Breaker

heading back to Lymington by late afternoon. As far as I recall he said he had an appointment in London on Monday-this morning in other words-and was planning to catch the last train up.'

'Did he have a child with him?'

'No.'

'How did he pay?'

'Credit card.'

'Did he have a wallet?'

'No. He had the card tucked into a pocket inside his shorts. Said it was all you needed these days to go traveling.'

'Was he carrying anything?'

'Not when he came into the office.'

No one had made a note of Crazy Daze's departure, but the berth was empty again by 7:00 p.m. on Sunday evening, when a yacht out of Portsmouth had been logged in. On this initial inquiry, there were no reports of an unaccompanied toddler leaving the marina or of a man taking a toddler away with him. However, several people pointed out that marinas were busy places-even at eight o'clock in the morning-and anyone could take anything off a boat if it was wrapped in something unexceptional like a sleeping bag and placed in a marina trolley to transport it away from the pontoons.

Within two hours of the Lymington police being asked to check William Sumner's cottage in Rope Walk, another request came through from Winfrith to locate a boat by the name of Crazy Daze, which was moored somewhere in the tiny Hampshire port's complex of marinas, river moorings, and commercial fishing quarter. It took a single telephone call to the Lymington harbormaster to establish its exact whereabouts.

'Sure I know Steve. He moors up to a buoy in the dogleg, about five hundred yards beyond the yacht club. Thirty-foot sloop with a wooden deck and claret-colored sails. Nice boat. Nice lad.'

'Is he on board?'

'Can't say. I don't even know if his boat's in. Is it important?'

'Could be.'

'Try phoning the yacht club. They can pick him out with binoculars if he's there. Failing that, come back to me, and I'll send one of my lads up to check.'

William Sumner was reunited with his daughter in the Poole police station at half past six that evening after a tiring two-hundred-and-fifty-mile drive from Liverpool, but if anyone expected the little girl to run to him with joyful smiles of recognition, they were to be disappointed. She chose to sit at a distance, playing with some toys on the floor, while making a cautious appraisal of the exhausted man who had slumped on a chair and buried his head in his hands. He apologized to WPC Griffiths. 'I'm afraid she's always like this,' he said. 'Kate's the only one she responds to.' He rubbed his red eyes. 'Have you found her yet?'

Griffiths moved protectively in front of the little girl, worried about how much she understood. She exchanged a glance with John Galbraith, who had been waiting in the room with her. 'My colleague from Dorset Constabulary Headquarters, DI Galbraith, knows more about that than I do, Mr. Sumner, so I think the best thing is that you talk it through with him while I take Hannah to the canteen.' She reached out an inviting hand to the toddler. 'Would you like an ice cream, sweetheart?' She was surprised by the child's reaction. With a trusting smile, Hannah scrambled to her feet and held up her arms. 'Well, that's a change from yesterday,' she said with a laugh, swinging her on to her hip. 'Yesterday, you wouldn't even look at me.' She cuddled the warm little body against her side and deliberately ignored the danger signals that shot like Cupid's arrows through her bloodstream, courtesy of her frustrated thirty-five-year-old hormones.

After they'd gone, Galbraith pulled forward a chair and sat facing Sumner. The man was older than he'd been expecting, with thinning dark hair and an angular, loose-limbed body that he seemed unable to keep still. When he wasn't plucking nervously at his lips, he was jiggling one heel in a constant rat-a-tat-tat against the floor, and it was with reluctance that Galbraith took some photographs from his breast pocket and held them loosely between his hands. When he spoke it was with deep and genuine sympathy. 'There's no easy way to tell you this, sir,' he said gently, 'but a young woman, matching your wife's description, was found dead yesterday morning. We can't be sure it's Kate until you've identified her, but I think you need to prepare yourself for the fact that it might be.'

A look of terror distorted the man's face. 'It will be,' he said with absolute certainty. 'All the way back I've been thinking that something awful must have happened. Kate would never have left Hannah. She adored her.'

Reluctantly, Galbraith turned the first close-up and held it for the other man to see.

Sumner gave an immediate nod of recognition. 'Yes,' he said with a catch in his voice, 'that's Kate.'

'I'm so sorry, sir.'

Sumner took the photograph with trembling fingers and examined it closely. He spoke without emotion. 'What happened?'

Galbraith explained as briefly as possible where and how Kate Sumner had been found, deeming it unnecessary at this early stage to mention rape or murder.

'Did she drown?'

'Yes.'

Sumner shook his head in bewilderment. 'What was she doing there?'

'We don't know, but we think she must have fallen from a boat.'

'Then why was Hannah in Poole?'

'We don't know,' said Galbraith again.

The man turned the photograph over and thrust it at Galbraith, as if by putting it out of sight he could deny its contents. 'It doesn't make sense,' he said harshly. 'Kate wouldn't have gone anywhere without Hannah, and she hated sailing. I used to have a Contessa thirty-two when we lived in Chichester, but I could never persuade her to come out on it because she was terrified of turning turtle in the open sea and drowning.' He lowered his head into