blast away, and the difficulty's gone. Supposedly."
"You aren't recommending I shoot Hillier, are you?"
"Only as a last resort. In the meantime, I suggest a trip to Osterley."
So he took up her suggestion. It was an ungodly hour for visiting a convalescent hospital, but he reckoned his police identification would be enough to get him inside.
It was. Most of the patients were still at their breakfasts, but Malcolm Webberly's bed was empty. However, a helpful orderly directed him to the physiotherapy room. There, Lynley found Detective Superintendent Webberly working his way between two parallel bars.
Lynley watched him from the doorway. The fact that the superintendent was alive was miraculous. He'd survived a laundry list of injuries, all of them brought about by a hit-and-run driver. He'd endured the removal of his spleen and a good portion of his liver, a fractured skull and the removal of a blood clot on his brain, nearly six weeks of drug-induced coma, a broken hip, a broken arm, five broken ribs, and a heart attack in the midst of his slow recovery from everything else. He was nothing if not a warrior in the battle to regain his strength. He was also the one man at New Scotland Yard with whom Lynley had long felt he could be unguarded.
Webberly inched along the bars, encouraged by the therapist, who insisted upon calling him luv despite the scowls Webberly sent in her direction. She was approximately the size of a canary, and Lynley wondered how she would approach supporting the burly superintendent should he begin to topple. But it appeared that Webberly had no intention of doing anything other than making his way to the end of the apparatus. When he'd managed that, he said without looking in Lynley's direction, "You'd think they'd let me have a bloody cigar on occasion, wouldn't you, Tommy? Their idea of a celebration round here is an enema administered to the sound of Mozart."
"How are you, sir?" Lynley asked, coming farther into the room. "Have you lost a few stone?"
"Are you saying I needed to?" Webberly looked shrewdly in his direction. He was pale and unshaven and he looked quite tentative about the titanium acting the part of his new hip. He wore a tracksuit instead of hospital garb. The words "Top Cop" decorated its jacket.
"Just a casual observation," Lynley said. "To me you were always a picture needing no revision."
"What cock." Webberly grunted as he reached the end of the bars and made the turn that was necessary for his descent to the wheelchair, which the therapist brought to him. "Wouldn't trust you as far as I could throw you."
"Cup of tea, luv?" Webberly's therapist asked him once he'd lowered himself to his chair. "Nice ginger biscuit? You did very well."
"She thinks I'm a performing dog," Webberly informed Lynley. He said to the woman, "Bring the whole damn tin of biscuits, thank you."
She smiled serenely and patted his shoulder. "Cup of tea and a biscuit it is. And for you?" This last was directed to Lynley, who told her he'd do nicely with nothing. She disappeared into an adjoining room.
Webberly wheeled himself over to a window, where he raised the blinds and looked out at the day. "Bloody weather," he growled. "I'm that ready for Spain, Tommy. The thought of it...That's what's keeping me going."
"Taking your pension, then?" Lynley tried to make the question light, not a reflection of what he felt at the thought of the superintendent's permanent removal from the force.
He didn't fool Webberly with his tone, however. The superintendent gave him a look, cast over his shoulder from his perusal of the day. "David behaving badly, is he? You've got to come up with a strategy for coping with him. That's all I can tell you."
Lynley joined him at the window. There, they both looked morosely out at the grey day and what the window offered of it, which was a distant view of bare branches, the supplicant winter arms of trees in Osterley Park. Closer in, they had the carpark to gaze upon.
"For myself, I can do it," Lynley said.
"That's all anyone asks of you."
"It's the others I'm worried about. Barbara and Winston mostly. I've not done either of them any favours, taking on your position. It was madness to think I could."
Webberly was silent. Lynley knew that the other man would see his point. Havers' boat of dreams at the Yard would doubtless continue to take on water as long as she maintained her association