Breaker

*20*

Galbraith leaned forward, folding his freckled hands under his chin. He looked completely unalarming, almost mild in fact, like a round-faced schoolboy seeking to make friends. He was quite an actor, like most policemen, and could change his mood as occasion demanded. He tempted Sumner to confide in him. "Do you know Lulworth Cove, William?" he murmured in a conversational tone of voice.

The other man looked startled but whether from guilt or from the DI's abrupt switch of tack it was impossible to say. "Yes."

"Have you been there recently?"

"Not that I recall."

"It's hardly the sort of thing you'd forget, is it?"

Sumner shrugged. "It depends what you mean by recently. I sailed there several times in my boat, but that was years ago."

"What about renting a caravan or a cottage? Maybe you've taken the family there on holiday?"

He shook his head. "Kate and I only ever had one holiday and that was in a hotel in the Lake District. It was a disaster," he said in weary recollection. "Hannah wouldn't go to sleep, so we had to sit in our room, night after night, watching the television to stop her screaming the place down and upsetting the other guests. We thought we'd wait until she was older before we tried again."

It sounded convincing, and Galbraith nodded. "Hannah's a bit of a handful, isn't she?"

"Kate managed all right."

"Perhaps because she dosed her with sleeping drugs?"

Sumner looked wary. "I don't know anything about that. You'd have to ask her doctor."

"We already have. He says he's never prescribed any sedatives or hypnotics for either Kate or Hannah."

"Well then."

"You work in the business, William. You can probably get free samples of every drug on the market. And, let's face it, with all these conferences you go to, there can't be much about pharmaceutical drugs you don't know."

"You're talking rubbish," said Sumner, winking uncontrollably. "I need a prescription like anyone else."

Galbraith nodded again as if to persuade William that he believed him. "Still ... a difficult, demanding child wasn't what you signed up for when you got married, was it? At the very least it will have put a blight on your sex life."

Sumner didn't answer.

"You must have thought you'd got yourself a good bargain at the beginning. A pretty wife who worshipped the ground you trod on. All right, you didn't have much in common with her, and fatherhood left a lot to be desired, but all in all, life was rosy. The sex was good, you had a mortgage you could afford, the journey to work was a doddle, your mother was keeping tabs on your wife during the day, your supper was on the table when you came home of an evening, and you were free to go sailing whenever you wanted." He paused. "Then you moved to Lymington, and things started to turn sour. I'm guessing Kate grew less and less interested in keeping you happy because she didn't need to pretend anymore. She'd got what she wanted-no more supervision from her mother-in-law ... a house of her own ... respectability-all of which gave her the confidence to make a life for herself and Hannah which didn't include you." He eyed the other man curiously. "And suddenly it was your turn to be taken for granted. Is that when you began to suspect Hannah wasn't yours?"

Sumner surprised him by laughing. "I've known since she was a few weeks old that she couldn't possibly be mine. Kate and I are blood group O, and Hannah's blood group A. That means her father has to be either blood group A or AB. I'm not a fool. I married a pregnant woman, and I had no illusions about her, whatever you or my mother may think."

"Did you challenge Kate with it?"

Sumner pressed a finger to his fluttering lid. "It was hardly a challenge. I just showed her an Exclusions of Paternity table on the ABO system and explained how two blood group O parents can only produce a group O child. She was shocked to have been found out so easily, but as my only purpose in doing it was to show her I wasn't as gullible as she seemed to think I was, it never became an issue between us. I had no problem acknowledging Hannah as mine, which is all Kate wanted."

"Did she tell you who the father was?"

He shook his head. "I didn't want to know. I assume it's someone I work with-or have worked with-but as she broke all contact with Pharmatec after she left, except for the odd visit from Polly Garrard, I knew the father didn't figure in her life anymore." He stroked the arm of his chair. "You probably won't believe me, but I couldn't see the point of getting hot under the collar about someone who had become an irrelevance."

He was right. Galbraith didn't believe him. "Presumably the fact that Hannah isn't your child explains your lack of interest in her?"

Once again the man didn't answer, and a silence lengthened between them.

"Tell me what went wrong when you moved to Lymington," Galbraith said then.

"Nothing went wrong."

"So you're saying that from day one"-he emphasized the word-"marriage was like living with a landlady? That's a pretty unattractive proposition, isn't it?"

"It depends what you want," said Sumner. "Anyway, how would you describe a woman whose idea of an intellectual challenge was to watch a soap opera, who had no taste in anything, was so houseproud that she believed cleanliness was next to godliness, preferred overcooked sausages and baked beans to rare steak, and accounted voluntarily for every damn penny that either of us ever spent?"

There was a rough edge to his voice, which to Galbraith's ears sounded more like guilt at exposing his wife's shortcomings than bitterness that she'd had them, and he had the impression that William couldn't make up his mind if he'd loved his wife or loathed her. But whether that made him guilty of her murder, Galbraith didn't know.

"If you despised her to that extent, why did you marry her?"

Sumner rested his head against the back of his chair and stared at the ceiling. "Because the quid pro quo for helping her out of the hole she'd dug for herself was sex whenever I wanted it." He turned to look at Galbraith, and his eyes were bright with unshed tears. "That's all I was interested in. That's all any man's interested in. Isn't it? Sex on tap. Kate would have sucked me off twenty times a day if I'd told her to, just so long as I kept acknowledging Hannah as my daughter." The memory brought him little pleasure, apparently, because tears streamed in murky rivers down his cheeks while his uncontrollable lid winked ... and winked...

It was an hour and a half before Ingram returned to Broxton House, carrying something wrapped in layers of cling film. Maggie saw him pass the kitchen window and went through the scullery to let him in. He was soaked to the skin and supported himself against the doorjamb, head hanging in exhaustion.

"Did you find anything?" she asked him.

He nodded, lifting the bundle. "I need to make a phone call, but I don't want to drip all over your mother's floor. I presume you were carrying your mobile this morning, so can I borrow it?"

"Sorry, I wasn't. So no. I got it free two years ago in return for a year's rental, but it was so bloody expensive I declined to renew my subscription and I haven't used it in twelve months. It's in the flat somewhere." She held the door wide. "You'd better come in. There's an extension in the kitchen, and the quarry tiles won't hurt for getting water on them." Her lips gave a brief twitch. "They might even benefit. I dread to think when they last saw a mop."

He padded after her, his shoes squelching as he walked. "How did you phone me this morning if you didn't have a mobile?"

"I used Steve's," she said, pointing to a Philips GSM on the kitchen table.

He pushed it to one side with the back of his finger and placed the cling film bundle beside it. "What's it doing here?"

"I put it in my pocket and forgot about it," she said. "I only remembered it when it started ringing. It's rung five times since you left."

"Have you answered it?"

"No. I thought you could deal with it when you came back."

He moved across to the wall telephone and lifted it off its bracket. "You're very trusting," he murmured, punching in the number of the Kate Sumner incident room. "Supposing I'd decided to let you and your mother stew in your own juices for a bit?"

"You wouldn't," she said frankly. "You're not the type."

He was still wondering how to take that when he was put through to Detective Superintendent Carpenter. "I've fished a boy's T-shirt out of the sea, sir ... almost certainly belonging to one of the Spender boys. It's got a Derby County Football Club logo on the front, and Danny claimed Harding stole it from him." He listened for a moment. "Yes, Danny could have dropped it by accident ... I agree, it doesn't make Harding a pedophile." He held the phone away from his ear as Carpenter's barking beat against his eardrums. "No, I haven't found the rucksack yet, but as a matter of fact ... only that I've a pretty good idea where it is." More barking. "Yes, I'm betting it's what he came back for..." He grimaced into the receiver. "Oh, yes, sir, I'd say it's definitely in Chapman's Pool." He glanced at his watch. "The boat sheds in an hour. I'll meet you there." He replaced the receiver, saw amusement at his discomfort in Maggie's eyes, and gestured abruptly toward the hall. "Has the doctor been to see your mother?"

She nodded.

"Well?"

"He told her she was a fool not to take the paramedic's offer to have her admitted as an emergency this morning, then patted her on the head and gave her some painkillers." Her lips twitched into another small smile. "He also said she needs a walker and wheelchair, and suggested I drive to the nearest Red Cross depot this afternoon and see what they can do for her."

"Sounds sensible."

"Of course it does, but since when did sense feature in my mother's life? She says if I introduce any such contraptions into her house, she won't use them and she'll never speak to me again. And she means it, too. She says she'd rather crawl on her hands and knees than give anyone the impression she's passed her sell-by date." She gave a tired sigh. "Ideas on a postcard, please, care of Broxton House Lunatic Asylum. What the hell am I supposed to do?"

"Wait," he suggested.

"What for?"

"A miraculous cure or a request for a walker. She's not stupid, Maggie. Logic will prevail once she gets over her irritation with you, me, and the doctor. Meanwhile, be kind to her. She crippled herself for you this morning, and a little gratitude and TLC will probably have her on her feet quicker than anything."

"I've already told her I couldn't have done it without her."

He looked amused. "Like mother like daughter, eh?"

"I don't understand."

"She can't say sorry. You can't say thank you."

Sudden light dawned. "Oh, I see. So that's why you went off in a huff two hours ago. It was gratitude you wanted. How silly of me. I thought you were angry because I told you to mind your own business." She wrapped her arms about her thin body and gave him a tentative smile. "Well, thank you, Nick, I'm extremely grateful for your assistance."

He tugged at his forelock. "Much obliged I'm sure, Miss Jenner," he said in a rolling burr. "But a lady like you don't need to thank a man for doing his job."

Her puzzled eyes searched his for a moment before it occurred to her he was taking the piss, and her overwrought nerves snapped with a vengeance. "Fuck off!" she said, landing a furious fist on the side of his jaw before marching into the hall and slamming the door behind her.

Two Dartmouth policemen listened with interest to what the Frenchman told them, while his daughter stood in embarrassed silence beside him, fidgeting constantly with her hair. The man's English was good, if heavily accented, as he explained carefully and precisely where he and his boat had been the previous Sunday. He had come, he said, because he had read in the English newspapers that the woman who had been lifted off the shore had been murdered. He placed a copy of Wednesday's Telegraph on the counter in case they didn't know which inquiry he was referring to. "Mrs. Kate Sumner," he said. "You are acquainted with this matter?" They agreed they were, so he produced a videocassette from a carrier bag and put it beside the newspaper. "My daughter made a film of a man that day. You understand-I know nothing about this man. He may-how you say-be innocent. But I am anxious." He pushed the video across the desk. "It is not good what he is doing, so you play it. Yes? It is important, perhaps."

Harding's mobile telephone was a sophisticated little item with the capacity to call abroad or be called from abroad. It required an SIM (Subscriber Identification Module) card and a PIN number to use it, but as both had been logged in, presumably by Harding himself, the phone was operational. If it hadn't been, Maggie wouldn't have been able to use it. The card had an extensive memory and, depending on how much the user programmed into it, could store phone numbers and messages, plus the last ten numbers dialed out and the last ten dialed in.

The screen was displaying "5 missed calls" and a "messages waiting" sign. With a wary look toward the door into the hall, Ingram went into the menu, located "voice mail" followed by "mailbox," pressed the "call" button, and held the receiver to his ear. He massaged his cheek tenderly while he listened, wondering if Maggie had any idea how powerful her punch was.

"You have three new messages," said a disembodied female voice at the other end.

"Steve?" A lisping, lightweight-foreign?-voice, although Ingram couldn't tell if it was male or female. "Where are you? I'm frightened. Please phone me. I've tried twenty times since Sunday."

"Mr. Harding?" A man's voice, definitely foreign. "This is the Hotel Angelique, Concarneau. If you wish us to keep your room, you must confirm your reservation by noon today, using a credit card. I regret that without such confirmation the reservation cannot be honored."

"Hi," said an Englishman's voice next. "Where the fuck are you, you stupid bastard? You're supposed to be kipping here, for Christ's sake. Dammit, this is the address you've been bailed to, and I swear to God I'll take you to the cleaners if you get me into any more trouble. Just don't expect me to keep my mouth shut next time. I warned you I'd have your stinking hide if you were playing me for a patsy. Oh, and in case you're interested, there's a sodding journalist nosing around who wants to know if it's true you've been questioned about Kate's murder. He's really bugging me, so get your arse back PDQ before I drop you in it up to your neck."

Ingram touched "end" to disconnect, then went through the whole process again, jotting down bullet points on the back of a piece of paper which he took from a notepad under the wall telephone. Next he pressed the arrow button twice to scroll up the numbers of the last ten people who had dialed in. He discounted "voice mail" and made a note of the rest, together with the last ten calls Harding had made, the first of which was Maggie's call to him. For further good measure-To hell with it! In for a penny, in for a pound!-he scrolled through the entries under "names" and took them down together with their numbers.

"Are you doing something illegal?" asked Maggie from the doorway.

He had been so engrossed he hadn't heard the door open, and he looked up with a guilty start. "Not if DI Galbraith already has this information." He flattened his palm and made a rocking motion. "Probable infringement of Harding's rights under the Data Protection Act, if he hasn't. It depends whether the phone was on Crazy Daze when they searched it."

"Won't Steven Harding know you've been playing his messages when you give it back to him? Our answerphone never replays the ones you've already listened to unless you rewind the tape."

"Voice mail's different. You have to delete the messages if you don't want to keep hearing them." He grinned. "But if he's suspicious, let's just hope he thinks you buggered it up when you made your phone call."

"Why drag me into it?"

"Because he'll know you phoned me. My number's in the memory."

"Oh God," she said in resignation. "Are you expecting me to lie for you?"

"No." He stood up, lacing his hands above his head and stretching his shoulder muscles under his damp clothes. He was so tall he could almost touch the ceiling, and he stood like a Colossus in the middle of the kitchen, easily dominating a room that was big enough to house an entire family.

Watching him, Maggie wondered how she could ever have called him an overweight Neanderthal. It had been Martin's description, she remembered, and it galled her unbearably to think how tamely she had adopted it herself because it had raised a laugh among people she had once regarded as friends but whom she now avoided like the plague. "Well, I will," she said with sudden decision.

He shook his head as he lowered his arms. "It wouldn't do me any good. You couldn't lie to save your life. And that's a compliment, by the way," he said as she started to scowl, "so there's no need to hit me again. I don't admire people who lie."

"I'm sorry," she said abruptly.

"No need to be. It was my fault. I shouldn't have teased you." He started to gather the bits and pieces from the table.

"Where are you going now?"

"Back to my house to change, then down to the boat sheds at Chapman's Pool. But I'll look in again this afternoon before I go to see Harding. As you so rightly pointed out, I need to take a statement from you." He paused. "We'll talk about this in detail later, but did you hear anything before he appeared?"

"Like what?"

"Shale falling?"

She shook her head. "All I remember is how quiet it was. That's why he gave me such a fright. One minute I was on my own, the next he was crouching on the ground in front of me like a rabid dog. It was really peculiar. I don't know what he thought he was doing, but there's a lot of scrub vegetation and bushes around there, so I think he must have heard me coming and ducked down to hide."

He nodded. "What about his clothes? Were they wet?"

"No."

"Dirty?"

"You mean before he bled all over them?"

"Yes."

She shook her head again. "I remember thinking that he hadn't shaved, but I don't remember thinking he was dirty."

He stacked the cling film bundle, notes, and phone into a pile and lifted them off the table. "Okay. That's great. I'll take a statement this afternoon." He held her gaze for a moment. "You'll be all right," he told her. "Harding's not going to come back."

"He wouldn't dare," she said, clenching her fists.

"Not if he has any sense," murmured Ingram, moving out of her range.

"Do you have any brandy in your house?"

The switch was so abrupt that he needed time to consider. "Ye-es," he murmured cautiously, fearing another assault if he dared to question why she was asking. He suspected four years of angry frustration had gone into her punch, and he wished she'd chosen Harding for target practice instead of himself.

"Can you lend me some?"

"Sure. I'll drop it in on my way back to Chapman's Pool."

"If you give me a moment to tell Ma where I'm going, I'll come with you. I can walk back."

"Won't she miss you?"

"Not for an hour or so. The painkillers have made her sleepy."

Bertie was lying on the doorstep in the sunshine as Ingram drew the Jeep to a halt beside his gate. Maggie had never been inside Nick's little house, but she had always resented the neatness of his garden. It was like a reproach to all his less organized neighbors with its beautifully clipped privet hedges and regimented hydrangeas and roses in serried ranks before the yellow-stone walls of the house. She often wondered where he found the time to weed and hoe when he spent most of his free hours on his boat, and in her more critical moments put it down to the fact that he was boring and compartmentalized his life according to some sensible duty roster.

The dog raised his shaggy head and thumped his tail on the mat before rising leisurely to his feet and yawning. "So this is where he comes," she said. "I've often wondered. How long did it take you to train him, as a matter of interest?"

"Not long. He's a bright dog."

"Why did you bother?"

"Because he's a compulsive digger, and I got fed up with having my garden destroyed," he said prosaically.

"Oh God," she said guiltily. "Sorry. The trouble is he never takes any notice of me."

"Does he need to?"

"He's my dog," she said.

Ingram opened the Jeep door. "Have you made that clear to him?"

"Of course I have. He comes home every night, doesn't he?"

He reached into the back for the stack of evidence. "I wasn't questioning ownership," he told her. "I was questioning whether or not Bertie knows he's a dog. As far as he's concerned, he's the boss in your establishment. He gets fed first, sleeps on your sofa, licks out your dishes. I'll bet you even move over in bed in order to make sure he's more comfortable, don't you?"

She colored slightly. "What if I do? I'd rather have him in my bed than the weasel that used to be in it. In any case, he's the closest thing I've got to a hot-water bottle."

Ingram laughed. "Are you coming in or do you want me to bring the brandy out? I guarantee Bertie won't disgrace you. He has beautiful manners since I took him to task for wiping his bottom on my carpet."

Maggie sat in indecision. She had never wanted to go inside, because it would tell her things about him that she didn't want to know. At the very least it would be insufferably clean, she thought, and her bloody dog would shame her by doing exactly what he was told.

"I'm coming in," she said defiantly.

(Carpenter took a phone call from a Dartmouth police sergeant just as he was about to leave for Chapman's Pool. He listened to a description of what was on the Frenchman's video then asked: "What does he look like?"

"Five eight, medium build, bit of a paunch, thinning dark hair."

"I thought you said he was a young chap."

"No. Mid-forties, at least. His daughter's fourteen."

Carpenter's frown dug trenches out of his forehead. "Not the bloody Frenchman," he shouted, "the toe-rag on the video!"

"Oh, sorry. Yes, he's young all right. Early twenties, I'd say. Longish dark hair, sleeveless T-shirt, and cycling shorts. Muscles. Tanned. A handsome bugger, in fact. The kid who filmed him said she thought he looked like Jean-Claude Van Damme. Mind you, she's mortified about it now, can't believe she didn't realize what he was up to, considering he's got a rod like a fucking salami. This guy could make a fortune in porno movies."

"All right, all right," said Carpenter testily. "I get the picture. And you say he's wanking into a handkerchief?"

"Looks like it."

"Could it be a child's T-shirt?"

"Maybe. It's difficult to tell. Matter of fact, I'm amazed the French geezer spotted what the bastard was up to. It's pretty discreet. It's only because his knob's so damn big that you can see anything at all. The first time I watched it I thought he was peeling an orange in his lap." There was a belly laugh at the other end of the line. "Still, you know what they say about the French. They're all wankers. So I guess our little geezer's done a spot of it himself and knew what to look for. Am I right or am I right?"

Carpenter, who spent all his holidays in France, cocked a finger and thumb at the telephone and pulled the trigger-bloody racist, he was thinking-but there was no trace of irritation in his voice when he spoke. "You said the young man had a rucksack. Can you describe it for me?"

"Standard camping type. Green. Doesn't look as if it's got much in it."

"Big?"

"Oh, yes. It's a full-size job."

"What did he do with it?"

"Sat on it while he jerked himself off."

"Where? Which part of Chapman's Pool? Eastern side? Western side? Describe the scenery for me."

"Eastern side. The Frenchman showed me on the map. Your wanker was down on the beach below Emmetts Hill, facing out toward the Channel. Green slope behind him."

"What did he do with the rucksack after he sat on it?"

"Can't say. The film ends."

With a request to send the tape on by courier, together with the Frenchman's name, proposed itinerary for the rest of his holiday, and address in France, Carpenter thanked the sergeant and rang off.

"Did you make this yourself?" asked Maggie, peering at the Cutty Sark in the bottle on the mantelpiece as Ingram came downstairs in uniform, buttoning the sleeves of his shirt.

"Yes."

"I thought you must have done. It's like everything else in this house. So"-she waved her glass in the air-"well behaved." She might have said masculine, minimal, or monastic, in an echo of Galbraith's description of Harding's boat, but she didn't want to be rude. It was as she had predicted, insufferably clean, and insufferably boring as well. There was nothing to say this house belonged to an interesting personality, just yards of pallid wall, pallid carpet, pallid curtains, and pallid upholstery, broken occasionally by an ornament on a shelf. It never occurred to her that he was tied to the house through his job, but even if it had, she would still have expected splashes of towering individualism among the uniformity.

He laughed. "Do I get the impression you don't like it?"

"No, I do. It's-er-"

"Twee?" he suggested.

"Yes."

"I made it when I was twelve." He flexed his huge fingers under her nose. "I couldn't do it now." He straightened his tie. "How's the brandy?"

"Very good." She dropped into a chair. "Does exactly what it's supposed to do. Hits the spot."

He took her empty glass. "When did you last drink alcohol?"

"Four years ago."

"Shall I give you a lift home?"

"No." She closed her eyes. "I'm going to sleep."

"I'll look in on your mother on my way back from Chapman's Pool," he promised her, shrugging on his jacket. "Meanwhile, don't encourage your dog to sit on my sofa. It's bad for both your characters."

"What will happen if I do?"

"The same thing that happened to Bertie when he wiped his bottom on my carpet."

Despite another day of brilliant sunshine, Chapman's Pool was empty. The southwesterly breeze had created an unpleasant swell, and nothing was more guaranteed to discourage visitors than the likelihood of being sick over their lunch. Carpenter and two detective constables followed Ingram away from the boat sheds toward an area marked out on the rocky shore with pieces of driftwood.

"We won't know until we see the video, of course," said Carpenter, taking his bearings from the description the Dartmouth sergeant had given of where Harding had been sitting, "but it looks about right. He was certainly on this side of the bay." They were standing on a slab of rock at the shoreline, and he touched a small pebble cairn with the toe of his shoe. "And this is where you found the T-shirt?"

Ingram nodded as he squatted down and put his hand in the water that lapped against the base of the rock. "But it was well and truly wedged. A gull had a go at getting it out, and failed, and I was saturated doing my retrieval act."

"Is that important?"

"Harding was dry as a bone when I saw him, so it can't have been the T-shirt he came back for. I think that's been here for days."

"Mmm." Carpenter pondered for a moment. "Does fabric easily get wedged between rocks?"

Ingram shrugged. "Anything can get wedged if a crab takes a fancy to it."

"Mmm," said Carpenter again. "All right. Where's this rucksack?"

"It's only a guess, sir, and a bit of a flaky one at that," said Ingram standing up.

"I'm listening."

"Okay, well, I've been puzzling about the ruddy thing for days. He obviously didn't want it anywhere near a policeman, or he'd have brought it down to the boat sheds on Sunday. By the same token it wasn't on his boat when you searched it-or not in my opinion, anyway-and that suggests to me that it's incriminating in some way and he needed to get rid of it."

"I think you're right," said Carpenter. "Harding wants us to believe he was carrying the black one we found on his boat, but the Dartmouth sergeant described the one on the video as green. So what's he done with it, eh? And what's he trying to hide?"

"It depends on whether the contents were valuable to him. If they weren't, then he'll have dropped it in the ocean on his way back to Lymington. If they were, he'll have left it somewhere accessible but not too obvious." Ingram shielded his eyes from the sun and pointed toward the slope behind them. "There's been a mini-avalanche up there," he said. "I noticed it because it's just to the left of where Miss Jenner said Harding appeared in front of her. Shale's notoriously unstable-which is why these cliffs are covered in warnings-and it looks to me as though that fall's fairly recent."

Carpenter followed his gaze. "You think the rucksack's under it?"

"Put it this way, sir, I can't think of a quicker or more convenient way of burying something than to send an avalanche of shale over the top of it. It wouldn't be hard to do. Kick out a loose rock, and hey presto, you've got a convenient slide of loose cliff pouring over whatever it is you want to hide. No one's going to notice it. Slides like that happen every day. The Spender brothers set one off when they dropped their father's binoculars, and I can't help feeling that might have given Harding the idea."

"Meaning he did it on Sunday?"

Ingram nodded.

"And came back this morning to make sure it hadn't been disturbed?"

"I suspect it's more likely he intended to retrieve it, sir."

Carpenter brought his ferocious scowl to bear on the constable. "Then why wasn't he carrying it when you saw him?"

"Because the shale's dried in the sunshine and become impacted. I think he was about to go looking for a spade when he ran into Miss Jenner by accident."

"Is that your best suggestion?"

"Yes, sir."

"You're a bit of a suggestion-junky, aren't you, lad?" said Carpenter, his frown deepening. "I've got DI Galbraith chasing over half of Hampshire on the back of the suggestions you faxed through last night."

"It doesn't make them wrong, sir."

"It doesn't make them right either. We had a team scouring this area on Monday, and they didn't find a damn thing."

Ingram jerked his head toward the next bay. "They were searching Egmont Bight, sir, and with respect, no one was interested in Steven Harding's movements at that point."

"Mmm. These search teams cost money, lad, and I like a little more certainty before I commit taxpayers' money to guesses." Carpenter stared out across the sea. "I could understand him revisiting the scene of the crime to relive his excitement-it's the sort of thing a man like him might do-but you're saying he wasn't interested in that."

Ingram had said no such thing, but he wasn't going to argue the point. For all he knew, the superintendent was right anyway. Maybe that's exactly what Harding had come back for. His own avalanche theory looked horribly insignificant beside the magnitude of a psychopath gloating over the scene of murder.

"Well?" demanded Carpenter.

The constable smiled self-consciously. "I brought my own spade, sir," he said. "It's in the back of my Jeep."