The Breaker (10 page)

"A liar, more like. According to Ingram, he said he grew up on a farm in Cornwall." Galbraith raised his collar as a breeze blew down the river, reminding him that he had put on light clothes that morning when the air temperature had touched the low thirties. "Do you fancy him for it?"

Carpenter shook his head. "Not really. He's a bit too visible. I think our man's more likely to be textbook material. A loner ... poor work record ... history of failed relationships ... probably lives at home with his mother ... resents her interference in his life." He raised his nose to sniff the air. "At the moment, I'd say the husband sounds a more likely candidate."

Tony Bridges lived in a small terraced house behind the High Street and gave a nod of agreement when the gray-haired detective sergeant at his door asked if he could talk to him for a few minutes about Steven Harding. He had no shirt or shoes on, just a pair of jeans, and he weaved unsteadily down the corridor as he led the way to an untidy sitting room. He was thin and sharp-featured, with a peroxided crew-cut that didn't suit his sallow complexion, but he smiled amiably enough as he gestured DS Campbell through the door. Campbell, who thought he smelled cannabis in the air, had the distinct impression that visits from the police were not unusual and suspected the neighbors had much to put up with.

The house gave the impression of multiple occupancy, with a couple of bicycles leaning against the wall at the end of the corridor, and assorted clothes lying in heaps about the furniture and floor. Dozens of empty lager cans had been tossed into an old beer crate in a corner-left over, Campbell presumed, from a long-dead party-and overflowing ashtrays reeked into the atmosphere. Campbell wondered what the kitchen was like. If it was as rank as the sitting room, it probably had rats, he thought.

"If his car alarm's gone off again," said Bridges, "then it's the garage you want to talk to.
They
fitted the sodding thing, and I'm sick to death of people phoning you lot about it when he's not here. I don't even know why he bothered to have it put in. The car's a pile of crap, so I can't see anyone wanting to steal it." He picked up an opened Enigma can from the floor and used it to point to a chair. "Take a pew. Do you want a lager?"

"No thanks." Campbell sat down. "It's not about his alarm, sir. We're asking routine questions of everyone who knows him in order to eliminate him from an inquiry, and we were given your name by his agent."

"What inquiry?"

"A woman drowned on Saturday night and Mr. Harding reported finding the body."

"Is that right? Shit! Who was it?"

"A local woman by the name of Kate Sumner. She lived in Rope Walk with her husband and daughter."

"Fucking Nora! Are you serious?"

"Did you know her?"

Tony took a swill from the can. "I knew
of
her, but I never met her. She had this thing about Steve. He helped her out once with her kid, and she wouldn't leave him alone. It used to drive him mad."

"Who told you this?"

"Steve, of course. Who else?" He shook his head. "No wonder he drank himself stupid last night if he's the one who found her."

"He wasn't. Some boys found her. He made the phone call on their behalf."

Bridges pondered for several moments in silence, and it was clearly hard work. Whatever anesthetic he'd taken-cannabis, alcohol, or both-he was having trouble getting his mind into gear. "This doesn't make sense," he said with sudden belligerence, his eyes focusing on Campbell like two little spy cameras. "I know for a fact Steve wasn't in Lymington on Saturday night. I saw him Friday night, and he told me he was going to Poole for the weekend. His boat was out all Saturday and Sunday, which means there's no way he could have reported a drowning in Lymington."

"She didn't drown here, sir. She drowned off the coast about twenty miles from Poole."

"Ah, shit!" He emptied the lager can with one swallow, then crumpled it between his fist and threw it at the beer crate. "Look, it's pointless asking me any more questions. I don't know anything about anyone drowning. Okay? I'm a mate of Steve's, not his blasted keeper."

Campbell nodded. "Fair enough. So, as a mate, do you know if he has a girlfriend down here called Bibi or Didi, Mr. Bridges?"

Tony leveled an accusing finger. "What the hell
is
this?" he demanded. "Over my dead body are these routine questions. What's going on?"

The DS looked thoughtful. "Steve isn't answering his telephone, so his agent's the only person we've been able to talk to. He told us Steve had a girlfriend in Lymington called Bibi or Didi, and he suggested we contact you for her address. Is that a problem for you?"

"To-ony!"
called a drunken female voice from upstairs.
"I'm wa-aiting!"

"Too right it's a problem," said Bridges angrily. "That's Bibi, and she's
my
sodding girlfriend, not Steve's. I'll kill the bastard if he's been two-timing me."

There was the sound of a body slumping on the floor upstairs.
"I'm going to sle-ep again, Tony!"
 

Carpenter and Galbraith traveled out to
Crazy Daze
on the harbormaster's rib-a souped-up dinghy with a fiberglass keel and a steering column-captained by one of his young assistants. The night air had become noticeably cold after the heat of the day, and both men wished they had had the sense to wear sweaters or fleeces under their jackets. A stiff breeze was funneling down the Solent, making rigging lines rattle noisily against the forest of masts in the Berthon and Yacht Haven marinas. Ahead of them the Isle of Wight crouched like a slumbering beast against the shadowy sky and the lights from the approaching Yarmouth-Lymington ferry danced in reflection across the waves.

The harbormaster had been amused by police suspicion over their fruitless attempts to raise Harding via radio or mobile telephone. "Do the man a favor! Why should he waste his batteries on the odd chance that you lot want to talk to him? There's no shore power to boats on the buoys. He lights the saloon with a butane gas lamp-claims it's romantic-which is why he prefers a buoy in the river to a pontoon in a marina. That, and the fact that once on board the girls are dependent on him and his dinghy to get them off again."

"Does he take many girls out there?" asked Galbraith.

"I wouldn't know. I've got better things to do than keep a tally of Steve's conquests. He prefers blonds, I know that. I've seen him with a right little stunner recently."

"Small, curly blond hair, blue eyes?"

"Far as I recall, she had straight hair, but don't quote me on it. I'm no good with faces."

"Any idea what time Steve's boat left on Saturday morning?" asked Carpenter.

The harbormaster shook his head. "I can't even see it from here. Ask at the yacht club."

"We already have. No luck."

"Wait till the weekenders come down on Saturday then. They'll be your best bet."

The rib slowed as it approached Harding's sloop. Yellow light glimmered in the midship portholes, and a rubber dinghy bobbed astern in the wash from the ferry. From inside came the faint sound of music.

"Hey, Steve," shouted the harbormaster's lad, rapping smartly on the port planking. "It's Gary. You've got visitors, mate."

Harding's voice came faintly. "Bog off, Gary! I'm sick."

"No can do. It's the police. They want to talk to you. Come on, open up, and give us a hand."

The music ceased abruptly, and Harding hoisted himself through the open companionway into the cockpit. "What's up?" he asked, surveying the two detectives with an ingenuous smile. "I guess this has something to do with that woman yesterday? Were the boys lying about the binoculars?"

"We've a few follow-up questions," said Detective Superintendent Carpenter with an equally ingenuous smile. "Can we come on board?"

"Sure." He hopped onto the deck and reached down to assist Carpenter before turning to help his companion.

"My shift ends at ten," the lad called to the police officers. "I'll be back in forty minutes to take you off. If you want to leave earlier call on your mobile. Steve knows the number. Otherwise get him to bring you back."

They watched him turn away in a wide circle, carving a gleaming wake out of the water as he headed upriver toward the town.

"You'd better come below," said Harding. "It's cold out here." He was dressed-much to Galbraith's relief-in the same sleeveless T-shirt and shorts he'd been wearing the day before, and he shivered as a wind blew across the salt flats at the entrance to the river. Barefoot himself, he looked critically at the policemen's shoes. "You'll have to take those off," he told them. "It's taken me two years to get the planking looking like this, and I don't want it marked."

Obligingly, the two men unlaced their boots before padding across to the companionway in search of welcome warmth. The atmosphere inside the saloon was still redolent of the previous night's heavy drinking session, and even without the evidence of the empty whisky bottle which stood on the table, neither officer had any difficulty guessing why Harding had described himself as "sick." The muted light of the single gas-operated lamp served only to accentuate the hollows in his cheeks and the dark stubble around his unshaven jaw, and the brief glimpse they had of the tumbled sheets in the forward cabin before he closed the door left neither of them in any doubt that he'd spent most of the day sleeping off a ferocious hangover.

"What kind of follow-up questions?" he asked, sliding onto a bench seat at the side of the table and gesturing them to take the other.

"Routine ones, Mr. Harding," said the superintendent.

"About what?"

"Yesterday's events."

He pressed the heels of his palms against his lids and rotated them fiercely as if to drive out demons. "I don't know any more than I told the other guy," he said, eyes watering as he lowered his hands. "And most of that was what the boys told me. They reckoned she drowned and got left on the beach. Were they right?"

"It certainly looks that way."

He hunched forward over the table. "I'm thinking about making a complaint against that copper. He was bloody rude, made out me and the kids had something to do with the body being there. I didn't mind for myself so much, but I was pretty pissed off for the boys. They were scared of him. I mean, let's face it, it can't be much fun finding a corpse-and then to have some idiot in hobnailed boots making the whole situation worse..." He broke off with a shake of his head. "Matter of fact I think he was jealous. I was chatting up this bird when he came back, and he looked bloody furious about it. I reckon he fancies her himself, but he's such a dozy pillock he hasn't done anything about it."

As neither Galbraith nor Carpenter rose in Ingram's defense, a silence fell during which the two policemen cast interested glances about the saloon. In other circumstances the light may well have been romantic, but to a couple of law officers intent on spotting anything that might connect its owner to a brutal rape and murder it was worse than useless. Too much of the interior was obscured by shadow, and if there was evidence that Kate and Hannah Sumner had been on board the previous Saturday then it wasn't obvious.

"What do you want to know?" asked Harding then. He was watching John Galbraith as he spoke, and there was something in his eye-
triumph? amusement?
-that made Galbraith think the silence had been deliberate. He had given them an opportunity to look, and they had only themselves to blame if they were disappointed.

"We understand you berthed in Salterns Marina on Saturday night and stayed there most of Sunday?" said Carpenter.

"Yes."

"What time did you tie up, Mr. Harding?"

"I've no idea." He frowned. "Pretty late. What's that got to do with anything?"

"Do you keep a log?"

He glanced toward his chart table. "When I remember."

"May I look at it?"

"Why not?" He leaned over and retrieved a battered exercise book from the clutter of paper on the lid of the chart table. "It's hardly great literature." He handed it across.

Carpenter read the last six entries.

"You certainly don't waste your words much, do you?" he murmured, flicking back through the pages to look at other entries. "Doesn't wind speed or course ever feature in your log?"

"Not often."

"Is there a reason for that?"

The young man shrugged. "I know the course to everywhere on the south coast, so I don't need to keep reminding myself, and wind speed is wind speed. That's part of the beauty of it. Any journey takes as long as it takes. If you're the sort of impatient type who's only interested in arrivals, then sailing will drive you nuts. On a bad day it can take hours to go a few miles."