Necessary as Blood (30 page)

But it was late, getting on for midnight, and Gemma suspected they’d be more likely to get complaints from the neighbors than cooperation.

She rubbed her ring against the lapel of her jacket to polish it. The band was the only tangible reminder that the afternoon had not been a dream. She’d taken the time to change from her lovely dress into jacket and trousers. She didn’t intend to face Alexander in her wedding finery, and face him she meant to do, no matter how long it took.

But would she have another chance to speak to him without a solicitor present? She looked up and down the corridor. There was no sign of Kincaid returning. Taking a breath, she opened the door and went in.

Miles Alexander sat at the table in his bespoke suit, studying his nails. He looked up at the sound of the door, then raised an eyebrow in an expression of mild interest.

“Haven’t I seen you before?” he asked.

“I met you in hospital,” said Gemma. “My mother had a shunt put in her arm. You were her anesthetist.”

“A ginger-haired woman.” He smiled, as if pleased by his recollection. “Leukemia. Not a good prognosis, I’m afraid.”

The remark was deliberately, casually cruel.

Refusing to let him see that the taunt had hit its mark, Gemma
smiled back. “Do you always have such a good bedside manner, Mr. Alexander? Or did you choose your speciality because the patients couldn’t talk back?”

“Oh, aren’t you the wit. I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I don’t remember your name.” Alexander seemed unperturbed. “Nor do I have to speak to you, although you do seem to be conscious.”

“I can’t question you, no. But I can
say
whatever I like.” She moved a step closer, and wondered if she were imagining the metallic, slightly chemical smell of him. “You see, I know you murdered Sandra Gilles and her husband. And I don’t intend to let you get away with playing God.”

“Then I’d say you have a rather elevated self-image, and a very active imagination.” Alexander smiled again, but she had seen the glint in his eyes, like the flash of a snake moving in the grass.

It was only then that she realized she’d been harboring the tiniest shred of hope that Sandra Gilles was still alive. She turned and left the room.

A few moments later, she was leaning against the corridor wall, her eyes closed, when she heard footsteps. She opened her eyes and saw Kincaid, alone.

“Where’s Alexander’s lawyer?” asked Gemma.

“Rethinking his strategy, I suspect. He said he needed to make a phone call.”

“Why? What’s happened?”

“Good news for us,” Kincaid answered, but his expression was grim. “Doug and Melody came up trumps. Mr. Alexander’s next-door neighbor came home after an evening out. She’s a single mum, apparently, and was only too happy to talk about the odd goings-on next door.

“She didn’t recall seeing Naz or Sandra. But”—he forestalled her disappointment—“she did tell them that she’d been worried about the young girl she’d seen in the house, sometimes looking out a win
dow, a few times peeking through the open door when Alexander was coming or going.

“Once she stopped Alexander and asked if his little girl might like to play with her own daughter. He told her the girl was his housekeeper’s child, and more or less to mind her own business.

“But the mum says she never saw a housekeeper. And not long after that, she stopped seeing the girl, too.”

“When?” asked Gemma. “When did she last see the girl?”

“She said she was sure it was in May. Her wisteria had just finished blooming.”

Gemma stared at him in dismay. “And she said
child
? Not a teenager? Not the girl who came into the clinic?”

“A little girl not more than ten or twelve, she told Doug. Asian, wearing traditional dress. I’ve rung the magistrate. We should have a search warrant by daybreak.”

Miles Alexander had, on the advice of his solicitor, refused to answer any of their questions. After a whispered conference with his lawyer, he had not reacted when told they intended to search his house. The solicitor, however, had looked distinctly uneasy.

Gemma thought Kincaid might provoke a response when he suggested that Alexander might find a night enjoying the hospitality of the Metropolitan Police a novel experience, one more comfortable than a night spent in a National Health Service hospital ward. But Alexander had remained bland as butter, with no more displays of the veiled viciousness that had marked his off-the-record conversation with Gemma.

Kincaid had left Doug Cullen preparing the request for a warrant, and Gemma and Kincaid had gone home and fallen into bed.

“We’ve made a real balls-up of this if we don’t find anything,” Kincaid said as Gemma turned out the light.

“We will. He’s an arrogant bastard who thinks the rules don’t apply to him—any rules. But he’s not quite as clever as he thinks.”

Duncan rolled over against her back. His voice already slurred with sleep, he threw an arm over her and murmured, “Wifey.”

Gemma roused herself enough to poke him with her elbow and say, “Don’t you dare call me that,” but she smiled and pulled him closer.

“How are you going to stop me?”

“Oh, I can think of ways,” said Gemma. She could feel the warmth of his hand on her belly, and snuggled against him. But his hand relaxed, and his breathing settled into a slow, regular rhythm.

She smiled and fell asleep.

As the sky began to gray, his phone rang. The sound was shockingly loud in the quiet room. “Oh, God, turn it off,” Gemma mumbled groggily.

But when she heard his voice, she came wide awake, sitting up and pushing her hair away from her face.

“What’s happened?” she asked when he rang off. “Did they get the warrant?”

Kincaid was already half out of bed. He leaned back and kissed her quickly. “A team will be waiting for us in Hoxton.”

Gemma had washed her face and thrown on jeans and a light jumper, then checked on the children.

Betty had insisted on staying over, and had made herself a bed on the sofa. She’d put Charlotte in with Toby, and when Gemma peeked in at the two little ones, Toby had, as usual, thrown off the covers, and Charlotte was rolled up in the duvet like a little hedgehog, with just her curls showing.

Gemma stood, gazing at them, wishing with all her heart she
could protect Charlotte from any more harm—and from the truth about what had happened to her parents, if they should learn it. Then she sighed and closed the door.

The Georgian street in Hoxton seemed slightly later in period than Fournier Street in Spitalfields. The front doors lacked Fournier Street’s ornate lintels, and the houses lacked the touches of eccentricity that made Fournier Street so appealing.

Here, the terrace was uniform, from windows and doors to trim work to bellpulls. Miles Alexander’s house, however, was easily identified by the surrounding cluster of police cars, the SOCO van, and the open front door.

Doug Cullen was waiting for them on the pavement, and so, to Gemma’s surprise, was Melody. Melody, like Gemma, had thrown on jeans and a cardigan, as the early morning air was still cool. She looked exhausted, but she had paper cups of coffee waiting for them. “Coffee shop round the corner,” she explained. “I was desperate.”

“What are you doing here?” Gemma asked her. “I didn’t mean for you to get out this morning, after all the work you put in last night.”

“Doug called me. And I wanted to be here.”

Gemma noted with interest that Doug and Melody seemed to have advanced to a comfortable first-name basis, and that he had actually invited Melody’s participation.

“Anything so far?” Kincaid asked.

“You were right, guv,” said Cullen. “I had a look at his computer before forensics packed it up. Bastard didn’t even have his files encrypted, but I suppose he thought he could wipe them if anyone came snooping round.”

“And there
are
photos,” Melody added, with no trace of her usual cheerful manner. “Albums of them.” She hunched her shoulders. “Truman’s in some of them, too. And some other blokes. We’ll
have to crop the girls’ faces from the shots, so that we can show them to Alia, and to the lady next door.”

“How many girls?” asked Gemma.

Melody shrugged and sipped her coffee. “Half a dozen, maybe. The last girl looked very young. Very pretty. The men were—” She shook her head.

“Any sign of girls in the house recently?” Kincaid asked.

Doug took over from Melody, but without his usual territorial defensiveness. “Not at the moment, no, but they’ve not got through everything yet. The interior of the house is recognizable from some of the photos, so apparently he used it for his…entertainment…on a regular basis. And the SOCOs found a pair of girl’s knickers in the outside rubbish bin. They were…” Cullen seemed unusually hesitant. “…soiled.”

“Blood?”

“And semen, they think. Maybe from last night’s little soirée.”

“Jesus.” Kincaid looked as sick as Gemma felt. The fact that they’d seen these things before didn’t make it easier. “His mates will have got the girl out after we had Alexander picked up. Bloody hell. We should have kept a watch on the house. I hope she’s still alive.”

Cullen nodded agreement. “I’ve got a call in to the sergeant who was in charge last night, to see if he can match any of the men he saw with the photos in Alexander’s albums. Then we can start trying to put names to the faces.”

“Lucas Ritchie may be able to help there. And I suspect he’ll be glad to cooperate if he wants to hang on to any shred of reputation.” Kincaid glanced up the road. A shiny red tow truck came round the corner and pulled up behind a new-model silver Lexus parked near the house.

“Is that Alexander’s car?” asked Gemma.

“His pride and joy, looks like,” Cullen answered, crumpling his empty cup. “But if he took Naz Malik to the park in it, the lab should be able to find traces of hair or fiber.”

Kincaid nodded. “That would be a start, although it wouldn’t prove that Naz was in the car the day he died unless they were found in the boot. And I don’t see how he could have carried him out of the house and dumped him in the boot here. It wouldn’t have been quite dark, and the car would have been in full view of all the neighbors. I imagine he walked him out as if he were very drunk, or ill, and put him in the backseat.”

“Has there been anything in the house so far that links Alexander to Naz or Sandra?” Gemma asked.

“Not yet, but the SOCOs are working on it.” Cullen sounded as if he took the failure personally, but Gemma hadn’t really expected more. She was, in fact, astonished by Alexander’s arrogance in leaving evidence of his trade in children in plain view.

A woman came out of the house next door and stood on her front step, watching them. She had a toweling dressing gown pulled tightly around her, as if she were cold. Her blond-streaked hair was pulled up with a band, and her thin face free of makeup.

“Is this the woman you talked to last night?” she asked Cullen and Melody.

“Her name is Anna Swinburne,” answered Melody. “Nice woman. She seems very distressed by the whole business.”

“Can’t say as I blame her. I’ll just have a word.” Gemma walked next door. “I’m DI James,” she said, holding out her hand. “I just wanted to thank you for talking to our officers last night.”

Anna Swinburne’s fingers were icy. “Is this because of me?” she asked, nodding towards the patrol cars and tow truck as Gemma released her hand.

“Well, at least in part. That’s why—”

“Will he go to jail?”

Gemma looked at her a little more carefully. “I don’t know. That’s not up to us. It’s just our job to gather the evidence.”

“Well, I hope he does,” said Anna vehemently. “I don’t like him. I never felt safe with him next door.”

“Was there any particular reason?”

“Oh, I suppose at first there was a bit of hurt vanity.” Anna Swinburne smiled, and Gemma decided she was pretty in an intense sort of way. “I’m divorced. This was a new start, this house, and he was a nice-looking single man. But he made it clear he wasn’t interested in giving me the time of day, and I was all right with that even if it was a bit ego dampening. But the more I saw of him—”

“Did he say something, or do something?” Gemma encouraged.

Anna shrugged. “No. He was just unfriendly, even for a Londoner. And…odd. I’m a television writer, so I work from home a good bit. He was always popping in and out at different times, sometimes just for a minute or two. I know he’s a doctor, but I thought they kept more regular hours—that he’d be in surgeries all day or something.”

If he’d been keeping a girl in the house, Gemma thought it quite likely that he’d been checking on her. It would have been a good way to keep the child too cowed to go out.

“After you stopped seeing the little girl, did he still pop in like that?”

Anna Swinburne frowned and pulled her toweling dressing gown tighter. “Now that you mention it, I don’t think he did.”

“And you never talked to her, the little girl?”

“No. Once or twice, when I saw her at the window on nice days, I waved to her. One time she waved back. But then all the landscapes were in and out, and after that I didn’t see her again.”

“Landscapers?”

“Oh, these houses have quite large gardens in the back. That’s one reason I bought here, so my daughter would have a place to play. I don’t know what he had done in his garden, but it must have been quite a big project.”

“When was this?” Gemma asked, but she had a sinking feeling that she knew. Anna had already told Cullen and Melody that she’d last seen the little girl in May.

“May-ish, I’m sure. We had a warm spell, and I remember I could hear them working next door when I was sitting in my garden.”

“Ms. Swinburne—Anna. We may have some photos for you to look at later. We’d like to see if you can identify this little girl.”

The woman paled. “But I don’t want to see—my daughter’s ten. I don’t want to think about—”

“It will be all right. It will just be the girls’ faces.”

Gemma thanked her and rejoined Kincaid. Cullen and Melody had gone to speak to the tow truck driver. “I want to go into the house,” she said.

“I thought you would.” Kincaid handed her the white overall he’d taken from the boot of the Escort. “I’ll be right behind you. I just want to have a word with the SOCOs about getting those photos copied as soon as possible.” The head of the crime scene team had just come out, carrying samples to the van.

When Gemma had slipped on her overall, she walked in slowly, studying the house. The decor seemed late Georgian, and was based, she guessed, on the period when they had begun to use gilt to reflect light. And although the rooms were laid out simply, as in the other Georgian houses she’d seen, the furnishings looked authentic, and of museum quality. The few pieces of contemporary art on the pale-stone-colored walls worked well, rather to Gemma’s surprise.

The ground-floor rooms were the grand reception rooms, and in both sitting and dining rooms the elegant fireplaces served as focal points. But in the sitting room, the wall above the mantel was empty—a look at odds with the careful placement of furniture and artwork elsewhere in the house.

Gemma gazed at the room, and at the size of the empty space, and thought of the unfinished collage on Sandra’s worktable. Had it been meant to go here?

That would explain so much. If Sandra had been working on a piece commissioned by Alexander, and had come to the house to get a feel for what her client wanted, and where the piece would go, she
might have stumbled across something that made her connect the story she’d heard at the clinic with Alexander. Could it have been the little girl the neighbor saw, the latest of Alexander’s victims?

But if so, what had become of the child?

Gemma went downstairs, and through a sleek, modern kitchen into the high-walled garden beyond.

The garden, like the house, was formal, with rows of neatly clipped hedges around the borders, and a paved courtyard with a fountain at its center. There were no flowers, and no color other than the green of the shrubs and the pale ocher of paving, gravel, and fountain. And although there were two stone benches, it was not a place in which Gemma could imagine spending time.

She looked down at the paving stones, so perfectly, newly laid. And she thought of Sandra’s haunting, faceless girls and women, preserved forever behind the bars of their gilded cages.