Breaker

*23*

Secured in the passenger seat of the police Range Rover, where Ingram could keep an eye on him, Harding sat huddled in moody silence for most of the trip back to Swanage. Ingram made no attempt to talk to him. Once in a while their eyes met when the policeman was checking traffic to his left, but he felt none of the empathy for Harding that Galbraith had experienced on Crazy Daze. He saw only immaturity in the young man's face and despised him because of it. He was reminded of every juvenile delinquent he'd arrested down the years, not one of whom had had the experience or the wisdom to understand the inevitability of consequence. They saw it in terms of retribution and justice and whether they would do "time," never in terms of the slow destruction of their lives.

It was as they drove through the little town of Corfe Castle, with its ruined medieval ramparts commanding a gap in the Purbeck chalk ridge, that Harding broke the silence. "If you hadn't jumped to conclusions on Sunday," he said in a reasonable tone of voice, "none of this would have happened."

"None of what?"

"Everything. My arrest. This." He touched a hand to his sling. "I shouldn't be here. I had a part lined up in London. It could have been my breakthrough."

"The only reason you're here is because you attacked Miss Jenner this morning," Ingram pointed out. "What have the events of Sunday got to do with that?"

"She wouldn't know me from Adam but for Kate's murder."

"That's true."

"And you won't believe I didn't have anything to do with that-none of you will-but it's not fair," Harding complained with a sudden surge of bitterness. "It's just a bloody awful coincidence, like the coincidence of bumping into Maggie this morning. Do you think I'd have shown myself to her if I'd known she was there?"

"Why not?" The car sped up as they exited the thirty-mile speed limit.

He turned a morose stare on Ingram's profile. "Have you any idea what it's like to have your movements monitored by the police? You've got my car, my boat. I'm supposed to stay at an address you've chosen for me. It's like being in prison without the walls. I'm being treated like a criminal when I haven't done anything, but if I lose my temper because some stupid woman treats me like Jack the Ripper I get accused of assault."

Ingram kept his eyes on the road ahead. "You hit her. Don't you think she had a right to treat you like Jack the Ripper?"

"Only because she wouldn't stop screaming." He gnawed at his fingernails. "I guess you told her I was a rapist, so of course she believed you. That's what got me riled. She was fine with me on Sunday, then today..." He fell silent.

"Did you know she might be there?"

"Of course not. How could I?"

"She rides that gully most mornings. It's one of the few places she can give her horses a good gallop. Anyone who knows her could have told you that. It's also one of the few places with easy access to the beach from the coastal path."

"I didn't know."

"Then why are you so surprised she was scared of you? She'd have been scared of any man who appeared out of nowhere on a deserted headland when she wasn't expecting it."

"She wouldn't have been scared of you."

"I'm a policeman. She trusts me."

"She trusted me," said Harding, "until you told her I was a rapist."

It was the same point Maggie had made, and Ingram conceded it was a fair one-to himself if not to Harding. It was the grossest injustice to destroy an innocent person's reputation, however it was done, and while neither he nor Galbraith had said that the young man was a rapist, the implication had been clear enough. They continued for a while in silence. The road to Swanage led southeast along the spine of Purbeck, and the distant sea showed intermittently between folds of pastureland. The sun was warm on Ingram's arm and neck, but Harding, sitting in shade on the left-hand side of the car, hunched tighter into himself as if he was cold and stared sightlessly out of the window. He seemed lost in lethargy, and Ingram wondered if he was still trying to concoct some sort of defense or whether the events of the morning had finally taken their toll.

"That dog of hers should be shot," he said suddenly.

Still concocting a defense then, thought Ingram, while wondering why it had taken him so long to get around to it. "Miss Jenner claims he was only trying to protect her," he said mildly.

"It bloody savaged me."

"You shouldn't have hit her."

Harding gave a long sigh. "I didn't mean to," he admitted as if realizing that continued argument would be a waste of time. "I probably wouldn't have done it if she hadn't called me a pervert. The last person who did that was my father, and I flattened him for it."

"Why did he call you a pervert?"

"Because he's old-fashioned, and I told him I'd done a porno shoot to make money." The young man balled his hands into fists. "I wish people would just keep their noses out of my business. It gets on my tits the way everyone keeps lecturing me about the way I live my life."

Ingram shook his head in irritation. "There's no such thing as a free lunch, Steve."

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"Live now, pay later. What goes around, comes around. No one promised you a rose garden."

Harding turned to stare out of the passenger window, offering a cold shoulder to what he clearly felt was a patronizing police attitude. "I don't know what the fuck you're talking about."

Ingram smiled slightly. "I know you don't." He glanced sideways. "What were you doing on Emmetts Hill this morning?"

"Just walking."

There was a moment's silence before Ingram gave a snort of laughter. "Is that the best you can do?"

"It's the truth," he said.

"Like hell it is. You've had all day to work this one out, but by God, if that's the only explanation you've been able to come up with, you must have a very low opinion of policemen."

The young man turned back to him with an engaging smile. "I do."

"Then we'll have to see if we can change your mind." Ingram's smile was almost as engaging. "Won't we?"

Gregory Freemantle was pouring himself a drink in the front room of his flat in Poole when his girlfriend showed in two detectives. The atmosphere was thick enough to cut with a knife, and it was obvious to both policemen that they had walked in on a humdinger of a row. "DS Campbell and DC Langham," she said curtly. "They want to talk to you."

Freemantle was a Peter Stringfellow lookalike, an aging playboy with straggling blond hair and the beginnings of desperation in the sagging lines around his eyes and chin. "Oh God," he groaned, "you're not taking her seriously about that bloody oil drum, are you? She doesn't know the first thing about sailing"-he paused to consider-"or children, for that matter, but it doesn't stop her being lippy." He raised one hand and worked his thumb and forefingers to mimic a mouth working.

He was the kind of man other men take against instinctively, and DS Campbell glanced sympathetically at the girlfriend. "It wasn't an oil drum, sir, it was an upturned dinghy. And, yes, we took Miss Hale's information very seriously."

Freemantle raised his glass in the woman's direction. "Good one, Jenny." His eyes were already showing alcohol levels well above average, but he still downed two fingers of neat whisky without blinking. "What do you want?" he asked Campbell. He didn't invite them to sit down, merely turned back to the whisky bottle and poured himself another drink.

"We're trying to eliminate people from the Kate Sumner murder inquiry," Campbell explained, "and we're interested in everyone who was in Chapman's Pool on Sunday. We understand you were there on a Fairline Squadron."

"You know I was. She's already told you."

"Who was with you?"

"Jenny and my two daughters, Marie and Fliss. And it was a bloody nightmare, if you're interested. You buy a boat to keep everyone happy, and all they can do is snipe at each other. I'm going to sell the damn thing." His drink-sodden eyes filled with self-pity. "It's no fun going out on your own, and it's even less fun taking a menagerie of cats with you."

"Was either of your daughters wearing a bikini and lying facedown on the bow between twelve thirty and one o'clock on Sunday, sir?"

"I don't know."

"Does either of them have a boyfriend called Steven Harding?"

He shrugged indifferently.

"I'd be grateful for an answer, Mr. Freemantle."

"Well, you're not going to get one, because I don't know and I don't care," he said aggressively. "I've had a bucketful of women today, and as far as I'm concerned the sooner they're all genetically engineered to behave like Stepford wives the better." He raised his glass again. "My wife serves me with notice that she intends to bankrupt my company in order to take three-quarters of what I'm worth. My fifteen-year-old daughter tells me she's pregnant and wants to run away to France with some longhaired git who fancies himself as an actor, and my girlfriend"-he lurched his glass in Jenny Hale's direction-"that one over there-tells me it's all my fault because I've waived my responsibilities as a husband and a father. So cheers! To men, eh!"

Campbell turned to the woman. "Can you help us, Miss Hale?"

She looked questioningly toward Gregory, clearly seeking his support, but when he refused to meet her eyes, she gave a small shrug. "Ah, well," she said, "I wasn't planning on hanging around after this evening anyway. Marie, the fifteen-year-old, was wearing a bikini and was sunbathing on the bow before lunch," she told the two policemen. "She lay on her tummy so that her father wouldn't see her bump, and she was signaling to her boyfriend, who was jerking off on the shore for her benefit. The rest of the time she wore a sarong to disguise the fact that she's pregnant. She has since told us that her boyfriend's name is Steve Harding and that he's an actor in London. I knew she was plotting something because she was hyped up from the moment we left Poole, and I realized it must be to do with the boy on the shore, because she became completely poisonous after he left and has been a nightmare ever since." She sighed. "That's what the row has been about. When she turned up today in one of her tantrums I told her father he should take some interest in what's really going on because it's been obvious to me for a while that she's not just pregnant but has been taking drugs as well. Now open war has broken out."

"Is Marie still here?"

Jenny nodded. "In the spare bedroom."

"Where does she normally live?"

"In Lymington, with her mother and sister."

"Do you know what she and her boyfriend were planning to do on Sunday?"

She glanced at Gregory. "They were going to run away together to France, but when that woman's body was found they had to abandon the plan because there were too many people watching. Steve has a boat apparently, which he'd left at Salterns Marina, and the idea was for Marie to vanish into thin air out of Chapman's Pool after saying she was going for a walk to Worth Matravers. They thought if she changed into some men's clothes that Steve had brought with him, and slogged it back across land to the ferry, they could be on their way to France by the evening and no one would ever know where she'd gone or who she was with." She shook her head. "Now she's threatening to kill herself if her father doesn't let her leave school and go and live with Steve in London."

While the garage in Lymington, and its contents, were being taken apart systematically by scene-of-crime officers in search of evidence, Tony Bridges was being formally interviewed as a witness and under taped conditions by Detective Superintendent Carpenter and DI Galbraith.

He refused to repeat anything he had said to Galbraith about his or Harding's alleged smuggling activities, however, and, as that particular matter was being passed to Customs and Excise, Carpenter was less exercised by the refusal than he might otherwise have been. Instead, he chose to shock Bridges by showing him the videotape of Harding masturbating, then asked him if his friend made a habit of performing indecent acts in public.

Surprisingly, Bridges was shocked.

"Jesus!" he exclaimed, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. "How would I know? We lead separate lives. He's never done anything like that around me."

"It's not that bad," murmured Galbraith, who was sitting beside Carpenter. "Just a discreet wank. Why are you sweating over it, Tony?"

The young man eyed him nervously. "I get the impression it's worse than that. You wouldn't be showing it to me otherwise."

"You're a bright lad," said Carpenter, freeze-framing the video at the point where Harding was cleaning himself up. "That's a T-shirt he's using. You can just make out the Derby FC logo on the front. It belongs to a ten-year-old kid called Danny Spender. He thinks Steve stole it off him around midday on Sunday, and half an hour later we see him ejaculating all over it. You know the guy better than anyone. Would you say he has a yen for little boys?"

Bridges looked even more startled. "No," he muttered.

"We have a witness who says Steve couldn't keep his hands off the two lads who found Kate Sumner's body. One of the boys describes him using his mobile telephone to bring on an erection in front of them. We have a policeman who says he maintained the erection while the boys were around him."

"Ah, shit!" Bridges ran his tongue around dry lips. "Listen, I always thought he hated kids. He can't stand working with them, can't stand it when I talk about teaching." He looked toward the frozen image on the television screen. "This has to be wrong. Okay, he's got a thing about sex-talks about it too much-likes blue movies- boasts about three-in-a-bed romps, that kind of thing-but it's always with women. I'd have bet my last cent he was straight."

Carpenter leaned forward to examine the other man closely, then shifted his gaze to look at the television screen. "That really offends you, doesn't it? Why is that, Tony? Did you recognize anyone else in the sequence?"

"No. I just think it's obscene, that's all."

"It can't be worse than the pornography shoots he does."

"I wouldn't know. I've never seen them."

"You must have seen some of his photographs. Describe them for us."

Bridges shook his head.

"Do they include kids? We know he's done some gay poses. Does he pose with children as well?"

"I don't know anything about it. You'll have to talk to his agent."

Carpenter made a note. "Pedophile rings pay double what anyone else pays."

"It's got nothing to do with me."

"You're a teacher, Tony. You have more responsibility than most people toward children. Does your friend pose with children?"

He shook his head.

"For the purposes of the tape," said Carpenter into the microphone, "Anthony Bridges declined to answer." He consulted a piece of paper in front of him. "On Tuesday you told us Steve wasn't the kiss-and-tell type; now you're saying he boasts about three-in-a-bed sex. Which is true?"

"The boasting," he said with more confidence, glancing at Galbraith. "That's how I know about Kate. He was always telling me what they did together."

Galbraith wiped a freckled hand around the back of his neck to massage muscles made sore by too much driving that day. "Except it sounds like all talk and no action, Tony. Your friend goes in for solitary pursuits. On beaches. On his boat. In his flat. Did you ever wonder if he was lying about his relationships with women?"

"No. Why should I? He's a good-looking bloke. Women like him."

"All right, let me put it another way. How many of these women have you actually met? How often does he bring them to your house?"

"He doesn't need to. He takes them to his boat."

"Then why is there no evidence of that? There were a couple of articles of women's clothing and a pair of Hannah's shoes on board but nothing to suggest that a woman was ever in the bed with him."

"You can't know that."

"Oh, come on," said Galbraith in exasperation, "you're a chemist. His sheets have semen stains all over them but nothing that remotely suggests there was anyone else in the bed with him when he ejaculated."

Bridges looked rather wildly toward the superintendent. "All I can tell you is what Steve told me. It's hardly my fault if the stupid sod was lying."

"True," agreed Carpenter, "but you do keep shoving his prowess down our throats." He produced Bridges' statement from a folder on the table and spread it flat in front of him, holding it down with his palms stretched on either side. "You seem to have a bit of a thing about him being good-looking. This is what you said at the beginning of the week. 'Steve's a good-looking bloke,' "he read, " 'and has an active sex life. He has at least two girls on the go at the same time...'" He lifted inquiring eyebrows. "Do you want to comment on that?"

It was clear that Tony had no idea where this line of questioning was leading and needed time to think. A fact which interested both policemen. It was as if he were trying to predict moves in a chess game and had begun to panic because checkmate looked inevitable. Every so often his eyes flicked toward the television screen, then dropped away rapidly as if the frozen image was more than he could bear. "I don't know what you want me to say."

"In simple terms, Tony, we're trying to square your portrayal of Steve with the forensic evidence. You want us to believe your friend had a prolonged affair with an older married woman, but we're having difficulty substantiating that any such affair happened. For example, you told my colleague that Steve took Kate to your house on occasion, yet, despite the fact that your house clearly hasn't been cleaned in months, we couldn't find a single fingerprint belonging to Kate Sumner anywhere inside it. There is also nothing to suggest that Kate was ever in Steve's car, although you claim that he drove her to the New Forest on numerous occasions for sex in the back of it."

"He said they needed out-of-the-way places in case they were spotted together. They were scared of William finding out, because according to Steve, he was so jealous he'd go berserk if he knew he was being two-timed." He wilted before Carpenter's unconvinced expression. "It's not my fault if he was lying to me," he protested.

"He described William to us as middle-aged and straight," said Carpenter thoughtfully. "I don't recall him suggesting he was aggressive."

"That's what he told me."

Galbraith stirred on his chair. "So your entire knowledge of Steve's alleged"-he put careful stress on the word-"affair with Kate came from a single meeting with her in a pub and whatever Steve chose to tell you about her?"

Bridges nodded but didn't answer.

"For the purposes of the tape, Anthony Bridges gave a nod of agreement. So was he ashamed of the relationship, Tony? Is that why you only got to meet her once? You said yourself, you couldn't understand what the attraction was."

"She was married," he said. "He was hardly going to parade a married woman around the town, was he?"

"Has he ever paraded a woman around town, Tony?"

There was a long silence. "Most of his girlfriends are married," he said then.

"Or mythical?" suggested Carpenter. "Like claiming Bibi as a girlfriend?"

Bridges looked baffled, as if he was struggling with half-heard, dimly understood truths that were suddenly making sense. He didn't answer.

Galbraith leveled a finger at the television screen. "What we're beginning to suspect is that the talk was a smokescreen for no action. Maybe he was pretending to like women because he didn't want anyone to know that his tastes lay in an entirely different direction? Maybe the poor bastard doesn't want to recognize it himself and lets off steam quietly in order to keep himself under control?" He turned the finger accusingly on Bridges. "But if that's true, then where does it leave you and Kate Sumner?"

The young man shook his head. "I don't understand." The DI took his notebook from his pocket and flipped it open. "Let me quote some of the things you said about her: 'I think she must have lived on a diet of soap operas...' 'Kate said Hannah would scream her head off...' 'I guess she'd been conning idiots like her husband for so long...' I could go on. You talked about her for fifteen minutes, fluently and with no prompting from me." He laid his notebook on the table. "Do you want to tell us how you know so much about a woman you only met once?"

"Everything I know is what Steve told me."

Carpenter nodded toward the recording machine. "This is a formal interview under taped conditions, Tony. Let me rephrase the question for you so there can be no misunderstandings. Bearing in mind that the Sumners are recent newcomers to Lymington, that both Steven Harding and William Sumner have denied there was any relationship between Steven and Kate Sumner, and that you, Anthony Bridges, claim to have met her only once, how do you explain your extensive and accurate knowledge of her?"

Marie Freemantle was a tall, willowy blond with waist-length wavy hair and huge doe-like eyes, which were awash with tears. Once assured that Steve was alive and well and currently answering questions about why he had been at Chapman's Pool on Sunday, she dried her eyes and favored the policemen with a heavily practiced triangular smile. If they were honest, both men were moved by her prettiness when they first saw her, although their sympathies were soon frayed by the self-centered, petulant nature beneath. They realized she wasn't very bright when it became clear that it hadn't occurred to her they were questioning her because Steven Harding was a suspect in Kate Sumner's murder. She chose to talk to them away from her father and his girlfriend, and her spite was colossal, particularly toward the woman whom she described as an interfering bitch. "I hate her," she finished. "Everything was fine till she stuck her nose in."

"Meaning you've always been allowed to do what you liked?" suggested Campbell.

"I'm old enough."

"How old were you when you first had sex with Steven Harding?"

"Fifteen." She wriggled her shoulders. "But that's nothing these days. Most girls I know had sex at thirteen."

"How long have you known him?"

"Six months."

"How often have you had sex with him?"

"Lots of times."

"Where do you do it?"

"Mostly on his boat."

Campbell frowned. "In the cabin?"

"Not often. The cabin stinks," she said. "He takes a blanket up on deck, and we do it in the sunshine or under the stars. It's great."

"Moored up to the buoy?" asked Campbell, with a rather shocked expression. Like Galbraith earlier, he was wondering about the generation gap that seemed to have opened, unobserved, between himself and today's youth. "In full view of the Isle of Wight ferry?"

"Of course not," she said indignantly, wriggling her shoulders again. "He picks me up somewhere and we go for a sail."

"Where does he pick you up?"

"All sorts of places. Like he says, he'd get strung up if anyone knew he was going with a fifteen-year-old, and he reckons if you don't use the same place too often, no one notices." She shrugged, recognizing that further explanation was necessary. "If you use a marina once in two weeks, who's going to remember? Then there's the salt flats. I walk around the path from the Yacht Haven, and he just shoots in with his dinghy and lifts me off. Sometimes I go to Poole by train and meet him there. Mum thinks I'm with Dad; Dad thinks I'm with Mum. It's simple. I just phone him on his mobile, and he tells me where to go."

"Did you leave a message on his phone this morning?"

She nodded. "He can't phone me in case Mum gets suspicious."

"How did you meet him in the first place?"

"At the Lymington yacht club. There was a dance there on St. Valentine's Day, and Dad got tickets for it because he's still a member even though he lives in Poole now. Mum said Fliss and me could go if Dad watched out for us, but he got shit-faced as usual and left us to get on with it. That's when he was going out with his bitch of a secretary. I really hated her. She was always trying to put him against me."

Campbell was tempted to say it wouldn't have been difficult. "Did your father introduce you to Steve? Did he know him?"

"No. One of my teachers did. He and Steve have been friends for years."

"Which teacher?"

"Tony Bridges." Her full lips curved into a malicious smile. "He's fancied me for ages, and he was trying to make this pathetic move on me when Steve cut him out. God, he was pissed about it. He's been needling away at me all term, trying to find out what's going on, but Steve told me not to tell him in case he got us into trouble for underage sex. He reckons Tony's so fucking jealous he'd make life hell for us if he could."

Campbell thought back to his interview with Bridges on Monday night. "Perhaps he feels responsible for you."

"That's not the reason," she said scornfully. "He's a sad little bastard-that's the reason. None of his girlfriends stay with him because he's stoned most of the time and can't do the business properly. He's been going out with this hairdresser for about four months now, and Steve says he's been feeding her drugs so she won't complain about his lousy performance. If you want my opinion, there's something wrong with him-he's always trying to touch up girls in class-but our stupid headmaster's too thick to do anything about it."

Campbell exchanged a glance with his colleague. "How does Steve know he's been feeding her drugs?" he asked.

"He's seen him do it. It's like a Mickey Finn. You dissolve a tablet in lager, and the girl passes out."

"Do you know what drug he's using?"

Another shrug. "Some sort of sleeping pill."

I'm not going to explain anything without a solicitor here," said Bridges adamantly. "Look, this was one sick woman. You think that kid of hers is weird? Well, trust me, she's as sane as you and me compared with her mother."

WPC Griffiths heard the sound of smashing glass from the kitchen and lifted her head in immediate concern. She had left Hannah watching television in the sitting room, and as far as she knew, William was still in his study upstairs, where he had retreated, angry and resentful, after his interview with DI Galbraith. With a perplexed frown, she tiptoed along the corridor and pushed open the sitting-room door to find Sumner standing just inside. He turned an ashen face toward her, then gestured helplessly toward the little girl, who stalked purposefully about the room, picking up pictures of her mother and throwing them with high-pitched guttural cries into the unlit fireplace.

Ingram put a cup of tea in front of Steven Harding and took a chair on the other side of the table. He was puzzled by the man's attitude. He had expected a long interview session, punctuated by denials and counteraccusations. Instead Harding had admitted culpability and agreed with everything Maggie had written in her statement. All that awaited him now was to be formally charged and held over till the next morning. His only real concern had been his telephone. When Ingram had handed it to the custody sergeant and formally entered it into the inventory of Harding's possessions, Harding had looked relieved. But whether because it had been returned or because it was switched off, Ingram couldn't tell.

"How about talking to me off the record?" he invited. "Just to satisfy my own curiosity. There's no tape. No witnesses to the conversation. Just you and me."

Harding shrugged. "What do you want to talk about?"

"You. What's going on. Why you were on the coastal path on Sunday. What brought you back to Chapman's Pool this morning."

"I already told you. I fancied a walk"-he made a good attempt at a cocky grin-"both times."

"All right." He splayed his palms on the edge of the table, preparatory to standing up. "It's your funeral. Just don't complain afterward that no one tried to help you. You've always been the obvious suspect. You knew the victim, you own a boat, you were on the spot, you told lies about what you were doing there. Have you any idea how all that is going to look to a jury if the Crown Prosecution Service decides to prosecute you for Kate Sumner's rape and murder?"

"They can't. They haven't got any evidence."

"Oh, for Christ's sake grow up, Steve!" he said in irritation, subsiding onto his chair again. "Don't you read the newspapers? People have spent years in prison on less evidence than Winfrith has against you. All right, it's only circumstantial, but juries don't like coincidence any more than the rest of us, and frankly, your antics of this morning haven't helped any. All they prove is that women make you angry enough to attack them." He paused, inviting a reply that never came. "If you're interested in the report I wrote on Monday, I mentioned that both Miss Jenner and I thought you were having difficulty coping with an erection. Afterward one of the Spender boys described how you were using your telephone as a masturbation aid before Miss Jenner arrived." He shrugged. "It may have had nothing to do with Kate Sumner, but it won't sound good in court."

A dull flush spread up Harding's throat and into his face. "That sucks!"

"True nevertheless."

"I wish to God I'd never helped those kids," he said with a burst of anger. "I wouldn't be in this mess but for them. I should have walked away and left them to cope on their own." He pushed his hair off his face with both hands and rested his forehead in his palms. "Jesus Christ! Why do you have to put something like that in a report?"

"Because it happened."

"Not like that it didn't," he said sullenly, the flush of humiliation lingering in his cheeks.

"Then how?" Ingram watched him for a moment. "Headquarters thinks you came back to gloat over the rape and that's what caused your erection."

"That's bullshit!" said the young man angrily.

"What other explanation is there? If it wasn't the thought of Kate Sumner's body that excited you, then it had to be Miss Jenner or the boys."

Harding raised his head and stared at the policeman, his eyes widening in shocked revulsion. "The boys?" he echoed.

It crossed Ingram's mind that the facial expression was a little too theatrical, and he reminded himself, as Galbraith had done, that he was dealing with an actor. He wondered what Harding's reaction would be when he was told about the videotape. "You couldn't keep your hands off them," he pointed out. "According to Miss Jenner, you were hugging Paul from behind when she rounded the boat sheds."

"I don't believe this," said Harding in desperation. "I was only showing him how to use the binoculars properly."

"Prove it."

"How can I?"

Ingram tilted his chair back and stretched his long legs out in front of him, lacing his hands behind his head. "Tell me why you were at Chapman's Pool. Let's face it, whatever you were doing can't be any worse than the constructions that are being put on your actions at the moment."

"I'm not saying another word."

Ingram stared at a mark on the ceiling. "Then let me tell you what I think you were doing. You went there to meet someone," he murmured. "I think it was a girl and I think she was on one of the boats, but whatever plans you'd made with her were scuppered when the place started jumping with policemen and sightseers." He shifted his attention back to Harding. "But why the secrecy, Steve? What on earth were you intending to do with her that meant you'd rather be arrested on suspicion of rape and murder than give an explanation?"

It was two hours before a solicitor arrived, courtesy of Tony's grandfather, and after a brief discussion with his client, and following police assurances that, because of his alibi, Tony was not under suspicion of involvement in Kate Sumner's death, he advised him to answer their questions.

"Okay, yes, I got to know Kate pretty well. She lives-lived-about two hundred yards from my grandfather's garage. She used to come in and talk to me whenever I was in there because she knew I was a friend of Steve's. She was a right little tart, always flirting, always opening those baby blue eyes of hers and telling stories about how this and that man fancied her. I thought it was a come-on, particularly when she said William had a problem getting it up. She told me she went through pints of baby oil to help the poor sod out, and it made her laugh like a drain. Her descriptions were about as graphic as you can get, but she didn't seem to care that Hannah was listening or that I might get to be friendly with William." He looked troubled, as if the memory haunted him. "I told you she was sick. Matter of fact, I think she enjoyed being cruel to people. I reckon she made that poor bastard's life hell. It certainly gave her a kick slapping me down when I tried to kiss her. She spat in my face and said she wasn't that desperate." He fell silent.

"When was this?"

"End of February."

"What happened then?"

"Nothing. I told her to fuck off. Then Steve started dropping hints that he was balling her. I think she must have told him I'd made a pass, so he thought he'd swagger a bit just to rub it in. He said everyone had had her except me."

Carpenter pulled forward a piece of paper and flicked the plunger on his pen. "Give me a list," he said. "Everyone you know who had anything to do with her."

"Steve Harding."

"Go on."

"I don't know of anyone else."

Carpenter laid his pen on the table again and stared at the young man. "That's not good enough, Tony. You describe her as a tart, then offer me one name. That gives me very little confidence in your assessment of Kate's character. Assuming you're telling the truth, we know of only three men who had a relationship with her-her husband, Steven Harding, and one other from her past." His eyes bored into Bridges'. "By any standards that's a modest number for a thirty-year-old woman. Or would you call any woman who's had three lovers a tart? Your girlfriend, for example? How many partners has Bibi had?"

"Leave Bibi out of this," said Bridges angrily. "She's got nothing to do with it."

Galbraith leaned forward. "She gave you your alibi for Saturday night," he reminded him. "That means she has a great deal to do with it." He folded his hands in front of his mouth and studied Bridges intently. "Did she know you fancied Kate Sumner?"

The solicitor laid a hand on the young man's arm. "You don't need to answer that."

"Well, I'm going to," he said, shaking himself free. "I'm fed up with them trying to drag Bibi into it." He addressed Galbraith. "I didn't fucking well fancy Kate. I loathed the stupid bitch. I just thought she was easy, that's all, so I tried it on once. Listen, she was a cockteaser. It gave her a buzz to get blokes excited."

"That's not what I asked you, Tony. I asked you if Bibi knew you fancied Kate."

"No," he muttered.

Galbraith nodded. "But she knew about Steve and Kate?"

"Yes."

"Who told her? You or Steve?"

Bridges slumped angrily in his chair. "Steve mostly. She got really worked up when Kate started smearing Hannah's crap all over his car, so he told her what had been going on."

Galbraith leaned back, letting his hands drop to the tabletop. "Women don't give a toss about a car unless the guy who drives it matters to her. Are you sure your girlfriend isn't playing away from home?"

Bridges erupted out of his seat in a fury of movement, "You are so fucking patronizing. You think you know it all, don't you? She got mad because there was shit all over the handle when she tried to open the door. That's what got her worked up. Not because she cares about Steve or the car, but because her hand was covered in crap. Are you so stupid you can't work that out for yourselves?"

"But doesn't that prove my point?" said Galbraith unemotionally. "If she was driving Steve's car, she must have had more than a nodding acquaintance with him."

"I was driving it," said Bridges, ignoring the solicitor's restraining hand to lean across the table and thrust his face into the inspector's. "I checked the driver's-side handle and it was clean, so I released the locks. What never occurred to me was that the bloody bitch might have changed tactics. This time the crap was on the passenger's side. Now, get this, dickhead. It was still soft when Bibi touched it, so that meant Kate must have put it there minutes before. It also meant that Bibi's hand stank to high bloody heaven. Can you follow all that, or do you want me to repeat it?"

"No," said Galbraith mildly. "The tape recorder's pretty reliable. I think we got it." He nodded toward the chair on the other side of the table. "Sit down, Tony." He waited while Bridges resumed his seat. "Did you see Kate walk away?"

"No."

"You should have done. You said the feces were still soft."

Tony pulled both hands across his peroxided hair and bent forward over the table. "There were plenty of places she could have been hiding. She was probably watching us."

"Did you ever wonder if you were the target and not Steve? You describe her as sick and say she spat at you."

"No."

"She must have known Steve allows you to drive his car."

"Once in a while. Not often."

Galbraith flipped another page of his notebook. "You told me this afternoon that you and Steve had an arrangement regarding your grandfather's garage and Crazy Daze. A straight swap, you called it."

"Yes."

"You said you took Bibi there two weeks ago."

"What of it?"

"Bibi doesn't agree with you. I phoned her at her parents' house two hours ago, and she said she's never been on Crazy Daze."

"She's forgotten," he said dismissively. "She was drunk as a skunk that night. What does it matter anyway?"

"Let's just say we're interested in discrepancies."

The young man shrugged. "I don't see what difference it makes. It's got nothing to do with anything."

"We like to be accurate." Galbraith consulted his notebook. "According to her, the reason she's never been on Crazy Daze is because Steve banned you from using it the week before you met her. 'Tony trashed the boat when he was drunk,' " he read, " 'and Steve blew his stack. He said Tony could go on using the car but Crazy Daze was off limits.' " He looked up. "Why did you lie about taking Bibi on board?"

"To wipe the stupid smirk off your face, I expect. It pisses me off the way you bastards behave. You're all fascists." He hunched forward, eyes burning angrily. "I haven't forgotten you were planning to drag me through the streets in the buff even if you have."

"What's that got to do with Bibi?"

"You wanted an answer so I gave you one."

"How about this for an answer instead? You knew Bibi had been on board with Steve, so you decided to offer an explanation for why her fingerprints were there. You knew we'd find yours because you went out to Crazy Daze on Monday, and you thought you'd be safe pretending you and Bibi had been there together. But the only place we lifted your prints in the cabin, Tony, was on the forward hatch, while Bibi's were all over the headboard behind the bed. She likes being on top, presumably?"

He dropped his head in misery. "Fuck off."

"It must drive you up the wall the way Steve keeps stealing your girlfriends."