She put through a call to the Lymington police, explaining the details of the case and asking for a check to be made of Sumner's address, then as a matter of routine dialed the Regal Hotel in Liverpool to inquire whether a Mr. William Sumner had been registered in room two-two-three-five since Thursday. 'Yes, ma'am,' said the receptionist, 'but I can't put you through, I'm afraid. He left five minutes ago.'
Reluctantly, she started on the list of hospitals.
For various reasons, Nick Ingram had no ambitions to move away from his rural police station, where life revolved around community policing and the hours were predictable. Major cases were handled thirty miles away at County HQ Winfrith, and this left him free to deal with the less glamorous side of policing, which for ninety-five percent of the population was the only side that mattered. People slept sounder in their beds knowing that PC Ingram had zero tolerance for lager louts, vandals, and petty thieves.
Real trouble usually came from outside, and the unidentified woman on the beach looked like being a case in point, he thought, when a call came through from Winfrith at 12:45 p.m. on Monday, 11 August. The coroner's office at Poole had ordered a murder inquiry following the postmortem, and he was told to expect a DI and a DS from headquarters within the hour. A scene-of-crime team had already been dispatched to search the beach at Egmont Bight, but Ingram was requested to stay where he was.
'I don't think they'll find anything,' he said helpfully. 'I had a bit of a scout around yesterday, but it was fairly obvious the sea had washed her up.
'I suggest you leave that to us,' said the unemotional voice at the other end.
Ingram gave a shrug at his end. 'What did she die of?'
'Drowning,' came the blunt response. 'She was thrown into the open sea after an attempt at manual strangulation which failed. The pathologist guesstimates she swam half a mile to try and save herself before she gave up from exhaustion. She was fourteen weeks pregnant, and her killer held her down and raped her before pitching her over the side.'
Ingram was shocked. 'What sort of man would do that?'
'An unpleasant one. We'll see you in an hour.'
Griffiths drew a series of blanks with the name Kate Sumner-there was no record of her at any hospital in Dorset or Hampshire. It was only when she made a routine check through Winfrith to see if there was any information on the whereabouts of a small blond woman, aged thirty-one, who appeared to have gone missing from Lymington within the last forty-eight hours, that the scattered pieces of the jigsaw began to come together.
The two detectives arrived punctually for their meeting with PC Ingram. The sergeant, an arrogant, pushy type with ambitions to join the Met, who clearly believed that every conversation was an opportunity to impress, went down like a lead balloon with his rural colleague, and Ingram was never able afterward to remember his name. He talked in bullet points: 'reference a major investigation' in which 'speed was of the essence' before the murderer had a chance to get rid of evidence and/or strike again. Local marinas, yacht clubs, and harbors were being 'targeted' for information on the victim and/or her killer. Victim identification was the 'first priority.' They had a possible lead on a missing female, but no one was counting chickens until her husband identified a photograph and/or the body. The second priority was to locate the boat she'd come off and give forensics a chance to strip it top-to-bottom in search of nonintimate samples that would connect it to the body. Give us a suspect, he suggested, and DNA testing would do the rest.
Ingram raised an eyebrow when the monologue came to an end but didn't say anything.
'Did you follow all that?' asked the sergeant impatiently.
'I think so, si-rr,' he said in a broad Dorsetshire burr, resisting the temptation to tug his forelock. 'If you find some of her hairs on a man's boat, that'll mean he's the rapist.'
'Near enough.'
'That's amazing, sir-rr,' murmured Ingram.
'You don't sound convinced,' said DI Galbraith, watching his performance with amusement.
He shrugged and reverted to his normal accent. 'The only thing that nonintimate samples will prove is that she visited his boat at least once, and that's not proof of rape. The only useful DNA tests will have to be done on her.'
'Well, don't hold your breath,' the DI warned. 'Water doesn't leave trace evidence. The pathologist's taken swabs, but he's not optimistic about getting a result. Either she was in the sea too long and anything useful was flushed away, or her attacker was wearing a condom.' He was a pleasant-looking man with cropped ginger hair and a smiling, freckled face that made him look younger than his forty-two years. It also belied a sharp intelligence that caught people unawares if they were foolish enough to stereotype him by his appearance.
'How long was long?' asked Ingram with genuine curiosity. 'Put it this way, how does the pathologist know she swam half a mile? It's a very precise estimate for an unpredictable stretch of water.'
'He based it on the condition of the body, prevailing winds and currents, and the fact that she must have been alive when she reached the shelter of Egmont Point,' said John Galbraith, opening his briefcase and extracting a sheet of paper. 'Victim died of drowning at or around high tide, which was at one fifty-two a.m. British Summer Time on Sunday, ten August,' he said, skip-reading the document. 'Several indicators, such as evidence of hypothermia, the fact that a keeled boat couldn't have sailed too close to the cliffs, and the currents around St. Alban's Head suggest she entered the sea'-he tapped the page with his finger-'a
'Okay, well, assuming the minimum, that doesn't mean she swam half a mile. There are some strong currents along this part of the coast, so the sea would have caused her eastward drift. In real terms she would only have swum a couple of hundred yards.'
'I presume that was taken into account.'
Ingram frowned. 'So why was she showing evidence of hypothermia? The winds have been light for the last week, and the sea's been calm. In those conditions, an average swimmer could cover two hundred yards in fifteen to twenty minutes. Also, the sea temperature would have been several degrees higher than the night air, so she'd be more likely to develop hypothermia on the beach than she would in the water, especially if she was naked.'
'In which case she wouldn't have died from drowning.'
'No.'
