what I deserve," Nkata cut in. "Not to mention DPA. Not before this, not now, and not later."
Barbara was silent. She couldn't dispute what they both knew to be the truth. She finally said, "You know, Winnie, we're sort of in the same position."
"How d'you mean? Woman cop, black cop?"
"Not that. It's more about vision. Hillier doesn't really see either one of us. Fact is, you can apply that to everyone on this team. He doesn't see any of us, just how we can either help him or hurt him."
Nkata considered this. "I s'pose you're right."
"So none of what he says and does matters because we have the same job at the end of the day. Question is: Are we up for that? 'Cause it means letting go of how much we loathe him and just getting on with what we do best."
"I'm on for that," Nkata said. "But, Barb, you still deserve-"
"Hey," she interrupted, "so do you."
Now, she yawned widely and shoved her shoulder against the recalcitrant door of the Mini. She'd found a parking space along Steeles Road, round the corner from Eton Villas. She plodded back to the yellow house, hunched into a cold wind that had come up in the late afternoon, and went along the path to her bungalow.
Inside, she flipped on the lights, tossed her shoulder bag on the table, and dug the desired tin of Heinz from a cupboard. She dumped its contents unceremoniously into a pan. Under other circumstances, she'd have eaten the beans cold. But tonight, she decided she deserved the full treatment. She popped bread into the toaster and from the fridge took a Stella Artois. It wasn't her night to drink, but she'd had a tough day.
As her meal was preparing itself, she went for the television remote, which, as usual, she couldn't find. She was searching the wrinkled linens of the unmade daybed when someone rapped at her door. She glanced over her shoulder and saw through the open blinds on the window two shadowy forms on her front step: one quite small, the other taller, both of them slender. Hadiyyah and her father had come calling.
Barbara gave up her search for the remote and opened the door to her neighbours. She said, "Just in time for a Barbara Special. I've two pieces of toast, but if you behave yourselves, we can divide them three ways." She held the door wider to admit them, giving a glance over her shoulder to check that she'd tossed her dirty knickers in the laundry basket sometime during the last forty-eight hours.
Taymullah Azhar smiled with his usual grave courtesy. He said, "We cannot stay, Barbara. This will only take a moment, if you do not mind."
He sounded so sombre that Barbara glanced warily from him to his daughter. Hadiyyah was hanging her head, her hands clasped behind her back. A few wisps of hair escaped from her plaits, brushing against her cheeks, and her cheeks themselves were flushed. She looked as if she'd been crying.
"What's wrong? Is something...?" Barbara felt dread from a dozen different sources, none of which she particularly cared to name. "What's going on, Azhar?"
Azhar said, "Hadiyyah?" His daughter looked up at him imploringly. His face was implacable. "We have come for a reason. You know what it is."
Hadiyyah gulped so loudly that Barbara could hear it. She brought her hands from round her back and extended them to Barbara. In them, she held the Buddy Holly CD. She said, "Dad says I'm to give this back to you, Barbara."
Barbara took it from her. She looked at Azhar. She said, "But...Sorry, but is it not allowed, or something?" That seemed unlikely. She knew a little about their customs, and gift giving was one of them.
"And?" Azhar said to his daughter without answering Barbara's question. "There is more, is there not?"
Hadiyyah lowered her head again. Barbara could see that her lips were trembling.
Her father said, "Hadiyyah. I shall not ask you-"
"I fibbed," the little girl blurted out. "I fibbed to my dad and he found out and I'm meant to give this back to you in consee...con...consequence." She raised her head. She'd begun to cry. "But thank you, because I thought it was lovely. I liked 'Peggy Sue' especially." Then she spun on her heel and fled, back towards the front of the house. Barbara heard her sob.
She looked to her neighbour. She said, "Listen, Azhar. This is actually my fault. I had no idea Hadiyyah wasn't supposed to go