The Breaker

by Minette Walters

  ‘That’s not good enough, Steve. Recently? A long time ago? Under what circumstances? Did you bring them out in your dinghy? Was Kate one of your conquests? Did you make love to her?’

  ‘No, dammit!’ he said angrily. ‘I hated the stupid bitch. She was always throwing herself at me, wanting me to fuck her and wanting me to be nice to that weird kid of hers. They used to hang around down by the fuelling pontoon in case I came in for diesel. It used to bug me, it really did.’

  ‘So, let me get this straight,’ murmured Carpenter sarcastically. ‘To stop her pestering you, you invited her on board?’

  ‘I thought if I was polite . . . Ah, what the hell! Go ahead, search the damn boat. You won’t find anything.’

  Carpenter nodded to Galbraith. ‘I suggest you start in the cabin. Do you have another lamp, Steve?’

  Harding shook his head.

  Galbraith unhooked a torch from the aft bulkhead and flicked the switch to see if it was working. ‘This’ll do.’ He propped open the cabin door and swung the beam around the interior, settling almost immediately on a small pile of clothes on the port shelf. He used the end of his biro to push a flimsy blouse, a bra and pair of panties to one side to reveal some tiny child’s shoes nestling together on the shelf. He turned the beam of the torch full on them and stood back so they were visible to Carpenter and Harding.

  ‘Who do the shoes belong to, Mr Harding?’

  No answer.

  ‘Who do the women’s clothes belong to?’

  No answer.

  ‘If you have an explanation for why these articles are on board your boat, Steve, then I advise you to give it to us now.’

  ‘They’re my girlfriend’s,’ he said in a strangled voice. ‘She has a son. The shoes belong to him.’

  ‘Who is she, Steve?’

  ‘I can’t tell you. She’s married, and she’s got nothing to do with this.’

  Galbraith emerged from the cabin with one of the shoes hooked on the end of his biro. ‘There’s a name written on the strap, guv, H. SUMNER. And there’s staining on the floor in here.’ He pointed the torch beam towards some dark marks beside the bunk bed. ‘It looks fairly recent.’

  ‘I need to know what caused the stains, Steve.’

  In one lithe movement, the young man erupted out of his seat and grabbed the whisky bottle in both hands, swinging it violently to his left and forcing Galbraith to retreat into the cabin. ‘Enough, okay!’ he growled, moving towards the chart table. ‘You’re way off beam on this one. Now back off before I do something I’ll regret. You’ve got to give me some space, for Christ’s sake. I need to think.’

  He was unprepared for the ease with which Galbraith plucked the bottle from his grasp and spun him round to face the teak clad wall while securing his wrists behind his back with handcuffs.

  ‘You’ll have plenty of time for thinking when we get you into a police cell,’ said the DI unemotionally as he pushed the young man face-down on to the settee. ‘I am arresting you on suspicion of murder. You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

  Had William Sumner not had a key to his front door, Sandy Griffiths would have questioned whether he had ever lived in Langton Cottage because his knowledge of the house was minimal. Indeed, the police constable who had stayed behind to act as her shadow was better informed than he was, having watched the scene-of-crime officers meticulously examine every room. Sumner looked at her blankly each time she asked him a question. Which cupboard was the tea in? He didn’t know. Where did Kate keep Hannah’s nappies? He didn’t know. Which towel or flannel was hers? He didn’t know. Could he at least show her to Hannah’s room so that she could put the child to bed? He looked towards the stairs. ‘It’s up there,’ he said, ‘you can’t miss it.’

  He seemed fascinated by the invasion of his home by the search team. ‘What were they looking for?’ he asked.

  ‘Anything that will connect with Kate’s disappearance,’ said Griffiths.

  ‘Does that mean they think I did it?’

  Griffiths eased Hannah on her hip and turned the child’s head into her shoulder in a somewhat futile attempt to block her ears. ‘It’s standard procedure, William, but I don’t think it’s something we should talk about in front of your daughter. I suggest you take it up with DI Galbraith tomorrow.’

  But he was either too insensitive or too careless of his daughter’s welfare to take the hint. He stared at a photograph of his wife on the mantelpiece. ‘I couldn’t have done it,’ he said. ‘I was in Liverpool.’

  At the request of Dorsetshire Constabulary, Liverpool police had already begun preliminary inquiries at the Regal Hotel. It was early days, of course, but the account he’d settled that morning made interesting reading. Despite being a heavy user of the telephone, coffee lounge, restaurant and bar in the first two days, there was a period of twenty-four hours between lunchtime on Saturday and a noon drink in the bar on Sunday when he had failed to make use of a single hotel service.

  Chapter Ten

  DURING THE TWENTY minutes that he waited in the sitting room at Langton Cottage the following morning to speak to William Sumner, John Galbraith learnt 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 learnt was that he could never have lived with Kate. She delighted, it seemed, in applying frills to everything: lace curtains with frills, pelmets with frills, armchairs with frills – even the lampshades had tassels attached to them. Nothing, not even the walls, had escaped her taste for over-embellishment. 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 coloured 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 cot. 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 1.00 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 towards 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 towards 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 dishevelled, 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 polythene 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 towards 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?’

  ‘Pretence, 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 tru
th in the statement. Who could contradict him, after all? Kate was dead; Hannah was tongue-tied; and the various neighbours 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 neighbours; they get thrust upon you . . .’

  ‘He’s not what you’d call sociable. Kate told me once that he spends 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 behaviour?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘The doctor who examined her after she was taken to 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?’