Breaker

by Minette Walters

"Not when he came into the office."

  No one had made a note of Crazy Daze's departure, but the berth was empty again by 7:00 p.m. on Sunday evening, when a yacht out of Portsmouth had been logged in. On this initial inquiry, there were no reports of an unaccompanied toddler leaving the marina or of a man taking a toddler away with him. However, several people pointed out that marinas were busy places-even at eight o'clock in the morning-and anyone could take anything off a boat if it was wrapped in something unexceptional like a sleeping bag and placed in a marina trolley to transport it away from the pontoons.

  Within two hours of the Lymington police being asked to check William Sumner's cottage in Rope Walk, another request came through from Winfrith to locate a boat by the name of Crazy Daze, which was moored somewhere in the tiny Hampshire port's complex of marinas, river moorings, and commercial fishing quarter. It took a single telephone call to the Lymington harbormaster to establish its exact whereabouts.

  "Sure I know Steve. He moors up to a buoy in the dogleg, about five hundred yards beyond the yacht club. Thirty-foot sloop with a wooden deck and claret-colored sails. Nice boat. Nice lad."

  "Is he on board?"

  "Can't say. I don't even know if his boat's in. Is it important?"

  "Could be."

  "Try phoning the yacht club. They can pick him out with binoculars if he's there. Failing that, come back to me, and I'll send one of my lads up to check."

  William Sumner was reunited with his daughter in the Poole police station at half past six that evening after a tiring two-hundred-and-fifty-mile drive from Liverpool, but if anyone expected the little girl to run to him with joyful smiles of recognition, they were to be disappointed. She chose to sit at a distance, playing with some toys on the floor, while making a cautious appraisal of the exhausted man who had slumped on a chair and buried his head in his hands. He apologized to WPC Griffiths. "I'm afraid she's always like this," he said. "Kate's the only one she responds to." He rubbed his red eyes. "Have you found her yet?"

  Griffiths moved protectively in front of the little girl, worried about how much she understood. She exchanged a glance with John Galbraith, who had been waiting in the room with her. "My colleague from Dorset Constabulary Headquarters, DI Galbraith, knows more about that than I do, Mr. Sumner, so I think the best thing is that you talk it through with him while I take Hannah to the canteen." She reached out an inviting hand to the toddler. "Would you like an ice cream, sweetheart?" She was surprised by the child's reaction. With a trusting smile, Hannah scrambled to her feet and held up her arms. "Well, that's a change from yesterday," she said with a laugh, swinging her on to her hip. "Yesterday, you wouldn't even look at me." She cuddled the warm little body against her side and deliberately ignored the danger signals that shot like Cupid's arrows through her bloodstream, courtesy of her frustrated thirty-five-year-old hormones.

  After they'd gone, Galbraith pulled forward a chair and sat facing Sumner. The man was older than he'd been expecting, with thinning dark hair and an angular, loose-limbed body that he seemed unable to keep still. When he wasn't plucking nervously at his lips, he was jiggling one heel in a constant rat-a-tat-tat against the floor, and it was with reluctance that Galbraith took some photographs from his breast pocket and held them loosely between his hands. When he spoke it was with deep and genuine sympathy. "There's no easy way to tell you this, sir," he said gently, "but a young woman, matching your wife's description, was found dead yesterday morning. We can't be sure it's Kate until you've identified her, but I think you need to prepare yourself for the fact that it might be."

  A look of terror distorted the man's face. "It will be," he said with absolute certainty. "All the way back I've been thinking that something awful must have happened. Kate would never have left Hannah. She adored her."

  Reluctantly, Galbraith turned the first close-up and held it for the other man to see.

  Sumner gave an immediate nod of recognition. "Yes," he said with a catch in his voice, "that's Kate."

  "I'm so sorry, sir."

  Sumner took the photograph with trembling fingers and examined it closely. He spoke without emotion. "What happened?"

  Galbraith explained as briefly as possible where and how Kate Sumner had been found, deeming it unnecessary at this early stage to mention rape or murder.

  "Did she drown?"

  "Yes."

  Sumner shook his head in bewilderment. "What was she doing there?"

  "We don't know, but we think she must have fallen from a boat."

  "Then why was Hannah in Poole?"

  "We don't know," said Galbraith again.

  The man turned the photograph over and thrust it at Galbraith, as if by putting it out of sight he could deny its contents. "It doesn't make sense," he said harshly. "Kate wouldn't have gone anywhere without Hannah, and she hated sailing. I used to have a Contessa thirty-two when we lived in Chichester, but I could never persuade her to come out on it because she was terrified of turning turtle in the open sea and drowning." He lowered his head into his hands again as the meaning of what he'd said came home to him.

  Galbraith gave him a moment to compose himself. "What did you do with it?"

  "Sold it a couple of years ago and put the money toward buying Langton Cottage." He lapsed into another silence, which the policeman didn't interrupt. "I don't understand any of this," he burst out then in despair. "I spoke to her on Friday night, and she was fine. How could she possibly be dead forty-eight hours later?"

  "It's always worse when death happens suddenly," said the DI sympathetically. "We don't have time to prepare for it."

  "Except I don't believe it. I mean, why didn't someone try to save her? You don't just abandon people when they fall overboard." He looked shocked suddenly. "Oh, God, did other people drown as well? You're not going to tell me she was on a boat that capsized, are you? That was her worst nightmare."

  "No, there's no evidence that anything like that happened." Galbraith leaned forward to bridge the gap between them. They were on hard-backed chairs in an empty office on the first floor, and he could have wished for friendlier surroundings for a conversation like this one. "We think Kate was murdered, sir. The Home Office pathologist who performed the postmortem believes she was raped before being deliberately thrown into the sea to die. I realize this must be a terrible shock to you, but you have my assurance that we're working around the clock to find her killer, and if there's anything we can do to make the situation easier for you, we will of course do it."

  It was too much for Sumner to take in. He stared at the detective with a surprised smile carving ridges in his thin face. "No," he said, "there's been a mistake. It can't have been Kate. She wouldn't have gone anywhere with a stranger." He reached out a tentative hand for the photograph again, then burst into tears when Galbraith turned it over for him.

  The wretched man was so tired that it was several minutes before he could stem his weeping, but Galbraith kept quiet because he knew from past experience that sympathy more often exacerbated pain than ameliorated it. He sat quietly looking out of the window, which faced toward the park and Poole Bay beyond, and stirred only when Sumner spoke again.

  "I'm sorry," he said, striking the tears from his cheeks. "I keep thinking how frightened she must have been. She wasn't a very good swimmer, which is why she didn't want to go sailing."

  Galbraith made a mental note of the fact. "If it's any comfort, she did everything in her power to save herself. It was exhaustion that beat her, not the sea."

  "Did you know she was pregnant?" Tears gathered in his eyes again.

  "Yes," said Galbraith gently, "and I'm sorry."

  "Was it a boy?"

  "Yes."

  "We wanted a son." He took a handkerchief from his pocket and held it to his eyes for several moments before getting up abruptly and walking to the window to stand with his back to Galbraith. "How can I help you?" he said then in a voice stripped of feeling.

  "You can tell me about her. We need as much b
ackground information as you can give us-the names of her friends, what she did during the day, where she shopped. The more we know the better." He waited for a response, which never came. "Perhaps you'd rather leave it until tomorrow? I realize you must be very tired."

  "Actually, I think I'm going to be sick." Sumner turned an ashen face toward him, then, with a small sigh, slid to the floor in a dead faint.

  The Spender boys were easy company. They demanded little from their host other than the odd can of Coke, occasional conversation, and help with threading their hooks with bait. Ingram's immaculate fifteen-foot day-boat, Miss Creant, sat prettily on the surface of a calm turquoise sea off Swanage, her white topsides turning pale pink in the slowly setting sun and a fine array of rods bristling along her rails like porcupine quills. The boys loved her.

  "I'd rather have Miss Creant than a stupid cruiser any day," said Paul after helping the mighty policeman launch her down the Swanage slip. He had allowed the boy to operate the winch at the back of his ancient Jeep while he himself had waded into the sea to float her off the trailer and make her fast to a ring on the slip wall. Paul's eyes had gleamed with excitement because boating was suddenly more accessible than he'd realized. "Do you reckon Dad might buy one? Holidays would be great if we had a boat like this."

  "You can always ask," had been Ingram's response.

  Danny found the whole idea of sliding a long wriggling ragworm onto a barbed point until the steel was clothed in something resembling a wrinkled silk stocking deeply repugnant and insisted that Ingram do the business for him. "It's alive," he pointed out. "Doesn't the hook hurt it?"

  "Not as much as it would hurt you."

  "It's an invertebrate," said his brother, whp was leaning over the side of the boat and watching his various floats bob on the water, "so it doesn't have a nervous system like us. Anyway, it's near the bottom of the food chain so it exists only to be eaten."

  "Dead things are the bottom of the food chain," said Danny. "Like the lady on the beach. She'd've been food if we hadn't found her."

  Ingram handed Danny his rod with the worm in place. "No fancy casting," he said, "just dangle it over the side and see what happens." He leaned back and tilted his baseball cap over his eyes, content to let the boys do the fishing. "Tell me about the bloke who made the phone call," he invited. "Did you like him?"

  "He was all right," said Paul.

  "He said he saw a lady with no clothes on, and she looked like an elephant," said Danny, joining his brother to lean over the side.

  "It was a joke," said Paul. "He was trying to make us feel better."

  "What else did he talk about?"

  "He was chatting up the lady with the horse," said Danny, "but she didn't like him as much as he liked her."

  Ingram smiled to himself. "What makes you think that?"

  "She frowned a lot."

  So what's new?

  "Why do you want to know if we liked him?" asked Paul, his agile mind darting back to Ingram's original question. "Didn't you like him?"

  "He was all right," said Ingram, echoing Paul's own answer. "A bit of a moron for setting out on a hike on a hot day without any suntan lotion or water, but otherwise okay."

  "I expect they were in his rucksack," said Paul loyally, who hadn't forgotten Harding's kindness even if his brother had. "He put it down to make the telephone call, then left it there because he said it was too heavy to lug down to the police car. He was going to pick it up again on his way back. It was probably water that was making it heavy." He looked earnestly toward their host. "Don't you think?"

  Ingram closed his eyes under the brim of his cap. "Yes," he agreed, while wondering what had been in the rucksack that meant Harding hadn't wanted a policeman to see it. Binoculars? Had he seen the woman, after all? "Did you describe the lady on the beach to him?" he asked Paul.

  "Yes," said the boy. "He wanted to know if she was pretty."

  There were two hidden agendas behind the decision to send WPC Griffiths home with William and Hannah Sumner. The first derived entirely from the child's unfavorable psychiatric report and was intended to safeguard her welfare; the second was based on years of statistical evidence that showed a wife was always more likely to be murdered by her husband than by a stranger. However, because of the distances involved and the problems of jurisdiction-Poole being Dorsetshire Constabulary and Lymington being Hampshire Constabulary-Griffiths was advised that the hours would be long ones.

  "Yes, but is he really a suspect?" Griffiths asked Galbraith.

  "Husbands are always suspects."

  "Come on, guv, he was definitely in Liverpool, because I phoned the hotel to check, and it's a hell of a long way from there to Dorset. If he's driven to and fro twice in five days, then he's done over a thousand miles. That's a hell of a lot of driving."

  "Which may explain why he fainted," was Galbraith's dry response.

  "Oh, great!" she said sarcastically. "I've always wanted to spend quality time with a rapist."

  "There's no compulsion, Sandy. You don't have to do it if you don't want to, but the only other option is to leave Hannah in the care of foster parents until we're satisfied it's safe to return her to her father. How about you go back tonight and see how it goes? I've got a team searching the house at the moment, so I'll instruct one of the chaps to stay on and shadow you. Can you live with that?"

  "What the hell!" she said cheerfully. "With any luck, it'll give me a chance to work babies out of my system."

  As far as Sumner himself was concerned, Griffiths was the official "friend" who was supplied by any police force to a family in distress. "I can't possibly cope on my own," he kept telling Galbraith as if it was the fault of the police that he found himself a widower.

  "We don't expect you to."

  The man's color had improved after he had been given something to eat when he admitted he'd had nothing since a cup of tea at breakfast that morning. Renewed energy had set him chasing explanations again. "Were they kidnapped?" he asked suddenly.

  "We don't think so. Lymington police checked the house inside and out, and there's no indication of any sort of disturbance. The neighbor let them in with a spare key, so the search was a thorough one. That doesn't mean we're ignoring the possibility of abduction, just that we're keeping an open mind. We're conducting a second search ourselves at the moment, but on the evidence so far it looks as if Kate and Hannah left of their own accord sometime after the post was delivered on Saturday morning. The letters had been opened and stacked on the kitchen table."

  "What about her car? Could she have been taken from her car?"

  Galbraith shook his head. "It's parked in your garage."

  "Then I don't understand." Sumner appeared genuinely confused. "What happened?"

  "Well, one explanation is that Kate met someone when she was out, a friend of the family perhaps, who persuaded her and Hannah to go for a sail in his boat." He was careful to avoid any idea of a prearranged meeting. "But whether she expected to be taken as far as Poole and the Isle of Purbeck we simply don't know."

  Sumner shook his head. "She'd never have gone," he said with absolute certainty. "I keep telling you, she didn't like sailing. And, anyway, the only people we know with boats are couples." He stared at the floor. "You're not suggesting a couple could have done something like this, are you?" He sounded shocked.

  "I'm not suggesting anything at the moment," said Galbraith patiently. "We need more information before we can do that." He paused. "Her wedding ring seems to be missing. We assume it was removed because it could identify her. Was it special in some way?"

  Sumner held out a trembling hand and pointed to his own ring. "It was identical to this one. We had them engraved inside with our initials. 'K' entwined with 'W.' "

  Interesting, thought Galbraith. "When you're ready, I'd like a list of your friends, particularly the ones who sail. But there's no immediate hurry." He watched Sumner crack his finger joints noisily, one after the other, and wondered what had attr
acted the pretty little woman in the mortuary to this gauche, hyperactive man.

  Sumner clearly hadn't been listening. "When was Hannah abandoned?" he demanded.

  "We don't know."

  "My mother said she was found in Poole at lunchtime yesterday, but you said Kate died in the early hours of the morning. Doesn't that mean Hannah must have been on board when Kate was raped and was put ashore in Poole after Kate was dead? I mean, she couldn't possibly have been wandering around on her own for twenty-four hours before somebody saw her, could she?"

  He was certainly no fool, thought Galbraith. "We don't think so."

  "Then her mother was killed in front of her?" The man's voice rose. "Oh my God, I'm not sure I can bear this! She's only a baby, for Christ's sake."

  Galbraith reached out a calming hand. "It's far more likely she was asleep."

  "You can't know that."

  No, thought Galbraith, I can't. As about everything else in policework, I can only guess. "The doctor who examined her after she was found thinks she was sedated," he explained. "But, yes, you're right. At the moment we can't be certain about anything." He rested his palm briefly on the man's taut shoulder, then withdrew tactfully into his own space. "But it really is better to stop tormenting yourself with what might have been. Nothing's ever as bleak as our imagination paints it."

  "Isn't it?" Sumner straightened abruptly and let his head flop onto the chair back so that he was looking at the ceiling. A long sigh whispered from his chest. "My imagination tells me you're working on the theory that Kate was having an affair, and that the man she went with was her lover."

  Galbraith saw no point in pretending. The idea of an affair that had turned sour was the first they'd considered, particularly as Hannah had apparently accompanied her mother on whatever journey she had made. "We can't ignore the possibility," he said honestly. "It would certainly explain why she agreed to go on board somebody's boat and take Hannah with her." He studied the man's profile. "Does the name Steven Harding mean anything to you?"

  Sumner frowned. "What's he got to do with it?"