The French windows were open, and cooking sounds along with conversation came from within. Hadiyyah was chatting to her father and Barbara could hear from her voice that she was excited.

She knocked and called out, “Anyone home?” to which Hadiyyah cried, “Barbara! You’re back! Brilliant!”

When Hadiyyah came to the door, she looked altered to Barbara. Taller, somehow, although that didn’t make sense, as Barbara had hardly been gone long enough for the little girl to have grown. “Oh, this is so lovely,” Hadiyyah cried. “Dad! Barbara’s here. C’n she stay for dinner?”

“No, no,” Barbara stammered. “Please, don’t, kiddo. I only came to say thank you. I’ve just got back. I found the skirt. And the rest. And what a bloody nice surprise it was.”

“I hemmed it myself,” Hadiyyah informed her proudly. “Well, maybe Mrs. Silver helped a bit ’cause sometimes I make my stitches crooked. But were you surprised? I ironed it as well. Did you find the bracelet?” She bounced from foot to foot. “Did you like it? When I saw it, I asked Dad could we buy it ’cause you know how you got to accessorise, Barbara.”

“From your lips to my memory,” Barbara told her reverently. “But I couldn’t’ve found anything as perfect as that.”

“It’s the colour, isn’t it?” Hadiyyah said. “And part of what makes it so wonderful is the size. See, what I learned is that the size of the accessory depends upon the size of the person wearing it. But that has to do with one’s features and bones and body type, not with one’s weight and height, if you know what I mean. So if you look at your wrists-like if you compare them to mine-what you c’n see-”

“Khushi.” Azhar came to the door of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a tea towel.

Hadiyyah turned to him. “Barbara found the surprise!” she announced. “She likes it, Dad. And what about the blouse, Barbara? Did you like the new blouse? I wished I picked it out, but I didn’t. Dad picked it out, didn’t you, Dad? I wanted a different one.”

“Don’t tell me. You wanted one with a pussy bow.”

“Well…” She shifted on her feet, doing a little tap dancing in the doorway. “Not exactly. But it did have ruffles. Not a lot, you see. But there was a sweet little ruffle down the front hiding the buttons and I liked it awfully. I thought it was brilliant. But Dad said you wouldn’t ever wear ruffles. I said fashion is all about expanding one’s horizons, Barbara. But he said horizons can be expanded only so far, and he said the tailored blouse was better. I said the neckline of a blouse is meant to copy the shape your jawline makes and your face is rounded, isn’t it, not angular like the tailored blouse is. And he said let’s try it and you c’n always take it back if you don’t like it. And d’you know where we got it?”

“Khushi, khushi,” Azhar said warmly. “Why do you not invite Barbara inside?”

Hadiyyah laughed, hands to her mouth. “I got so excited!” She stepped back from the door. “We have fizzy lemonade to drink. D’you want some? We’re having a celebration, aren’t we, Dad?”

“Khushi,” Azhar said to her meaningfully.

Some sort of message passed between them, and Barbara realised that Azhar and his daughter had been in the midst of a private conversation. Her presence was clearly an interruption. She said hastily, “Anyway, I’m off, you two. I wanted to say thanks straightaway. It was awfully kind. C’n I pay you for the blouse?”

“You may not,” Azhar told her.

“It was a present,” Hadiyyah declared. “We even bought it in Camden High Street, Barbara. Not in the Stables or anything-”

“God no,” Barbara said. Uneasy personal experience had taught her how Azhar felt about Hadiyyah wandering round the warren comprising the Stables and Camden Lock Market.

“-but we did go into Inverness Street Market, and it was just lovely. I’ve never been there before.”

Azhar smiled. He cupped the back of his daughter’s head and jiggled it lightly in a fond gesture. He said, “How you chatter tonight.” And to Barbara, “Will you stay for dinner, Barbara?”

“Oh, do stay, Barbara,” Hadiyyah said. “Dad’s making chicken saag masala, and there’s dal and chapatis and mushroom dopiaza. I gen’rally don’t like mushrooms, you know, but I love them how Dad cooks. Oh, an’ he’s making rice pilau with spinach and carrots.”

“That sounds like quite a feast,” Barbara said.

“It is, it is! ’Cause-” She clapped her hands to her mouth. Her eyes fairly danced above them. She said against her palms, “Oh, I wish and wish I could say more. Only I can’t, you see. I promised.”

“Then you mustn’t,” Barbara said.

“But you’re such a friend. Isn’t she, Dad? C’n I…?”

“You may not.” Azhar shot Barbara a smile. “Now, we have stood here chatting long enough. Barbara, we insist that you join us for dinner.”

“There’s lots of food,” Hadiyyah announced.

“Put that way,” Barbara told her, “I can hardly do anything but fall straight into it.”

She followed them inside, and she felt a warmth that had nothing to do with the day’s temperature, which had hardly been lessened by the cooking that had gone on within the flat. Indeed, the beastly heat of the waning day was something she hardly noticed at all. Instead, she noticed the manner in which her mood lifted, she no longer was caught up in considering what was happening to Thomas Lynley, and the concerns of the murder enquiry melted away.

THE CONFRONTATION WITH John Stewart left Isabelle rattled, a reaction she hadn’t expected. She was long used to dealing with men on the force, but theirs was generally a covert sexism, displayed by the sly innuendo whose interpretation could, conveniently, be attributed to everything from thin skin to complete misinterpretation on the part of the listener. Matters were different with John Stewart. Sly innuendo was not his style. At least Isabelle found that this was the case behind closed doors when Stewart knew very well that any move she made against him would be an instance of her-word-against-his with the higher-ups. And this in a situation in which the last thing she wanted to do was to go to her superior officers with a complaint about sexual harassment or anything else. John Stewart, she realised, was clever as the devil. He knew the ice she was skating on was thin. He was happy to shove her directly into the middle of the pond.

She wondered briefly how a man could be so shortsighted as to set himself in warfare with someone who might be selected as his superior officer. But she gave that consideration only a moment before she saw their standoff from Stewart’s point of view: Clearly, he didn’t expect her to be selected. And at the end of the day, she couldn’t blame him for believing she’d soon be shown the door.

What a cock-up, she thought. How could things possibly get any worse?

God, how she wanted a drink.

But she steeled herself not to have one, not even to look inside her handbag where her airline bottles nestled like sleeping infants. She didn’t need the stuff. She merely wanted it. Want was not need.

A knock on her office door and she swung round from the window, where she’d been standing to gaze at a view she did not even see. She called entrance, and Lynley stood there. He held a manila envelope in his hand.

He said, “I was out of order earlier. I’m terribly sorry.”

She laughed shortly. “You and everyone else.”

“Still and all-”

“It’s no matter, Thomas.”

He said nothing for a moment, observing her. He tapped the envelope against his palm, as if he was thinking how to go on. At last he said, “John is…,” but still he hesitated, perhaps looking for the proper word.

She said, “Yes. It’s hard to pin down, isn’t it? Just the right term to capture the essence of John Stewart.”

“I suppose. But I shouldn’t have reprimanded him, Isabelle. It was rather a knee-jerk reaction, I’m afraid.”