with him. As for Nkata...Lynley knew that any other officer elevated to the rank of acting superintendent would have done a better job of keeping Winston out of Hillier's clutches. Instead, Havers was looking more professionally doomed every day, while Nkata knew he was being used as a token and might end up carrying round a load of bitterness that could blight his career for years. No matter how he looked at the matter, Lynley felt it was all down to him that Nkata and Havers were in the positions they were in at the moment.
"Tommy," Webberly said, as if Lynley had spoken all this, "you don't have that power."
"Don't I? You did. You do. I ought to be able-"
"Stop. I'm not talking about the power to be a buffer between David and his targets. I'm talking about the power to change him, to un-David him. Which is what you'd like to do, if you'll admit it. But he has his own set of demons, just like you. And there's not a thing in the world that you can do to remove them from him."
"So how do you cope with him?"
Webberly rested his arms on the windowsill. He was looking, Lynley saw, much older these days. His thin hair-once the faded sand of the redhead going grey-had now reached that destination, while the flesh under his eyes was baggy and the skin beneath his chin was wattled. Seeing this, Lynley was reminded of Ulysses' rumination, faced with knowledge of his mortality: "Old age hath yet his honour and his toil." He wanted to recite it to Webberly. Anything, he thought, to postpone the inevitable.
"It's down to the knighthood, I reckon," Webberly said. "You think David wears it comfortably. I believe he wears it like a suit of armour, which as we both know, has comfort as the least of its purposes. He wanted it, and he didn't want it. He schemed to get it, and now he has to live with that."
"The scheming? But that's what he does best."
"Too right. So think about having that on your gravestone. Tommy, you know all this. And if you can let the knowledge just get past that nasty temper of yours, you'll be able to deal with him."
There it was, Lynley thought. The dominant truth of his life. He could hear his father comment upon it, though the man had been dead nearly twenty years: Temper, Tommy. You're allowing passion not only to blind you but to rule you, son.
What had it been at the time? A football match and a wild disagreement with a referee? A call in rugby he hadn't liked? A row with his sister over a board game? What? And what did it matter now?
But that had been his father's point. That, full stop. The black passion of the moment did not matter once the moment passed. He merely failed to see that fact, over and over again, resulting in everyone else having to pay for his fatal flaw. He was Othello without the excuse of Iago; he was Hamlet sans ghost. Helen was right. Hillier set traps and he walked right into them.
It was all he could do not to groan aloud. Webberly looked at him. "There's a learning curve involved with the job," the superintendent said kindly. "Why don't you let yourself travel it?"
"Easier said than done when at the other end of the curve is someone waiting with a battle-axe."
Webberly shrugged. "You can't stop David from arming himself. Who you have to become is the person who can dodge the blows."
The canary therapist came back into the room, tea in one hand and paper napkin in the other. On this rested a lone ginger biscuit, the superintendent's reward for managing the parallel bars. "Here you go, luvvie," she said to Webberly. "Nice hot cuppa with milk and sugar...I've made it just the way you like it."
"I hate tea," Webberly informed her as he took the cup and the biscuit.
"Oh, go on with you," she replied. "You're being quite naughty this morning. Is that because of your visitor?" She patted his shoulder. "Well, it's good to see you showing some life. But stop pulling my leg, luv, or I'll give you what for."
"You're the reason I'm trying to get the hell out of here, woman," Webberly told her.
"That," she said placidly, "is my whole objective." She wagged her fingers and headed out of the room, scooping up a medical chart on her way.