Breaker

He quoted from her letter. ' 'She'-meaning Wendy-'had to apologize, but she doesn't regret any of it. She says she's never seen Purdy go purple before! I thought of you immediately, of course...' ' He laid the page on the bench between them. 'Why that last bit, Polly? Why should Purdy going purple make you think of Kate Sumner?'

She thought for a moment. 'Because she used to work at Pharmatec?' she tried unconvincingly. 'Because she thought Purdy was a prick? It's just a figure of speech.'

He tapped the copy of Kate's draft reply. 'She crossed out, 'You promised on your honor' in this before going on to write 'The story about Wendy Plater was really funny!' ' he said. 'What did you promise her, Polly?'

She looked uncomfortable. 'Hundreds of things, I should think.'

'I'm only interested in the one that had something to do with either James Purdy or Wendy Plater.'

She removed her arm from the back of the seat and hunched forward despondently. 'It's got nothing to do with her being killed. It's just something that happened.'

'What?'

She didn't answer.

'If it really does have nothing to do with her murder, then I give you my word, it'll go no further than me,' he said reassuringly. 'I'm not interested in exposing her secrets, only in finding her killer.' Even as he spoke, he knew the statement was untrue. All too often, justice for a rape victim meant that she had to endure the humiliation of her secrets being exposed. He looked at Polly with unexpected sympathy. 'But I'm afraid I'm the one who has to decide whether it's important.'

She sighed. 'I could lose my job if Purdy ever finds out I told you.'

'There's no reason why he should.'

'You reckon?'

Galbraith didn't say anything, having learned from experience that silence often exerted more pressure than words.

'Oh, what the hell!' she said then. 'You've probably guessed anyway. Kate had an affair with him. He was crazy about her, wanted to leave his wife and everything, then she blew him away and said she was going to marry William instead. Poor old Purdy couldn't believe it. He's no spring chicken, and he'd been rogering himself stupid to keep her interested. I think he may even have told his wife he wanted a divorce. Anyway, Kate said he went purple and then collapsed on his desk. He was off work for three months afterward, so I reckoned he must have had a heart attack, but Kate said he couldn't face coming back while she was still there.' She shrugged. 'He started work again the week after she left, so maybe she was right.'

'Why did she choose William?' he asked. 'She wasn't any more in love with him than she was with Purdy, was she?'

Polly repeated the gesture of rubbing her thumb and fingers together. 'Dosh,' she said. 'Purdy's got a wife and three grown-up children, all of whom would have demanded their cut before Kate got a look in.' She pulled a wry face. 'Like I said, what she really wanted was an unmarried guy without children. She reckoned if she was going to have to bust a gut to make some plonker happy, she wanted access to everything he owned.'

Galbraith shook his head in perplexity. 'Then why bother with Purdy at all?'

She hooked her arm over the sofa again and thrust her tits into his face. 'She didn't have a father, did she? Any more than I do.'

'So?'

'She had a thing about older men.' She opened her eyes wide in flirtatious invitation. 'Me, too, if you're interested.'

Galbraith chuckled. 'Do you eat them alive?'

She looked pointedly at his fly. 'I swallow them whole,' she said with a laugh.

He shook his head in amusement. 'You were telling me why Kate bothered with Purdy,' he reminded her.

'He was the boss,' she said, 'the guy with the loot. She thought she'd take him for a few bob, get him to pay for improvements on her flat, while she looked around for something better. The trouble was, she didn't reckon on him getting as smitten as he did, so the only way to get rid of him was to be cruel. She wanted security, not love, you see, and she didn't think she'd get it from Purdy, not after his wife and children had taken their slice. He was thirty years older than she was, remember. Also, he didn't want any more kids, and that was all she really wanted, kids of her own. She was pretty screwed up in some ways, I guess because she'd had a tough time growing up.'

'Did William know about her affair with Purdy?'

Polly shook her head. 'No one knew except me. That's why she swore me to secrecy. She said William would call the wedding off if he ever found out.'

'Would he have done?'

'Oh, for sure. Look, he was thirty-seven years old, and he wasn't the marrying kind. Wendy Plater nearly got him up to scratch once till Kate put a spanner in the works by telling him she was a lush. He dumped her so quick, you wouldn't believe.' She smiled reminiscently. 'Kate practically had to put a ring through his nose to get him to the registry office. It might have been different if his mother had approved, but old Ma Sumner and Will were like a couple of old folks, and Kate had to work her socks off every night to make sex more attractive to the silly sod than having his laundry done on a regular basis.'

'Was it true about Wendy Plater?'

Polly looked uncomfortable again. 'She gets drunk sometimes but not on a regular basis. Still, as Kate said, if Will had wanted to marry her, he wouldn't have believed it, would he? He just seized on the first good excuse to get out.'

Galbraith looked down at Kate Sumner's childish writing in the draft letter she'd written to Polly and wondered