Necessary as Blood

said this Ritchie guy is good-looking? Come on, let‘s go see for ourselves. I‘ll be your partner in crime.‘

Chapter Eighteen

The latest arrivals in Brick Lane, the “haircuts‘ (as some of the locals like to call them), are the ones buying up old warehouses and turning them into vintage-clothing stores or dot.com companies...
As the City moves further towards territory traditionally belonging to immigrant groups tensions are increasing.

Rachel Lichtenstein, On Brick Lane

    To Gemma the street seemed like a canyon, a last bastion of the old London, close and crowded, steeped in the bustle of centuries, while beyond it the great towers of the modern City advanced inexorably, like armies of jagged glass shards. ‘I wonder why it was called Widegate?‘ she said aloud.
    Melody, who was scanning the frontages as she walked beside her, answered absently, ‘These are eighteenth-century silk merchants‘ houses, most of them. Maybe there was a gate into Spitalfields — literally into the fields, I mean. Look, this must be the club. It‘s a new building, but very cleverly done.‘
    The building matched the description that Kincaid had given Gemma. She rang the bell, and after a moment the door clicked open.
    The girl who met them in the elegant reception area, however, was not the girl Kincaid had described. This one was a delicate blonde, with a Nordic look that reminded Gemma of Pippa Nightingale, but Gemma‘s gaze was held by the large fabric collage over the desk. Sandra‘s work, undoubtedly, and as stunning as the pieces she had seen in Sandra‘s studio.
    They had no sooner asked to see Lucas Ritchie than a tall, fair man appeared from the small office area behind the reception desk. He came towards them with a hand outstretched, but his expression was a bit wary. ‘I‘m Lucas Ritchie. Can I help you?‘
    ‘I‘m Detective Inspector Gemma James, and this is DC Tklbot. But I‘m not here officially, Mr Ritchie.‘ As Gemma shook his hand, she gave him the same explanation she had given Roy Blakely and Pippa Nightingale, and took the opportunity to study him. Good-looking, yes, but — she couldn‘t quite put her finger on what she found disconcerting. Perhaps he was just a bit too neat and perfectly tailored, although there was a suggestion of muscle under the fine fabric of his suit jacket. Or maybe it was the faintest hint of red to his fair hair, or the freckling on his lightly tanned skin — something she had a personal bias against. ‘Pippa said that you and Sandra went back a long way,‘ she went on, trying to mesh this very polished man with what she knew of Sandra. ‘I thought that if you‘d known her family...‘
    Ritchie moved away from the desk, although the blonde girl had disappeared into the office area. A pale, heatless flame flickered in the sitting-area fireplace, even on such a warm day. It was meant to invoke a cosy atmosphere, Gemma supposed, but Ritchie didn‘t offer them a seat.
    ‘I told your superintendent — Kincaid, was it?‘ Ritchie said, and Gemma nodded vaguely, as if she hadn‘t a clue whom he meant. She certainly wasn‘t claiming possession at this point. ‘I told Superintendent Kincaid yesterday that I really didn‘t know Sandra‘s family.‘ Ritchie leaned against the back of an armchair, folding his arms. ‘You have to understand, when we first met we were kids in art school. Those aren‘t the sorts of things we talked about. We were going to change the world, and we didn‘t want any baggage while we were doing it.‘ There was a faraway look in his caramel-coloured eyes. After a moment, he added reflectively, ‘Although I think you could say Sandra tipped the balance for the better. And she had more cachet than most of us, even in the beginning, being a genuine working-class girl, although she didn‘t make much stock of it.‘
    ‘Was she ashamed of her background?‘ asked Melody. In her tastefully pinstriped dark suit, she looked as if she belonged on the club staff.
    ‘Sandra?‘ Ritchie laughed. ‘You didn‘t know Sandra. She was proud of being an East Ender — a real East Ender, some would say now — although Sandra was never the type to exclude anyone. She was unusually touchy about prejudice against race or religion, even for the multicultural crowd we hung out with.‘
    ‘Mr Ritchie,‘ said Gemma, trying to come up with a tactful way to say it, ‘were you and Sandra always... just friends?‘
    He gave her an assessing look, then