Breaker

by Minette Walters

  "I don't need this," she said tiredly. "It's none of your business anyway. We manage fine on our own."

  He watched her for a moment, then turned back to the sink, emptying the mugs of bleach and rinsing them under the tap. He jerked his head toward the kettle. "Your mother would like a cup of tea, and I suggest you put several spoonfuls of sugar in it to bring up her energy levels. I also suggest you make one for yourself. The GP said he'd be here by eleven." He dried his hands on a tea towel and rolled down his sleeves.

  "Where are you going?" she asked him.

  "Up to the headland. I want to try and find out why Harding came back. Does your mother have any freezer bags?"

  "No. We can't afford a freezer."

  "Cling film?"

  "In the drawer by the sink."

  "Can I take it?" "

  "I suppose so." She watched him remove the roll and tuck it under his arm. "What do you want it for?"

  "Evidence," he said unhelpfully, making for the door.

  She watched him in a kind of despair. "What about me and Ma?"

  He turned with a frown. "What about you?"

  "God, I don't know," she said crossly. "We're both pretty shaken, you know. That bloody man hit me, in case you've forgotten. Aren't the police supposed to stay around when women get attacked? Take statements or something?"

  "Probably," he agreed, "but this is my day off. I turfed out to help you as a friend, not as a policeman, and I'm only following up on Harding because I'm involved in the Kate Sumner case. Don't worry," he said with a comforting smile, "you're in no danger from him, not while he's in Poole, but dial nine-nine-nine if you need someone to hold your hand."

  She glared at him. "I want him prosecuted, which means I want you to take a statement now."

  "Mmm, well, don't forget I'll be taking one from him, too," Ingram pointed out, "and you may not be so eager to go for his jugular if he opts to counterprosecute on the grounds that he's the one who suffered the injuries because you didn't have your dog under proper control. It's going to be your word against his," he said, making for the door, "which is one of the reasons why I'm going back up there now."

  She sighed. "I suppose you're hurt because I told you to mind your own business?"

  "Not in the least," he said, disappearing into the scullery. "Try angry or bored."

  "Do you want me to say sorry?" she called after him. "Well, okay ... I'm tired ... I'm stressed out, and I'm not in the best of moods but"-she gritted her teeth-"I'll say 'sorry' if that's what you want."

  But her words fell on stony ground, because all she heard was the sound of the back door closing behind him.

  The detective inspector had been silent so long that William Sumner grew visibly nervous. "There you are then," he said again. "I couldn't possibly have drowned her, could I?" Anxiety had set his eyelid fluttering, and he looked absurdly comical every time his lid winked. "I don't understand why you keep hounding me. You said you were looking for someone with a boat, but you know I haven't got one. And I don't understand why you released Steven Harding when WPC Griffiths said he was seen talking to Kate outside Tesco's on Saturday morning."

  WPC Griffiths should learn to keep her mouth shut, thought Galbraith in annoyance. Not that he blamed her. Sumner was bright enough to read between the lines of newspaper reports about "a young Lymington actor being taken in for questioning" and then press for answers. "Briefly," he said, "then they went their separate ways. She talked to a couple of market stallholders afterward, but Harding wasn't with her."

  "Well, it wasn't me who did it." He winked. "So there must be someone else you haven't found yet."

  "That's certainly one way of looking at it." Galbraith lifted a photograph of Kate off the table beside him. "The trouble is looks are so often deceptive. I mean, take Kate here. You see this?" He turned the picture toward the husband. "The first impression she gives is that butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, but the more you learn about her the more you realize that isn't true. Let me tell you what I know of her." He held up his fingers and ticked the points off as he spoke. "She wanted money and she didn't really mind how she got it. She manipulated people in order to achieve her ambitions. She could be cruel. She told lies if necessary. Her goal was to climb the social ladder and become accepted within a milieu she admired, and as long as it brought the goalposts closer, she was prepared to play-act whatever role was required of her, sex being the major weapon in her armory. The one person she couldn't manipulate successfully was your mother, so she dealt with her in the only way possible-by moving away from her influence." He dropped his hand to his lap and looked at the other man with genuine sympathy. "How long was it before you realized you'd been suckered, William?"

  "I suppose you've been talking to that bloody policewoman?"

  "Among other people."

  "She made me angry. I said things I didn't mean."

  Galbraith shook his head. "Your mother's view of your marriage wasn't so different," he pointed out. "She may not have used the terms 'landlady' or 'cheap boarding-house,' but she certainly gave the impression of an unfulfilled and unfulfilling relationship. Other people have described it as unhappy, based on sex, cool, boring. Are any of those descriptions accurate? Are they all accurate?"

  Sumner pressed his finger and thumb to the bridge of his nose. "You don't kill your wife because you're bored with her," he muttered.

  Galbraith wondered again at the man's naivete. Boredom was precisely why most men killed their wives. They might disguise it by claiming provocation or jealousy, but in the end, a desire for something different was usually the reason-even if the difference was simply escape. "Except I'm told it wasn't so much a question of boredom but more a question of you taking her for granted. And that interests me. You see, I wonder what a man like you would do if the woman you'd been taking for granted suddenly decided she wasn't going to play the game anymore."

  Sumner stared back at him with disdain. "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "Or if," Galbraith went on relentlessly, "you discovered that what you'd been taking for granted wasn't true. Such as being a father, for example."

  Ingram's assumption was that Harding had come back for his rucksack because, despite the man's claim that the rucksack found on board Crazy Daze was the one he'd been carrying, Ingram remained convinced that it wasn't. Paul and Danny Spender had been too insistent that it was big for Ingram to accept that a triangular one fitted the description. Also, he remained suspicious about why Harding had left it behind when he took the boys down to the boat sheds. Nevertheless, the logic of why he had descended to the beach that morning, only to climb up again empty-handed, was far from obvious. Had someone else found the rucksack and removed it? Had Harding weighted it with a rock and thrown it into the sea? Had he even left it there in the first place?

  In frustration, he slithered down a gully in the shale precipice to where the grassy slope at the end of the quarry valley undulated softly toward the sea. It was a western-facing cliff out of sight of the sun, and he shivered as the cold and damp penetrated his flimsy T-shirt and sweater. He turned to look back toward the cleft in the cliff, giving himself a rough idea of where Harding must have emerged in front of Maggie. Shale still pattered down the gully Ingram himself had used, and he noticed what was obviously a recent slide farther to the left. He walked over to it, wondering if Harding had dislodged it in his ascent, but the surface was damp with dew and he decided it must have happened a few days previously.

  He turned his attention to the shore below, striding down the grass to take a closer look. Pieces of driftwood and old plastic containers had wedged themselves into cracks in the rocks, but there was no sign of a black or green rucksack. He felt exhausted suddenly, and wondered what the hell he was doing there. He'd planned to spend his day in total idleness aboard Miss Creant, and he really didn't appreciate giving it up for a wild-goose chase. He raised his eyes to the clouds skudding in on a southwesterly breeze and sighed his frustration to the wi
nds..

  Maggie put a cup of tea on the table beside her mother's bed. "I've made it very sweet," she said. "Nick said you needed your energy levels raised." She looked at the dreadful state of the top blanket, worn and covered in stains, then noticed the tannin dribbles on Celia's bed-jacket. She wondered what the sheets looked like-it was ages since Broxton House had boasted a washing machine-and wished angrily that she had never introduced the word "slob" into her conversation with Nick.

  "I'd rather have a brandy," said Celia with a sigh.

  "So would I," said Maggie shortly, "but we haven't got any." She stood by the window, looking at the garden, her own cup cradled between her hands. "Why does he want to get even with you, Ma?"

  "Did you ask him?"

  "Yes. He said it was a private joke."

  Celia chuckled. "Where is he?"

  "Gone."

  "I hope you thanked him for me."

  "I didn't. He started ordering me about, so I sent him away with a flea in his ear."

  Her mother eyed her curiously for a moment. "How odd of him," she said, reaching for her tea. "What sort of orders was he giving you?"

  "Snide ones."

  "Oh, I see."

  Maggie shook her head. "I doubt you do," she said, addressing the garden. "He's like Matt and Ava, thinks society would have better value out of this house if we were evicted and it was given to a homeless family."

  Celia took a sip of her tea and leaned back against her pillows. "Then I understand why you're so angry," she said evenly. "It's always irritating when someone's right."

  "He called you a slob and said it was a miracle you hadn't come down with food poisoning."

  Celia pondered for a moment. "I find that hard to believe if he wasn't prepared to tell you why he wanted to get even with me. Also, he's a polite young man and doesn't use words like 'slob.' That's more your style, isn't it, darling?" She watched her daughter's rigid back for a moment but, in the absence of any response, went on: "If he'd really wanted to get even with me, he'd have spiked my guns a long time ago. I was extremely rude to him, and I've regretted it ever since."

  "What did you do?"

  "He came to me two months before your wedding with a warning about your fiance, and I sent him away"-Celia paused to recall the words Maggie had used-"with a flea in his ear." Neither she nor Maggie could ever think of the man who had wheedled his way into their lives by his real name, Robert Healey, but only by the name they had come to associate with him, Martin Grant. It was harder for Maggie, who had spent three months as Mrs. Martin Grant before being faced with the unenviable task of informing banks and corporations that neither the name nor the title belonged to her. "Admittedly the evidence against Martin was very thin," Celia went on. "Nick accused him of trying to con Jane Fielding's parents-in-law out of several thousand pounds by posing as an antiques dealer-with everything resting on old Mrs. Fielding's insistence that Martin was the man who came to their door-but if I'd listened to Nick instead of castigating him..." She broke off. "The trouble was he made me angry. He kept asking me what I knew of Martin's background, and when I told him Martin's father was a coffee-grower in Kenya, Nick laughed and said, how convenient."

  "Did you show him the letters they wrote to us?"

  "Supposedly wrote," Celia corrected her. "And, yes, of course I did. It was the only proof we had that Martin came from a respectable background. But, as Nick so rightly pointed out, the address was a PO box number in Nairobi, which proved nothing. He said anyone could conduct a fake correspondence through an anonymous box number. What he wanted was Martin's previous address in Britain, and all I could give him was the address of the flat Martin was renting in Bournemouth." She sighed. "But as Nick said, you don't have to be the son of a coffee planter to rent a flat, and he told me I'd be wise to make a few inquiries before I allowed my daughter to marry someone I knew nothing about."

  Maggie turned to look at her. "Then why didn't you?"

  "Oh, I don't know." Her mother sighed. "Perhaps because Nick was so appallingly pompous ... Perhaps because on the one occasion that I dared to question Martin's suitability as a husband"-she lifted her eyebrows- "you called me a meddling bitch and refused to speak to me for several weeks. I think I asked you if you could really marry a man who was afraid of horses, didn't I?"

  "Ye-es," said her daughter slowly, "and I should have listened to you. I'm sorry now that I didn't." She crossed her arms. "What did you say to Nick?"

  "More or less what you just said about him," said Celia. "I called him a jumped-up little oik with a Hitler complex and tore strips off him for having the brass nerve to slander my future son-in-law. Then I asked him which day Mrs. Fielding claimed to have seen Martin, and when he told me, I lied and said she couldn't possibly have done because Martin was out riding with you and me."

  "Oh my God!" said Maggie. "How could you do that?"

  "Because it never occurred to me for one moment that Nick was right," said Celia with an ironic smile. "After all, he was just a common or garden-variety policeman and Martin was such a gent. Oxford graduate. Old Etonian. Heir to a coffee plantation. So who wins the prize for stupidity now, darling? You or me?"

  Maggie shook her head. "Couldn't you at least have told me about it? Forewarned might have been forearmed."

  "Oh, I don't think so. You were always so cruel about Nick after Martin pointed out that the poor lad blushed like a beetroot every time he saw you. I remember you laughing and saying that even beetroots have more sex appeal than overweight Neanderthals in policemen's uniforms."

  Maggie squirmed at the memory. "You could have told me about it afterward."

  "Of course I could," said Celia bluntly, "but I didn't see why I should give you an excuse to shuffle the guilt off onto me. You were just as much to blame as I was. You were living with the wretched creature in Bournemouth, and if anyone should have seen the flaws in his story it was you. You weren't a child in all conscience, Maggie. If you'd asked to visit his office just once, the whole edifice of his fraud would have collapsed."

  Maggie sighed in exasperation-with herself-with her mother-with Nick Ingram. "Don't you think I know that? Why do you think I don't trust anyone anymore?"

  Celia held her gaze for a moment, then looked away. "I've often wondered," she murmured. "Sometimes I think it's bloody-mindedness, other times I think it's immaturity. Usually I put it down to the fact that I spoiled you as a child and made you vain." Her eyes fastened on Maggie's again. "You see it's the height of arrogance to question other people's motives when you consistently refuse to question your own. Yes, Martin was a con man, but why did he pick on us as his victims? Have you ever wondered about that?"

  "We had money."

  "Lots of people have money, darling. Few of them get defrauded in the way that we did. No," she said with sudden firmness, "I was conned because I was greedy, and you were conned because you took it for granted that men found you attractive. If you hadn't, you'd have questioned Martin's ridiculous habit of telling everyone he met how much he loved you. It was so American and so insincere, and I can't understand why any of us believed it."

  Maggie turned back to the window so that her mother wouldn't see her eyes. "No," she said unevenly. "Neither can I-now."

  A gull swooped toward the shore and pecked at something white tumbling at the water's edge. Amused, Ingram watched it for a while, expecting it to take off again with a dead fish in its beak, but when it abandoned the sport and flapped away in disgust, screaming raucously, he walked down the waterline, curious about what the intermittent flash of white was that showed briefly between each wave. A carrier bag caught in the rocks? A piece of cloth? It ballooned unpleasantly as each swell invaded it, before rearing abruptly in a welter of spume as a larger wave flooded in.

  *20*

  Galbraith leaned forward, folding his freckled hands under his chin. He looked completely unalarming, almost mild in fact, like a round-faced schoolboy seeking to make friends. He was quite an actor, like most poli
cemen, and could change his mood as occasion demanded. He tempted Sumner to confide in him. "Do you know Lulworth Cove, William?" he murmured in a conversational tone of voice.

  The other man looked startled but whether from guilt or from the DI's abrupt switch of tack it was impossible to say. "Yes."

  "Have you been there recently?"

  "Not that I recall."

  "It's hardly the sort of thing you'd forget, is it?"

  Sumner shrugged. "It depends what you mean by recently. I sailed there several times in my boat, but that was years ago."

  "What about renting a caravan or a cottage? Maybe you've taken the family there on holiday?"

  He shook his head. "Kate and I only ever had one holiday and that was in a hotel in the Lake District. It was a disaster," he said in weary recollection. "Hannah wouldn't go to sleep, so we had to sit in our room, night after night, watching the television to stop her screaming the place down and upsetting the other guests. We thought we'd wait until she was older before we tried again."

  It sounded convincing, and Galbraith nodded. "Hannah's a bit of a handful, isn't she?"

  "Kate managed all right."

  "Perhaps because she dosed her with sleeping drugs?"

  Sumner looked wary. "I don't know anything about that. You'd have to ask her doctor."

  "We already have. He says he's never prescribed any sedatives or hypnotics for either Kate or Hannah."

  "Well then."

  "You work in the business, William. You can probably get free samples of every drug on the market. And, let's face it, with all these conferences you go to, there can't be much about pharmaceutical drugs you don't know."

  "You're talking rubbish," said Sumner, winking uncontrollably. "I need a prescription like anyone else."

  Galbraith nodded again as if to persuade William that he believed him. "Still ... a difficult, demanding child wasn't what you signed up for when you got married, was it? At the very least it will have put a blight on your sex life."