Free Necessary as Blood by Deborah Crombie

herself for having forgotten to turn it off, she fumbled in her handbag, all eyes on her. When she’d fished the offending instrument from the bottom of her bag, she glanced at the caller ID and froze. Gemma. She felt a moment of unreasoning panic. She couldn’t answer. Not here. Not now. She could not gracefully explain to her boss where she was and who she was with, nor could she lie with an audience.
    Swallowing, she pushed Ignore, then switched the phone off. “I think I’d like a glass of champagne for starters, Daddy,” she said, smiling brightly.
     
    Gemma went back through the house once more, checking that the lights were off, shutting doors. As she returned to the hall, the emptiness of the house seemed to close in behind her. Hurriedly, she let herself out and locked the dead bolt with the key. The thought of home, warm and light and cluttered from the boys’ Saturday activities, was suddenly almost irresistible, but first she had to return Naz Malik’s keys.
    She stood on the pavement, feeling the thick, damp evening air, slick as butter, slip round her bare arms and legs. If she got the tube from Old Street, it was only one stop on the Northern Line to the Angel in Islington, and from there a ten-minute walk to Tim’s.
    She turned left, then left again, deciding to walk up Brick Lane rather than Commercial Street. At the corner, the smell of curry was enticingly strong, but even if she’d had the time, the Brick Lane curry houses didn’t seem places a woman would comfortably go in for a meal on her own.
    But as she walked northwards, the curry palaces quickly gave way to small shops and businesses—textiles, barbers, hairdressers,travel agents, moneylenders—all catering to the Bangladeshi community, and all closed except for the newsagents or grocers. From the open door of a newsagent’s came the wailing chant of Asian music, monotonous but oddly appealing to her unaccustomed ear. The street signs were in English and Bengali, and the streetlamps, their delicate tracery in red and green metal inspired by Indian design, festively framed the narrow street.
    Gemma stopped, puzzling for a moment, then realized she’d seen that same design in some of Sandra Gilles’s work.
    By the time she reached Hanbury Street, notorious in Whitechapel lore as the site of the grisly death of Jack the Ripper’s second victim, Annie Chapman, the Banglatown part of Brick Lane had begun to recede. Here, the walls of the old Truman Brewery made a canyon of the narrow street, the smokestack a darker shadow against the night sky. But at street level, music boomed from the Vibe bar, and the pedestrians who jostled past her were young and for the most part white, clubbers dressed for a Saturday night on the town. This once-disreputable part of the East End had become a destination spot, a mecca for the hip and affluent. There was still enough of an edge, she thought as she passed a DJ setting up turntables in a makeshift stall on the pavement, for the West End patrons to feel they were living a bit dangerously.
    More shops were open here, now offering vintage clothing, records, books, coffee and Wi-Fi, and as she neared the old Bishopsgate railway line, the graffiti became more visible.
    Then she caught the scent of freshly baked bread and her steps quickened. She saw two bagel bakeries ahead on the left, both with lights on and doors open. As she drew closer, her mouth watered and she felt a bit light-headed. Warmed-over pizza at home seemed light-years away. She would need something to get by on.
    Gemma chose the second bakery, Beigel Bake, simply because the queue was longer—usually a good sign that the food was worth the wait. But the service was friendly and efficient and the queue movedquickly, just giving Gemma time to take in the no-nonsense interior, the huge steel ovens in the back, and the two Royalty Protection Command officers in full gear ahead of her. They were enormous, like nightclub bouncers on steroids.