The Breaker

by Minette Walters

  ‘Let’s just say we’re interested in discrepancies.’

  The young man shrugged. ‘I don’t see what difference it makes. It’s got nothing to do with anything.’

  ‘We like to be accurate.’ Galbraith consulted his notebook. ‘According to her, the reason she’s never been on Crazy Daze is because Steve banned you from using it the week before you met her. “Tony trashed the boat when he was drunk,”’ he read, ‘“and Steve blew his stack. He said Tony could go on using the car but Crazy Daze was off limits.”’ He looked up. ‘Why did you lie about taking Bibi on board?’

  ‘To wipe the stupid smirk off your face, I expect. It pisses me off the way you bastards behave. You’re all fascists.’ He hunched forward, eyes burning angrily. ‘I haven’t forgotten you were planning to drag me through the streets in the buff even if you have.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with Bibi?’

  ‘You wanted an answer so I gave you one.’

  ‘How about this for an answer instead? You knew Bibi had been on board with Steve, so you decided to offer an explanation for why her fingerprints were there. You knew we’d find yours because you went out to Crazy Daze on Monday, and you thought you’d be safe pretending you and Bibi had been there together. But the only place we lifted your prints in the cabin, Tony, was on the foreward hatch, while Bibi’s were all over the headboard behind the bed. She likes being on top, presumably?’

  He dropped his head in misery. ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘It must drive you up the wall the way Steve keeps stealing your girlfriends.’

  Chapter Twenty-four

  MAGGIE LOWERED HER aching arms and tapped pointedly on her watch when Nick shouldered his way through the scullery door, carrying an aluminium stepladder. She was perched precariously on a garden chair on top of the kitchen table, her hair sticky with cobwebs, her rolled-up sleeves saturated with water. ‘What sort of time do you call this?’ she demanded. ‘It’s a quarter to ten and I have to be up at five o’clock tomorrow morning to see to the horses.’

  ‘Good God, woman!’ he declared plaintively. ‘A night without sleep won’t kill you. Live dangerously and see how you enjoy it.’

  ‘I expected you hours ago.’

  ‘Then don’t marry a policeman,’ he said, setting up his ladder under the uncleaned part of the ceiling.

  ‘Chance’d be a fine thing.’

  He grinned up at her. ‘You mean you’d contemplate it?’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ she said, as if offering him a challenge to even try and chat her up. ‘All I meant was that no policeman has ever asked me.’

  ‘He wouldn’t dare.’ He opened the cupboard under the sink and hunkered down to inspect it for cleaning implements and buckets. She was above him – like the rare occasions when she met him on horseback – and she felt an awful temptation to take advantage of the fact by dripping water on to the back of his neck. ‘Don’t even think about it,’ he said, without looking up, ‘or I’ll leave you to do the whole bloody lot on your own.’

  She chose to ignore him, preferring dignity to humiliation. ‘How did you get on?’ she asked, stepping down from the chair to dunk her sponge in the bucket on the table.

  ‘Rather well.’

  ‘I thought you must have done. Your tail’s wagging.’ She climbed back on to the chair. ‘What did Steve say?’

  ‘You mean apart from agreeing with everything in your statement?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He told me what he was doing at Chapman’s Pool on Sunday.’ He looked up at her. ‘He’s a complete idiot, but I don’t think he’s a rapist or a murderer.’

  ‘So you were wrong about him?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Good. It’s bad for your character to have everything your own way. What about paedophile?’

  ‘It depends on your definition of paedophilia.’ He swung forward a chair and straddled it, resting his elbows along the back, content to watch her work. ‘He’s besotted with a fifteen-year-old girl who’s so unhappy at home she keeps threatening to kill herself. She’s an absolute stunner apparently, nearly six feet tall, looks twenty-five, ought to be a supermodel and turns heads wherever she goes. Her parents are separated and fight like cat and dog – her mother’s jealous of her – her father has a string of bimbos – she’s four months pregnant by Steve – refuses to have an abortion – weeps all over his manly bosom every time she sees him’ – he lifted a sardonic eyebrow – ‘which is probably why he finds her attractive – and is so desperate to have the baby and so desperate to be loved that she’s twice tried to slit her wrists. Steve’s solution to all this was to whisk her off to France in Crazy Daze where they could live’ – another sardonic lift of an eyebrow – ‘love’s young dream without her parents having any idea where she’d gone or who she’d gone with.’

  Maggie chuckled. ‘I told you he was a good Samaritan.’

  ‘Bluebeard, more like. She’s fifteen.’

  ‘And looks twenty-five.’

  ‘If you believe Steve.’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Put it this way,’ he said dispassionately, ‘I wouldn’t let him within half a mile of a daughter of mine. He’s oversexed, deeply enamoured with himself and has the morals of an alleycat.’

  ‘A bit like the weasel I married in other words?’ she asked dryly.

  ‘No question about it.’ He grinned up at her. ‘But then I’m prejudiced of course.’

  There was a glint of amusement in her eyes. ‘So what happened? He got sidetracked by Paul and Danny and the whole thing went pear-shaped?’

  He nodded. ‘He realized, when he had to identify himself, that there was no point going on with it and signalled to his girlfriend to abandon it. Since when, he’s had one tearful conversation with her over his mobile on his way back to Lymington on Sunday night, and hasn’t been able to talk to her since because he’s either been under arrest or separated from his phone. The rule is, she always calls him, and as he hasn’t heard from her he’s terrified she’s killed herself.’

  ‘Is it true?’

  ‘No. One of the messages on his mobile was from her.’

  ‘Still . . . poor boy. You’ve locked him up again, haven’t you? He must be worried sick. Couldn’t you have let him talk to her?’

  He wondered at the vagaries of human nature. He would have bet on her sympathies being with the girl. ‘Not allowed.’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ she said crossly. ‘That’s just cruel.’

  ‘No. Common sense. Personally, I wouldn’t trust him further than I could throw him. He’s committed several crimes, don’t forget. Assault on you, sex with an under-age girl, conspiracy to abduct, not to mention gross indecency and committing lewd acts in public . . .’

  ‘Oh my God! You haven’t charged him with having an erection, have you?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘You are cruel,’ she said in disgust. ‘It was obviously his girlfriend he was looking at through the binoculars. On that basis you should have arrested Martin every time he put his hand on my arse.’

  ‘I couldn’t,’ he said seriously. ‘You never objected, so it didn’t constitute an assault.’

  There was a twinkle in her eye. ‘What happened to indecency?’

  ‘I never caught him with his trousers down,’ he said with regret. ‘I did try, but he was too bloody quick every time.’

  ‘Are you winding me up?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m courting you.’

  Half-asleep, Sandy Griffiths squinted at the luminous hands on her clock through gritty eyes, saw that it was three o’clock, and tried to remember if William had gone out earlier. Yet again, something had disturbed her intermittent dozing. She thought it was the front door closing, although she couldn’t be sure if the sound had been real or if she’d dreamt it. She listened for footfalls on the stairs but, hearing only silence, stumbled out of bed and dragged on her dressing gown. Babies she thought she could probably cope with – a husband, NEVER . . .
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  She switched on the landing lamp and pushed open Hannah’s bedroom door. A wedge of light cut across the cot, and her alarm subsided immediately. The child sat in the concentrated immobility that seemed to be her nature, thumb in mouth, staring wide-eyed with her curiously intense gaze. If she recognized Griffiths, she didn’t show it. Instead she looked through her as if her mind saw images behind and beyond the woman that had no basis in reality, and Griffiths realized she was fast asleep. It explained the cot and the locks on all the doors. They were there to protect a sleepwalker, she understood belatedly, not to deprive a conscious child of adventure.

  From outside, muffled by closed doors, she heard the sound of a car starting, followed by gears engaging and the scrunch of tyres on the drive. What the hell did the bloody man think he was doing now, she wondered? Did he seriously believe that abandoning his daughter in the early hours of the morning would endear him to social services? Or was that the whole point? Had he decided to ditch the responsibility once and for all?

  Wearily she leaned against the door jamb and studied Kate’s blank-eyed, blonde-haired replica with compassion and thought about what the doctor had said when he saw the smashed photographs in the fireplace. ‘She’s angry with her mother for deserting her . . . it’s a perfectly normal expression of grief . . . get her father to cuddle her . . . that’s the best way to fill the gap . . .’

  William Sumner’s disappearance raised a few eyebrows in the incident room at Winfrith when Griffiths notified them of it, but little real interest. As so often in his life, he had ceased to matter. Instead, the spotlight turned on Beatrice ‘Bibi’ Gould who, when police knocked on her parents’ door at 7.00 a.m. on Saturday morning, inviting her back to Winfrith for further questioning, burst into tears and locked herself in the bathroom, refusing to come out. When threatened with immediate arrest for obstruction, and on the promise that her parents could accompany her, she finally agreed to come out. Her fear seemed out of proportion to the police request and when asked to explain it she said, ‘Everyone is going to be angry with me.’

  Following a brief appearance before magistrates on his assault charge, Steven Harding, too, was invited for further questioning. He was chauffeured by a yawning Nick Ingram who took the opportunity to impart a few facts of life to the immature young man at his side. ‘Just for the record, Steve, I’d break your legs if it was my fifteen-year-old daughter you’d got pregnant. As a matter of fact, I’d break your legs if you even laid a finger on her.’

  Harding was unrepentant. ‘Life’s not like that any more. You can’t order girls to behave the way you want them to behave. They decide for themselves.’

  ‘Watch my lips, Steve. I said it’s your legs I’d be breaking, not my daughter’s. Trust me, the day I find a twenty-four-year-old man besmirching a beautiful child of mine is the day that bastard will wish he’d kept his zip done up.’ Out of the corner of his eye he watched words begin to form on Harding’s lips. ‘And don’t tell me she wanted it just as much as you did,’ he snarled, ‘or I’d be tempted to break your arms as well. Any little jerk can persuade a vulnerable adolescent into bed with him as long as he promises to love her. It takes a man to give her time to learn if the promise is worth anything.’

  Bibi Gould refused to have her father in the interview room with her, but begged for her mother to sit with her and hold her hand. On the other side of the table, Detective Superintendent Carpenter and DI Galbraith took her through her previous statement. She quailed visibly in front of Carpenter’s frown, and he only had to say: ‘We believe you’ve been lying to us, young lady,’ for the floodgates of truth to open.

  ‘Dad doesn’t like me spending weekends at Tony’s . . . says I’m making myself cheap . . . He’d have gone spare if he’d known I’d passed out. Tony said it was alcohol poisoning because I was vomiting blood, but I think it was the bad E that his friend sold him . . . I was sick for hours after I came round . . . Dad would have killed me if he’d known . . . He hates Tony . . . He thinks he’s a bad influence.’ She laid her head on her mother’s shoulder and sobbed heartily.

  ‘When was this?’ asked Carpenter.

  ‘Last weekend. We were going to this rave in Southampton so Tony got some E from this bloke he knows . . .’ She faltered to a stop.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Everyone’s going to be angry,’ she wailed. ‘Tony said why should we get his friend into trouble just because Steve’s boat was in the wrong place.’

  With considerable effort Carpenter managed to smooth his frown into something approaching fatherly kindness. ‘We’re not interested in Tony’s friend, Bibi, we’re only interested in getting an accurate picture of where everyone was last weekend. You’ve told us you’re fond of Steven Harding,’ he said disingenuously, ‘and it will help Steve considerably if we can clear up some of the discrepancies around his story. You and Tony claimed you didn’t see him on Saturday because you went to a rave in Southampton. Is that true?’

  ‘It’s true we didn’t see him.’ She sniffed. ‘At least I didn’t . . . I suppose Tony might have done . . . but it’s not true about the rave. It didn’t start till ten, so Tony said we might as well get in the mood earlier. The trouble is I can’t remember much about it . . . We’d been drinking since five and then I took the E . . .’ She wept into her mother’s shoulder again.

  ‘For the record, Bibi, you’re telling us you took an Ecstasy tablet supplied to you by your boyfriend, Tony Bridges?’

  She was alarmed by his tone. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

  ‘Have you ever passed out before in Tony’s company?’

  ‘Sometimes . . . if I drink too much.’

  Pensively, Carpenter stroked his jaw. ‘Do you know what time you took the tablet on Saturday?’

  ‘Seven, maybe. I can’t really remember.’ She blew her nose into a Kleenex. ‘Tony said he hadn’t realized how much I’d been drinking, and that if he had he wouldn’t have given it to me. It was awful . . . I’m never going to drink or take Ecstasy ever again . . . I’ve been feeling ill all week.’ She raised a wan smile. ‘I reckon it’s true what they say about it. Tony thinks I was lucky not to die.’

  Galbraith was less inclined to be fatherly. His private opinion of her was that she was a blousy slag with too much puppy fat and too little self-control, and he seriously pondered the mysteries of nature and chemistry that meant a girl like this could cause a previously sane man to behave with insanity. ‘You were drunk again on Monday,’ he reminded her, ‘when DS Campbell visited Tony’s house in the evening.’

  She flicked him a sly up-from-under look that curdled any remnants of sympathy he might have had. ‘I only had two lagers,’ she said. ‘I thought they’d make me feel better – but they didn’t.’

  Carpenter tapped his pen on the table to bring her attention back to him. ‘What time did you come round on Sunday morning, Bibi?’

  She shrugged self-pityingly. ‘I don’t know. Tony said I was sick for about ten hours, and I didn’t stop till seven o’clock on Sunday evening. That’s why I was late back to my parents’.’

  ‘So about nine o’clock on Sunday morning then?’

  She nodded. ‘About that.’ She turned her wet face to her mother. ‘I’m ever so sorry, Mum. I’m never going to do it again.’

  Mrs Gould squeezed the girl’s shoulder and looked pleadingly at the two policemen. ‘Does this mean she’ll be prosecuted?’

  ‘What for, Mrs Gould?’

  ‘Taking Ecstasy?’

  The Superintendent shook his head. ‘I doubt it. As things stand, there isn’t any evidence that she took any.’ Rohypnol, maybe . . . ‘But you’re a very stupid young woman, Bibi, and I trust you won’t come whining to the police with your troubles the next time you accept unknown and unidentified tablets from a man. Like it or not, you bear responsibility for your own behaviour, and the best advice I can offer you is to listen to your father once in a while.’

  Good one, guv, thought Galbraith.

  Carpent
er tented his fingers over Bibi’s previous statement. ‘I don’t like liars, young woman. None of us does. I think you told another lie last night to my colleague DI Galbraith, didn’t you?’

  Her eyes stretched in a kind of panic but she didn’t answer.

  ‘You said you’ve never been on Crazy Daze when we think you have.’

  ‘I haven’t.’

  ‘You volunteered a set of your fingerprints at the beginning of the week. They match several sets found in the cabin of Steve’s boat. Would you care to explain their presence in light of your denial that you’ve never been there?’ He scowled at her.

  ‘It’s . . . Tony doesn’t know, you see . . . oh God!’ She shook with nerves. ‘It was just . . . Steve and I got drunk one night when Tony was away. He’d be so hurt if he found out . . . he’s got this thing about Steve being good-looking, and it’d kill him if he found out that we . . . well, you know . . .’

  ‘That you had intercourse with Steven Harding on board Crazy Daze?’

  ‘We were drunk. I don’t even remember much about it. It didn’t mean anything,’ she said desperately, as if disloyalty could be excused when alcohol loosened inhibitions. But perhaps the concept of in vino veritas was too obscure for an immature nineteen-year-old to understand.

  ‘Why are you so frightened of Tony finding out?’ asked Carpenter curiously.

  ‘I’m not.’ Her eyes stretched wider in a visible demonstration that she was lying.

  ‘What does he do to you, Bibi?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s just . . . he gets really jealous sometimes.’

  ‘Of Steve?’

  She nodded.

  ‘How does he show it?’

  She licked her lips. ‘He’s only done it once. He jammed my fingers in the car door after he found me in the pub with Steve. He said it was an accident, but . . . well . . . I don’t think it was.’

  ‘Was that before or after you slept with Steve?’

  ‘After.’

  ‘So he knew what you and Steve had done?’