Necessary as Blood

there came the comforting sound of her moving about in the kitchen, and her soft voice singing. Shifting her position a bit, so that Charlotte could see more of the room, Gemma said, ‘Betty has some pretty things, don‘t you think?‘ She pulled a box of thread spools closer with her free hand.
    Lifting the top, she began to rummage through them, pulling spools out for inspection. ‘There‘s blue, and red, and lime green, and a very pretty yellow. What about this one?‘ She held up a deep-pink spool. ‘What colour is this?‘
    ‘Magenta,‘ whispered Charlotte, reaching for it with fingers that were still toddler chubby.
    ‘Magenta? What a clever girl you are.‘
    Charlotte slid from Gemma‘s lap and knelt by the box. ‘My mummy has threads.‘ She began to take spools out and stack them, sorting by colour. ‘Reds together, blues together, greens together.‘
    ‘Where does the pink go, then?‘
    ‘Between the reds and the blues.‘ Charlotte looked up at her, frowning, as if the answer were obvious. ‘They‘re families. Reds are mummies, blues are daddies, and the pinks can be the little children.‘ She had the slightest lisp, but her diction was remarkably clear for not quite three. This was a child who had spent much time in the company of adults.
    ‘Yes, that sounds a good idea.‘ Impeccable colour-wheel logic, thought Gemma. ‘Does your mummy let you play with her thread?‘ she asked, having noted Charlotte‘s usage of the present tense.
    ‘I help. I‘m her best helper.‘ The red spools toppled, and Charlotte gathered them up with studied patience. ‘They shouldn‘t run away. That‘s naughty. My daddy says families belong together.‘
    Present tense for Daddy, too. Treading very carefully, but wanting to get an idea of just how much Charlotte understood, Gemma said, ‘But your daddy‘s not here now, is he?‘
    Charlotte pushed her stacks of spools a bit closer together and shook her head. ‘No,‘ she said, as matter-of-factly as if Gemma had asked about the weather. ‘Daddy‘s gone to look for Mummy.‘

    Weller always felt there was a persistent hum to a hospital. Even in nether regions like the basement, you could sense the unseen activity, a working hive.
    Unfair to compare Rashid to a bee, however — there was no mindless industry here, in this room of tile and steel and precision instruments. And there was definitely no smell of honey.
    ‘You getting soft, old man?‘ said Rashid, glancing up from the table. ‘You‘re looking a bit green.‘ He‘d finished the post-mortem on Naz Malik and had sent his assistant off, preferring to do the closing himself. He liked, as he had told Weller often enough, the sense of closure. And then he‘d flashed his wicked pathologist‘s grin at the bad pun.
    ‘Still suffering from the ravages of too much wedding champagne,‘ Weller said, rubbing his temples. ‘Cheap stuff, too, although I can‘t say I blame the bride‘s family, considering everything else they had to shell out for.‘
    ‘Sorry I couldn‘t make it. One of the pathologists on the rota, Dr Ling, had a family emergency. Her mother, I think. So duty called and all that. Give Sean my regrets.‘
    Weller‘s son and Rashid were the same age, and had become friends over the years. ‘You were well out of it, although you might have had a good laugh,‘ Weller told him. Rashid didn‘t drink, and Weller imagined that a hotel ballroom full of thoroughly pissed guests would get a bit wearing after a while if you didn‘t share their rather skewed perspective.
    His tie felt too tight, even in the cold room. Pulling at the knot, Weller repositioned himself against the tiled wall so that Kaleem‘s body half-blocked his view of the table. ‘Look, Rashid, I appreciate you moving this one up.‘ Weller didn‘t like to call in favours, but he was feeling less and less comfortable about this case. He‘d gone back to Bethnal Green, gone over the notes on the Sandra Gilles case, wondering what he might have missed besides this man Ritchie. Tim Cavendish had had no further information on Ritchie or his club, so Weller had put Sergeant Singh onto a search.
    Nothing had come in on Naz Malik. It was too soon to expect any results from the techies, and so far no good citizen had reported seeing Malik in the park last night or yesterday afternoon. Where had Malik been in those hours between the time he left his house in Fournier Street and the time Rashid estimated he had died in the