Breaker

lunchtime on Saturday and lunchtime on Sunday. We're now blitzing everyone, hotel staff, other conference delegates, but those'-he leveled a finger at the documents in Galbraith's hand-'are the names Sumner himself gave us.' His eyes gleamed. 'And if they're not prepared to alibi him, I can't see anyone else doing it. It looks as if you could be right, John.'

Galbraith nodded. 'How did he do it, though?'

'He used to sail, must know Chapman's Pool as well as Harding, must know there are dinghies lying around for the taking.'

'How did he get Kate there?'

'Phoned her Friday night, said he was bored out of his mind with the conference and was planning to come home early, suggested they do something exciting for a change, like spend the afternoon on Studland beach, and arranged to meet her and Hannah off the train in Bournemouth or Poole.'

Galbraith tugged at his earlobe. 'It's possible,' he agreed.

A child of three travels free by train, and the record of sales from Lymington station had shown that numerous single adult fares to Bournemouth and Poole had been sold on the Saturday, the trip being a quick and easy one through a change onto regular mainline trains at Brockenhurst. However, if Kate Sumner had purchased one of the tickets, she had used cash rather than a check or credit card for the transaction. None of the railway staff remembered a small blond woman with a child, but as they pointed out, the traffic through Lymington station on a Saturday in peak holiday season was so continuous and so heavy because of the ferry link to and from the Isle of Wight that it was unlikely they would.

'The only fly in the ointment is Hannah,' Carpenter went on. 'If he abandoned her in Lilliput before driving back to Liverpool, why did it take so long for anyone to notice her? He must have dumped her by six a.m., but Mr. and Mrs. Green didn't spot her until ten thirty.'

Galbraith thought of the traces of benzodiazepine and paracetamol in her system. 'Maybe he fed, watered, and cleaned her at six, then left her asleep in a cardboard box in a shop doorway,' he said thoughtfully. 'He's a pharmaceutical chemist, don't forget, so he must have a pretty good idea how to put a three-year-old under for several hours. My guess is he's been doing it for years. By the way the child behaves around him she must have been a blight on his sex life from the day she was born.'

Meanwhile, Nick Ingram was chasing stolen dinghies. The fishermen who parked their boats at Chapman's Pool couldn't help. 'Matter of fact it's the first thing we checked when we heard the woman had drowned,' said one. 'I'd have let you know if there'd been a problem, but nothing's missing.'

It was the same story in Swanage and Kimmeridge Bay.

His last port of call, Lulworth Cove, looked more promising. 'Funny you should ask,' said the voice on the other end of the line, 'because we have had one go missing, black ten-footer.'

'Sounds about right. When did it go?'

'A good three months back.'

'Where from?'

'Would you believe it, off the beach. Some poor sod from Spain anchors his cruiser in the bay, ferries himself and his family in for a pub lunch, leaves the outboard in place with the starter cord dangling, and then tears strips off yours truly because it was hijacked from under his nose. According to him, no one in Spain would dream of stealing another chap's boat-never mind he makes it easy enough for the local moron to nick it-and then gives me a load of grief about the aggression of Cornish fishermen and how they were probably at the bottom of it. I pointed out that Cornwall's a good hundred miles away, and that Spanish fishermen are far more aggressive than the Cornish variety and never follow European Union rules, but he still said he was going to report me to the European Court of Human Rights for failing to protect Spanish tourists.'

Ingram laughed. 'So what happened?'

'Nothing. I took him and his family out to his sodding great bastard of a fifty-foot cruiser and we never heard another word. He probably put in for twice the dinghy's insurance value and blamed the vile English for its disappearance. We made inquiries, of course, but no one had seen anything. I mean, why would they? We get hundreds of people here during bank holiday week, and anyone could have started it up with no trouble. I mean what kind of moron leaves a dinghy with an outboard in place? We reckoned it was taken by joyriders who sank it when they got bored with it.'

'Which bank holiday was it?'

'End of May. School half-term. The place was packed.'

'Did the Spaniard give you a description of the dinghy?'

'A whole bloody manifest more like. All ready for the insurance. Half of me suspected he wanted it to be nicked just so he could get something a bit more swanky.'

'Can you fax the details through?'

'Sure.'

'I'm particularly interested in the outboard.'

'Why?'

'Because I don't think it was on the dinghy when it went down. With any luck, it's still in the possession of the thief.'

'Is he your murderer?'

'Very likely.'

'Then you're in luck, mate. I've got all sorts of serial numbers here, courtesy of our Spanish friend, and one of them's the outboard.'

*14*