“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 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.

“You’ve got Hillier, I’ve got her,” Webberly groused as he bit into his biscuit.

“But at least she offers refreshments,” Lynley said.

Nothing was resolved in the visit to Osterley, but Helen’s prescription did work as she’d thought it would. When Lynley left the superintendent back in his room, he felt ready for another round of his professional life.

What that round brought was information from a number of sources. He met the squad in the incident room, where phones were ringing and constables were typing information into the computers. Stewart was compiling action reports from one of his teams, and-mirabile dictu, as things turned out-Barbara Havers had, in his absence, apparently managed to take direction from the DI without episode. When Lynley called the group together, the first thing he learned was that, upon Stewart’s orders, Havers had traveled across the river to Colossus for another set-to with Ulrike Ellis.

“It’s amazing how quickly she was able to locate information on Jared Salvatore once she twigged we had the book from reception with his name blazed all over it,” Havers reported, “and she’s managed to unearth all sorts of useful details on Anton Reid. She’s onboard now, sir, cooperation incarnate. She’s provided the name of every kid who’s dropped out of Colossus for the last twelve months, and I’ve been seeing if we can match any of them with the rest of the bodies.”

“What about the other two boys’ personal connections to anyone at Colossus?”

“Jared and Anton? Griffin Strong was their assessment leader, surprise, surprise. Anton Reid also did some time on Greenham’s computer course.”

“What about Kilfoyle and Veness? Any relationship between the boys and them?”

Havers consulted her report which-perhaps as evidence of her dubious intention of being a model cop from this moment forward-appeared to be typed for once. “Both of them knew Jared Salvatore. Evidently, he was quite the whiz at creating recipes. He couldn’t read, so he couldn’t follow cookbooks, but he’d manage to whip up something without instructions and serve it round, with the staff at Colossus doing the guinea-pig thing. Everyone knew him, as things turn out. My mistake earlier”-she shot a look round the room as if anticipating a reaction from someone to her admission-“was asking only Ulrike Ellis and Griff Strong about Jared. When they said he wasn’t one of theirs, I believed them because they’d admitted to Kimmo Thorne right up front. Sorry.”

“What are Kilfoyle and Veness saying about Anton Reid, then?”

“Kilfoyle says he doesn’t remember Anton. Veness is vague about it. Thinks he may, he says. Neil Greenham remembers him well enough.”

“As to Greenham, Tommy,” John Stewart weighed in, “he’s got a real temper, according to the head teacher up in Kilburn where he taught. He lost it with kids a few times and he shoved one against the blackboard once. He heard about that from the parents straightaway and he apologised for it, but that doesn’t mean he was genuine about the apology.”

“So much for his theories on discipline,” Havers noted.

“Have we laid on surveillance for these blokes?” Lynley asked.

“We’re stretched too thin, Tommy. Hillier’s not authorising any more men till we’ve got a result.”