Breaker

Daze was the one he'd been carrying, Ingram remained convinced that it wasn't. Paul and Danny Spender had been too insistent that it was big for Ingram to accept that a triangular one fitted the description. Also, he remained suspicious about why Harding had left it behind when he took the boys down to the boat sheds. Nevertheless, the logic of why he had descended to the beach that morning, only to climb up again empty-handed, was far from obvious. Had someone else found the rucksack and removed it? Had Harding weighted it with a rock and thrown it into the sea? Had he even left it there in the first place?

In frustration, he slithered down a gully in the shale precipice to where the grassy slope at the end of the quarry valley undulated softly toward the sea. It was a western-facing cliff out of sight of the sun, and he shivered as the cold and damp penetrated his flimsy T-shirt and sweater. He turned to look back toward the cleft in the cliff, giving himself a rough idea of where Harding must have emerged in front of Maggie. Shale still pattered down the gully Ingram himself had used, and he noticed what was obviously a recent slide farther to the left. He walked over to it, wondering if Harding had dislodged it in his ascent, but the surface was damp with dew and he decided it must have happened a few days previously.

He turned his attention to the shore below, striding down the grass to take a closer look. Pieces of driftwood and old plastic containers had wedged themselves into cracks in the rocks, but there was no sign of a black or green rucksack. He felt exhausted suddenly, and wondered what the hell he was doing there. He'd planned to spend his day in total idleness aboard Miss Creant, and he really didn't appreciate giving it up for a wild-goose chase. He raised his eyes to the clouds skudding in on a southwesterly breeze and sighed his frustration to the winds..

Maggie put a cup of tea on the table beside her mother's bed. 'I've made it very sweet,' she said. 'Nick said you needed your energy levels raised.' She looked at the dreadful state of the top blanket, worn and covered in stains, then noticed the tannin dribbles on Celia's bed-jacket. She wondered what the sheets looked like-it was ages since Broxton House had boasted a washing machine-and wished angrily that she had never introduced the word 'slob' into her conversation with Nick.

'I'd rather have a brandy,' said Celia with a sigh.

'So would I,' said Maggie shortly, 'but we haven't got any.' She stood by the window, looking at the garden, her own cup cradled between her hands. 'Why does he want to get even with you, Ma?'

'Did you ask him?'

'Yes. He said it was a private joke.'

Celia chuckled. 'Where is he?'

'Gone.'

'I hope you thanked him for me.'

'I didn't. He started ordering me about, so I sent him away with a flea in his ear.'

Her mother eyed her curiously for a moment. 'How odd of him,' she said, reaching for her tea. 'What sort of orders was he giving you?'

'Snide ones.'

'Oh, I see.'

Maggie shook her head. 'I doubt you do,' she said, addressing the garden. 'He's like Matt and Ava, thinks society would have better value out of this house if we were evicted and it was given to a homeless family.'

Celia took a sip of her tea and leaned back against her pillows. 'Then I understand why you're so angry,' she said evenly. 'It's always irritating when someone's right.'

'He called you a slob and said it was a miracle you hadn't come down with food poisoning.'

Celia pondered for a moment. 'I find that hard to believe if he wasn't prepared to tell you why he wanted to get even with me. Also, he's a polite young man and doesn't use words like 'slob.' That's more your style, isn't it, darling?' She watched her daughter's rigid back for a moment but, in the absence of any response, went on: 'If he'd really wanted to get even with me, he'd have spiked my guns a long time ago. I was extremely rude to him, and I've regretted it ever since.'

'What did you do?'

'He came to me two months before your wedding with a warning about your fiance, and I sent him away'-Celia paused to recall the words Maggie had used-'with a flea in his ear.' Neither she nor Maggie could ever think of the man who had wheedled his way into their lives by his real name, Robert Healey, but only by the name they had come to associate with him, Martin Grant. It was harder for Maggie, who had spent three months as Mrs. Martin Grant before being faced with the unenviable task of informing banks and corporations that neither the name nor the title belonged to her. 'Admittedly the evidence against Martin was very thin,' Celia went on. 'Nick accused him of trying to con Jane Fielding's parents-in-law out of several thousand pounds by posing as an antiques dealer-with everything resting on old Mrs. Fielding's insistence that Martin was the man who came to their door-but if I'd listened to Nick instead of castigating him...' She broke off. 'The trouble was he made me angry. He kept asking me what I knew of Martin's background, and when I told him Martin's father was a coffee-grower in Kenya, Nick laughed and said, how convenient.'

'Did you show him the letters they wrote to us?'

'Supposedly wrote,' Celia corrected her. 'And, yes, of course I did. It was the only proof we had that Martin came from a respectable background. But, as Nick so rightly pointed out, the address was a PO box number in Nairobi, which proved nothing. He said anyone could conduct a fake correspondence through an anonymous box number. What he wanted was Martin's previous address in Britain, and all I could give him was the address of the flat Martin was renting in Bournemouth.' She sighed. 'But as Nick said, you don't have to be the son of a coffee planter to rent a flat, and he told me I'd be wise to make a few inquiries before I allowed my daughter to marry someone I knew nothing about.'

Maggie turned to look at her. 'Then why didn't you?'

'Oh, I don't know.' Her mother sighed. 'Perhaps because Nick was so appallingly pompous ... Perhaps because on the one occasion that I dared to question Martin's suitability as a husband'-she lifted her eyebrows- 'you called me a meddling bitch and refused to speak to me for several weeks. I think I asked you if you could really marry a man who was afraid of horses, didn't I?'

'Ye-es,' said her daughter slowly, 'and I should have listened to you. I'm sorry now that I didn't.' She crossed her arms. 'What did you say to Nick?'

'More or less what you just said about him,' said Celia. 'I called him a jumped-up little oik with a Hitler