Breaker

by Minette Walters

  *10*

  During the twenty minutes that he waited in the sitting room at Langton Cottage the following morning to speak to William Sumner, John Galbraith learned two things about the man's dead wife. The first was that Kate Sumner was vain. Every photograph on display was either of herself, or of herself and Hannah, and he searched without success for a likeness of William, or even of an elderly woman who might have been William's mother. In frustration he ended up counting the pictures that were there-thirteen-each of which showed the same prettily smiling face within its framework of golden curls. Was this the cult of the personality taken to its extreme, he wondered, or an indication of a deep-seated inferiority which needed constant reminders that to be photogenic was a talent like any other?

  The second thing he learned was that he could never have lived with Kate. She delighted, it seemed, in applying frills to everything: lace curtains with frills, valances with frills, armchairs with frills-even the lampshades had tassels attached to them. Nothing, not even the walls, had escaped her taste for overembellishment. Langton Cottage was of nineteenth-century origin with beamed ceilings and brick fireplaces, and instead of the plain white plaster that would have shown these features off to their best advantage, she had covered the walls of the sitting room-probably at considerable expense-with mock Regency wallpaper, adorned with gilt stripes, white bows, and baskets of unnaturally colored fruit. Galbraith shuddered at the desecration of what could have been a charming room and unconsciously contrasted it with the timbered simplicity of Steven Harding's sloop, which was currently being put under a microscope by scene-of-crime officers while Harding, exercising his right to remain silent, cooled his heels in a police cell.

  Rope Walk was a quiet tree-lined avenue to the west of the Royal Lymington and Town yacht clubs, and Langton Cottage had clearly not been cheap. As he knocked on the door at eight o'clock on Tuesday morning after two hours' sleep, Galbraith wondered how big a mortgage William had had to raise to buy it and how much he earned as a pharmaceutical chemist. He could see no logic behind the move from Chichester, particularly as neither Kate nor William appeared to have any links with Lymington.

  He was let in by WPC Griffiths, who pulled a face when he told her he needed to talk to Sumner. "You'll be lucky," she whispered. "Hannah's been bawling her head off most of the night, so I doubt you'll get any sense out of him. He's had almost as little sleep as I've had."

  "Join the club."

  "You, too, eh?"

  Galbraith smiled. "How's he holding up?"

  She shrugged. "Not too well. Keeps bursting into tears and saying it's not supposed to be like this." She lowered her voice even further. "I'm really concerned about Hannah. She's obviously scared of him. She works herself into a tantrum the minute he enters the room, then calms down rapidly as soon as he leaves. I ordered him to bed in the end to try and get her to sleep."

  Galbraith looked interested. "How does he react?"

  "That's the odd thing. He doesn't react at all. He just ignores it as if it's something he's grown used to."

  "Has he said why she does it?"

  "Only that, being out at work so much, he's never had a chance to bond with her. It could be true, you know. I get the impression Kate swaddled her in cotton wool. There are so many safety features in this house that I can't see how Hannah was ever expected to learn anything. Every door has a child lock on it-even the wardrobe in her own bedroom-which means she can't explore, can't choose her own clothes, or even make a mess if she wants to. She's almost three, but she's still sleeping in a crib. That's pretty weird, you know. More like prison bars than a nursery. It's a damned odd way to bring up a child and, frankly, I'm not surprised she's a withdrawn little thing."

  "I suppose it's occurred to you that she might be scared of him because she watched him kill her mother," murmured Galbraith.

  Sandy Griffiths spread her hand and made a rocking motion. "Except I don't see how he can have done it. He's made a list of some colleagues who can alibi him for Saturday night in Liverpool, and if that holds good then there's no way he could have been shoving his wife in the water at one a.m. in Dorset."

  "No," agreed Galbraith. "Still..." He pursed his lips in thought. "Do you realize the SOCOs found no drugs in this house at all, not even paracetamol? Which is odd, considering William's a pharmaceutical chemist."

  "Maybe that's why there aren't any. He knows what goes into them."

  "Mmm. Or they were deliberately cleared out before we got here." He glanced toward the stairs. "Do you like him?" he asked her.

  "Not much," she admitted, "but you don't want to go by what I say. I've always been a lousy judge of character where men are concerned. He could have done with a good smacking thirty years ago, in my opinion, just to teach him some manners but as things are, he seems to view women as serving wenches."

  He laughed. "Are you going to be able to stick it out?"

  She rubbed her tired eyes. "God knows! Your chap left about half an hour ago, and there's supposed to be some relief coming when William's taken away to identify the body and talk to the doctor who examined Hannah. The trouble is, I can't see Hannah letting me go that easily. She clings to me like a limpet. I'm using the spare room to grab kip when I can, and I thought I'd try to organize some temporary cover while she's asleep so I can stay on the premises. But I'll need to get hold of my governor to organize someone locally." She sighed. "I suppose you want me to wake William for you."

  He patted her shoulder. "No. Just point me toward his room. I'm happy to do the business."

  She was sorely tempted, but shook her head. "You'll disturb Hannah," she said, baring her teeth in a threatening grimace, "and I swear to God I'll kill you if she starts howling again before I've had a fag and some black coffee. I'm bushed. I can't take any more of her screaming without mega-fixes of caffeine and nicotine."

  "Is it putting you off babies?"

  "It's putting me off husbands," she said. "I'd have coped better if he hadn't kept hovering like a dark cloud over my shoulder." She eased open the sitting-room door. "You can wait in here till he comes. You'll love it. It has all the makings of a shrine."

  Galbraith heard footsteps on the stairs and turned to face the door as it opened. Sumner was in his early forties, but he looked a great deal older than that today, and Galbraith suspected Harding would have been a lot harsher in his description if he could have seen Kate's husband like this. He was unshaven and disheveled, and his face was inexpressibly weary, but whether from grief or lack of sleep, it was impossible to say. Nevertheless, his eyes shone brightly enough, and Galbraith took note of the fact. Lack of sleep did not lead automatically to blunted intelligence.

  "Good morning, sir," he said. "I'm sorry to bother you again so early but I've more questions to ask, and I'm afraid they won't wait."

  "That's all right. Sit down. I feel I was less than helpful last night, but I was so whacked I couldn't think properly." He took an armchair and left Galbraith to the sofa. "I've made those lists you wanted. They're on the table in the kitchen."

  "Thanks." He gave the man a searching look. "Did you get any sleep?"

  "Not really. I couldn't stop thinking about it. It's all so illogical. I could understand if they'd both drowned, but it doesn't make sense that Kate's dead and Hannah's alive."

  Galbraith agreed. He and Carpenter had been puzzling over that very fact most of the night. Why had Kate had to swim for her life while the toddler was allowed to live? The neat explanation-that the boat was Crazy Daze, that Hannah had been on board but had managed to release herself while Harding was walking to Chapman's Pool-failed to address the questions of why the child hadn't been pushed into the sea along with her mother, why Harding was so unconcerned about her wails being heard by other boat users in the marina that he'd left her on her own, and who had fed, watered, and changed her nappy in the hours before she was found.

  "Have you had time to go through your wife's wardrobe, Mr. Sumner? Do you know if any of her clothes
are missing?"

  "Not that I can tell ... but it doesn't mean much," he added as an afterthought. "I don't really notice what people wear, you see."

  "Suitcases?"

  "I don't think so."

  "All right." He opened his briefcase on the sofa beside him. "I've some articles of clothing to show you, Mr. Sumner. Please tell me if you recognize any of them." He removed a plastic bag containing the flimsy blouse found on board Crazy Daze, which he held out for the other man to look at.

  Sumner shook his head, without taking it. "It's not Kate's," he said.

  "Why so positive," Galbraith asked curiously, "if you didn't notice what she wore?"

  "It's yellow. She hated yellow. She said it didn't suit people with fair hair." He gestured vaguely toward the door. "There's no yellow anywhere in the house."

  "Fair enough." He took out the bags containing the bra and panties. "Do you recognize either of these as belonging to your wife?"

  Sumner reached out a reluctant hand and took both bags, examining the contents closely through the clear plastic. "I'd be surprised if they were hers," he said, handing them back. "She liked lace and frills, and these are very plain. You can compare them with the other things in her drawers, if you like. You'll see what I mean."

  Galbraith nodded. "I'll do that. Thank you." He took out the bag with the child's shoes and laid them on his right palm. "What about these?"

  Sumner shook his head again. "I'm sorry. All children's shoes look alike to me."

  'They have H. Sumner printed inside the strap."

  He shrugged. "Then they must be Hannah's."

  "Not necessarily," said Galbraith. "They're very small, more suited to a one-year-old than a three-year-old, and anyone can write a name into some shoes."

  "Why would they want to do that?"

  "Pretense, perhaps."

  The other man frowned. "Where did you find them?"

  But Galbraith shook his head. "I'm afraid I can't reveal that at this stage." He held the shoes up again. "Would Hannah recognize them, do you think? They may be a pair of cast-offs."

  "She might if the policewoman showed them to her," said Sumner. "There's no point in my trying. She screams her head off every time she sees me." He swept imaginary dirt from the arm of the chair. "The trouble is I spend so much time at work that she's never had the chance to get to know me properly."

  Galbraith gave him a sympathetic smile while wondering if there was any truth in the statement. Who could contradict him, after all? Kate was dead; Hannah was tongue-tied; and the various neighbors who'd already been interviewed claimed to know little about William. Or indeed, Kate herself.

  "To be honest I've only met him a couple of times and he didn't exactly impress me. He works very hard, of course, but they were never ones for entertaining. She was quite sweet, but we were hardly what I'd call friends. You know how it is. You don't choose your neighbors; they get thrust upon you..."

  "He's not what you'd call sociable. Kate told me once that he spent his evenings and weekends working out formulas on his computer while she watched soaps on the telly. I feel awful about her dying like that. I wish I'd had more time to talk to her. I think she must have been quite lonely, you know. The rest of us all work, of course, so she was a bit of a rarity, staying at home and doing the housework..."

  "He's a bully. He took my wife to task about one of the fencing panels between our gardens, said it needed replacing, and when she told him it was his ivy that was pulling it down, he threatened her with court proceedings. No, that's the only contact we've had with him. It was enough. I don't like the man..."

  "I saw more of Kate than I saw of him. It was an odd marriage. They never did anything together. I sometimes wondered if they even liked each other very much. Kate was very sweet, but she hardly ever talked about William. To be honest, I don't think they had much in common..."

  "I understand Hannah cried most of the night. Does she usually do that?"

  "No," Sumner answered without hesitation, "but then Kate always cuddled her when she was upset. She's crying for her mother, poor little thing."

  "So you haven't noticed any difference in her behavior?"

  "Not really."

  "The doctor who examined her after she was taken to the Poole police station was very concerned about her, described her as unnaturally withdrawn, backward in her development, and possibly suffering from some sort of psychological trauma." Galbraith smiled slightly. "Yet you're saying that's quite normal for Hannah?"

  Sumner colored slightly as if he'd been caught out in a lie. "She's always been a little bit"-he hesitated-"well, odd. I thought she was either autistic or deaf so we had her tested, but the GP said there was nothing wrong and just advised us to be patient. He said children were manipulative, and if Kate did less for her she'd be forced to ask for what she wanted and the problem would go away."

  "When was this?"

  "About six months ago."

  "What's your GP's name?"

  "Dr. Attwater."

  "Did Kate take his advice?"

  He shook his head. "Her heart wasn't in it. Hannah could always make her understand what she wanted, and she couldn't see the point of forcing her to talk before she was ready."

  Galbraith made a note of the GP's name. "You're a clever man, Mr. Sumner," he said next, "so I'm sure you know why I'm asking you these questions."

  A ghost of a smile flickered across the man's tired face. "I prefer William," he said, "and yes, of course I do. My daughter screams every time she sees me; my wife had ample opportunity to cheat on me because I'm hardly ever at home; I'm angry because I didn't want to move to Lymington; the mortgage on this place is way too high and I'd like to get shot of it; she was lonely because she hadn't made many friends; and wives are more usually murdered by their partners out of fury than by strangers out of lust." He gave a hollow laugh. "About the only thing in my favor is a cast-iron alibi, and believe me, I've spent most of the night thanking God for it."

  Under the rules governing police detention, there is a limit to how long a person may be held without charge, and the pressure to find evidence against Steven Harding mounted as the hours ticked by. It was notable more for its absence. The stains on the floor of the cabin, which had looked so promising the night before, turned out to be whisky-induced vomit-blood group A, matching Harding's-and a microscopic examination of his boat failed to produce any evidence that an act of violence had occurred on board.

  If the pathologist's findings were right-"bruising and abrasions to back (pronounced on shoulder blades and buttocks) and inside of thighs, indicative of forced intercourse on a hard surface such as a deck or an uncarpeted floor-some blood loss from abrasions in vagina"-the wooden planking of the deck and/or saloon and/or cabin should have had traces of blood, skin tissue, and even semen trapped between the grooved joints or under rogue splinters of wood. But no such traces were found. Dried salt was scraped in profusion from the deck planking, but while this might suggest he had scrubbed the topsides down with sea water to remove evidence, it was axiomatic that dried salt would be found on a sailing boat.

  On the more likely probability that a blanket or rug had been spread on the hard surface before Kate Sumner had been forced onto it, every item of cloth on board was examined with similarly negative results, although it was all too obvious that any such item would have been thrown overboard along with Kate's clothes and anything else connecting her to the boat. Kate's body was re-examined inch by inch, in the hope that splinters of wood, linking her to Crazy Daze, had become embedded under her skin, but either the flaying action of the sea on open wounds had washed the evidence away or it had never been there in the first place. It was a similar story with her broken fingernails. If anything had ever been underneath them, it had long since vanished.

  Only the sheets in the cabin showed evidence of semen staining, but as the bedclothes hadn't been washed for a very long time it was impossible to say whether the stains were the product of recent intercour
se. Indeed, as only two alien hairs were discovered on the pillows and bedclothes-neither of which was Kate's although both were blond-the conclusion was that, far from being the promiscuous stallion portrayed by the harbormaster, Steven Harding was in fact a lonely masturbator.

  A small quantity of cannabis and a collection of unopened condoms were discovered in the bedside locker, together with three torn Mates wrappers minus their contents. No used condoms were found. Every container was examined for benzodiazepine, Rohypnol and/or any hypnotic. No indications were found. Despite a comprehensive search for pornographic photographs and magazines, none were found. Subsequent searches of Harding's car and flat in London were equally disappointing, although the flat contained thirty-five adult movies. All were on general release, however. A warrant was issued to search Tony Bridges' house in Lymington, but there was nothing to incriminate Steven Harding or to connect him or anyone else there with Kate Sumner. Despite extensive inquiries, police could come up with no other premises used or owned by Harding, and bar a single sighting of him talking to Kate outside Tesco's on Saturday morning, no one reported seeing them together.

  There was fingerprint and palm evidence that Kate and Hannah Sumner had been on board Crazy Daze, but too many of the prints were overlaid with other prints, few of which were Steven Harding's, for the SOCOs to be confident that the visit had been a recent one. Considerable interest was raised by the fact that twenty-five different sets of fingerprints, excluding Carpenter's, Galbraith's, Kate's, Hannah's, and Steven's-at least five of the sets being small enough to be children's-were lifted from the saloon, some of which matched prints lifted from Bridges' house, but few of which were replicated in the cabin. Demonstrably, therefore, Harding had entertained people on board, although the nature of the entertainment remained a mystery. He explained it by saying he always invited fellow sailors into the saloon whenever he took a berth in a marina, and in the absence of proof to the contrary, the police accepted his explanation. Nevertheless, they remained curious about it.