Necessary as Blood

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-coloured 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 work table. 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 that the neighbour 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 centre. There were no flowers, and no colour other than the green of the shrubs and the pale ochre 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.

Chapter Thirty-One

‘When you are on the streets in Brick Lane the interior spaces are external to you. There aren‘t many reasons to go inside the buildings and get into these private spaces that hold their time in a different way to street time, which is always contemporary! (Iain Sinclair)

Rachel Lichtenstein, On Brick Lane

    Doug Cullen came into Kincaid‘s office and laid an evidence bag containing a familiar-looking, gold-stamped leather folder down on Kincaid‘s desk. ‘Forensics just delivered Alexander‘s passport. Makes for very interesting reading.‘
    ‘I bloody well hope so,‘ Kincaid said, with feeling. It was Monday morning and he had been up most of the night. Miles Alexander had been singularly uncooperative, either sneering or silent, and Kincaid was tired and frustrated. ‘We‘d better come up with something that will make the child-trafficking charges stick like glue, because we haven‘t got enough so far to sell the prosecution on a single homicide, much less a double one. And I do not want to let this bastard go.‘
    He felt quite sure that if Miles Alexander walked out of Scotland Yard, he would disappear, just like his friend Truman.
    He still had hopes that the lab would find fibre-transfer that would place Naz Malik in Alexander‘s house or car, but even that might be too little, and too late. Alexander could argue that Naz had visited him, or ridden in his car, at any time. What they really needed was to match Alexander with hair or fibre that had been found on or around Naz Malik‘s body. But the processing of trace evidence took time, and he doubted he‘d get a result soon enough to allow him to keep Alexander in the nick.
    ‘What about Gemma‘s project?‘ asked Cullen, his face schooled into a neutrality Kincaid was sure he didn‘t feel. ‘I hear the Super‘s not best pleased at the expense.‘
    Kincaid knew Cullen was less than enthusiastic about Gemma‘s suggestion that they excavate Alexander‘s garden. ‘Slow going. They‘ve got the fountain moved and the pavers up, but apparently it‘s teaspoon-digging from now on. They can‘t risk disturbing any evidence.‘
    ‘If there‘s any evidence to disturb.‘
    ‘Gemma‘s