The Breaker

by Minette Walters

  Sumner coloured slightly as if he’d been caught out in a lie. ‘She’s always been a little bit’ – he hesitated – ‘well, odd. I thought she was either autistic or deaf so we had her tested, but the GP said there was nothing wrong and just advised us to be patient. He said children were manipulative, and if Kate did less for her she’d be forced to ask for what she wanted and the problem would go away.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘About six months ago.’

  ‘What’s your GP’s name?’

  ‘Dr Attwater.’

  ‘Did Kate take his advice?’

  He shook his head. ‘Her heart wasn’t in it. Hannah could always make her understand what she wanted, and she couldn’t see the point of forcing her to talk before she was ready.’

  Galbraith made a note of the GP’s name. ‘You’re a clever man, Mr Sumner,’ he said next, ‘so I’m sure you know why I’m asking you these questions.’

  A ghost of a smile flickered across the man’s tired face. ‘I prefer William,’ he said, ‘and yes, of course I do. My daughter screams every time she sees me; my wife had ample opportunity to cheat on me because I’m hardly ever at home; I’m angry because I didn’t want to move to Lymington; the mortgage on this place is way too high and I’d like to get shot of it; she was lonely because she hadn’t made many friends; and wives are more usually murdered by their partners out of fury than by strangers out of lust.’ He gave a hollow laugh. ‘About the only thing in my favour is a cast-iron alibi and, believe me, I’ve spent most of the night thanking God for it.’

  Under the rules governing police detention, there is a limit to how long a person may be held without charge, and the pressure to find evidence against Steven Harding mounted as the hours ticked by. It was notable more for its absence. The stains on the floor of the cabin, which had looked so promising the night before, turned out to be whisky-induced vomit – blood group A, matching Harding’s – and a microscopic examination of his boat failed to produce any evidence that an act of violence had occurred on board.

  If the pathologist’s findings were right – ‘bruising and abrasions to back (pronounced on shoulder blades and buttocks) and inside of thighs, indicative of forced intercourse on a hard surface such as a deck or an uncarpeted floor – some blood loss from abrasions in vagina’ – the wooden planking of the deck and/or saloon and/or cabin should have had traces of blood, skin tissue and even semen trapped between the grooved joints or under rogue splinters of wood. But no such traces were found. Dried salt was scraped in profusion from the deck planking, but while this might suggest he had scrubbed the topsides down with sea water to remove evidence, it was axiomatic that dried salt would be found on a sailing boat.

  On the more likely probability that a blanket or rug had been spread on the hard surface before Kate Sumner had been forced on to it, every item of cloth on board was examined with similarly negative results, although it was all too obvious that any such item would have been thrown overboard along with Kate’s clothes and anything else connecting her to the boat. Kate’s body was re-examined inch by inch, in the hope that splinters of wood, linking her to Crazy Daze, had become embedded under her skin, but either the flaying action of the sea on open wounds had washed the evidence away or it had never been there in the first place. It was a similar story with her broken fingernails. If anything had ever been underneath them, it had long since vanished.

  Only the sheets in the cabin showed evidence of semen staining but as the bedclothes hadn’t been washed for a very long time it was impossible to say whether the stains were the product of recent intercourse. Indeed, as only two alien hairs were discovered on the pillows and bedclothes – neither of which was Kate’s although both were blonde – the conclusion was that, far from being the promiscuous stallion portrayed by the harbour master, Steven Harding was in fact a lonely masturbator.

  A small quantity of cannabis and a collection of unopened condoms were discovered in the bedside locker, together with three torn Mates wrappers minus their contents. No used condoms were found. Every container was examined for benzodiazepine, Rohypnol and/or any hypnotic. No indications were found. Despite a comprehensive search for pornographic photographs and magazines, none were found. Subsequent searches of Harding’s car and flat in London were equally disappointing, although the flat contained thirty-five adult movies. All were on general release, however. A warrant was issued to search Tony Bridges’ house in Lymington, but there was nothing to incriminate Steven Harding or to connect him or anyone else there with Kate Sumner. Despite extensive inquiries, police could come up with no other premises used or owned by Harding, and bar a single sighting of him talking to Kate outside Tesco’s on Saturday morning, no one reported seeing them together.

  There was fingerprint and palm evidence that Kate and Hannah Sumner had been on board Crazy Daze but too many of the prints were overlaid with other prints, few of which were Steven Harding’s, for the SOCOs to be confident that the visit had been a recent one. Considerable interest was raised by the fact that twenty-five different sets of fingerprints, excluding Carpenter’s, Galbraith’s, Kate’s, Hannah’s and Steven’s – at least five of the sets being small enough to be children’s – were lifted from the saloon, some of which matched prints lifted from Bridges’ house, but few of which were replicated in the cabin. Demonstrably, therefore, Harding had entertained people on board, although the nature of the entertainment remained a mystery. He explained it by saying he always invited fellow sailors into the saloon whenever he took a berth in a marina and, in the absence of proof to the contrary, the police accepted his explanation. Nevertheless, they remained curious about it.

  In view of the cheese and apples in the galley, Kate Sumner’s last meal looked like something the police could run with until the pathologist pointed out that it was impossible to link semi-digested food with a particular purchase. A Tesco’s Golden Delicious, minced with gastric acids, showed the same chemical printout as a Sainsbury’s Golden Delicious. Even the child’s bib proved inconclusive when the fingerprint evidence on the plastic surface demonstrated that, while Steven Harding and two unidentified others had certainly touched it, Kate Sumner had not.

  Briefed by Nick Ingram, attention was paid to the only rucksack found on the boat, a triangular black one with a handful of sweet wrappers in the bottom. Neither Paul nor Danny Spender had been able to give an accurate description of it – Danny: ‘it was a big black one . . .’; Paul: ‘it was quite big . . . I think it might have been green . . .’ – but it told them nothing about what it might have contained on Sunday morning or indeed identified it as the one the boys had seen. Steven Harding, who seemed baffled by police interest in his rucksack, claimed it was certainly the one he had been using that day and explained he had left it on the hillside because it had a litre bottle of water in it, and he couldn’t be bothered to lug it down to the boatsheds simply to lug it all the way up again. He further said that PC Ingram had never asked him about a rucksack which is why he hadn’t mentioned it at the time.

  The nail in the coffin of police suspicion was supplied by a cashier at Tesco’s in Lymington High Street who had been on duty the previous Saturday.

  ‘’Course I know Steve,’ she said, identifying his photograph. ‘He comes in every Saturday for provisions. Did I see him talking to a blonde woman and child last week? Sure I did. He spotted them as he was about to leave and he said, “Damn!” so I said, “What’s the problem?” and he said, “I know that woman and she’s going to talk to me because she always does,” so I said, jealous-like, “She’s very pretty,” and he said, “Forget it, Dawn, she’s married, and anyway I’m in a hurry.” And he was right. She did talk to him, but he didn’t hang around, just tapped his watch and scarpered. You want my opinion? He had something good lined up and he didn’t want delaying. She looked mighty miffed when he left, but I didn’t blame her for it. Steve’s a bit of a hunk. I’d go for him myself if I wasn’t a grandmother three times over.’
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  William Sumner claimed to know little about the management of Langton Cottage or his wife’s regular movements. ‘I’m away from the house for twelve hours a day, from seven in the morning till seven at night,’ he told Galbraith as if it were something to be proud of. ‘I was much more au fait with her routine in Chichester, probably because I knew the people and the shops she was talking about. Things register better when you recognize names. It’s all so different here.’

  ‘Did Steven Harding feature in her conversation?’ asked Galbraith.

  ‘Is he the bastard who had Hannah’s shoes?’ demanded Sumner angrily.

  Galbraith shook his head. ‘We’ll get on a lot faster if you don’t keep second-guessing me, William. Let me remind you that we still don’t know if the shoes belonged to Hannah.’ He held the other man’s gaze. ‘And, while I’m about it, let me warn you that if you start speculating on anything to do with this case, you could prejudice any prosecution we try to bring. And that could mean Kate’s killer going free.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He raised his hands in apology. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Did Steven Harding feature in her conversation?’ Galbraith asked again.

  ‘No.’

  Galbraith referred to the lists of names he had produced. ‘Are any of the men on here ex-boyfriends? The ones in Portsmouth, for example. Did she go out with any of them before she went out with you?’

  Another shake of the head. ‘They’re all married.’

  Galbraith wondered about the naivety of that statement, but didn’t pursue the issue. Instead, he went on to try and build a picture of Kate’s early life. It was about as easy as building houses out of straw. The potted history that William gave him was notable more for its gaps than its inclusions. Her maiden name had been Hill, but whether that was her mother’s or her father’s surname, he didn’t know.

  ‘I don’t think they were married,’ he said.

  ‘And Kate never knew him?’

  ‘No. He left when she was a baby.’

  She and her mother had lived in a council flat in Birmingham, although he had no idea where it was, which school Kate had gone to, where she had trained as a secretary or, even, where she had worked before joining Pharmatec UK. Galbraith asked him if she had any friends from that time with whom she had kept in contact, but William shook his head and said he didn’t think so. He produced an address book from a drawer in a small bureau in the corner of the room and said Galbraith could check for himself. ‘But you won’t find anyone from Birmingham in there.’

  ‘When did she move?’

  ‘When her mother died. She told me once that she wanted to put as much distance between herself and where she grew up as she could, so she moved to Portsmouth and rented a flat over a shop in one of the back streets.’

  ‘Did she say why distance was important?’

  ‘I think she felt she’d have less of a chance to get on if she stayed put. She was quite ambitious.’

  ‘For a career?’ asked Galbraith in surprise, recalling Sumner’s assertion the day before that Kate’s one ambition had been to have a family of her own. ‘I thought you said she was happy to give up working when she got pregnant.’

  There was a short silence. ‘I suppose you’re planning to talk to my mother?’

  Galbraith nodded.

  He sighed. ‘She didn’t approve of Kate so she’ll tell you she was a gold-digger. Not in so many words, perhaps, but the implication will be clear. She can be pretty vitriolic when she chooses.’ He stared at the floor.

  ‘Is it true?’ prompted Galbraith after a moment.

  ‘Not in my opinion. The only thing Kate wanted was something better for her children than she had herself. I admired her for it.’

  ‘And your mother didn’t?’

  ‘It’s not important,’ said Sumner. ‘She never approved of anyone I brought home, which probably explains why it took me so long to get married.’

  Galbraith glanced at one of the vacuously smiling photographs on the mantelpiece. ‘Was Kate a strong character?’

  ‘Oh, yes. She was single-minded about what she wanted.’ He gave a lopsided smile as he made a gesture that encompassed the room. ‘This was it. The dream. A house of her own. Social acceptance. Respectability. It’s why I know she’d never have had an affair. She wouldn’t have risked this for anything.’

  Yet another display of naivety? Galbraith wondered. ‘Maybe she didn’t realize there was a risk involved,’ he said dispassionately. ‘By your own admission, you’re hardly ever here so she could easily have been conducting an affair that you knew nothing about.’

  Sumner shook his head. ‘You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t fear of me finding out that would have stopped her. She had me wound round her little finger from the first time I met her.’ A wry smile thinned his lips. ‘My wife was an old-fashioned puritan. It was fear of other people finding out that ruled her life. Respectability mattered.’

  It was on the tip of the DI’s tongue to ask this man if he had ever loved his wife, but he decided against it. Whatever answer Sumner gave, he wouldn’t believe him. He felt the same instinctive dislike of William that Sandy Griffiths felt, but he couldn’t decide if it was a chemical antipathy or a natural revulsion that was inspired by his own unshakeable hunch that William had killed his wife.

  Galbraith’s next port of call was The Old Convent, Osborne Crescent in Chichester where Mrs Sumner senior lived in sheltered accommodation at number two. It had obviously been a school once but was now converted into a dozen small flats with a resident warden. Before he went in, he stared across the road at the solidly rectangular 1930s semi-detached houses on the other side, wondering idly which had been the Sumners’ before it was sold to buy Langton Cottage. They were all so similar that it was impossible to say, and he had a sneaking sympathy for Kate’s desire to move. Being respectable, he thought, wasn’t necessarily synonymous with being boring.

  Angela Sumner surprised him because she wasn’t what he was expecting. He had pictured an autocratic old snob with reactionary views, and found instead a tough, gutsy woman, wheelchair-bound by rheumatoid arthritis, but with eyes that brimmed with good humour. She told him to put his warrant card through her letter-flap before she’d allow him entrance, then made him follow her electrically operated chair down the corridor into the sitting room. ‘I suppose you’ve given William the third degree,’ she said, ‘and now you’re expecting me to confirm or deny what he’s told you.’

  ‘Have you spoken to him?’ asked Galbraith with a smile.

  She nodded, pointing to a chair. ‘He phoned me yesterday evening to tell me that Kate was dead.’

  He took the chair she indicated. ‘Did he tell you how she died?’

  She nodded. ‘It shocked me, although to be honest I guessed something dreadful must have happened the minute I saw Hannah’s picture on the television. Kate would never have abandoned the child. She doted on her.’

  ‘Why didn’t you phone the police yourself when you recognized Hannah’s photograph?’ he asked curiously. ‘Why did you ask William to do it?’

  She sighed. ‘Because I kept telling myself it couldn’t possibly be Hannah – I mean, she’s such an unlikely child to be wandering around a strange town on her own – and I didn’t want to appear to be causing trouble if it wasn’t. I phoned Langton Cottage over and over again and it was only when it became clear yesterday morning that no one was going to answer that I phoned William’s secretary and she told me where he was.’

  ‘What kind of trouble would you have been causing?’

  She didn’t answer immediately. ‘Let’s just say Kate wouldn’t have believed my motives were pure if I made a genuine error. You see, I haven’t seen Hannah since they moved twelve months ago, so I wasn’t 100 per cent sure I was right anyway. Children change so quickly at that age.’

  It wasn’t much of an answer, but Galbraith let it go for the moment. ‘So you didn’t know William had gone to Liverpool?’

  �
�There’s no reason why I should. I don’t expect him to tell me where he is all the time. He rings once a week and drops in occasionally on his way back to Lymington, but we don’t live in each other’s pockets.’

  ‘That’s quite a change, though, isn’t it?’ suggested Galbraith. ‘Didn’t you and he share a house before he was married?’

  She gave a little laugh. ‘And you think that means I knew what he was doing? You obviously don’t have grown-up children, Inspector. It makes no difference whether they live with you or not, you still can’t keep tabs on them.’

  ‘I have a seven- and five-year-old who already have a more exciting social life than I’ve ever had. It gets worse, does it?’

  ‘It depends on whether you approve of them spreading their wings. I think the more space you give them, the more likely they are to appreciate you as they get older. In any case, my husband converted the house into two self-contained flats about fifteen years ago. He and I lived downstairs, and William lived upstairs, and days could go by without our paths crossing. We lived quite separate lives, which didn’t change much even after my husband died. I became more disabled, of course, but I hope I was never a burden to William.’

  Galbraith smiled. ‘I’m sure you weren’t, but it must have been a bit of a worry, knowing he’d get married one day and all the arrangements would have to change.’

  She shook her head. ‘Quite the reverse. I was longing for him to settle down but he never showed any inclination to do it. He adored sailing, of course, and spent most of his free time out on his Contessa. He had girlfriends, but none that he took seriously.’

  ‘Were you pleased when he married Kate?’

  There was a short silence. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

  Galbraith shrugged. ‘No reason. I’m just interested.’

  Her eyes twinkled suddenly. ‘I suppose he’s told you I thought his wife was a gold-digger?’