A Banquet of Consequences by Elizabeth George Page A

Inspector, I’d like to offer to take the project in hand.”
    “Towards what end?” Lynley enquired.
    “To the obvious end,” she announced. “The end that delivers her to love, of course, in any particular form it takes.”
    “And you actually think this will make a difference?” Lynley asked her.
    She smiled a smile replete with knowledge. “Trust me,” she said.

23 JULY
    BISHOPSGATE
    LONDON
    A s soon as she alighted at Liverpool Street Station, Barbara Havers asked herself what on earth she’d been thinking in agreeing to any kind of jaunt with Dorothea Harriman. She and the departmental secretary had exactly one thing in common—the possession of two X chromosomes—and no amount of plumbing either the depths or the shallows of their personalities was going to change that immutable fact. Additionally, Dee had not clued Barbara in as to their destination. Just “We’ll start out at Liverpool Street Station, Detective Sergeant Havers. The rail station, I mean. We’ll meet and see what happens from there. I must pop by Wentworth Street first, though. Have you been . . . ?”
    Barbara realised later that the innocence of that question should have told her a great deal, but at the moment she did not twig to anything other than Harriman’s offer of a mercy outing during their off hours. Since she was doing nothing on the particular day and time of the proposed outing—when was she doing
anything
at this point in her life? she asked herself—Barbara shrugged and said Wentworth Street was fine by her and no, she’d never been. She had no clue what they would encounter in that part of London aside from the distinct possibility of urban renewal run amok, and beinginvited to engage in a Dorothea Harriman experience was a novelty anyway.
    Barbara couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in Liverpool Street rail station, but as she emerged from the underground and wandered into the vast maw of the place, she did know it hadn’t been then what it currently was: an enormous shopping mall–cum–railway station with loudspeakers blaring announcements, people rushing by with valises, briefcases, and rucksacks; uniformed police pacing round and giving the eye to potential terrorists—male, female, youth, adult, or aged grandparent behind explosive zimmer frame—and adolescent girls with shopping bags the size of sandwich boards in one hand and smartphones in the other.
    They’d agreed to meet at the flower vendor, which Dorothea had assured Barbara she would have no trouble finding, and this turned out to be the case. She sauntered up and interrupted the young woman in midflirt with an antique gentleman who was attempting to press an armload of tuberoses upon her.
    Barbara joined them with the excuse for her tardiness that every Londoner who used the underground had long ago expected to hear when someone was late for an appointment: “Northern Line. There’s going to be a riot on the platform one day.”
    “Not a problem,” Dorothea told her. She waved good-bye to the gentleman, linked her arm to Barbara’s, and said confidentially, “I’ve had a skinny latte, bought some new knickers, and practised turning down an indecent proposal from a seventy-year-old. Lord. Have you noticed how men
never
seem to take the fact of their ageing to heart while, as women, we’re continually bombarded with reminders that middle age is out there, waiting to claim us with crow’s-feet?”
    Barbara hadn’t noticed. She’d never been the recipient of any sort of proposal, indecent or otherwise, and as for crow’s-feet, her attempts to avoid them had so far been limited to not looking into mirrors longer than it took to see if she had spinach between her teeth on the rare occasions when she actually ate spinach.
    As they walked towards a glittering exit that loomed at the top of a set of escalators, Barbara cast an eye upon Harriman’s day-out-in-East-London ensemble of slim navy trousers tapering down toslender