A Banquet of Consequences by Elizabeth George Page B

ankles and ballerina shoes in tan and white. She’d topped the trousers with a red-and-white-striped tee-shirt, and she carried a tan and white handbag that matched the shoes. On her days off, Harriman managed to look as put together as she looked on her days on, Barbara thought.
    In contrast, Barbara herself had taken directly to heart the word
“outing”
that Dorothea had used to describe what they would be doing, and she had dressed accordingly. She wore draw-string trousers and a tee-shirt with
Are you talking to yourself or just pretending that I’m listening?
emblazoned across it while on her feet she’d donned—in honour of the occasion—her new shoes. The fact that they were leopard-print high-top trainers made a certain statement, she’d reckoned back in Chalk Farm when she’d put them on. Now, however, she decided that they might be a wee bit . . . well,
out there
was probably the term of choice.
    Right. Well. Too late to do anything about it, she decided. She followed Harriman onto the escalator. At the top, she decided a compliment was in order, and she told Dorothea that she looked—a word search was necessary—smashing. Harriman thanked her prettily and explained that Wentworth Street was responsible.
    Barbara experienced an uh-oh moment. “I hope you’re not saying what I think you’re saying.”
    “Which is what?” Dorothea asked.
    “Which is that you intend to make me over. I went that route once, Dee. It didn’t take.”
    “Heavens, no,” Dorothea said. “I wouldn’t presume. But I’ve a garden party to go to tomorrow afternoon and not a stitch to wear that everyone hasn’t seen two thousand times. This will take five minutes.”
    “And after that?”
    “I think it’s bric-a-brac day at Spitalfields Market. Are you interested in bric-a-brac, Detective Sergeant?”
    “Do I look like someone who’s interested in bric-a-brac?” Barbara enquired. “Dee, what’s this about?”
    “Nothing at all.” Dorothea had stepped off the escalator and was heading towards the towering doors. She stopped, though, when Barbara said her name more insistently.
    “You’re not taking me in hand?” Barbara demanded. “You’re not following orders? Ardery says to you, ‘Do something with Sergeant Havers because she still isn’t quite right,’ and you go along with it?”
    “You’re joking, of course. What on earth would I ‘do’ with you? Come along and stop being so difficult,” Dorothea said, and she once again took Barbara’s arm to make sure her directions were being followed.
    They found themselves in Bishopsgate, where modern London of the City—in the form of looming glass tower blocks—was steadily creeping towards pre-Victorian London of Spitalfields. Here unrestrained capitalism was doing its best to destroy the history of the capital, and where there were not soaring buildings announcing themselves as multinational corporations, there were chain shops whose ownership by unknown multinational magnates fairly did the same.
    The pavements were crowded. So was the street. But the congestion didn’t deter Dorothea, who kept her arm linked with Barbara’s and who carved an easy route through pedestrians, taxis, buses, and cars in order to cross over. Barbara expected her to pop inside one of the several shops they passed, but this did not happen. Instead, within five minutes, Harriman’s sure pacing had taken them in a crisscross pattern of narrowing thoroughfares and back into a London of another century.
    A hotchpotch of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century buildings sprang up in unwashed brick splendour, comprising questionable housing and forlorn places of business. There were colourful sari shops, dubious-looking hair studios with Mediterranean names, textile outlets, pubs announcing themselves as the Angel and the Pig and Whistle, and the kind of cafés where coffee came in either white or black via a kettle and a jar of powder. Within one hundred yards an open-air