The Breaker (38 page)

"She was married," he said. "He was hardly going to parade a married woman around the town, was he?"

"Has he
ever
paraded a woman around town, Tony?"

There was a long silence. "Most of his girlfriends are married," he said then.

"Or mythical?" suggested Carpenter. "Like claiming Bibi as a girlfriend?"

Bridges looked baffled, as if he was struggling with half-heard, dimly understood truths that were suddenly making sense. He didn't answer.

Galbraith leveled a finger at the television screen. "What we're beginning to suspect is that the talk was a smokescreen for no action. Maybe he was pretending to like women because he didn't want anyone to know that his tastes lay in an entirely different direction? Maybe the poor bastard doesn't want to recognize it himself and lets off steam quietly in order to keep himself under control?" He turned the finger accusingly on Bridges. "But if that's true, then where does it leave you and Kate Sumner?"

The young man shook his head. "I don't understand." The DI took his notebook from his pocket and flipped it open. "Let me quote some of the things you said about her:
'I think she must have lived on a diet of soap operas...' 'Kate said Hannah would scream her head off...' 'I guess she'd been conning idiots like her husband for so long...'
I could go on. You talked about her for fifteen minutes, fluently and with no prompting from me." He laid his notebook on the table. "Do you want to tell us how you know so much about a woman you only met once?"

"Everything I know is what Steve told me."

Carpenter nodded toward the recording machine. "This is a formal interview under taped conditions, Tony. Let me rephrase the question for you so there can be no misunderstandings. Bearing in mind that the Sumners are recent newcomers to Lymington, that both Steven Harding and William Sumner have denied there was any relationship between Steven and Kate Sumner, and that you, Anthony Bridges, claim to have met her only once, how do you explain your extensive and accurate knowledge of her?"
 

Marie Freemantle was a tall, willowy blond with waist-length wavy hair and huge doe-like eyes, which were awash with tears. Once assured that Steve was alive and well and currently answering questions about why he had been at Chapman's Pool on Sunday, she dried her eyes and favored the policemen with a heavily practiced triangular smile. If they were honest, both men were moved by her prettiness when they first saw her, although their sympathies were soon frayed by the self-centered, petulant nature beneath. They realized she wasn't very bright when it became clear that it hadn't occurred to her they were questioning her because Steven Harding was a suspect in Kate Sumner's murder. She chose to talk to them away from her father and his girlfriend, and her spite was colossal, particularly toward the woman whom she described as an interfering bitch. "I hate her," she finished. "Everything was fine till she stuck her nose in."

"Meaning you've always been allowed to do what you liked?" suggested Campbell.

"I'm old enough."

"How old were you when you first had sex with Steven Harding?"

"Fifteen." She wriggled her shoulders. "But that's nothing these days. Most girls I know had sex at thirteen."

"How long have you known him?"

"Six months."

"How often have you had sex with him?"

"Lots of times."

"Where do you do it?"

"Mostly on his boat."

Campbell frowned. "In the cabin?"

"Not often. The cabin stinks," she said. "He takes a blanket up on deck, and we do it in the sunshine or under the stars. It's great."

"Moored up to the buoy?" asked Campbell, with a rather shocked expression. Like Galbraith earlier, he was wondering about the generation gap that seemed to have opened, unobserved, between himself and today's youth. "In full view of the Isle of Wight ferry?"

"Of course not," she said indignantly, wriggling her shoulders again. "He picks me up somewhere and we go for a sail."

"Where does he pick you up?"

"All sorts of places. Like he says, he'd get strung up if anyone knew he was going with a fifteen-year-old, and he reckons if you don't use the same place too often, no one notices." She shrugged, recognizing that further explanation was necessary. "If you use a marina once in two weeks, who's going to remember? Then there's the salt flats. I walk around the path from the Yacht Haven, and he just shoots in with his dinghy and lifts me off. Sometimes I go to Poole by train and meet him there. Mum thinks I'm with Dad; Dad thinks I'm with Mum. It's simple. I just phone him on his mobile, and he tells me where to go."

"Did you leave a message on his phone this morning?"

She nodded. "He can't phone me in case Mum gets suspicious."

"How did you meet him in the first place?"

"At the Lymington yacht club. There was a dance there on St. Valentine's Day, and Dad got tickets for it because he's still a member even though he lives in Poole now. Mum said Fliss and me could go if Dad watched out for us, but he got shit-faced as usual and left us to get on with it. That's when he was going out with his bitch of a secretary. I really
hated
her. She was always trying to put him against me."

Campbell was tempted to say it wouldn't have been difficult. "Did your father introduce you to Steve? Did he know him?"

"No. One of my teachers did. He and Steve have been friends for years."

"Which teacher?"

"Tony Bridges." Her full lips curved into a malicious smile. "He's fancied me for ages, and he was trying to make this pathetic move on me when Steve cut him out. God, he was pissed about it. He's been needling away at me all term, trying to find out what's going on, but Steve told me not to tell him in case he got us into trouble for underage sex. He reckons Tony's so fucking jealous he'd make life hell for us if he could."

Campbell thought back to his interview with Bridges on Monday night. "Perhaps he feels responsible for you."

"That's not the reason," she said scornfully. "He's a sad little bastard-
that's
the reason. None of his girlfriends stay with him because he's stoned most of the time and can't do the business properly. He's been going out with this hairdresser for about four months now, and Steve says he's been feeding her drugs so she won't complain about his lousy performance. If you want my opinion, there's something wrong with him-he's always trying to touch up girls in class-but our stupid headmaster's too thick to do anything about it."

Campbell exchanged a glance with his colleague. "How does Steve know he's been feeding her drugs?" he asked.

"He's seen him do it. It's like a Mickey Finn. You dissolve a tablet in lager, and the girl passes out."

"Do you know what drug he's using?"

Another shrug. "Some sort of sleeping pill."
 

I'm not going to explain anything without a solicitor here," said Bridges adamantly. "Look, this was one sick woman. You think that kid of hers is weird? Well, trust me, she's as sane as you and me compared with her mother."
 

WPC Griffiths heard the sound of smashing glass from the kitchen and lifted her head in immediate concern. She had left Hannah watching television in the sitting room, and as far as she knew, William was still in his study upstairs, where he had retreated, angry and resentful, after his interview with DI Galbraith. With a perplexed frown, she tiptoed along the corridor and pushed open the sitting-room door to find Sumner standing just inside. He turned an ashen face toward her, then gestured helplessly toward the little girl, who stalked purposefully about the room, picking up pictures of her mother and throwing them with high-pitched guttural cries into the unlit fireplace.
 

Ingram put a cup of tea in front of Steven Harding and took a chair on the other side of the table. He was puzzled by the man's attitude. He had expected a long interview session, punctuated by denials and counteraccusations. Instead Harding had admitted culpability and agreed with everything Maggie had written in her statement. All that awaited him now was to be formally charged and held over till the next morning. His only real concern had been his telephone. When Ingram had handed it to the custody sergeant and formally entered it into the inventory of Harding's possessions, Harding had looked relieved. But whether because it had been returned or because it was switched off, Ingram couldn't tell.

"How about talking to me off the record?" he invited. "Just to satisfy my own curiosity. There's no tape. No witnesses to the conversation. Just you and me."

Harding shrugged. "What do you want to talk about?"

"You. What's going on. Why you were on the coastal path on Sunday. What brought you back to Chapman's Pool this morning."

"I already told you. I fancied a walk"-he made a good attempt at a cocky grin-"both times."

"All right." He splayed his palms on the edge of the table, preparatory to standing up. "It's your funeral. Just don't complain afterward that no one tried to help you. You've always been the obvious suspect. You knew the victim, you own a boat, you were on the spot, you told lies about what you were doing there. Have you any idea how all that is going to look to a jury if the Crown Prosecution Service decides to prosecute you for Kate Sumner's rape and murder?"

"They can't. They haven't got any evidence."

"Oh, for Christ's sake grow up, Steve!" he said in irritation, subsiding onto his chair again. "Don't you read the newspapers? People have spent years in prison on less evidence than Winfrith has against you. All right, it's only circumstantial, but juries don't like coincidence any more than the rest of us, and frankly, your antics of this morning haven't helped any. All they prove is that women make you angry enough to attack them." He paused, inviting a reply that never came. "If you're interested in the report I wrote on Monday, I mentioned that both Miss Jenner and I thought you were having difficulty coping with an erection. Afterward one of the Spender boys described how you were using your telephone as a masturbation aid before Miss Jenner arrived." He shrugged. "It may have had nothing to do with Kate Sumner, but it won't sound good in court."

A dull flush spread up Harding's throat and into his face. "That sucks!"

"True nevertheless."

"I wish to God I'd never helped those kids," he said with a burst of anger. "I wouldn't be in this mess but for them. I should have walked away and left them to cope on their own." He pushed his hair off his face with both hands and rested his forehead in his palms. "Jesus Christ! Why do you have to put something like that in a report?"

"Because it happened."

"Not like that it didn't," he said sullenly, the flush of humiliation lingering in his cheeks.

"Then how?" Ingram watched him for a moment. "Headquarters thinks you came back to gloat over the rape and that's what caused your erection."

"That's bullshit!" said the young man angrily.

"What other explanation is there? If it wasn't the thought of Kate Sumner's body that excited you, then it had to be Miss Jenner or the boys."

Harding raised his head and stared at the policeman, his eyes widening in shocked revulsion. "The boys?" he echoed.

It crossed Ingram's mind that the facial expression was a little too theatrical, and he reminded himself, as Galbraith had done, that he was dealing with an actor. He wondered what Harding's reaction would be when he was told about the videotape. "You couldn't keep your hands off them," he pointed out. "According to Miss Jenner, you were hugging Paul from behind when she rounded the boat sheds."

"I don't believe this," said Harding in desperation. "I was only showing him how to use the binoculars properly."

"Prove it."

"How can I?"

Ingram tilted his chair back and stretched his long legs out in front of him, lacing his hands behind his head. "Tell me why you were at Chapman's Pool. Let's face it, whatever you were doing can't be any worse than the constructions that are being put on your actions at the moment."

"I'm not saying another word."

Ingram stared at a mark on the ceiling. "Then let me tell you what I think you were doing. You went there to meet someone," he murmured. "I think it was a girl and I think she was on one of the boats, but whatever plans you'd made with her were scuppered when the place started jumping with policemen and sightseers." He shifted his attention back to Harding. "But why the secrecy, Steve? What on earth were you intending to do with her that meant you'd rather be arrested on suspicion of rape and murder than give an explanation?"
 

It was two hours before a solicitor arrived, courtesy of Tony's grandfather, and after a brief discussion with his client, and following police assurances that, because of his alibi, Tony was not under suspicion of involvement in Kate Sumner's death, he advised him to answer their questions.

"Okay, yes, I got to know Kate pretty well. She lives-lived-about two hundred yards from my grandfather's garage. She used to come in and talk to me whenever I was in there because she knew I was a friend of Steve's. She was a right little tart, always flirting, always opening those baby blue eyes of hers and telling stories about how this and that man fancied her. I thought it was a come-on, particularly when she said William had a problem getting it up. She told me she went through pints of baby oil to help the poor sod out, and it made her laugh like a drain. Her descriptions were about as graphic as you can get, but she didn't seem to care that Hannah was listening or that I might get to be friendly with William." He looked troubled, as if the memory haunted him. "I told you she was sick. Matter of fact, I think she enjoyed being cruel to people. I reckon she made that poor bastard's life hell. It certainly gave her a kick slapping me down when I tried to kiss her. She spat in my face and said she wasn't that desperate." He fell silent.