Breaker

*9*

Ahead across the water, the lights of Swanage gleamed like brilliant jewels in the night. Behind, the dying sun dipped beneath the horizon. Danny Spender was yawning profusely, worn out by his long day and three hours' exposure to fresh sea air. He leaned against Ingram's comforting bulk while his older brother stood proudly at the wheel, steering Miss Creant home. 'He was a dirty person,' he confided suddenly.

'Who was?'

'That man yesterday.'

Ingram glanced down at him. 'What did he do?' he asked, careful to keep the curiosity out of his voice.

'He was rubbing his willy with his telephone,' said Danny, 'all the time the lady was being rescued.'

Ingram looked at Paul to see if he was listening but the other boy was too enthralled by the wheel to pay them any attention. 'Did Miss Jenner see him do it?'

Danny's eyelids drooped. 'No. He stopped when she came around the corner. Paul reckons he was polishing it- you know, like bowlers do with cricket balls to make them turn in the air-but he wasn't, he was being dirty.'

'Why does Paul like him so much?'

The child gave another huge yawn. 'Because he wasn't cross with him for spying on a nudie. Dad would be. He was furious when Paul got hold of some porno mags. I said they were boring, but Paul said they were natural.'

Detective Superintendent Carpenter's telephone rang. 'Excuse me,' he said, retrieving it from his jacket pocket and flipping open the mouthpiece. 'Yes, Campbell,' he said. 'Right ... go on...' He stared at a point above Steven Harding's head as he spoke, his inevitable frown lengthened and deepened by the shadows thrown by the gaslight as he listened to his DS's report on his interview with Tony Bridges. He clamped the receiver tight against his ear as the name 'Bibi' was mentioned, and lowered his eyes curiously to the young man opposite. Galbraith watched Steven Harding while the one-sided conversation proceeded. The man was listening acutely, straining to pick up what was being said at the other end, all too aware that the topic under discussion was probably himself. Most of the time he stared at the table, but once or twice he raised his eyes to look at Galbraith, and Galbraith felt a curious empathy with him as if he and Harding, by dint of their mutual ignorance of the conversation, were ranged against Carpenter. He had no sense that Harding was guilty, no intuition that he was sitting with a rapist; yet his training told him that that meant nothing. Sociopaths could be as charming and as unthreatening as the rest of humanity, and it was always a potential victim who thought otherwise.

Galbraith resumed his inspection of the interior, picking out shapes in the shadows beyond the gaslight. His eyes had become accustomed to the gloom, and he was able to make out a great deal more now than he had ten minutes ago. With the exception of the clutter on the chart table, everything else was neatly stowed away in lockers or on shelves, and there was nothing to indicate the presence of a woman. It was a masculine environment of wooden planking, black leather seats, and brass fittings, and no color intruded anywhere to adorn its austere simplicity. Monastic, he thought, with approval. His own house, a noisy toy-filled establishment created by a wife who was a power in the National Childbirth Trust, was too cluttered and ... God forbid, child- centered! ... for an endlessly weary policeman.

The galley, which was to starboard of the companionway, particularly interested him. It was built into an alcove beside the laddered steps and contained a small sink and Calor-gas hob set into a teak worktop with lockers below and shelves above. His attention had been caught by some articles pushed back into the shadows in the corner, and with the passage of time, he had been able to identify them as a half-eaten lump of cheese in a plastic wrapper with a Tesco's sticker and a bag of apples. He felt the shift of Harding's gaze as it followed his, and he wondered if the man had any idea that a forensic pathologist could detail what a victim had eaten before she died.

Carpenter disconnected and placed the telephone on the logbook. 'You said you had a feeling the body was Kate Sumner's,' he reminded Harding.

'That's right.'

'Could you elaborate? Explain when and why you got this feeling?'

'I didn't mean I had a feeling it was going to be her, only that it was bound to be somebody I knew otherwise you wouldn't have come out to my boat.' He shrugged. 'Put it this way, if you do this kind of follow-up every time somebody makes an emergency call, then it's not bloody surprising the country's awash with unconvicted criminals.'

Carpenter chuckled, although the frown didn't leave his face, and remained fixed on the young man opposite. 'Never believe what you read in newspapers, Steve. Trust me, we always catch the criminals who matter.' He examined the actor closely for several seconds. 'Tell me about Kate Sumner,' he invited. 'How well did you know her?'

'Hardly at all,' said Harding with airy unconcern. 'I've met her maybe half a dozen times since she and her husband moved to Lymington. The first time was when she was having trouble pushing her little girl's buggy over the cobbles near the old Customs House. I gave her a hand with it, and we had a brief chat before she went on up the High Street to do her shopping. After that she always stopped to ask me how I was whenever she saw me.'

'Did you like her?'

Harding's gaze strayed toward the telephone while he considered his answer. 'She was all right. Nothing special.'

'What about William Sumner?' asked Galbraith. 'Do you like him?'

'I don't know him well enough to say. He seems okay.'

'According to him, he sees you quite often. He's even invited you back to his house.'

The young man shrugged. 'So? Loads of people invite me to their houses. It doesn't mean I'm close mates with them. Lymington's a sociable place.'

'He told me you showed him some photographs of yourself in a gay magazine. I'd have thought you'd need to