With No One As Witness by Elizabeth George

lied to me, Barbara.”
    “To you? About—”
    “And this is something I will not accept.”
    “But when? When did she lie to you?”
    “When I asked her about the CD. She said you had given it to her—”
    “Azhar, that was true.”
    “—but she failed to include the information about where it had come from. That in itself slipped out when she was chatting about CDs in general. About how many there were to choose from at the Virgin Megastore.”
    “Bloody hell, Azhar, that’s not a lie, is it?”
    “No. But the outright denial of having been in the Virgin Megastore is. And this is something that I will not accept. Hadiyyah is not to start that with me. She will not begin lying. She will not. Not to me.” His voice was so controlled and his features so rigid that Barbara realised far more was being discussed than his daughter’s initial venture into prevarication.
    She said, “Okay. I get it. But she feels wretched. Whatever your point is, I think you made it.”
    “I hope so. She must learn that there are consequences to the decisions she makes, and she must learn this as a child.”
    “I don’t disagree. But…” Barbara drew in on her cigarette before she dropped it to the front step and ground it out. “It seems like making her admit her wrongdoing to me—sort of like in public?—is punishment enough. I think you should let her keep the CD.”
    “I’ve decided the consequences.”
    “You can bend, though, can’t you?”
    “Too far,” he said, “and you break on the wheel of your own inconsistencies.”
    “What happens then?” Barbara asked him. When he didn’t reply, she went on quietly with, “Hadiyyah and lying…This isn’t really what it’s all about. Is it, Azhar.”
    He replied, “I will not have her start,” and he stepped back, preparatory to leaving. He added politely, “I have kept you from your toast long enough,” before he returned to the front of the property.
    NO MATTER HIS conversation with Barbara Havers and her reassurance on the subject, Winston Nkata didn’t rest easily beneath the mantle of detective sergeant. He’d thought he would—that was the hell of it—but it wasn’t happening, and the comfort he wanted in his employment hadn’t materialised for most of his career.
    He hadn’t started out in police work feeling uneasy about his job. But it hadn’t been long before the reality of being a black cop in a world dominated by white men had begun to sink in. He’d noticed it first in the canteen, in the way that glances sidled over to him and then slid onto someone else; then he felt it in the conversations, how they became ever so slightly more guarded when he joined his colleagues. After that it was in the manner that he was greeted: with just a shade more welcome than was given the white cops when he sat with a group at table. He hated that deliberate effort people made to appear tolerant when he was near. The very act of diligently treating him like one of the lads made him feel like the last thing he’d ever become was one of the lads.
    At first he’d told himself he didn’t want that anyway. It was rough enough round Loughborough Estate hearing himself called a fucking coconut. It would be that much worse if he actually ended up becoming part of the white establishment. Still, he hated being marked as phony by his own people. While he kept in mind his mother’s admonition that “it doesn’t make you a chair ’f some ignoramus calls you a chair,” he found it increasingly difficult just to keep himself moving in the direction he wanted to go. On the estate, that meant to and from his parents’ flat and nowhere else. Otherwise, it meant upward in his career.
    “Jewel, luv,” his mother had said when he phoned her with the news of his promotion. “Doesn’t matter one bit why they promoted you. What matters is they did, and now the opening’s there. You walk through it. And you don’t look back.”
    But he couldn’t do that. Instead, he