Breaker

*15*

Maggie Jenner was raking straw in one of the stables when Nick Ingram and John Galbraith drove into Broxton House yard on Thursday morning. Her immediate reaction, as it was with all visitors, was to retreat into the shadows, unwilling to be seen, unwilling to have her privacy invaded, for it required an effort of will to overcome her natural disinclination to participate in anything that involved people. Broxton House, a square Queen Anne building with pitched roof, red-brick walls, and shuttered upper windows, was visible through a gap in the trees to the right of the stableyard, and she watched the two men admire it as they got out of the car, before turning to walk in her direction.

With a resigned smile, she drew attention to herself by hefting soiled straw through the stable doorway on the end of a pitchfork. The weather hadn't broken for three weeks, and sweat was running freely down her face as she emerged into the fierce sunlight. She was irritated by her own discomfort and wished she'd put on something else that morning or that PC Ingram had had the courtesy to warn her he was coming. Her checkered cheesecloth shirt gripped her damp torso like a stocking, and her jeans chafed against the inside of her thighs. Ingram spotted her almost immediately and was amused to see that, for once, the tables were turned, and it was she who was hot and bothered and not he, but his expression as always was unreadable.

She propped the pitchfork against the stable wall and wiped her palms down her already filthy jeans before smoothing her hair off her sweaty face with the back of one hand. "Good morning, Nick," she said. "What can I do for you?"

"Miss Jenner," he said, with his usual polite nod. "This is Detective Inspector Galbraith from Dorset HQ. If it's convenient, he'd like to ask you a few questions about the events of last Sunday."

She inspected her palms before tucking them into her jeans pockets. "I won't offer to shake hands, Inspector. You wouldn't like where mine have been."

Galbraith smiled, recognizing the excuse for what it was, a dislike of physical contact, and cast an interested glance around the cobbled courtyard. There was a row of stables on each of three sides, beautiful old red-brick buildings with solid oak doors, only half a dozen of which appeared to have occupants. The rest stood empty, doors hooked back, brick floors bare of straw, hay baskets unfilled, and it was a long time, he guessed, since the business had been a thriving one. They had passed a faded sign at the entrance gate, boasting: BROXTON HOUSE RIDING & LIVERY STABLES, but, like the sign, evidence of dilapidation was everywhere, in the crumbling brickwork that had been thrashed by the elements for a couple of hundred years, in the cracked and peeling paintwork and the broken windows in the tack room and office, which no one had bothered-or could afford?-to replace.

Maggie watched his appraisal. "You're right," she said, reading his mind. "It has enormous potential as a row of holiday chalets."

"A pity when it happens, though."

"Yes."

He looked toward a distant paddock where a couple of horses grazed halfheartedly on drought-starved grass. "Are they yours as well?"

"No. We just rent out the paddock. The owners are supposed to keep an eye on them, but they're irresponsible, frankly, and I usually find myself doing things for their wretched animals that was never part of the contract." She pulled a rueful smile. "I can't get it into their owners' heads that water evaporates and that the trough needs filling every day. It makes me mad sometimes."

"Quite a chore then?"

"Yes." She gestured toward a door at the end of the row of stables behind her. "Let's go up to my flat. I can make you both a cup of coffee."

"Thank you." She was an attractive woman, he thought, despite the muck and the brusque manner, but he was intrigued by Ingram's stiff formality toward her, which wasn't readily explained by the story of the bigamous husband. The formality, he thought, should be on her side. As he followed them up the wooden stairs, he decided the constable must have tried it on at some point and been comprehensively slapped down for playing outside his own league. Miss Jenner was top-drawer material, even if she did live in something resembling a pigsty.

The flat was the antithesis of Nick's tidy establishment. There was disorder everywhere, bean bags piled in front of the television on the floor, newspapers with finished and half-finished crosswords abandoned on chairs and tables, a filthy rug on the sofa which smelled unmistakably of Bertie, and a pile of dirty washing-up in the kitchen sink. "Sorry about the mess," she said. "I've been up since five, and I haven't had time to clean." To Galbraith's ears, this sounded like a well-worn apology that was trotted out to anyone who might be inclined to criticize her lifestyle. She swiveled the tap to squeeze the kettle between it and the washing-up. "How do you like your coffee?"

"White, two sugars, please," said Galbraith.

"I'll have mine black please, Miss Jenner. No sugar," said Ingram.

"Do you mind Coffeemate?" Maggie asked the inspector, sniffing at a cardboard carton on the side. "The milk's off." Cursorily she rinsed some dirty mugs under the tap. "Why don't you grab a seat? If you chuck Bertie's blanket on the floor, one of you can have the sofa."

"I think she means you, sir," murmured Ingram as they retreated into the sitting room. "Inspector's perks. It's the best seat in the place."

"Who's Bertie?" whispered Galbraith.

"The Hound of the Baskervilles. His favorite occupation is to shove his nose up men's crotches and give them a good slobbering. The stains tend to hang around through at least three washes, I find, so it pays to keep your legs crossed when you're sitting down."

"I hope you're joking!" said Galbraith with a groan. He had already lost one pair of good trousers to the previous night's soaking in the sea. "Where is he?"

"Out on the razzle, I should think. His second-favorite occupation is to service the local bitches."

The DI lowered himself gingerly into the only armchair. "Does he have fleas?"

With a grin, Ingram jerked his head toward the kitchen door. "Do mice leave their droppings in sugar?" he murmured.

"Shit!"

Ingram removed himself to a windowsill and perched precariously on the edge of it. "Just be grateful it wasn't her mother who was out riding on Sunday," he said in an undertone. "This kitchen's sterile by comparison with hers." He had sampled Mrs. Jenner's hospitality once four years ago, the day after Healey had fled, and he'd vowed never to repeat the experience. She had given him coffee in a cracked Spode cup that was black with tannin, and he had gagged continuously while drinking it. He had never understood the peculiar mores of the impoverished landed gentry, who seemed to believe the value of bone china outweighed the value of hygiene.

They waited in silence while Maggie busied herself in the kitchen. The atmosphere was ripe with the stench of horse manure, wafted in from a pile of soiled straw in the yard outside, and the heat baking the interior of the flat through the uninsulated roof was almost unbearable. In no time at all both men were red in the face and mopping at their brows with handkerchieves, and whatever brief advantage Ingram thought he had gained over Maggie was quickly dispelled. A few minutes later she emerged with a tray of coffee mugs, which she handed around before sinking onto Bertie's blanket on the sofa.

"So what can I tell you that I haven't already told Nick?" she asked Galbraith. "I know it's a murder inquiry because I've been reading the newspapers, but as I didn't see the body I can't imagine how I can help you."

Galbraith pulled some notes from his jacket pocket. "In fact it's rather more than a murder inquiry, Miss Jenner. Kate Sumner was raped before she was thrown into the sea, so the man who killed her is extremely dangerous and we need to catch him before he does it again." He paused to let the information sink in. "Believe me, any help you can give us will be greatly appreciated."

"But I don't know anything," she said.

"You spoke to a man called Steven Harding," he reminded her.

"Oh, good God," she said, "you're not suggesting he did it?" She frowned at Ingram. "You've really got it in for that man, haven't you, Nick? He was only trying to help in all conscience. You might as well say any of the men who were in Chapman's Pool that day could have killed her."

Ingram remained blandly indifferent to both her frown and her accusations. "It's a possibility."

"So why pick on Steve?"

"We're not, Miss Jenner. We're trying to eliminate him from the inquiry. Neither I nor the inspector wants to waste time investigating innocent bystanders."

"You wasted an awful lot of time on Sunday doing it," she said acidly, stung by his dreary insistence on treating her with forelock-tugging formality. He smiled but didn't say anything. She turned back to Galbraith. "I'll do my best," she said, "although I doubt I can tell you much. What do you want to know?"

"It would be helpful if you can start by describing your meeting with him. I understand you rode down the track toward the boat sheds and came across him and the boys beside PC Ingram's car. Is that the first time you saw him?"

"Yes, but I wasn't riding Jasper then. I was leading him, because he was frightened by the helicopter."

"Okay. What were Steven Harding and the two boys doing at that point?"

She shrugged. "They were looking at a girl on a boat through the binoculars, at least Steve and the older brother were. I think the younger one was bored by it all. Then Bertie got overexcited-"

Galbraith interrupted. "You said they were looking through binoculars. How did that work exactly? Were they taking it in turns?"

"No, well, that's wrong. It was Paul who was looking; Steve was just holding them steady for him." She saw his eyebrows lift in inquiry and anticipated his next question. "Like this." She made an embracing gesture with her arms. "He was standing behind Paul, with his arms around him, and holding the binoculars so Paul could look through the eyepieces. The child thought it was funny and kept giggling. It was rather sweet really. I think he was trying to take his mind off the dead woman." She paused to collect her thoughts. "Actually, I thought he was their father, till I realized he was too young."

"One of the boys said he was playing around with his telephone before you arrived. Did you see him do that?"

She shook her head. "It was clipped to his waistband."

"What happened next?"

"Bertie got overexcited, so Steve grabbed him and then suggested we put the boys at ease by encouraging them to pat Bertie and Sir Jasper. He said he was used to animals because he'd grown up on a farm in Cornwall." She frowned. "Why is any of this important? He was just being friendly."

"In what way, Miss Jenner?"

Her frown deepened, and she stared at him for a moment, clearly wondering where his questions were leading. "He wasn't making a nuisance of himself, if that's what you're getting at."

"Why would I think he was making a nuisance of himself?"

She gave an irritated toss of her head. "Because it would make things easier for you if he was," she suggested.

"How?"

"You want him to be the rapist, don't you? Nick certainly does."

Galbraith's gray eyes appraised her coolly. "There's a little more to rape than making a nuisance of yourself. Kate Sumner had been dosed with a sleeping drug, she had abrasions to her back, strangle marks at her neck, rope burns to her wrists, broken fingers, and a ruptured vagina. She was then thrown ... alive ... into the sea by someone who undoubtedly knew she was a poor swimmer and wouldn't be able to save herself, even assuming she came around from the effects of the drug. She was also pregnant when she died, which means her baby was murdered with her." He smiled slightly. "I realize that you're a very busy person and that the death of an unknown woman is hardly a priority in your life, but PC Ingram and I take it more seriously, probably because we both saw Kate's body and were distressed by it."

She looked at her hands. "I apologize," she said.

"We don't ask questions for the fun of it," said Galbraith without hostility. "Matter of fact, most of us find this sort of case very stressful, although the public rarely recognizes it."

She raised her head, and there was the glimmer of a smile in her dark eyes. "Point taken," she said. "The problem is, I get the impression you're homing in on Steve Harding just because he was there, and that seems unreasonable."

Galbraith exchanged a glance with Ingram. "There are other reasons why we're interested in him," he said, "but the only one I'm prepared to tell you at the moment is that he'd known the dead woman for quite some time. For that reason alone we'd be investigating him, whether he was at Chapman's Pool on Sunday or not."

She was thoroughly startled. "He didn't say he knew her."

"Would you have expected him to? He told us he never saw the body."

She turned to Ingram. "He can't have done, can he? He said he was walking from St. Alban's Head."

"There's a very good view of Egmont Bight from the coastal path up there," Ingram reminded her. "If he had a pair of binoculars, he could have picked her out quite easily."

"But he didn't," she protested. "All he had was a telephone. You made that point yourself."

Galbraith debated with himself how to put the next question and opted for a straightforward approach. The woman must have a stallion or two in her stables, so she was hardly likely to faint at the mention of a penis. "Nick says Harding had an erection when he first saw him on Sunday. Would you agree?"

"Either that or he's incredibly well endowed."

"Were you the cause of it, do you think?"

She didn't answer.

"Well?"

"I've no idea," she said. "My feeling at the time was that it was probably the girl on the boat who had got him excited. Walk along Studland beach any sunny day and you'll find a hundred randy eighteen- to twenty-four-year-olds cowering in the water because their dicks react independently of their brains. It's hardly a crime."

Galbraith shook his head. "You're a good-looking woman, Miss Jenner, and he was standing close to you. Did you encourage him in any way?"

"No."

"It is important."

"Why? All I know is the poor bloke wasn't in absolute control of himself." She sighed. "Look, I'm really sorry about the woman. But if Steve was involved, then he never gave me any indication of it. As far as I was concerned, he was a young man out for a walk who made a phone call on behalf of a couple of children."

Galbraith laid a forefinger on a page of his notes. "This is a quote from Danny Spender," he said. "Tell me how true it is. 'He was chatting up the lady with the horse, but I don't think she liked him as much as he liked her.' Is that what was happening?"

"No, of course it wasn't," she said with annoyance, as if the idea of being chatted up was pure anathema to her, "though I suppose it might have looked like that to the children. I said he was brave for grabbing Bertie by the collar, so he seemed to think that laughing a lot and slapping Jasper on the rump would impress the boys. In the end I had to move the animals into the shade to get them away from him. Jasper's amenable to most things but not to having his bottom smacked every two minutes, and I didn't want to be prosecuted if he lashed out suddenly."

"So was Danny right about you not liking him?"

"I don't see that it matters," she said uncomfortably. "It's a subjective thing. I'm not a very sociable person, so liking people isn't my strong point."

"What was wrong with him?" he went on imperturbably.

"Oh God, this is ridiculous!" she snapped. "Nothing. He was perfectly pleasant from beginning to end of our conversation." She cast an angry sideways glance toward Ingram. "Almost ridiculously polite, in fact."

"So why didn't you like him?"

She breathed deeply through her nose, clearly at war with herself about whether to answer or not. "He was a toucher," she said with a spurt of anger. "All right? Is that what you wanted? I have a thing against men who can't keep their hands to themselves, Inspector, but it doesn't make them rapists or murderers. It's just the way they are." She took another deep breath. "And while we're on the subject-just to show you how little faith you can put in my judgment of men-I wouldn't trust any of you farther than I could throw you. If you want to know why, ask Nick." She gave a hollow laugh as Galbraith lowered his eyes. "I see he's already told you. Still ... if you want the juicier details of my relationship with my bigamous husband, apply in writing and I'll see what I can do for you."

The DI, reminded of Sandy Griffiths' similiar caveat regarding her judgment of Sumner, ignored the tantrum. "Are you saying Harding touched you, Miss Jenner?"

She gave him a withering glance. "Of course not. I never gave him the opportunity."

"But he touched your animals, and that's what put you against him?"

"No," she said crossly. "It was the boys he couldn't keep his hands off. It was all very macho ... hail-fellow-well-met stuff ... you know, a lot of punching of shoulders and high-fives ... to be honest it's why I thought he was their father. The little one didn't like it much-he kept pushing him away-but the older one reveled in it." She smiled rather cynically. "It's the kind of shallow emotion you only ever see in Hollywood movies, so I wasn't in the least bit surprised when he told Nick he was an actor."

Galbraith exchanged a questioning glance with Ingram. "I'd say that's an accurate description," admitted the constable honestly. "He was very friendly toward Paul."

"How friendly?"

"Very," said Ingram. "And Miss Jenner's right. Danny kept pushing him away."

"Child seducer?" wrote Galbraith in his notebook. "Did you see Steve abandon a rucksack on the hillside before he took the boys down to Nick's car?" he asked Maggie then.

She was looking at him rather oddly. "The first time I saw him was at the boat sheds," she said.

"Did you see him retrieve it after Nick drove the boys away?""

"I wasn't watching him." Her forehead creased into lines of concern. "Look ... aren't you jumping to conclusions again? When I said he was touching the boys I didn't mean ... that is ... it wasn't inappropriate ... just, well, overdone, if you like."

"Okay."

"What I'm trying to say is I don't think he's a pedophile."

"Have you ever met one, Miss Jenner?"

"No."

"Well, they don't have two heads, you know. Nevertheless, point taken," he assured her in a conscious echo of what she'd said herself. Gallantly he lifted his untouched mug from the floor and drank it down before taking a card from his wallet and passing it across. "That's my number," he said, getting up. "If anything occurs to you that you think's important, you can always reach me there. Thank you for your help."

She nodded, watching as Ingram moved away from the window. "You haven't drunk your coffee," she said with a malicious gleam in her eyes. "Perhaps you'd have preferred it with sugar after all. I always find the mouse droppings sink to the bottom."

He smiled down at her. "But dog hairs don't, Miss Jenner." He put on his cap and straightened the peak. "My regards to your mother."

Kate Sumner's papers and private possessions had filled several boxes, which the investigators had been working their way through methodically for three days, trying to build a picture of the woman's life. There was nothing to link her with Steven Harding, or with any other man.

Everyone in her address book was contacted without results. They proved, without exception, to be people she had met since moving to the south coast and matched a neat Christmas card list in the bottom drawer of the bureau in the sitting room. An exercise book was found in one of the kitchen cupboards, inscribed "Weekly Diary," but turned out, disappointingly, to be a precise record of what she spent on food and household bills, and tallied, give or take a pound or two, with the allowance William paid her.

Her correspondence was composed almost entirely of business letters, usually referring to work on the house, although there were a few private letters from friends and acquaintances in Lymington, her mother-in-law, and one, with a date in July, from Polly Garrard at Pharmatec UK.

Dear Kate,

It's ages since we had a chat, and every time I ring, the phone's off the hook or you're not there. Give me a buzz when you can. I'm dying to hear how you and Hannah are getting on in Lymington. It's a waste of time asking William. He just nods and says, "Fine."

I'd really love to see the house since you've had all the decorating done. Maybe I could take a day off and visit you when William's at work? That way he can't complain if all we do is sit and gossip. Do you remember Wendy Plater? She got drunk a couple of weeks ago at lunchtime and called Purdy "a tight-arsed prick" because he was in the hall when she came staggering back late, and he told her he was going to dock her wages. God, it was funny! He would have sacked her on the spot if good old Trew hadn't spoken up for her. She had to apologize, but she doesn't regret any of it. She says she's never seen Purdy go purple before!

I thought of you immediately, of course, which is why I've been ringing. It really is ages. Do call. Thinking of you.

Love,

Polly Garrard

Attached to it by paper clip was the draft of an answer from Kate.

Dear Polly,

Hannah and I are doing well, and of course you must come and visit us. I'm a bit busy at the moment, but will ring as soon as I can. The house looks great. You'll love it.

You promised on your honor The story about Wendy Plater was really funny!

Hope all's well with you.

Speak soon.

Love, Kate

The Spender brothers' parents looked worried when Ingram asked if he and DI Galbraith could talk to Paul in private. "What's he done?" asked the father.

Ingram removed his cap and smoothed his dark hair with the flat of his hand. "Nothing as far as I know," he said with a smile. "It's just a few routine questions that's all."

"Then why do you want to talk to him in private?"

Ingram's frank gaze held his. "Because the dead woman was naked, Mr. Spender, and Paul's embarrassed to talk about it in front of you and your wife."

The man gave a snort of amusement. "He must think we're the most frightful prudes."

Ingram's smile broadened. "Just parents," he said. He gestured toward the lane in front of their rented cottage. "He'll probably feel more comfortable if he talks to us outside."

But Paul was surprisingly open about Steven Harding's "friendliness." "I reckon he fancied Maggie and was trying to impress her by how good he was with kids," he told the policemen. "My uncle's always doing it. If he comes to our house on his own he doesn't bother to talk to us, but if he brings one of his girlfriends he puts his arms around our shoulders and tells us jokes. It's only to make them think he'd be a good father."

Galbraith chuckled. "And that's what Steve was doing?"

"Must have been. He got much more friendly after she turned up."

"Did you notice him playing with his phone at all?"

"You mean the way Danny says?"

Galbraith nodded.

"I didn't watch him because I didn't want to be rude, but Danny's pretty sure about it, and he should know because he was staring at him all the time."

"So why was Steve doing that, do you think?"

"Because he forgot we were there," said the boy.

"In what way exactly?"

Paul showed the first signs of embarrassment. "Well, you know," he said earnestly, "he sort of did it without thinking ... my dad often does things without thinking, like licking his knife in restaurants. Mum gets really angry about it."

Galbraith gave a nod of agreement. "You're a bright lad. I should have thought of that myself." He stroked the side of his freckled face, considering the problem. "Still, rubbing yourself with a telephone's a bit different from licking your knife. You don't think it's more likely he was showing off?"

"He looked at a girl through the binoculars," Paul offered. "Maybe he was showing off to her?"

"Maybe." Galbraith pretended to ponder some more. "You don't think it's more likely he was showing off to you and Danny?"

"Well ... he talked a lot about ladies he'd seen in the nude, but I sort of got the feeling most of it wasn't true ... I think he was trying to make us feel better."

"Does Danny agree with you?"

The boy shook his head. "No, but that doesn't mean anything. He reckons Steve stole his T-shirt, so he doesn't like him."

"Is it true?"

"I don't think so. It's just an excuse because he's lost it and Mum gave him an earbashing. It's got 'Derby FC' on the front, and it cost a fortune."

"Did Danny have it with him on Sunday?"

"He says it was in the bundle around the binoculars, but I don't remember it."

"Okay." Galbraith nodded again. "So what does Danny think Steve was up to?"

"He reckons he's a pedophile," said Paul matter-of-factly.

WPC Sandra Griffiths whistled tunelessly to herself as she made a cup of tea in the kitchen at Langton Cottage. Hannah was sitting mesmerized in front of the television in the sitting room, while Sandy was blessing the memory of whatever genius had invented the electronic nanny. She turned toward the fridge in search of milk and found William Sumner standing directly behind her. "Did I frighten you?" he asked as she gave a little start of surprise.

You know you did, you stupid bastard...! She forced a smile to her face to disguise the fact that he was beginning to give her the creeps. "Yes," she admitted. "I didn't hear you come in."

"That's what Kate used to say. She'd get quite angry about it sometimes."

Who can blame her...? She was beginning to think of him as a voyeur, a man who got his rocks off by secretly watching a woman go about her business. She had stopped counting the number of times she'd glimpsed him peering around a doorjamb like an unwelcome intruder in his own house. She put distance between herself and him by removing the teapot to the kitchen table and pulling out a chair. There was a lengthy silence during which he sulkily kicked the toe of his shoe against the table leg, shoving the top in little jerks against her belly.

"You're afraid of me, aren't you?" he said suddenly.

"What makes you think that?" she asked as she held the table firm against his kicks.

"You were afraid last night." He looked pleased, as if the idea excited him, and she wondered how important it was to him to feel superior.

"Don't flatter yourself," she declared bluntly, lighting a cigarette and blowing the smoke deliberately in his direction. "Trust me, if I'd been remotely afraid, I'd have taken your fucking balls off. Cripple first and ask questions later, that's my motto."

"I don't like you smoking or swearing in this house," he said with another petulant kick at the table leg.

"Then put in a complaint," she answered. "It just means I'll be reassigned." She held his gaze for a moment. "And that wouldn't suit you one little bit, would it? You're too damn used to having an unpaid skivvy about the place."

Ready tears sprang to his eyes. "You don't understand what it's like. Everything worked so well before. And now ... well, I don't even know what I'm supposed to be doing."

His performance was amateur at best, diabolical at worst, and it brought out the bully in Griffiths. Did he think she found male helplessness attractive? "Then you should be ashamed of yourself," she snapped. "According to the health visitor you didn't even know where the vacuum cleaner was, let alone how to work it. She came here to teach you elementary parenting and housekeeping skills because no one-and I repeat no one-is going to allow a three-year-old child to remain in the care of a man who is so patently indifferent to her welfare."

He moved around the kitchen, opening and shutting cupboard doors as if to demonstrate familiarity with their contents. "It's not my fault," he said. "That's how Kate wanted it. I wasn't allowed to interfere in the running of the house."

"Are you sure it wasn't the other way around?" She tapped the ash off her cigarette into her saucer. "I mean you didn't marry a wife, did you? You married a housekeeper who was expected to run this house like clockwork and account for every last penny she spent."

"It wasn't like that."

"What was it like then?"

"Living in a cheap boardinghouse," he said bitterly. "I didn't marry a wife or a housekeeper, I married a landlady who allowed me to live here as long as I paid my rent on time."

The French yacht Mirage motored up the Dart River early on Thursday afternoon and took a berth in the Dart Haven Marina on the Kingswear side of the estuary, opposite the lovely town of Dartmouth and alongside the steam railway line to Paignton. Shortly after they made fast, there was a blast on a whistle and the three o'clock train set off in a rush of steam, raising in the Beneteau's owner a romantic longing for days he himself couldn't remember.

By contrast his daughter sat sunk in gloom, unable to comprehend why they had moored on the side of the river that boasted nothing except the station when everything that was attractive-shops, restaurants, pubs, people, life, men!-was on the other side, in Dartmouth. Scornfully, she watched her father take out the video camera and search through the case for a new tape in order to film steam engines. He was like a small boy, she thought, in his silly enthusiasms for the treasures of rural England when what really mattered was London. She was the only one of her friends who had never been there, and it mortified her. God, but her parents were sad!

Her father turned to her in mild frustration, asking where the unused tapes were, and she had to admit there were none. She'd used them all to film irrelevancies in order to pass the time, and with irritating tolerance (he was one of those understanding fathers who refused to indulge in rows) he played the videos back, squinting into the eyepiece, in order to select the least interesting for reuse.

When he came to a tape of a young man scrambling down the slope above Chapman's Pool toward two boys, followed by shots of him sitting alone on the foreshore beyond the boat sheds, he lowered the camera and looked at his daughter with a worried frown. She was fourteen years old, and he realized he had no idea if she was still innocent or whether she knew exactly what she'd been filming. He described the young man and asked her why she had taken so much footage of him. Her cheeks flushed a rosy red under her tan. No particular reason. He was there and he was-she spoke with defiance-handsome. In any case, she knew him. They'd introduced themselves when they'd chatted together in Lymington. And he fancied her. She could tell these things.

Her father was appalled.

His daughter flounced her shoulders. What was the big deal? So he was English. He was just a good-looking guy who liked French girls, she said.

Bibi Gould's face fell as she swung lightheartedly out of the hairdressing salon in Lymington where she worked and saw Tony Bridges standing on the pavement, half turned away from her, watching a young mother hoist a toddler onto her hip. Her relationship, such as it was, with Tony had become more of a trial than a pleasure, and for a brief second she thought about retreating through the door again until she realized he had seen her out of the corner of his eye. She forced a sickly smile to her lips. "Hi," she said with unconvincing jauntiness.

He stared at her with his peculiarly brooding expression, taking note of the skimpy shorts and cropped top that barely covered her tanned arms, legs, and midriff. A blood vessel started to throb in his head, and he had trouble keeping the temper out of his voice. "Who are you meeting?"

"No one," she said.

"Then what's the problem? Why did you look so pissed to see me?"

"I didn't." She lowered her head to swing her curtain of hair across her eyes in a way he hated. "I'm just tired, that's all ... I was going home to watch telly."

He reached out a hand to grip her wrist. "Steve's done a vanishing act. Is he the one you're planning to meet?"

"Don't be stupid."

"Where is he?"

"How would I know?" she said, twisting her arm to try to release herself. "He's your friend."

"Has he gone to the caravan? Did you say you'd meet him there?" Angrily, she succeeded in tugging herself free. "You've got a real problem with him, you know ... you should talk to someone about it instead of taking it out on me all the time. And for your information, not everyone runs away to hide in Mummy and Daddy's sodding caravan every time things go wrong. It's a dump, for Christ's sake ... like your house ... and who wants to fuck in a dump?" She rubbed her wrist where his fingers had left a Chinese burn on her skin, her immature nineteen-year-old features creasing into a vicious scowl. "It's not Steve's fault you're so spaced-out most nights you can't get it up, so don't keep pretending it is. The trouble with you is you've lost it, but you can't bloody well see it."

He eyed her with dislike. "What about Saturday? It wasn't me who passed out on Saturday. I'm sick to death of being fucked about, Beebs."

She was on the point of giving a petulant toss of her head and saying sex with him had become so boring that she might as well be comatose as not when caution persuaded her against it. He had a way of getting his own back that she didn't much like. "Yeah, well, you can't blame me for that," she muttered lamely. "You shouldn't buy dodgy E off your dodgy mates, should you? A girl could die that way."