Breaker

*3*

Why were you so bard on him?' asked Maggie critically as the policeman shut the boys into the back of his Range Rover and stood with eyes narrowed against the sun watching Harding walk away up the hill. Ingram was so tall and so solidly built that he cast her literally and figuratively into the shade, and he would get under her skin less, she often thought, if just once in a while he recognized that fact. She only felt comfortable in his presence when she was looking down on him from the back of a horse, but those occasions were too rare for her self-esteem to benefit from them. When he didn't answer her, she glanced impatiently toward the brothers on the backseat. 'You were pretty rough on the children, too. I bet they'll think twice before helping the police again.'

Harding disappeared from sight around a bend, and Ingram turned to her with a lazy smile. 'How was I hard on him, Miss Jenner?'

'Oh, come on! You all but accused him of lying.'

'He was lying.'

'What about?'

'I'm not sure yet. I'll know when I've made a few inquiries.'

'Is this a male thing?' she asked in a voice made silky by long-pent-up grudges. He had been her community policeman for five years, and she had much to feel resentful for. At times of deep depression, she blamed him for everything. Other times, she was honest enough to admit that he had only been doing his job.

'Probably.' He could smell the stables on her clothes, a musty scent of hay dust and horse manure that he half liked and half loathed.

'Then wouldn't it have been simpler just to whip out your willy and challenge him to a knob-measuring contest?' she asked sarcastically.

'I'd have lost.'

'That's for sure,' she agreed.

His smile widened. 'You noticed then?'

'I could hardly avoid it. He wasn't wearing those shorts to disguise anything. Perhaps it was his wallet. There was precious little room for it anywhere else.'

'No,' he agreed. 'Didn't you find that interesting?'

She looked at him suspiciously, wondering if he was making fun of her. 'In what way?'

'Only an idiot sets out from Poole for Lulworth with no money and no water. That's twenty-five miles.'

'Maybe he was planning to beg water off passersby or telephone a friend to come and rescue him. Why is it important? All he did was play the Good Samaritan to those kids.'

'I think he was lying about what he was doing here. Did he give a different explanation before I got back?'

She thought about it. 'We talked about dogs and horses. He was telling the boys about the farm he grew up on in Cornwall.'

He reached for the handle on the driver's-side door. 'Then perhaps I'm just suspicious of people who carry mobile telephones,' he said.

'Everyone has them these days, including me.'

He ran an amused eye over her slender figure in its tight cotton shirt and stretch jeans. 'But you don't bring yours on country rambles, whereas that young man does. Apparently he leaves everything behind except his phone.'

'You should be grateful,' she said tartly. 'But for him, you'd never have got to the woman so quickly.'

'I agree,' he said without rancor. 'Mr. Harding was in the right place at the right time with the right equipment to report a body on a beach, and it would be churlish to ask why.' He opened the door and squeezed his huge frame in behind the wheel. 'Good day, Miss Jenner,' he said politely. 'My regards to your mother.' He pulled the door closed and fired the engine.

The Spender brothers were of two minds whom to thank for their untroubled return home. The actor, because his pleas for tolerance worked? Or the policeman, because he was a decent bloke after all? He had said very little on the drive back to their rented cottage other than to warn them that the cliffs were dangerous and that it was foolish to climb them, however tempting the reason. To their parents he gave a brief, expurgated account of what had happened, ending with the suggestion that, as the boys' fishing had been interrupted by the events of the morning, he would be happy to take them out on his boat one evening. 'It's not a motor cruiser,' he warned them, 'just a small fishing boat, but the sea bass run at this time of year, and if we're lucky we might catch one or two.' He didn't put his arms around their shoulders or call them heroes, but he did give them something to look forward to.

Next on Ingram's agenda was an isolated farmhouse where the elderly occupants had reported the theft of three valuable paintings during the night. He had been on his way there when he was diverted to Chapman's Pool, and while he guessed he was wasting his time, community policing was what he was paid for.

'Oh God, Nick, I'm so sorry,' said the couple's harassed daughter-in-law, who, herself, was on the wrong side of seventy. 'Believe me, they did know the paintings were being auctioned. Peter's been talking them through it for the last twelve months, but they're so forgetful, he has to start again from scratch every time. He has power of attorney, so it's all quite legal, but, honestly, I nearly died when Winnie said she'd called you. And on a Sunday, too. I come over every morning to make sure they're all right, but sometimes...' She rolled her eyes to heaven, expressing without the need for words exactly what she thought of her ninety-five-year-old parents-in-law.

'It's what I'm here for, Jane,' he said, giving her shoulder an encouraging pat.

'No, it's not. You should be out catching criminals,' she said, echoing the words of people across the nation