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.
"He's up with the assistant commissioner, Detective Constable," she said. "He said you're to go up and join them. D'you know the hem's coming out of your trousers?"