Breaker

be arresting. She stole my phone.'

*23*

Secured in the passenger seat of the police Range Rover, where Ingram could keep an eye on him, Harding sat huddled in moody silence for most of the trip back to Swanage. Ingram made no attempt to talk to him. Once in a while their eyes met when the policeman was checking traffic to his left, but he felt none of the empathy for Harding that Galbraith had experienced on Crazy Daze. He saw only immaturity in the young man's face and despised him because of it. He was reminded of every juvenile delinquent he'd arrested down the years, not one of whom had had the experience or the wisdom to understand the inevitability of consequence. They saw it in terms of retribution and justice and whether they would do 'time,' never in terms of the slow destruction of their lives.

It was as they drove through the little town of Corfe Castle, with its ruined medieval ramparts commanding a gap in the Purbeck chalk ridge, that Harding broke the silence. 'If you hadn't jumped to conclusions on Sunday,' he said in a reasonable tone of voice, 'none of this would have happened.'

'None of what?'

'Everything. My arrest. This.' He touched a hand to his sling. 'I shouldn't be here. I had a part lined up in London. It could have been my breakthrough.'

'The only reason you're here is because you attacked Miss Jenner this morning,' Ingram pointed out. 'What have the events of Sunday got to do with that?'

'She wouldn't know me from Adam but for Kate's murder.'

'That's true.'

'And you won't believe I didn't have anything to do with that-none of you will-but it's not fair,' Harding complained with a sudden surge of bitterness. 'It's just a bloody awful coincidence, like the coincidence of bumping into Maggie this morning. Do you think I'd have shown myself to her if I'd known she was there?'

'Why not?' The car sped up as they exited the thirty-mile speed limit.

He turned a morose stare on Ingram's profile. 'Have you any idea what it's like to have your movements monitored by the police? You've got my car, my boat. I'm supposed to stay at an address you've chosen for me. It's like being in prison without the walls. I'm being treated like a criminal when I haven't done anything, but if I lose my temper because some stupid woman treats me like Jack the Ripper I get accused of assault.'

Ingram kept his eyes on the road ahead. 'You hit her. Don't you think she had a right to treat you like Jack the Ripper?'

'Only because she wouldn't stop screaming.' He gnawed at his fingernails. 'I guess you told her I was a rapist, so of course she believed you. That's what got me riled. She was fine with me on Sunday, then today...' He fell silent.

'Did you know she might be there?'

'Of course not. How could I?'

'She rides that gully most mornings. It's one of the few places she can give her horses a good gallop. Anyone who knows her could have told you that. It's also one of the few places with easy access to the beach from the coastal path.'

'I didn't know.'

'Then why are you so surprised she was scared of you? She'd have been scared of any man who appeared out of nowhere on a deserted headland when she wasn't expecting it.'

'She wouldn't have been scared of you.'

'I'm a policeman. She trusts me.'

'She trusted me,' said Harding, 'until you told her I was a rapist.'

It was the same point Maggie had made, and Ingram conceded it was a fair one-to himself if not to Harding. It was the grossest injustice to destroy an innocent person's reputation, however it was done, and while neither he nor Galbraith had said that the young man was a rapist, the implication had been clear enough. They continued for a while in silence. The road to Swanage led southeast along the spine of Purbeck, and the distant sea showed intermittently between folds of pastureland. The sun was warm on Ingram's arm and neck, but Harding, sitting in shade on the left-hand side of the car, hunched tighter into himself as if he was cold and stared sightlessly out of the window. He seemed lost in lethargy, and Ingram wondered if he was still trying to concoct some sort of defense or whether the events of the morning had finally taken their toll.

'That dog of hers should be shot,' he said suddenly.

Still concocting a defense then, thought Ingram, while wondering why it had taken him so long to get around to it. 'Miss Jenner claims he was only trying to protect her,' he said mildly.

'It bloody savaged me.'

'You shouldn't have hit her.'

Harding gave a long sigh. 'I didn't mean to,' he admitted as if realizing that continued argument would be a waste of time. 'I probably wouldn't have done it if she hadn't called me a pervert. The last person who did that was my father, and I flattened him for it.'

'Why did he call you a pervert?'

'Because he's old-fashioned, and I told him I'd done a porno shoot to make money.' The young man balled his hands into fists. 'I wish people would just keep their noses out of my business. It gets on my tits the way everyone keeps lecturing me about the way I live my life.'

Ingram shook his head in irritation. 'There's no such thing as a free lunch, Steve.'