Necessary as Blood

made a cold salad.‘
    ‘I‘d love to,‘ Gemma said, although the thought of food made the sweat break out on her forehead. ‘I‘d better go, though. Toby has a football match, and I promised I‘d take him to the art shop for some pencils like Charlotte‘s afterwards.‘ She stood and kissed Betty‘s cheek. ‘But I‘ll ring you, and we‘ll see about arranging a visit.‘
    She gave Charlotte a hug, resisting the temptation to keep her in her arms, then waved as she let herself out of the flat.
    The stairs, however, proved almost as daunting going down as they had going up, and when she reached the car, she got in and simply sat.
    She felt overwhelmed, as if the pieces of her life were flying off in all directions, out of her control, and she couldn‘t summon the focus to hold them together.
    Avoiding the tender bruise on her forehead, she rested her head on the hot steering wheel, trying to think. Wedding... Mum... Charlotte... the Gilles brothers... Melody... Wedding...
    Her mind whirled and she sat up, fighting another wave of dizziness. She couldn‘t sort it out, not the way she was feeling. She needed some sensible advice, and suddenly she realized to whom she could talk. Putting the key in the ignition, she started the car and drove, not to Toby‘s football match, but to Kensington.

    Doug Cullen had left home that morning with a list of flats and estate agents in his pocket. But somehow, instead of taking the District Line to Putney, he got on the wrong train and found himself at Victoria. The mistake was half-habit and half-absent-mindedness. But as the reason for the absent-mindedness was his mulling over of the business of the newspaper story, he decided to get off the train and go on into the Yard.
    He was glad to shut himself in his office, quiet on a Saturday, where he could think it through properly. Something was not right about the whole thing. There was Kincaid‘s reaction, to start with. After his first surprise, the guv‘nor had gone all quiet and nonchalant about it, and while he might have the clout to buck displeasure from above, Cullen had been in on the interview with Ritchie as well, and he knew he wasn‘t bulletproof.
    How the hell had someone put together their visit — because that had to have been the ‘police investigation‘ — with Azad‘s membership in the club, something they hadn‘t known themselves?
    Unless, of course, there really was another investigation... He picked up a pen and doodled on the message pad on his desk: names, interconnected with big swooping arrows. What if the club was somehow tied into the Narcotics investigation? But if he and Kincaid had been warned off, there was no way any other detectives were going to go round asking official questions, so that idea didn‘t wash.
    But Lucas Ritchie did have a connection with Sandra Gilles‘s brothers, through his friendship with Sandra. And if the brothers were dealing drugs, was it possible that Ritchie was running them? The club would certainly be a convenient front for money-laundering, and some of Ritchie‘s clients might be investing in a bit of the action on the side.
    But how did Ahmed Azad tie into that? He had never been accused, as far as Cullen knew, of having any connection with drugs.
    The pen had leaked as he scribbled. Cullen tore the inky piece of paper into strips, staining his fingers in the process. He shuffled the strips, realizing he‘d left something — or rather someone — out.
    Gemma. Gemma had been involved in this case from the beginning, even before they‘d been called in. And he knew her well enough now to be certain that she hadn‘t just walked away from it, especially after she‘d helped arrange foster care for Naz Malik‘s daughter. But what could Gemma possibly have to do with Lucas Ritchie? The more he thought about it, the more certain he became that Gemma was mixed up in all of it, somehow, and he didn‘t like the idea one bit. But he needed more information.
    Maybe it was time to take advantage of a favour owed him by a reporter on the Chronicle. These things were tit for tat — and Doug, like most detectives, had developed a list of contacts useful to both parties.
    He picked up the phone and, after a few calls, managed to track down his sometime source, a veteran reporter named Cal Grogan.
    But by the time he rang off, he felt more baffled than ever. Cal had assured him that he‘d be more than happy to help, but the story had come straight from the