The Breaker

by Minette Walters

  ‘It wasn’t like that.’

  ‘What was it like then?’

  ‘Living in a cheap boarding house,’ he said bitterly. ‘I didn’t marry a wife or a housekeeper, I married a landlady who allowed me to live here as long as I paid my rent on time.’

  The French yacht, Mirage, motored up the Dart river early on Thursday afternoon and took a berth in the Dart Haven Marina on the Kingswear side of the estuary, opposite the lovely town of Dartmouth and alongside the steam railway line to Paignton. Shortly after they made fast, there was a blast on a whistle and the three o’clock train set off in a rush of steam, raising in the Beneteau’s owner a romantic longing for days he himself couldn’t remember.

  By contrast his daughter sat sunk in gloom, unable to comprehend why they had moored on the side of the river that boasted nothing except the station when everything that was attractive – shops, restaurants, pubs, people, life, men! – was on the other side in Dartmouth. Scornfully, she watched her father take out the video camera and search through the case for a new tape in order to film steam engines. He was like a small boy, she thought, in his silly enthusiasms for the treasures of rural England when what really mattered was London. She was the only one of her friends who had never been there, and it mortified her. God, but her parents were sad!

  Her father turned to her in mild frustration, asking where the unused tapes were, and she had to admit there were none. She’d used them all to film irrelevancies in order to pass the time, and with irritating tolerance (he was one of those understanding fathers who refused to indulge in rows) he played the videos back, squinting into the eyepiece, in order to select the least interesting for reuse.

  When he came to a tape of a young man scrambling down the slope above Chapman’s Pool towards two boys, followed by shots of him sitting alone on the foreshore beyond the boatsheds, he lowered the camera and looked at his daughter with a worried frown. She was fourteen years old, and he realized he had no idea if she was still innocent or whether she knew exactly what she’d been filming. He described the young man and asked her why she had taken so much footage of him. Her cheeks flushed a rosy red under her tan. No particular reason. He was there and he was – she spoke with defiance – handsome. In any case, she knew him. They’d introduced themselves when they’d chatted together in Lymington. And he fancied her. She could tell these things.

  Her father was appalled.

  His daughter flounced her shoulders. What was the big deal? So he was English? He was just a good-looking guy who liked French girls, she said.

  Bibi Gould’s face fell as she swung light-heartedly out of the hairdressing salon in Lymington where she worked and saw Tony Bridges standing on the pavement, half-turned away from her, watching a young mother hoist a toddler on to her hip. Her relationship, such as it was, with Tony had become more of a trial than a pleasure and for a brief second she thought about retreating through the door again until she realized he had seen her out of the corner of his eye. She forced a sickly smile to her lips. ‘Hi,’ she said with unconvincing jauntiness.

  He stared at her with his peculiarly brooding expression, taking note of the skimpy shorts and cropped top that barely covered her tanned arms, legs and midriff. A blood vessel started to throb in his head, and he had trouble keeping the temper out of his voice. ‘Who are you meeting?’

  ‘No one,’ she said.

  ‘Then what’s the problem? Why did you look so pissed to see me?’

  ‘I didn’t.’ She lowered her head to swing her curtain of hair across her eyes in a way he hated. ‘I’m just tired, that’s all . . . I was going home to watch telly.’

  He reached out a hand to grip her wrist. ‘Steve’s done a vanishing act. Is he the one you’re planning to meet?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘How would I know?’ she said, twisting her arm to try to release herself. ‘He’s your friend.’

  ‘Has he gone to the caravan? Did you say you’d meet him there?’

  Angrily, she succeeded in tugging herself free. ‘You’ve got a real problem with him, you know . . . you should talk to someone about it instead of taking it out on me all the time. And for your information, not everyone runs away to hide in Mummy and Daddy’s sodding caravan every time things go wrong. It’s a dump, for Christ’s sake . . . like your house . . . and who wants to fuck in a dump?’ She rubbed her wrist where his fingers had left a Chinese burn on her skin, her immature nineteen-year-old features creasing into a vicious scowl. ‘It’s not Steve’s fault you’re so spaced out most nights you can’t get it up, so don’t keep pretending it is. The trouble with you is you’ve lost it, but you can’t bloody well see it.’

  He eyed her with dislike. ‘What about Saturday? It wasn’t me who passed out on Saturday. I’m sick to death of being fucked about, Beebs.’

  She was on the point of giving a petulant toss of her head and saying sex with him had become so boring that she might as well be comatose as not when caution persuaded her against it. He had a way of getting his own back that she didn’t much like. ‘Yeah, well, you can’t blame me for that,’ she muttered lamely. ‘You shouldn’t buy dodgy E off your dodgy mates, should you? A girl could die that way.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  FAX:

  From: PC Nicholas Ingram

  Date: 14 August – 7.05 p.m.

  To: DI John Galbraith

  Re: Kate Sumner murder inquiry

  Sir,

  I’ve had some follow-up thoughts on the above, particularly in relation to the pathologist’s report and the stranded dinghy, and as it’s my day off tomorrow I’m faxing them through to you. Admittedly they are based entirely on the presumption that the stranded dinghy was involved in Kate’s murder, but they suggest a new angle which may be worth considering.

  I mentioned this a.m. that: 1) there’s a possibility the dinghy was stolen from Lulworth Cove at the end of May, in which case the thief and Kate’s murderer could be one and the same person; 2) that if my ‘towing’ theory was correct, there was a good chance the outboard engine (Make: Fastrigger; Serial No: 240B 5006678) was removed and remains in the thief’s possession; 3) you take another look at Steven Harding’s log to see if he was in Lulworth Cove on Thursday, 29 May; 4) if he had a second dinghy stowed on board Crazy Daze – which only required a foot pump to reflate it – it would solve some of your forensic problems; 5) he probably has a lock-up somewhere which you haven’t yet discovered and which may contain the stolen outboard.

  ***I have since had time to consider the logistics of how the dinghy was actually removed from Lulworth Cove in broad daylight and I’ve realized that Harding or indeed any boat owner would have had some difficulty.

  It’s important to recognize that Crazy Daze must have anchored in the middle of Lulworth Bay and Harding could only have come ashore in his own dinghy. Joyriders going for a spin would have attracted little attention (the assumption would be that the boat belonged to them) but a man on his own, coping with two dinghies, would have stood out like a sore thumb, particularly as the only way he could have removed them from the Cove (unless he was prepared to waste time deflating them) was to tow them in tandem or parallel behind Crazy Daze. It is highly unusual for a yacht to have two dinghies and, once the theft had been reported, that fact is bound to have registered with the coastguards in the lookout point above Lulworth.

  I think now that a more likely scenario for the theft was removal by foot. Let’s say an opportunist thief spotted that the outboard wasn’t padlocked, released its clamps and carried it away quite openly to his car/ house/garage/caravan. Let’s say he wandered back half an hour later to see if the owners had returned and, finding they hadn’t, he simply hoisted the dinghy above his head and carried that away too. I’m not suggesting that Kate Sumner’s murder was premeditated at this early stage, but what I am suggesting is that the opportunist theft of the Spanish dinghy in May gave rise to an ideal method in August for the disposal
of her body. (NB: thefts of or from boats represent some of the highest crime statistics along the south coast.) I strongly advise, therefore, that you try to find out if anyone connected with Kate was staying in or near Lulworth between 24–31 May. I suspect the sad irony will be that she, her husband and her daughter were – there are several caravan parks and campsites round Lulworth – but I think this will please you. It strengthens the case against the husband.

  For reasons that follow, I am no longer confident that you’ll find the outboard. Assuming the intention was for the stolen dinghy, plus contents (i.e. Kate) to sink, then the outboard must have been on board.

  You may remember my querying the ‘hypothermia’ issue in the pathologist’s report when you showed it to me on Monday. The pathologist’s view is that Kate was swimming in the water for some considerable time, prior to drowning, which caused her stress and cold. At the time I wondered why it took her so long to swim a comparatively short distance and I suggested that she was more likely to suffer hypothermia from being exposed to air temperature at night rather than sea temperature – the latter being generally warmer. It would depend of course on how good a swimmer she was, particularly as the pathologist refers to her entering the sea a minimum of half a mile WSW of Egmont Bight, and I assumed she must have swum a great deal further than his estimate. However, you told Miss Jenner this morning that Kate was a poor swimmer, and I have been wondering since how a poor swimmer could have remained afloat long enough in difficult seas to show evidence of hypothermia before death. I have also been wondering why her killer was confident of making it safely back to shore, since there are no lights on that part of the coast and the currents are unpredictable.

  One explanation which covers the above is that Kate was raped ashore, her killer presumed her dead after the strangulation attempt and the whole ‘drowning’ exercise was designed to dispose of her body off an isolated stretch of coast.

  Can you buy this reasoning? 1) He bundled her naked and unconscious body into the stolen dinghy, then took her a considerable distance – Lulworth Cove to Chapman’s Pool = 8 nautical miles approx. – before he tied her to the outboard and left the dinghy to sink with its contents (wind-chill factor would already have caused hypothermia in a naked woman); 2) once set adrift, Kate came round from the strangulation attempt/ Rohypnol and realized she had to save herself; 3) her broken fingers and nails could have resulted from her struggle to break free of her bonds then release the clamps holding the outboard in place in order to eject its weight, probably capsizing the dinghy in the process; 4) she used the dinghy as a float and only became separated from it when she lapsed into unconsciousness or became too tired to hold on; 5) in all events, I am guessing the dinghy travelled much closer to shore than the pathologist’s estimate otherwise the boat would have become swamped and the killer himself would have been in trouble; 6) killer climbed the cliffs and returned to Lulworth/Kimmeridge via the coastal path during the dark hours of the night.

  This is as far as my thoughts have taken me, but if the dinghy was involved in the murder then it must have come from the west – Kimmeridge Bay or Lulworth Cove – because the craft was too fragile to negotiate the race around St Alban’s Head. I realize none of this explains Hannah, although I can’t help feeling that if you can discover where the stolen dinghy was hidden for two months, you may also discover where Kate was raped and where Hannah was left while her mother was being drowned.

  (NB: None of the above rules out Harding – the rape may have taken place on his deck with the evidence subsequently washed away, and the dinghy may have been towed behind Crazy Daze – but does it make him a less likely suspect?)

  Chapter Seventeen

  THE SUN HAD been up less than an hour on Friday morning when Maggie Jenner set off along the bridleway behind Broxton House, accompanied by Bertie. She was on a skittish bay gelding called Stinger, whose owner came down from London every weekend to her cottage in Langton Matravers to ride hard around the headlands as an antidote to her high-pressured job as a money broker in the City. Maggie loved the horse but loathed the woman whose hands were about as sensitive as steam hammers and who viewed Stinger in the same way as she probably viewed a snort of cocaine – as a quick adrenaline fix. If she hadn’t agreed to pay well over the odds for the livery service Maggie provided, Maggie would have refused her business without a second’s hesitation but, as with most things in the Jenners’ lives, compromise had become the better part of staving off bankruptcy.

  She turned right at St Alban’s Head Quarry, negotiating her way through the gate and into the deep, wide valley that cleaved a grassy downland passage towards the sea between St Alban’s Head to the south and the high ground above Chapman’s Pool to the north. She nudged her mount into a canter and sent him springing across the turf in glorious release. It was still cool but there was barely a breath of wind in the air, and as always on mornings like this her spirits soared. However bad existence was, and it could be very bad at times, she ceased to worry about it here. If there was any point to anything, then she came closest to finding it, alone and free, in the renewed optimism that a fresh sun generated with each daybreak.

  She reined in after half a mile, and walked the gelding towards the fenced coastal path which hugged the slopes of the valley on either side in a series of steep steps cut into the cliffs. It was a hardy rambler who suffered the agony of the downward trek only to be faced with the worse agony of the upward climb, and Maggie, who had never done either, thought how much more sensible it was to ride the gully in order to enjoy the scenery. Ahead, the sea, a sparkling blue, was flat calm without a sail in sight and she slipped lightly from the saddle while Bertie, panting from the exertion of keeping up, rolled leisurely in the warming grass beside the gelding’s hooves. Looping Stinger’s reins casually round the top rail of the fence, she climbed the stile and walked the few yards to the cliff edge to stand and glory in the vast expanse of blueness where the line of demarcation between sky and sea was all but invisible. The only sounds were the gentle swish of breakers on the shore, the sigh of the animals’ breaths and a lark singing in the sky above . . .

  It was difficult to say who was the more startled, therefore, Maggie or Steven Harding, when he rose out of the ground in front of her after hoisting himself over the cliff edge where the downland valley dropped towards the sea. He crouched on all fours for several seconds, his face pale and unshaven, breathing heavily and looking a great deal less pretty than he had five days before. More like a rapist; less like a Hollywood lead. There was a quality of disturbing violence about him, something calculating in the dark eyes that Maggie hadn’t noticed before, but it was his abrupt rearing to full height that caused her to shriek. Her alarm transmitted itself immediately to Stinger who pranced backwards, tearing his reins free of the fence, and thence to Bertie who leapt to his feet, hackles up.

  ‘YOU STUPID BASTARD!’ Maggie shouted at him, giving vent to her fear in furious remonstration as she heard Stinger’s snort of alarm and stamping hooves. She turned away from Harding in a vain attempt to catch the excited gelding’s reins before he bolted.

  Pray God, he didn’t . . . he was worth a fortune to Broxton House Livery Stables . . . she couldn’t afford it if he damaged himself . . . pray God, pray God . . .

  But Harding, for reasons best known to himself, darted across her path in Stinger’s direction and the gelding, eyes rolling, took off like lightning up the hill.

  ‘OH, SHIT!’ Maggie stormed, stamping her foot and raging at the young man, her face red and ugly with ungovernable fury. ‘How could you be so bloody infantile, you – you CREEP! What the hell did you think you were doing! I swear to Christ if Nick Ingram knew you were here he’d crucify you! He already thinks you’re a fucking PERVERT!’

  She was completely unprepared for his backhand slap that caught her a glancing blow across the side of her face and as she hit the ground with a resounding thud, the only thought in her head was: What on earth does this idiot think he’
s doing . . .?

  Ingram squinted painfully at his alarm clock when his phone rang at 6.30 a.m. He lifted the receiver and listened to a series of high-pitched, unintelligible squeaks at the other end of the line which he recognized as coming from Maggie Jenner.

  ‘You’ll have to calm down,’ he said when she finally took a breath. ‘I can’t understand a word you’re saying.’

  More squeaks.

  ‘Pull yourself together, Maggie,’ he said firmly. ‘You’re not a wimp so don’t behave like one.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said with a commendable attempt to compose herself. ‘Steven Harding hit me so Bertie went for him . . . there’s blood everywhere . . . I’ve rigged up a tourniquet on his arm but it’s not working properly . . . I don’t know what else to do . . . I think he’s going to die if he doesn’t get to hospital.’

  He sat up and rubbed his face furiously to eradicate sleep. He could hear the white noise of empty space and the sound of birdsong in the background. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘At the end of the quarry gully . . . near the steps on the coastal path . . . halfway between Chapman’s Pool and St Alban’s Head . . . Stinger’s bolted and I’m afraid he’s going to break a leg if he trips on his reins . . . we’ll lose everything . . . I think Steve’s dying . . .’ Her voice faded as she turned away from the signal. ‘Manslaughter . . . Bertie was out of control . . .’

  ‘I’m losing you, Maggie,’ he shouted.

  ‘Sorry.’ Her voice came back in a rush. ‘He’s not responding to anything. I’m worried Bertie’s severed an artery but I can’t get the tourniquet tight enough to stop the bleeding. I’m using Bertie’s lead but it’s too loose and the sticks here are all so rotten they just keep breaking.’