Elizabeth George: With No One As Witness

For her part, Hadiyyah took everything in like a child on her first trip to a fun fair, with Buddy Holly raining in her heart. It was only when they’d progressed upwards to Chalk Farm Road, where the crowds were if anything thicker, louder, and more decorated than in the shops below, that Hadiyyah removed her earphones and finally spoke.

“I want to come back here every week from now on,” she announced. “Will you come with me, Barbara? I could save all my money and we could have lunch and then we could go in all of the shops. We can’t today ’cause I ought to be home before Dad gets there. He’ll be cross if he knows where we’ve been.”

“Will he? Why?”

“Oh, ’cause I’m forbidden to come here,” Hadiyyah said pleasantly. “Dad says if he ever saw me out in Camden High Street, he’d wallop me properly till I couldn’t sit down. Your note didn’t say we were coming here, did it?”

Barbara gave an inward curse. She hadn’t considered the ramifications of what she’d intended as only an innocent jaunt to the music shop. She felt for a moment as if she’d corrupted the innocent, but she allowed herself to experience the relief of having written a note to Taymullah Azhar that had employed three words only-“Kiddo’s with me”-along with her signature. Now if she could just depend on Hadiyyah’s discretion…although from the little girl’s excitement-despite her intention of keeping her father in the dark as to her whereabouts while he was on his errand-Barbara had to admit it was highly unlikely that she’d be able to hide from Azhar the pleasure attendant on their adventure.

“I didn’t exactly tell him where we’d be,” Barbara admitted.

“Oh, that’s brilliant,” Hadiyyah said. “’Cause if he knew…I don’t much fancy being walloped, Barbara. Do you?”

“D’you think he’d actually-”

“Oh look, look ,” Hadiyyah cried. “What’s this place called, then? And it smells so heavenly . Are they cooking somewhere? C’n we go in?”

“This place” was Camden Lock Market, which they had come up to in their journey homeward. It stood on the edge of the Grand Union Canal, and the fragrance of the food stalls within it had reached them all the way on the pavement. Within, and mixing with the noise of rap music emanating from one of the shops, one could just discern the barking of food vendors hawking everything from stuffed jacket potatoes to chicken tikka masala.

“Barbara, c’n we go inside this place?” Hadiyyah asked again. “Oh, it’s so special . And Dad’ll never know. We won’t be walloped. I promise, Barbara.”

Barbara looked down at her shining face and knew she couldn’t deny her the simple pleasure of a wander through the market. How much trouble could it cause, indeed, if they were to take half an hour more and poke about among the candles, the incense, the T-shirts, and the scarves? She could distract Hadiyyah from the drug paraphernalia and the body-piercing stalls if they came upon them. As to the rest of what Camden Lock Market offered, it was all fairly innocent.

Barbara smiled at her little companion. “What the hell,” she said with a shrug. “Let’s go.”

They’d taken only two steps in their intended direction when Barbara’s mobile phone rang, however. Barbara said, “Hang on,” to Hadiyyah and read the incoming number. When she saw who it was, she knew the news was unlikely to be good.

“THE GAME’S AFOOT.” It was Acting Superintendent Thomas Lynley’s voice, and it bore an underlying note of tension the source of which he made clear when he added, “Get over to Hillier’s office as quickly as you can.”

“ Hillier ?” Barbara studied the mobile like an alien object while Hadiyyah waited patiently at her side, toeing a crack in the pavement and watching the mass of humanity part round them as it heaved its way towards one market or another. “AC Hillier can’t have asked for me.”

“You’ve got an hour,” Lynley told her.

“But, sir-”

“He wanted thirty minutes, but we negotiated. Where are you?”

“Camden Lock Market.”

“Can you get here in an hour?”

“I’ll do my best.” Barbara snapped the phone off and shoved it into her bag. She said, “Kiddo, we’ve got to save this for another day. Something’s up at the Yard.”

“Something bad?” Hadiyyah asked.

“Maybe yes, maybe no.”

Barbara hoped for no. She hoped that what was up was an end to her period of punishment. She’d been suffering the mortification of demotion for months now, and she couldn’t help anticipating an end to what she considered her professional ostracism every time Assistant Commissioner Sir David Hillier’s name came up in conversation.

And now she was wanted. Wanted in AC Hillier’s office. Wanted there by Hillier himself and by Lynley, who, Barbara knew, had been manoeuvring to get her back to her rank almost as soon as she’d had it stripped from her.

She and Hadiyyah virtually trotted all the way back to Eton Villas. They parted where the flagstone path divided at the corner of the house. Hadiyyah gave a wave before she skipped over to the ground-floor flat, where Barbara could see that the sticky note she’d left for the little girl’s father had been removed from the door. She concluded that Azhar had returned with the surprise for his daughter, so she went to her bungalow for a hasty change of clothes.

The first decision she had to make-and quickly, because the hour Lynley had spoken of on the mobile was now forty-five minutes after her dash from the markets on Chalk Farm Road-was what to wear. Her choice needed to be professional without being an obvious ploy to win Hillier’s approval. Trousers and a matching jacket would do the first without teetering too close to the second. So trousers and matching jacket it would be.

She found them where she’d last left them, in a ball behind the television set. She couldn’t recall exactly how they’d got there, and she shook them out to survey the damage. Ah the beauty of polyester, she thought. One could be the victim of stampeding buffalo and still not bear a wrinkle to show it.

She set about changing into an ensemble of sorts. This was less about making a fashion statement and more about throwing on the trousers and rooting for a blouse without too many obvious creases in it. She decided on the least offensive shoes she owned-a pair of scuffed brogues that she donned in place of the red high-top trainers she preferred-and within five minutes she was able to grab two Chocotastic Pop-Tarts. She shoved them into her shoulder bag on her way out of the door.

Outside, there remained the question of transport: car, bus, or underground. All of them were risky: A bus would have to lumber through the clogged artery of Chalk Farm Road, a car meant engaging in creative rat running, and as for the underground…the underground line serving Chalk Farm was the notoriously unreliable Northern line. On the best of days, the wait alone could be twenty minutes.

Barbara opted for the car. She fashioned herself a route that would have done justice to Daedalus, and she managed to get herself down to Westminster only eleven and a half minutes behind schedule. Still, she knew that Hillier was not going to be chuffed with anything other than punctuality, so she blasted round the corner when she got to Victoria Street, and once she’d parked, she headed for the lifts at a run.

She stopped on the floor where Lynley had his temporary office, in the hope that he might have held off Hillier for the extra eleven and a half minutes it had taken her to get there. He hadn’t done, or so his empty office suggested. Dorothea Harriman, the departmental secretary, confirmed Barbara’s conclusion.