The Breaker

by Minette Walters

  She pressed her hands to her face. ‘I don’t see how he could have done . . . he wasn’t around for the whole week but he’s been – well, odd – ever since . . .’

  ‘When did this happen?’

  ‘Last half-term.’

  Carpenter consulted his diary. ‘Between 24 and 31 May?’

  ‘It was a bank holiday, I know that.’

  Fine.’ He smiled encouragingly. ‘Only one or two more questions, Bibi, and then we’re done. Do you remember an occasion when Tony was driving you somewhere in Steve’s car and Kate Sumner had smeared the passenger door handle with her daughter’s faeces?’

  She pulled an expression of disgust. ‘It was horrible. I got it all over my hand.’

  ‘Can you remember when that was?’

  She thought about it. ‘I think it was the beginning of June. Tony said he’d take me to the flicks in Southampton but I had to wash my hands so much to get all the filth off that in the end we never went.’

  ‘After you’d slept with Steve then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thank you. Last question. Where did Tony stay while he was away?’

  ‘Miles away,’ she said with emphasis. ‘His parents have a caravan at Lulworth Cove and Tony always goes there on his own when he needs to recharge his batteries. I keep telling him he should give up teaching because he really hates children. He says if he has a nervous breakdown it’ll be their fault, even though everyone else will say it was because he smoked too much cannabis.’

  Steven Harding’s interview was tougher. He was informed that Marie Freemantle had given the police a statement about her relationship with him and that, because of her age, he could well face charges. Nevertheless, he declined the services of a solicitor, saying he had nothing to hide. He seemed to assume that Marie had been questioned as a result of his off-the-record conversation with Nick Ingram the previous evening, and neither Carpenter nor Galbraith disabused him of the fact.

  ‘You are currently in a relationship with a fifteen-year-old by the name of Marie Freemantle?’ said Carpenter.

  Yes.’

  ‘Whom you knew to be under-age when you first had sexual intercourse with her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where does Marie live?’

  ‘Fifty-four Dancer Road, Lymington.’

  ‘Why did your agent tell us you have a girlfriend called Marie living in London?’

  ‘Because that’s where he thinks she lives. He got her some work and, as she didn’t want her parents to know about it, we gave the address of a shop in London that acts as a postal drop.’

  ‘What sort of work?’

  ‘Nude work.’

  ‘Pornography?’

  Harding looked uncomfortable. ‘Only soft porn.’

  ‘Video or stills?’

  ‘Stills.’

  ‘Were you in the shots with her?’

  ‘Some,’ he admitted.

  ‘Where are those photographs now?’

  ‘I dropped them over the side of my boat.’

  ‘Because they showed you performing indecent acts with an under-age girl?’

  ‘She doesn’t look under-age.’

  ‘Answer the question, Steve. Did you put them over the side because they showed you performing indecent acts with an under-age girl?’

  Harding nodded.

  ‘For the purposes of the tape, Steven Harding nodded agreement. Did Tony Bridges know you were sleeping with Marie Freemantle?’

  ‘What’s Tony got to do with it?’

  ‘Answer the question, Steve.’

  ‘I don’t think so. I never told him.’

  ‘Did he see the photographs of her?’

  ‘Yes. He came out to my boat on Monday and they were on the table.’

  ‘Did he see them before Monday?’

  ‘I don’t know. He trashed my boat four months ago.’ He ran his tongue round his dry mouth. ‘He might have found them then.’

  Carpenter leaned back, his fingers toying with his pen. ‘Which would have made him angry,’ he said, more as a statement than a question. ‘She’s a pupil of his and he had a fondness for her himself, albeit a hands-off one because of his position, which you knew about.’

  ‘I – er – guess so.’

  ‘We understand you met Marie Freemantle on 14 February. Was that while you were having a relationship with Kate Sumner?’

  ‘I didn’t have a relationship with Kate.’ He blinked nervously, trying like Tony the night before to pre-guess the direction the questions were going. ‘I went back to her house one time and she kind of . . . well . . . threw herself at me. It was okay, but I’ve never been that keen on older women. I made it clear I wasn’t interested in anything long term and I thought she understood. It was just a quick shag in her kitchen – nothing to get excited about.’

  ‘So when Tony tells us the relationship went on for three or four months, he’s lying?’

  ‘Oh, Jesus!’ Harding’s nervousness increased. ‘Listen, I may have given him that impression. I mean I knew Kate . . . you know, as an acquaintance . . . for quite a while before we actually got it together, and I may have . . . well, given Tony the idea there was a bit more to it than there actually was. It was a joke, really. He’s a bit of a prude.’

  Carpenter watched him for a moment, before lowering his eyes to a piece of paper on the table in front of him. ‘Three months after meeting Marie, some time during the week 24–31 May, you had a one-night stand with Bibi Gould, Tony Bridges’ girlfriend. Is that right?’

  Harding gave a small groan. ‘Oh, come on! That really was nothing. We got drunk in the pub and I took her back to Crazy Daze to sleep it off because Tony was away and his house was locked up. She came on to me a bit strong and . . . well, to be honest, I don’t remember much about it. I was rat-arsed and couldn’t swear that anything happened worth recording.’

  ‘Does Tony know?’

  He didn’t answer immediately. ‘I don’t – look, why do you keep going on about Tony?’

  ‘Answer the question, please. Does Tony know that you slept with his girlfriend?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s been a bit off recently, so I’ve been wondering if he saw me ferrying her back to the slip the next morning.’ With a worried gesture, he pulled at the hair that flopped across his forehead. ‘He was supposed to be staying the whole week in his folks’ caravan, but Bob Winterslow said he saw him that day at his grandad’s place, getting ready to tow his rib out.’

  ‘Can you remember which day it was?’

  ‘Bank holiday Monday. Bibi’s hairdressing salon doesn’t open on bank holidays which is why she was able to stay over on Sunday night.’ He waited for Carpenter to speak, and when he didn’t, he gave a small shrug. ‘Listen, it was no big deal. I planned to square it with Tony if he ever said anything’ – another shrug – ‘but he never did.’

  ‘Does he normally say something when you sleep with his girlfriends?’

  ‘I don’t make a habit of it, for Christ’s sake. The trouble is . . . well, Bibi was like Kate. You try and be nice to a woman, and the next minute they’re climbing all over you.’

  Carpenter frowned. ‘Are you saying they forced you to have intercourse with them?’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘Then spare me the excuses.’ He consulted his notes again. ‘How did your agent get the idea Bibi was your girlfriend?’

  Harding tugged at his hair again and had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘Because I told him she was a bit of a goer.’

  ‘Meaning she’d be amenable to pornographic stills?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would your agent have mentioned that to Tony?’

  Harding shook his head. ‘If he had, Tony would have taken me apart.’

  ‘Except he didn’t take you apart over Kate Sumner, did he?’

  The young man was clearly baffled by the question. ‘Tony didn’t know Kate.’

  How well did you know her, Steve?’

  ‘That’s the c
razy thing,’ he said. ‘Hardly at all . . . okay, we did it once but . . . well, it doesn’t mean you get to know someone, does it? I avoided her afterwards because it was embarrassing. Then she started treating me as if I’d wronged her in some way.’

  Carpenter pulled out Harding’s statement. ‘You claimed she was obsessed with you, Steve. “I knew she had a serious crush on me . . .”’ he read. ‘“She used to hang around by the yacht club waiting for me to come ashore . . . Most of the time she just stood and watched me, but sometimes she’d deliberately bump into me and rub her breasts against my arm . . .” Is any of that true?’

  ‘I may have exaggerated a bit. She did hang around for about a week till she realized I wasn’t interested. Then she sort of . . . well, abandoned the idea, I suppose. I didn’t see her again till she did the thing with the nappy.’

  Carpenter sorted Tony Bridges’ statement from the pile. ‘This is what Tony said: “He told me on more than one occasion this year that he was having problems with a woman called Kate Sumner who was stalking him . . .” Did you decide to exaggerate a bit when you told Tony?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you refer to Kate as a “tart”?’

  He hunched his shoulders. ‘It was just an expression.’

  ‘Did you tell Tony Kate was easy?’

  ‘Listen, it was a joke. He used to have a real hang-up about sex. Everyone used to tease him, not just me . . . then Bibi came along and he . . . well, lightened up.’

  Carpenter studied him closely for a moment. ‘So did you sleep with Bibi for a joke?’

  Harding stared at his hands. ‘I didn’t do it for any particular reason. It just happened. I mean she really was easy. The only reason she hangs around with Tony is because she’s got a thing about me. Look’ – he hunched further into his seat – ‘you don’t want to get the wrong idea about all of this.’

  ‘What wrong idea’s that, Steve?’

  ‘I don’t know, but you seem to have it in for Tony.’

  ‘With reason,’ said Carpenter, easing another piece of paper from the pile in front of him and hiding the contents with cupped fingers. ‘We’ve been told you watched him feed Bibi a drug called’ – he lowered his eyes to the paper, as if the word were written there – ‘Rohypnol so she wouldn’t complain about his performance. Is that true?’

  ‘Oh, shit!’ He rested his head in his hands. ‘I suppose Marie’s been spouting her mouth off?’ His fingers caressed his temples in soft, circular movements, and Galbraith was fascinated by the gracefulness of his actions. He was an extraordinarily beautiful young man and it didn’t surprise him that Kate had found him more attractive than William.

  ‘Is it true, Steve?’

  ‘Sort of. He told me he slipped it to her once when she was giving him a load of grief but I didn’t see him do it, and for all I know he was lying through his teeth.’

  ‘How did he know about Rohypnol?’

  ‘Everyone knows.’

  ‘Did you tell him?’

  Harding lifted his head to look at the paper in front of the Superintendent, clearly wondering how much information was written there. ‘His grandad hasn’t been sleeping too well since his wife died so the GP prescribed him Rohypnol. Tony was telling me about it, so I laughed and said it could sort all his problems if he could get hold of some of it. It’s not my fault if the stupid fucker used it.’

  ‘Have you used it, Steve?’

  ‘Do me a favour! Why would I need to?’

  A faint smile crossed Carpenter’s face as he changed tack. ‘How soon after the incident with the nappy did Kate start smearing Hannah’s faeces on your car and setting the alarm off?’

  ‘I don’t know. A few days, maybe.’

  ‘How did you know it was her?’

  ‘Because she’d left Hannah’s crap on the sheets in my boat.’

  ‘Which was some time towards the end of April?’ Harding nodded. ‘But she didn’t start this’ – Carpenter sought a suitable phrase – ‘ “dirty campaign” until after she realized you weren’t interested in pursuing a relationship with her?’

  ‘It’s not my fault,’ he said despairingly. ‘She was . . . so . . . fucking . . . boring.’

  ‘The question I asked you, Steve,’ repeated Carpenter patiently, ‘was did she start her “dirty” campaign after she realized you weren’t interested in her?’

  ‘Yes.’ He jabbed the heels of his palms against his eyelids in an effort to recall detail. ‘She just made my life hell until I couldn’t stand it any longer. That’s when I thought of persuading William to tell her I was an arse-bandit.’

  The Superintendent ran a finger down Harding’s statement. ‘Which was in June?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Any particular reason why you waited a month and a half to put a stop to it?’

  ‘Because it was getting worse not better,’ the young man said with a sudden rush of anger as if the memory still rankled deeply. ‘I thought she’d run out of steam if I was patient, but when she started targeting my dinghy, I decided enough was enough. I reckoned she’d start on Crazy Daze next, and there was no way I was going to let her do that.’

  Carpenter nodded as if he thought the explanation a reasonable one. He pulled out Harding’s statement again and ran his finger down it. ‘So you sought out William and showed him photographs of yourself in a gay magazine because you wanted him to tell his wife you were gay?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Carpenter reached for Tony Bridges’ statement. ‘Tony, on the other hand, says that when you told him you were going to report Kate to the police for harassing you, he advised you to move your car instead. According to him that’s what sorted the problem. In fact, he thought it was pretty funny when we told him last night that your solution to Kate’s harassment was to how William gay pictures of yourself. He said: “Steve always was as thick as two short planks.”’

  Harding shrugged. ‘So? It worked. That’s all I was interested in.’

  Slowly, Carpenter squared the papers on the table in front of him. ‘Why do you think that was?’ he asked. ‘I mean, you’re not seriously suggesting that a woman who was so angry at being rejected that she was prepared to harass and intimidate you for weeks would meekly give up when she found out you were gay? Or are you? Admittedly I’m no expert in mental disorders but I’d guess the intimidation would become markedly worse. No one likes to be made a fool of, Steve.’

  Harding stared at him in perplexity. ‘Except she did stop.’

  The Superintendent shook his head. ‘You can’t stop something you never started, son. Oh, she certainly wiped Hannah’s nappy on your sheets in a moment of irritation, which probably gave Tony the idea, but it wasn’t Kate who was getting her own back on you, it was your friend. It was a peculiarly apt revenge after all. You’ve been crapping on his doorstep for years. It must have given him a hell of a buzz to pay you back in your own coin. The only reason he stopped was because you were threatening to go to the police.’

  A sickly smile washed across Harding’s face like wet water colour. He looked ill, thought Carpenter with satisfaction.

  *

  William Sumner’s mother had long since given up trying to induce her son to talk. Her initial surprise at his unheralded appearance in her flat had given way to fear and, like a hostage, she sought to appease and not to confront. Whatever had brought him back to Chichester was not something he wanted to share with her. He seemed to alternate between anger and anguish, rocking himself to and fro in bouts of frenetic movement only to collapse in tear-sodden lethargy when the fit passed. She was unable to help him. He guarded the telephone with the singlemindedness of a madman and, handicapped by immobility and dread, she withdrew into silent observation.

  He had become a stranger to her in the last twelve months and a kind of subdued dislike drove her towards cruelty. She found herself despising him. He had always been spineless, she thought, which was why Kate had gained such an easy ascendancy over him. Her mouth pin
ched into lines of contempt as she listened to the dry sobs that racked his thin frame and, when he finally broke his silence, she realized with a sense of inevitability that she could have predicted what he was going to say. ‘. . . I didn’t know what to do . . .’

  She guessed he had killed his wife. She feared now he had also killed his child.

  Tony Bridges rose to his feet as the cell door opened and viewed Galbraith with an uneasy smile. He was diminished by incarceration, a small insignificant man who had discovered what it meant to have his life controlled by others. Gone was the cocksure attitude of yesterday, in its place a nervous recognition that his ability to persuade had been blunted by the stone wall of police distrust. ‘How long are you going to keep me here?’

  ‘As long as it takes, Tony.’

  ‘I don’t know what you want from me.’

  ‘The truth.’

  ‘All I did was steal a boat.’

  Galbraith shook his head. He fancied he saw a momentary regret in the frightened gaze that briefly met his before he stood back to let the young man pass. It was remorse of a kind, he supposed.

  ‘. . . I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t do it – not really. Kate would still be alive if she hadn’t tried to push me over the side. It’s her fault she’s dead. We were getting on fine until she made a lunge at me, then the next thing I knew she was in the water. You can’t blame me for that. Don’t you think I’d have drowned Hannah too if I’d intended to kill her mother . . .?’

  Chapter Twenty-five

  BROXTON HOUSE SLUMBERED peacefully in the afternoon sunshine as Nick Ingram pulled up in front of the porticoed entrance. As always he paused to admire its clean, square lines and, as always, regretted its slow deterioration. To him, perhaps more than to the Jenners, it represented something valuable, a living reminder that beauty existed in everything; but then he, despite his job, was enduringly sentimental, and they were not. The double doors stood wide open, an invitation to any passing thief, and he picked up Celia’s handbag from the hall table as he passed on his way to the drawing room. Silence lay across the house like a blanket of dust, and he worried suddenly that he had come too late. Even his own footfalls on the marble floor were just a whisper in the great emptiness that surrounded him.