A Banquet of Consequences by Elizabeth George Read Free Book Online Page B

didn’t speak till she heard the door click shut behind them. Then she said, “Not wishing to be the bearer of bad news, but going there anyway—”
    “Christ. I haven’t driven her to transfer Barbara at once, have I?”
    “No, of course not. And rest assured she won’t do that unless the detective sergeant forces her hand.”
    “But Barbara being Barbara and hand forcing being her primary forte, along with line crossing and going entirely off the rails . . .”
    “You’d hoped to forestall what you see as the inevitable,” Dorothea said. “That’s what I reckoned you were up to. But really, there’s not going to be a change in that direction, Detective Inspector.” Dorothea indicated the route she’d come from Isabelle’s office as means of identifying the antecedent when she went on with, “She thinks she’s done the right thing and the only thing. She’s not about to back off.”
    “Not without a miracle the likes of which I’ve not yet encountered,” Lynley agreed.
    “And truth to tell, the detective sergeant does look ever so
slightly
more put together these days, wouldn’t you say?”
    “Her physical appearance is hardly the point. As you no doubt overheard.”
    Dorothea dropped her gaze and strove to look embarrassed although Lynley knew very well that the young woman experienced absolutely no shame when it came to her peerless skill at eavesdropping. “Admittedly,” she said, “things haven’t been nearly as lively as they used to be now that Detective Sergeant Havers is being so . . . so not Detective Sergeant Havers. And things definitely have become less interesting.”
    “You won’t find me disagreeing, Dee. But aside from persuading the superintendent to be rid of that transfer request—”
    “Which she will
never
do.”
    “—I’ve not the first idea how to put Barbara into the position where her brain is firing the way it once did without the additional problem of that same brain encouraging her to go her own way and ignore what she’s been ordered to do.” Lynley sighed and looked down at his shoes which, he noted, wanted a decent polishing.
    “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Dorothea said.
    “How to bring Barbara’s work up to snuff?”
    “In a manner of speaking.”
    “What does that mean?”
    Dorothea smoothed a nonexistent ruck in the seam of her frock. She was wearing a frothy summer dress of swirling, saturated colours, and she’d topped this with some sort of hot pink half-cardigan affair whose style Lynley’s late wife would have been able to name without hesitation, but Lynley himself could not. It was far too dressy an ensemble for a day at the Met, but Dorothea as usual made it work.
    She said, “It’s this. Obviously, she’s desperately unhappy just now. She’s being someone she isn’t. She’s like a pendulum that’s swung too far one way and now is swinging too far the other.”
    “That fairly well describes it,” Lynley said.
    “Well, I think that there’s
always
been a solution to the problems she has here at the Met although I’m fairly sure you aren’t going to like it if I bring that solution to light. Shall I anyway?”
    “Try me,” he said.
    “Fine. Here it is. She’s too focused. She always has been. She’s been . . . let’s call it hyperfocused. It’s generally been on her work, an investigation, that sort of thing. But now the
only
focus she has is how to stay out of trouble with Detective Superintendent Ardery.”
    “As Ardery’s holding the transfer paperwork, I don’t disagree with that assessment at all.”
    “Well, that’s due to
something
, don’t you think?”
    “What is?”
    “Her problem with hyperfocus.”
    “I daresay it’s due to Barbara’s not wanting to end up in Berwick-upon-Tweed. And I can hardly blame her.”
    “Certainly, but that’s only half of it, Detective Inspector. The rest of it is what she’s
not
thinking about. And thinking about
that
would relieve her of