Breaker

bastard, or I'll empty that entire bucket over your head.'

He grinned at her. 'This isn't seduction, Maggie, this is courtship. If I wanted to seduce you I'd have brought several bottles of brandy with me.' He wrung out the boxer shorts and held them up for inspection. 'However ... if you think these would be effective...?'

'...Most of the time it's just me, the boat, and the sea ... I like that ... I feel comfortable with space around me ... people can get on your nerves after a while ... they always want something from you ... usually love ... but it's all pretty shallow ... Marie? She's okay ... nothing great ... sure I feel responsible for her, but not forever ... nothing's forever ... except the sea ... and death...'

*26*

John Galbraitb paused beside William Sumner's car in tbe Chichester street and stooped to look in through the window. The weather was still fair, and the heat from the sun-baked roof warmed his face. He walked up the path toward Angela Sumner's flat and rang the doorbell. He waited for the chain to rattle into place. 'Good afternoon, Mrs. Sumner,' he said when her bright eyes peered anxiously through the gap. 'I think you must have William in there.' He gestured toward the parked car. 'May I talk to him?'

With a sigh, she released the chain and pulled the door wide. 'I wanted to phone you, but he pulled the wire out of the wall when I suggested it.'

Galbraith nodded. 'We've tried your number several times, but there was never any answer. If the phone wasn't plugged in, that explains it. I thought I'd come anyway.'

She turned her chair to lead him down the corridor. 'He keeps saying he didn't know what to do. Does that mean he killed her?'

Galbraith laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. 'No,' he said. 'Your son isn't a murderer, Mrs. Sumner. He loved Kate. I think he'd have given her the earth if she'd asked him for it.'

They paused in the sitting-room doorway. William sat huddled in an armchair, arms wrapped protectively about himself and the telephone in his lap, his jaw dark with stubble and his eyes red-rimmed and puffy from too much weeping and too little sleep. Galbraith studied him with concern, recognizing that he bore some of the responsibility for pushing him toward the brink. He could excuse his prying into William's and Kate's secrets on the grounds of justice, but it was a cold logic. He could have been kinder, he thought-one could always be kinder-but, sadly, kindness rarely elicited truth.

He squeezed Angela Sumner's shoulder. 'Perhaps you could make us a cup of tea,' he suggested, moving aside for her wheelchair to reverse. 'I'd like to have a few words with William alone, if that's possible.'

She nodded gratefully. 'I'll wait till you call me.'

He closed the door behind her and listened to the whine of the battery fading into the kitchen. 'We've caught Kate's killer, William,' he said, taking the seat opposite the man. 'Steven Harding has been formally charged with her abduction, rape, and murder, and will be remanded to prison shortly to await trial. I want to stress that Kate was not a party to what happened to her, but on the contrary fought hard to save herself and Hannah.' He paused briefly to search William's face but went on when there was no reaction. 'I'm not going to pretend she didn't have sex with Steven Harding prior to the events of last week, because she did. However, it was a brief affair some months ago, and followed a prolonged campaign by Harding to break her down. Nevertheless-and this is important'-he glossed the truth deliberately in Kate's favor-'it's clear she made up her mind very quickly to put an end to the relationship when she recognized that her marriage was more important to her than a mild infatuation with a younger man. Her misfortune was her failure to recognize that Steven Harding is self-fixated and dangerously immature and that she needed to be afraid of him.' Another pause. 'She was lonely, William.'

A strangled sob issued from the other man's mouth, 'I've been hating her so much ... I knew he was more than a casual acquaintance when she said she didn't want him in the house anymore. She used to flirt with him at the beginning, then she turned vicious and started calling him names ... I guessed he'd got bored with her...'

'Is that when he showed you the photographs?'

'Yes.'

'Why did he do that, William?'

'He said he wanted me to show them to Kate but...' He lifted a trembling hand to his mouth.

Galbraith recalled something Tony had said the previous evening. 'The only reason Steve does pornography is because he knows it's inadequate guys who're going to look at it. He doesn 't have any hang-ups about sex, so it gives him a buzz to think of them squirming over pictures of him...'

'But he really wanted to show them to you?'

Sumner nodded. 'He wanted to prove that Kate would sleep with anyone-even a man who preferred other men-rather than sleep with me.' Tears streamed down his face. 'I think she must have told him I wasn't very good. I said I didn't want to see the pictures, so he put the magazine on the table in front of me and told me to'-he struggled with the words, closing his eyes in pain, as if to blot out the memory-' 'suck on it.' '

'Did he say he'd slept with Kate?'

'He didn't need to. I knew when Hannah let him pick her up in the street that something was going on ... she's never let me do that.' More tears squeezed from his tired eyes.

'What did he say, William?'

He plucked at his mouth. 'That Kate was making his life hell by smearing Hannah's nappies on his possessions, and that if I didn't make her stop he'd go to the police.'

'And you believed him?'

'Kate was-like that,' he said with a break in his voice. 'She could be spiteful when she didn't get her own way.'

'Did you show her the magazine?'

'No.'