Necessary as Blood

only bought things if someone he considered important had got in first.‘
    ‘Do you think Naz would have known Truman?‘
    ‘Not socially, if that‘s what you mean. If he bought work from Sandra, he might have met Naz at some point, although Sandra did her best to keep her work separate from her personal life.‘ Pippa turned, and the flash of anger that Gemma had seen had been replaced with amusement. ‘You could ask Lucas.‘
    Gemma knew there was something she was missing, some game between Pippa and Lucas Ritchie that she didn‘t understand, but she thought it revolved around Sandra. ‘I think I‘d do better to ask John Truman,‘ she said. ‘Do you know where I could find him?‘
    ‘Hoxton. His surgery‘s not far from the square, and he lives above it.‘ She walked back to her office, checked a file and wrote down an address on a note-card stamped with the gallery name.
    Gemma took the card and studied it, replaying her mental geography. ‘It‘s quite near, then.‘
    ‘Oh, yes,‘ said Pippa. ‘A Georgian house, like Sandra‘s, but butchered. I doubt Truman was inspired by the thought of the Huguenot silk weavers.‘
    Gemma thanked her and turned to go, but as she reached the top of the stairs she turned back. ‘You and Lucas. You seemed quite angry with him. Will you stay friends?‘
    Pippa smiled. ‘If you want to call it that. He always comes back to me.‘

    Gemma stood on the pavement just outside the gallery door as she pulled out her phone to ring Kincaid. He would need to pay an official call on this John Truman. Gemma had done as much as she dared. Any further action on her own and she would be seriously trespassing on a Scotland Yard investigation.
    But she stopped, finger hovering over the keypad, as she thought about the implications of her conversation with Pippa. Had Sandra and Pippa become estranged, not because Pippa disapproved of how Sandra was marketing her work, but because a longstanding jealousy over Lucas Ritchie had come to a head?
    Could Sandra have come here that day, from Columbia Road? Could Pippa have told her something, out of spite, that had made her run away? Or what if they had argued, and Pippa had killed Sandra?
    Although Gemma could have sworn, on her first visit, that Pippa‘s grief over Sandra‘s disappearance had been genuine, theirs had obviously been a complicated relationship, and love and jealousy had brought about stranger things. But even if the slender Pippa had been able to kill Sandra, could she have disposed of her body — and so efficiently that it had not been found? And then killed Naz Malik? For Gemma was now utterly convinced that Sandra‘s disappearance and Naz‘s murder were connected.
    She shook her head, staring absently at the front of the Rivington Street Health Clinic a few doors down. No, she was spinning theories out of air, and they wouldn‘t wash. Pippa‘s little display of spitefulness had been directed at Lucas, not Sandra. Truman, the vet, who was more than likely to have known Sandra, and who had easy access to the ketamine that had been found in Naz‘s system, seemed a more likely prospect. Maybe...
    Gemma‘s speculations came to an abrupt halt. A young woman, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, her dark hair pulled up in a haphazard ponytail, had stopped in front of the clinic, glancing up and down the street before slipping inside. The profile had been familiar, although recognition took Gemma a moment, because the last time she had seen the young woman, she‘d been wearing a headscarf. It was Alia Hakim, Charlotte‘s nanny.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Traffic in children has been going on for as long as mankind has been sinning and suffering. Josephine Butler (1828-1907) writes in her journals, pamphlets and diaries of the second half of the nineteenth century about seeing thousands (yes, thousands) of little girls, some as young as four or five, in the illegal brothels of London, Paris, Brussels and Geneva.

Jennifer Worth, Farewell to the East End

    Doug Cullen yanked the copy of Melody‘s email from the printer tray on Kincaid‘s desk and stared at it. ‘Where the hell did she get this?‘
    ‘Let me see.‘ Kincaid got up and took the pages from him. When he had read through the list of names, he said, ‘I‘m not sure I want to know. It‘s called deniability, Doug. But this could prove very useful.‘ For all their digging, they had not been able to come up with anything dodgy on Lucas Ritchie or his club, and they