Breaker

The desk sergeant found the description amusing. She'd never see thirty again, and he wondered how old the boyfriend was. Approaching fifty, he guessed, if he could afford to own a Fairline Squadron.

'I wanted Gregory to come and tell you about it himself,' she confided, 'because he could have given you a better idea of where it was, but he said it wasn't worth the bother because I didn't have enough experience to know what I was looking at. He believes his daughters, you see. They said it was an oil drum, and woe betide anyone who disagrees with them. He won't argue with them in case they complain to their mother when what he ought to be doing...' She heaved the kind of sigh that every potential stepmother has sighed down the ages. 'They're a couple of little madams, frankly. I thought we should have stopped at the time to investigate, but'-she shook her head-'it wasn't worth going into battle over. Frankly, I'd had enough for one day.'

The desk sergeant, who had stepchildren of his own, gave her a sympathetic smile. 'How old are they?'

'Fifteen and thirteen.'

'Difficult ages.'

'Yes, particularly when their parents...' She stopped abruptly, reconsidering how much she wanted to say.

'It'll get better in about five years when they've grown up a bit.'

A gleam of humor flashed in her eyes. 'Assuming I'm around to find out, which at the moment doesn't look likely. The younger one's not too bad, but I'd need a skin like a rhinoceros to put up with another five years of Marie. She thinks she's Elle MacPherson and Claudia Schiffer rolled into one, and throws a tantrum if she isn't being constantly petted and spoiled. Still...' She returned to her reason for being there. 'I'm sure it wasn't an oil drum. I was sitting at the back of the flying bridge and had a better view than the others. Whatever it was, it wasn't metal ... although it was black ... it looked to me like an upturned dinghy ... a rubber one. I think it may have been partially deflated, because it was pretty low in the water.'

The desk sergeant was taking notes. 'Why do you think it was connected with the murder?' he asked her.

She gave an embarrassed smile, afraid of making a fool of herself. 'Because it was a boat,' she said, 'and it wasn't far from where the body was found. We were in Chapman's Pool when the woman was lifted off by helicopter, and we passed the dinghy only about ten minutes after we rounded St. Alban's Head on our way home. I've worked out that the time must have been about six fifteen and I know we were traveling at twenty-five knots because my boyfriend commented on the fact as we rounded the Head. He says you'll be looking for a yacht or a cruiser, but I thought-well-you can drown off a dinghy just as easily as off a yacht, can't you? And this one had obviously capsized.'

Carpenter received the report from Bournemouth at three o'clock, mulled it over in conjunction with a map, then sent it through to Galbraith with a note attached.

Is this worth following up? If it hasn't beached between St. Alban's Head and Anvil Point, then it'll have gone down in deep water somewhere off Swanage and is irretrievable. However, the timings seem very precise, so assuming it washed up before Anvil Point, your friend Ingram can probably work out where it is. You said he was wasted as a beat copper. Failing him, get on to the coastguards. In fact it might be worth going to them first. You know how they hate having their thunder stolen by landlubbers. It's a long shot-can't see where Hannah fits in or how anyone can rape a woman in a dinghy without turning turtle- but you never know. It could be that boat off the Isle of Purbeck you wanted.

In the event, the coastguards happily passed the buck to Ingram, claiming they had better things to do at the height of the summer season than look for imaginary 'dinghies' in unlikely places. Equally skeptical himself, Ingram parked at Durlston Head and set off along the coastal path, following the route Harding claimed to have taken the previous Sunday. He walked slowly, searching the shoreline at the foot of the cliffs every fifty yards through binoculars. He was as conscious as the coastguards of the difficulties of isolating a black dinghy against the glistening rocks that lined the base of the headland, and constantly reexamined stretches he had already decided were clear. He also had little faith in his own estimate that a floating object seen at approximately 6:15 p.m. on Sunday evening, some three hundred yards out from Seacombe Cliff-his guess at where a Fairline Squadron might have been after ten minutes traveling at twenty-five knots from St. Alban's Head-could have beached approximately six hours later halfway between Blackers Hole and Anvil Point. He knew how unpredictable the sea was, and how very unlikely it was that a partially deflated dinghy would even have come ashore. The more probable scenario was that it was halfway to France by now-always assuming it had ever existed-or twenty fathoms under.

He found it slightly to the east of where he had predicted, nearer to Anvil Point, and he smiled with justifiable satisfaction as the powerful lenses picked it out. It was upside down, held in shape by its wooden floor and seats, and neatly stranded on an inaccessible piece of shore. He dialed through to DI Galbraith on his mobile. 'How good a sailor are you?' he asked him. 'Because the only way you'll get close to this little mother is by boat. If you meet me in Swanage I can take you out this evening. You'll need waterproofs and waders,' he warned. 'It'll be a wet trip.'

Ingram invited along a couple of friends from the Swanage lifeboat crew to keep Miss Creant on station while he took Galbraith in to the shore in his own inflatable. He killed the outboard motor and swung it up out of the water thirty yards from land, using his oars to maneuver them carefully through the crops of jagged granite that lay in wait for unwary sailors. He steadied the little craft against a good-sized rock, nodded to Galbraith to get out and start wading, then followed him into the water and used the painter to guide the lightened dinghy onto what passed for a beach in that desolate spot.

'There she is,' he said, jerking his head to the left while he lifted his inflatable clear of the waterline, 'but God only knows what she's doing out here. People don't abandon perfectly good dinghies for no reason.'

Galbraith shook his head in amazement. 'How the hell did you spot it?' he asked, gazing up at the sheer cliffs above them and thinking it must have been like looking for a needle in a haystack.

'It wasn't easy,' Ingram admitted, leading the way toward it. 'More to the point, how the hell did it survive the rocks?' He stooped over the upturned hull. 'It must have come in like this, or its bottom would have been ripped out, and that means there won't be anything left inside. Still'-he raised an inquiring eyebrow-'shall we turn it over?'

With a nod, Galbraith grasped the stern board while Ingram took a tuck in the rubber at the bow. They set it right-way-up with difficulty because the lack of air meant there was no rigidity in the structure and it collapsed in on itself like a deflated balloon. A tiny crab scuttled out from underneath and slipped into a nearby rock pool. As Ingram had predicted, there was nothing inside except the wooden floorboards and the remains of a wooden seat, which had snapped in the middle, probably on its journey to and fro across the rocks. Nevertheless, it was a substantial dinghy, about ten feet long and four feet wide, with its stern board intact.

Ingram pointed to the indentations where the screw clamps of an outboard motor had bitten into the wood, then squatted on his haunches to examine two metal rings screwed into the transom planking aft and a single ring