Breaker

*24*

Maggie lowered her aching arms and tapped pointedly on her watch when Nick shouldered his way through the scullery door, carrying an aluminum stepladder. She was perched precariously on a garden chair on top of the kitchen table, her hair sticky with cobwebs, her rolled-up sleeves saturated with water. "What sort of time do you call this?" she demanded. "It's a quarter to ten, and I have to be up at five o'clock tomorrow morning to see to the horses."

"Good God, woman!" he declared plaintively. "A night without sleep won't kill you. Live dangerously and see how you enjoy it."

"I expected you hours ago."

"Then don't marry a policeman," he said, setting up his ladder under the uncleaned part of the ceiling.

"Chance'd be a fine thing."

He grinned up at her. "You mean you'd contemplate it?"

"Absolutely not," she said, as if offering him a challenge to even try to chat her up. "All I meant was that no policeman has ever asked me."

"He wouldn't dare." He opened the cupboard under the sink and hunkered down to inspect it for cleaning implements and buckets. She was above him-like the rare occasions when she met him on horseback-and she felt an awful temptation to take advantage of the fact by dripping water onto the back of his neck. "Don't even think about it," he said, without looking up, "or I'll leave you to do the whole bloody lot on your own."

She chose to ignore him, preferring dignity to humiliation. "How did you get on?" she asked, stepping down from the chair to dunk her sponge in the bucket on the table.

"Rather well."

"I thought you must have done. Your tail's wagging." She climbed back onto the chair. "What did Steve say?"

"You mean apart from agreeing with everything in your statement?"

"Yes."

"He told me what he was doing at Chapman's Pool on Sunday." He looked up at her. "He's a complete idiot, but I don't think he's a rapist or a murderer."

"So you were wrong about him?"

"Probably."

"Good. It's bad for your character to have everything your own way. What about pedophile?"

"It depends on your definition of pedophilia." He swung forward a chair and straddled it, resting his elbows along the back, content to watch her work. "He's besotted with a fifteen-year-old girl who's so unhappy at home she keeps threatening to kill herself. She's an absolute stunner apparently, nearly six feet tall, looks twenty-five, ought to be a supermodel, and turns heads wherever she goes. Her parents are separated and fight like cat and dog-her mother's jealous of her-her father has a string of bimbos-she's four months pregnant by Steve-refuses to have an abortion-weeps all over his manly bosom every time she sees him"-he lifted a sardonic eyebrow-"which is probably why he finds her attractive-and is so desperate to have the baby and so desperate to be loved that she's twice tried to slit her wrists. Steve's solution to all this was to whisk her off to France in Crazy Daze, where they could live"-another sardonic lift of an eyebrow-"love's young dream without her parents having any idea where she'd gone or who she'd gone with."

Maggie chuckled. "I told you he was a good Samaritan."

"Bluebeard, more like. She's fifteen."

"And looks twenty-five."

"If you believe Steve."

"Don't you?"

"Put it this way," he said dispassionately, "I wouldn't let him within half a mile of a daughter of mine. He's oversexed, deeply enamored with himself, and has the morals of an alleycat."

"A bit like the weasel I married, in other words?" she asked dryly.

"No question about it." He grinned up at her. "But then I'm prejudiced, of course."

There was a glint of amusement in her eyes. "So what happened? He got sidetracked by Paul and Danny and the whole thing was deep-sixed?"

He nodded. "He realized, when he had to identify himself, that there was no point going on with it and signaled to his girlfriend to abandon it. Since then, he's had one tearful conversation with her over his mobile on his way back to Lymington on Sunday night, and hasn't been able to talk to her since because he's either been under arrest or separated from his phone. The rule is, she always calls him, and as he hasn't heard from her he's terrified she's killed herself."

"Is it true?"

"No. One of the messages on his mobile was from her."

"Still ... poor boy. You've locked him up again, haven't you? He must be worried sick. Couldn't you have let him talk to her?"

He wondered at the vagaries of human nature. He would have bet on her sympathies being with the girl. "Not allowed."

"Oh, come on," she said crossly. "That's just cruel."

"No. Common sense. Personally, I wouldn't trust him farther than I could throw him. He's committed several crimes, don't forget. Assault on you, sex with an underage girl, conspiracy to abduct, not to mention gross indecency and committing lewd acts in public..."

"Oh my God! You haven't charged him with having an erection, have you?"

"Not yet."

"You are cruel," she said in disgust. "It was obviously his girlfriend he was looking at through the binoculars. On that basis you should have arrested Martin every time he put his hand on my arse."

"I couldn't," he said seriously. "You never objected, so it didn't constitute an assault."

There was a twinkle in her eye. "What happened to indecency?"

"I never caught him with his trousers down," he said with regret. "I did try, but he was too bloody quick every time."

"Are you winding me up?"

"No," he said. "I'm courting you."

Half asleep, Sandy Griffiths squinted at the luminous hands on her clock through gritty eyes, saw that it was three o'clock, and tried to remember if William had gone out earlier. Yet again, something had disturbed her intermittent dozing. She thought it was the front door closing, although she couldn't be sure if the sound had been real or if she'd dreamed it. She listened for footfalls on the stairs but, hearing only silence, stumbled out of bed and dragged on her dressing gown. Babies she thought she could probably cope with-a husband, never...

She switched on the landing lamp and pushed open Hannah's bedroom door. A wedge of light cut across the crib, and her alarm subsided immediately. The child sat in the concentrated immobility that seemed to be her nature, thumb in mouth, staring wide-eyed with her curiously intense gaze. If she recognized Griffiths, she didn't show it. Instead she looked through her as if her mind saw behind and beyond the woman images that had no basis in reality, and Griffiths realized she was fast asleep. It explained the crib and the locks on all the doors. They were there to protect a sleepwalker, she understood belatedly, not to deprive a conscious child of adventure.

From outside, muffled by closed doors, she heard the sound of a car starting, followed by gears engaging and the scrunch of tires on the drive. What the hell did the bloody man think he was doing now? she wondered. Did he seriously believe that abandoning his daughter in the early hours of the morning would endear him to social services? Or was that the whole point? Had he decided to ditch the responsibility once and for all?

Wearily she leaned against the doorjamb and studied Kate's blank-eyed, blond-haired replica with compassion and thought about what the doctor had said when he saw the smashed photographs in the fireplace. "She's angry with her mother for deserting her ... it's a perfectly normal expression of grief ... get her father to cuddle her ... that's the best way to fill the gap..."

William Sumner's disappearance raised a few eyebrows in the incident room at Winfrith when Griffiths notified them of it, but little real interest. As so often in his life, he had ceased to matter. Instead, the spotlight turned on Beatrice "Bibi" Gould, who when police knocked on hei parents' door at 7:00 a.m. on Saturday morning, inviting her back to Winfrith for further questioning, burst into tears and locked herself in the bathroom, refusing to come out. When threatened with immediate arrest for obstruction, and on the promise that her parents could accompany her, she finally agreed to come out. Her fear seemed out of proportion to the police request and when asked to explain it she said, "Everyone is going to be angry with me."

Following a brief appearance before magistrates on his assault charge, Steven Harding, too, was invited for further questioning. He was chauffeured by a yawning Nick Ingram, who took the opportunity to impart a few facts of life to the immature young man at his side. "Just for the record, Steve, I'd break your legs if it was my fifteen-year-old daughter you'd got pregnant. As a matter of fact, I'd break your legs if you even laid a finger on her."

Harding was unrepentant. "Life's not like that anymore. You can't order girls to behave the way you want them to behave. They decide for themselves."

"Watch my lips, Steve. I said it's your legs I'd be breaking, not my daughter's. Trust me, the day I find a twenty-four-year-old man besmirching a beautiful child of mine is the day that bastard will wish he'd kept his zip done up." Out of the corner of his eye he watched words begin to form on Harding's lips. "And don't tell me she wanted it just as much as you did," he snarled, "or I'd be tempted to break your arms as well. Any little jerk can persuade a vulnerable adolescent into bed with him as long as he promises to love her. It takes a man to give her time to learn if the promise is worth anything."

Bibi Gould refused to have her father in the interview room with her, but begged for her mother to sit with her and hold her hand. On the other side of the table, Detective Superintendent Carpenter and DI Galbraith took her through her previous statement. She quailed visibly in front of Carpenter's frown, and he only had to say: "We believe you've been lying to us, young lady," for the floodgates of truth to open.

"Dad doesn't like me spending weekends at Tony's ... says I'm making myself cheap ... He'd have gone spare if he'd known I'd passed out. Tony said it was alcohol poisoning because I was vomiting blood, but I think it was the bad E that his friend sold him ... I was sick for hours after I came around ... Dad would have killed me if he'd known ... He hates Tony ... He thinks he's a bad influence." She laid her head on her mother's shoulder and sobbed heartily.

"When was this?" asked Carpenter.

"Last weekend. We were going to this rave in Southampton so Tony got some E from this bloke he knows..." She faltered to a stop.

"Go on."

"Everyone's going to be angry," she wailed. "Tony said why should we get his friend into trouble just because Steve's boat was in the wrong place."

With considerable effort Carpenter managed to smooth his frown into something approaching fatherly kindness. "We're not interested in Tony's friend, Bibi, we're only interested in getting an accurate picture of where everyone was last weekend. You've told us you're fond of Steven Harding," he said disingenuously, "and it will help Steve considerably if we can clear up some of the discrepancies around his story. You and Tony claimed you didn't see him Saturday because you went to a rave in Southampton. Is that true?"

"It's true we didn't see him." She sniffed. "At least I didn't ... I suppose Tony might have done ... but it's not true about the rave. It didn't start till ten, so Tony said we might as well get in the mood earlier. The trouble is I can't remember much about it ... We'd been drinking since five and then I took the E..." She wept into her mother's shoulder again.

"For the record, Bibi, you're telling us you took an Ecstasy tablet supplied to you by your boyfriend, Tony Bridges?"

She was alarmed by his tone. "Yes," she whispered.

"Have you ever passed out before in Tony's company?'

"Sometimes ... if I drink too much."

Pensively, Carpenter stroked his jaw. "Do you know what time you took the tablet on Saturday?"

"Seven, maybe. I can't really remember." She blew her nose into a Kleenex. "Tony said he hadn't realized how much I'd been drinking, and that if he had he wouldn't have given it to me. It was awful ... I'm never going to drink or take Ecstasy ever again ... I've been feeling ill all week." She raised a wan smile. "I reckon it's true what they say about it. Tony thinks I was lucky not to die."

Galbraith was less inclined to be fatherly. His private opinion of her was that she was a blowsy slut with too much baby fat and too little self-control, and he seriously pondered the mysteries of nature and chemistry that meant a girl like this could cause a previously sane man to behave with insanity. "You were drunk again on Monday," he reminded her, "when DS Campbell visited Tony's house in the evening."

She flicked him a sly up-from-under look that curdled any remnants of sympathy he might have had. "I only had two lagers," she said. "I thought they'd make me feel better-but they didn't."

Carpenter tapped his pen on the table to bring her attention back to him. "What time did you come around on Sunday morning, Bibi?"

She shrugged self-pityingly. "I don't know. Tony said I was sick for about ten hours, and I didn't stop till seven o'clock on Sunday evening. That's why I was late back to my parents'."

"So about nine o'clock on Sunday morning then?"

She nodded. "About that." She turned her wet face to her mother. "I'm ever so sorry, Mum. I'm never going to do it again."

Mrs. Gould squeezed the girl's shoulder and looked pleadingly at the two policemen. "Does this mean she'll be prosecuted?"

"What for, Mrs. Gould?"

"Taking Ecstasy?"

The superintendent shook his head. "I doubt it. As things stand, there isn't any evidence that she took any." Rohypnol, maybe... "But you're a very stupid young woman, Bibi, and I trust you won't come whining to the police with your troubles the next time you accept unknown and unidentified tablets from a man. Like it or not, you bear responsibility for your own behavior, and the best advice I can offer you is to listen to your father once in a while."

Good one, guv, thought Galbraith.

Carpenter tented his fingers over Bibi's previous statement. "I don't like liars, young woman. None of us does. I think you told another lie last night to my colleague DI Galbraith, didn't you?"

Her eyes stretched in a kind of panic, but she didn't answer.

"You said you've never been on Crazy Daze when we think you have."

"I haven't."

"You volunteered a set of your fingerprints at the beginning of the week. They match several sets found in the cabin of Steve's boat. Would you care to explain their presence in light of your denial that you've never been there?" He scowled at her.

"It's ... Tony doesn't know, you see ... oh God!" She shook with nerves. "It was just... Steve and I got drunk one night when Tony was away. He'd be so hurt if he found out ... he's got this thing about Steve being good-looking, and it'd kill him if he found out that we ... well, you know..."

"That you had intercourse with Steven Harding on board Crazy Daze?"

"We were drunk. I don't even remember much about it, It didn't mean anything," she said desperately, as if disloyalty could be excused when alcohol loosened inhibitions. But perhaps the concept of in vino veritas was too obscure for an immature nineteen-year-old to understand.

"Why are you so frightened of Tony finding out?' asked Carpenter curiously.

"I'm not." Her eyes stretched wider in a visible demonstration that she was lying.

"What does he do to you, Bibi?"

"Nothing. It's just ... he gets really jealous sometimes."

"Of Steve?"

She nodded.

"How does he show it?"

She licked her lips. "He's only done it once. He jammed my fingers in the car door after he found me in the pub with Steve. He said it was an accident, but ... well ... I don't think it was."

"Was that before or after you slept with Steve?"

"After."

"So he knew what you and Steve had done?"

She pressed her hands to her face. "I don't see how he could have done ... he wasn't around for the whole week, but he's been-well, odd-ever since..."

"When did this happen?"

"Last half-term."

Carpenter consulted his diary. "Between twenty-four and thirty-one May?"

"It was a bank holiday, I know that."

"Fine." He smiled encouragingly. "Only one or two more questions, Bibi, and then we're done. Do you remember an occasion when Tony was driving you somewhere in Steve's car and Kate Sumner had smeared the passenger door handle with her daughter's feces?"

She pulled an expression of disgust. "It was horrible. I got it all over my hand."

"Can you remember when that was?"

She thought about it. "I think it was the beginning of June. Tony said he'd take me to the flicks in Southampton, but I had to wash my hands so much to get all the filth off that in the end we never went."

"After you'd slept with Steve then?"

"Yes."

"Thank you. Last question. Where did Tony stay while he was away?"

"Miles away," she said with emphasis. "His parents have a caravan at Lulworth Cove, and Tony always goes there on his own when he needs to recharge his batteries. I keep telling him he should give up teaching because he really hates children. He says if he has a nervous breakdown it'll be their fault, even though everyone else will say it was because he smoked too much cannabis."

Steven Harding's interview was tougher. He was informed that Marie Freemantle had given the police a statement about her relationship with him and that, because of her age, he could well face charges. Nevertheless, he declined the services of a solicitor, saying he had nothing to hide. He seemed to assume that Marie had been questioned as a result of his off-the-record conversation wth Nick Ingram the previous evening, and neither Carpenter nor Galbraith disabused him of the fact.

"You are currently in a relationship with a fifteen-year-old by the name of Marie Freemantle?" said Carpenter.

"Yes."

"Whom you knew to be underage when you first had sexual intercourse with her?"

"Yes."

"Where does Marie live?"

"Fifty-four Dancer Road, Lymington."

"Why did your agent tell us you have a girlfriend called Marie living in London?"

"Because that's where he thinks she lives. He got her some work, and as she didn't want her parents to know about it, we gave the address of a shop in London that acts is a postal drop."

"What sort of work?"

"Nude work."

"Pornography?"

Harding looked uncomfortable. "Only soft porn."

"Video or stills?"

"Stills."

"Were you in the shots with her?"

"Some," he admitted.

"Where are those photographs now?"

"I dropped them over the side of my boat."

"Because they showed you performing indecent acts with an underage girl?"

"She doesn't look underage."

"Answer the question, Steve. Did you put them over the side because they showed you performing indecent acts with an underage girl?"

Harding nodded.

"For the purposes of the tape, Steven Harding nodded agreement. Did Tony Bridges know you were sleeping with Marie Freemantle?"

"What's Tony got to do with it?"

"Answer the question, Steve."

"I don't think so. I never told him."

"Did he see the photographs of her?"

"Yes. He came out to my boat on Monday, and they were on the table."

"Did he see them before Monday?"

"I don't know. He trashed my boat four months ago." He ran his tongue around his dry mouth. "He might have found them then."

Carpenter leaned back, his fingers toying with his pen. "Which would have made him angry," he said, more as a statement than a question. "She's a pupil of his and he had a fondness for her himself, albeit a hands-off one because of his position, which you knew about."

"I-er-guess so."

"We understand you met Marie Freemantle on fourteen February. Was that while you were having a relationship with Kate Sumner?"

"I didn't have a relationship with Kate." He blinked nervously, trying like Tony the night before to pre-guess the direction the questions were going. "I went back to her house one time and she kind of ... well ... threw herself at me. It was okay, but I've never been that keen on older women. I made it clear I wasn't interested in anything long term, and I thought she understood. It was just a quick shag in her kitchen-nothing to get excited about."

"So when Tony tells us the relationship went on for three or four months, he's lying?"

"Oh, Jesus!" Harding's nervousness increased. "Listen, I may have given him that impression. I mean I knew Kate ... you know, as an acquaintance ... for quite a while before we actually got it together, and I may have ... well, given Tony the idea there was a bit more to it than there actually was. It was a joke, really. He's a bit of a prude."

Carpenter watched him for a moment before lowering his eyes to a piece of paper on the table in front of him. "Three months after meeting Marie, sometime during the week twenty-four to thirty-one May, you had a one-night stand with Bibi Gould, Tony Bridges' girlfriend. Is that right?"

Harding gave a small groan. "Oh, come on! That really was nothing. We got drunk in the pub and I took her back to Crazy Daze to sleep it off because Tony was away and his house was locked up. She came on to me a bit strong and ... well, to be honest, I don't remember much about it. I was rat-arsed and couldn't swear that anything happened worth recording."

"Does Tony know?"

He didn't answer immediately. "I don't-Look, why do you keep going on about Tony?"

"Answer the question, please. Does Tony know that you slept with his girlfriend?"

"I don't know. He's been a bit off recently, so I've been wondering if he saw me ferrying her back to the slip the next morning." With a worried gesture, he pulled at the hair that flopped across his forehead. "He was supposed to be staying the whole week in his folks' caravan, but Bob Winterslow said he saw him that day at his granddad's place, getting ready to tow his rib out."

"Can you remember which day it was?"

"Bank-holiday Monday. Bibi's hairdressing salon doesn't open on bank holidays, which is why she was able to stay over on Sunday night." He waited for Carpenter to speak, and when he didn't, he gave a small shrug. "Listen, it was no big deal. I planned to square it with Tony if he ever said anything"-another shrug-"but he never did."

"Does he normally say something when you sleep with his girlfriends?"

"I don't make a habit of it, for Christ's sake. The trouble is ... well, Bibi was like Kate. You try and be nice to a woman, and the next minute they're climbing all over you."

Carpenter frowned. "Are you saying they forced you to have intercourse with them?"

"No, but-"

"Then spare me the excuses." He consulted his notes again. "How did your agent get the idea Bibi was your girlfriend?"

Harding tugged at his hair again and had the grace to look embarrassed. "Because I told him she was a bit of a goer."

"Meaning she'd be amenable to pornographic stills?"

"Yes."

"Would your agent have mentioned that to Tony?"

Harding shook his head. "If he had, Tony would have taken me apart."

"Except he didn't take you apart over Kate Sumner, did he?"

The young man was clearly baffled by the question. "Tony didn't know Kate."

"How well did you know her, Steve?"

"That's the crazy thing," he said. "Hardly at all ... okay, we did it once but ... well, it doesn't mean you get to know someone, does it? I avoided her afterward because it was embarrassing. Then she started treating me as if I'd wronged her in some way."

Carpenter pulled out Harding's statement. "You claimed she was obsessed with you, Steve. I knew she had a serious crush on me...' " he read. " 'She used to hang around by the yacht club waiting for me to come ashore ... Most of the time she just stood and watched me, but sometimes she'd deliberately bump into me and rub her breasts against my arm...' Is any of that true?"

"I may have exaggerated a bit. She did hang around for about a week till she realized I wasn't interested. Then she sort of ... well, abandoned the idea, I suppose. I didn't see her again till she did the thing with the nappy."

Carpenter sorted Tony Bridges' statement from the pile. "This is what Tony said: 'He told me on more than one occasion this year that he was having problems with a woman called Kate Sumner, who was stalking him...' Did you decide to exaggerate a bit when you told Tony?"

"Yes."

"Did you refer to Kate as a 'tart'?"

He hunched his shoulders. "It was just an expression."

"Did you tell Tony Kate was easy?"

"Listen, it was a joke. He used to have a real hang-up about sex. Everyone used to tease him, not just me ... then Bibi came along and he ... well, lightened up."

Carpenter studied him closely for a moment. "So did you sleep with Bibi for a joke?"

Harding stared at his hands. "I didn't do it for any particular reason. It just happened. I mean she really was easy. The only reason she hangs around with Tony is because she's got a thing about me. Look"-he hunched farther into his seat-"you don't want to get the wrong idea about all of this."

"What wrong idea's that, Steve?"

"I don't know, but you seem to have it in for Tony."

"With reason," said Carpenter, easing another piece of paper from the pile in front of him and hiding the contents with cupped fingers. "We've been told you watched him feed Bibi a drug called"-he lowered his eyes to the paper, as if the word were written there-"Rohypnol so she wouldn't complain about his performance. Is that true?"

"Oh, shit!" He rested his head in his hands. "I suppose Marie's been spouting her mouth off?" His fingers caressed his temples in soft, circular movements, and Galbraith was fascinated by the gracefulness of his actions. He was an extraordinarily beautiful young man, and it didn't surprise him that Kate had found him more attractive than William.

"Is it true, Steve?"

"Sort of. He told me he slipped it to her once when she was giving him a load of grief, but I didn't see him do it, and for all I know he was lying through his teeth."

"How did he know about Rohypnol?"

"Everyone knows."

"Did you tell him?"

Harding lifted his head to look at the paper in front of the superintendent, clearly wondering how much information was written there. "His granddad hasn't been sleeping too well since his wife died, so the GP prescribed him Rohypnol. Tony was telling me about it, so I laughed and said it could sort all his problems if he could get hold of some of it. It's not my fault if the stupid fucker used it."

"Have you used it, Steve?"

"Do me a favor! Why would I need to?"

A faint smile crossed Carpenter's face as he changed tack. "How soon after the incident with the nappy did Kate start smearing Hannah's feces on your car and setting the alarm off?"

"I don't know. A few days, maybe."

"How did you know it was her?"

"Because she'd left Hannah's crap on the sheets in my boat."

"Which was sometime toward the end of April?" Harding nodded. "But she didn't start this"-Carpenter sought a suitable phrase-" 'dirty campaign' until after she realized you weren't interested in pursuing a relationship with her?"

"It's not my fault," he said despairingly. "She was ... so ... fucking ... boring."

"The question I asked you, Steve," repeated Carpenter patiently, "was did she start her 'dirty campaign' after she realized you weren't interested in her?"

"Yes." He jabbed the heels of his palms against his eye in an effort to recall detail. "She just made my life hell until I couldn't stand it any longer. That's when I thought of persuading William to tell her I was an arse-bandit."

The superintendent ran a finger down Harding's statement. "Which was in June?"

"Yes."

"Any particular reason why you waited a month and a half to put a stop to it?"

"Because it was getting worse not better," the young man said with a sudden rush of anger as if the memory still rankled deeply. "I thought she'd run out of steam if I was patient, but when she started targeting my dinghy, I decided enough was enough. I reckoned she'd start on Crazy Daze next, and there was no way I was going to let her do that."

Carpenter nodded as if he thought the explanation a reasonable one. He pulled out Harding's statement again and ran his finger down it. "So you sought out William and showed him photographs of yourself in a gay magazine because you wanted him to tell his wife you were gay?"

"Yes."

"Mmm." Carpenter reached for Tony Bridges' statement. "Tony, on the other hand, says that when you told him you were going to report Kate to the police for harassing you, he advised you to move your car instead. According to him that's what sorted the problem. In fact, he thought it was pretty funny when we told him last night that your solution to Kate's harassment was to show William gay pictures of yourself. He said: 'Steve always was as thick as two short planks.' "

Harding shrugged. "So? It worked. That's all I was interested in."

Slowly, Carpenter squared the papers on the table in front of him. "Why do you think that was?" he asked. "I mean, you're not seriously suggesting that a woman who was so angry at being rejected that she was prepared to harass and intimidate you for weeks would meekly give up when she found out you were gay? Or are you? Admittedly I'm no expert in mental disorders, but I'd guess the intimidation would become markedly worse. No one likes to be made a fool of, Steve."

Harding stared at him in perplexity. "Except she did stop."

The superintendent shook his head. "You can't stop something you never started, son. Oh, she certainly wiped Hannah's nappy on your sheets in a moment of irritation, which probably gave Tony the idea, but it wasn't Kate who was getting her own back on you, it was your friend. It was a peculiarly apt revenge after all. You've been crapping on his doorstep for years. It must have given him a hell of a buzz to pay you back in your own coin. The only reason he stopped was because you were threatening to go to the police."

A sickly smile washed across Harding's face like wet watercolor. He looked ill, thought Carpenter with satisfaction.

William Sumner's mother had long since given up trying to induce her son to talk. Her initial surprise at his unheralded appearance in her flat had given way to fear, and like a hostage, she sought to appease and not to confront. Whatever had brought him back to Chichester was not something he wanted to share with her. He seemed to alternate between anger and anguish, rocking himself to and fro in bouts of frenetic movement only to collapse in tear-sodden lethargy when the fit passed. She was unable to help him. He guarded the telephone with the single-mindedness of a madman, and handicapped by immobility and dread, she withdrew into silent observation.

He had become a stranger to her in the last twelve months, and a kind of subdued dislike drove her toward cruelty. She found herself despising him. He had always been spineless, she thought, which was why Kate had gained such an easy ascendancy over him. Her mouth pinched into lines of contempt as she listened to the dry sobs that racked his thin frame, and when he finally broke his silence, she realized with a sense of inevitability that she could have predicted what he was going to say. "...I didn't know what to do..."

She guessed he had killed his wife. She feared now he had also killed his child.

Tony Bridges rose to his feet as the cell door opened and viewed Galbraith with an uneasy smile. He was diminished by incarceration, a small, insignificant man who had discovered what it meant to have his life controlled by others. Gone was the cocksure attitude of yesterday, in its place a nervous recognition that his ability to persuade had been blunted by the stone wall of police distrust. ''How long are you going to keep me here?"

"As long as it takes, Tony."

"I don't know what you want from me."

"The truth."

"All I did was steal a boat."

Galbraith shook his head. He fancied he saw a momentary regret in the frightened gaze that briefly met his before he stood back to let the young man pass. It was remorse of a kind, he supposed.

...I didn 't mean to do it. I didn 't do it-not really. Kate would still be alive if she hadn't tried to push me over the side. It's her fault she's dead. We were getting on fine until she made a lunge at me, then the next thing I knew she was in the water. You can't blame me for that. Don't you think I'd have drowned Hannah too if I'd intended to kill her mother...?"