The Breaker (44 page)

"If she hadn't told me William was away for the weekend I wouldn't have gone through with it, but you kind of get the feeling that some things are meant to happen. It was her fault really. She kept on about how she had nothing to go home for, so I offered her a drink. If I'm honest, I'd say she was up for it. You could tell she was pleased as bloody punch to find herself alone with me. Hannah wasn't a problem. She's always liked me. I'm about the only person, other than her mother, who could pick her up without her screaming..."

"He put her to sleep, using a benzodiazepine hypnotic drug called Rohypnol, which he dissolved in the champagne. It's been called the date-rape drug because it's easy to give to a woman without her knowing. It's powerful enough to keep her out for six to ten hours, and in the cases reported so far, women claim intermittent periods of consciousness when they know what's happening to them but an inability to do anything about it. We understand there are moves to change it to a schedule-three controlled drug in 1998, add a blue dye to it, and make it harder to dissolve, but at the moment it's open to abuse."

"Tony keeps his drug supplies in the garage, or did until he heard you'd arrested me, then he went in and cleared the whole lot out. He'd taken the Rohypnol off his granddad when the poor old bugger kept falling asleep during the daytime. He found him in the kitchen once with the gas going full blast because he'd nodded off before he had time to put a match to it. Tony was going to chuck the Rohypnol out but I told him it could do him some good with Bibi so he kept it. It worked like a treat on Kate. She went out like a light. The only problem was, she let Hannah drink some of the champagne as well, and when Hannah went out she fell over backward with her eyes wide open. I thought she was dead..."

"He's very unclear what he was intending to do to Kate. He talks about teaching her a lesson but whether the intention was always to rape her then kill her, he can't or won't say."

"I wasn't going to hurt Kate, just give her something to think about. She'd been pissing me off with the crap thing, and it had been really bugging me. Still, I had to have a rethink when Hannah keeled over. That was pretty frightening, you know. I mean, killing a kid, even if it was an accident, is heavy stuff. I thought about leaving them both there while I scarpered to France with Marie, but I was afraid Tony might find them before I met up with her, and I'd already told him I was going to Poole for the weekend. I guess it was the fact that Kate was so small that made me think about taking them both with me..."

"He took them on board under everyone's noses," said Galbraith. "Just motored
Crazy Daze
into one of the visitors' pontoons near the yacht club and carried Kate on in the canvas holdall that takes his dinghy when it's not in use. They're substantial items, apparently, big enough to take eight feet of collapsed rubber, plus the seat and the floorboarding, and he says he had no trouble folding Kate into it. He took Hannah on board in his rucksack and carried the buggy quite openly under his arm."

"People never question anything if you're up-front about what you 're doing. I guess it has something to do with the British psyche, and the fact we never interfere unless we absolutely have to. But you kind of want them to sometimes. It's almost as if you're being forced to do things you don't really want to do. I kept saying to myself, ask me what's in the bag, you bastards, ask me why I'm carrying a baby's buggy under my arm. But no one did, oj course..."

"Then he left for Poole," said Galbraith. "The time was getting on for midday by then, and he says he hadn't thought what he was going to do beyond smuggling Kate and Hannah aboard. He talks about being stressed out and being unable to think properly"-he raised his eyes to Sumner-"rather like your description of yourself earlier, and it does seem as if he opted to do nothing, left them imprisoned and unconscious inside the bags on the principle of out of sight out of mind."

"I guess I'd realized all along I was going to have to dump them over the side, but I kept putting it off. I'd sailed out into the Channel to get some space around me, and it was around seven o'clock when I hauled them up on deck to get it over with. I couldn't do it, though. I could hear whimpering coming out of the rucksack, so I knew Hannah was still alive. I felt good about that. I never wanted to kill either of them..."

"He claims Kate started to come around at about seven thirty, which is when he released her and let her sit beside him in the cockpit. He also claims it was her idea to take her clothes off. However, in view of the fact that her wedding ring is also missing, we think the truth is he decided to strip her body of anything that could identify her before he threw her overboard."

"I know she was frightened, and I know she probably did it to try to get into my good graces, but I never asked her to strip and I never forced her to have sex with me. I'd already made up my mind to take them back. I wouldn't have altered course otherwise, and she'd never have ended up in Egmont Bight. I gave her something to eat because she said she was hungry. Why would I do that if I was going to kill her...?"

"I know this is distressing for you, William, but we believe he spent hours fantasizing about what he was going to do with her before he killed her, and when he'd stripped her he went ahead and played out those fantasies. However, we don't know how conscious Kate was or how much she knew about what was going on. One of the difficulties we have is that
Crazy Daze
shows no recent signs of Kate and Hannah being on board. What we think happened is that he kept Kate naked on the deck for about five hours between seven thirty and half past midnight which would explain the evidence of hypothermia and the lack of forensic evidence connecting her with the interior. We're still looking for evidence on the topsides but I'm afraid he had hours during the trip back to Lymington on Sunday to scrub the deck clean with buckets of salt water."

"Okay, I was way out of line at the beginning, I'll admit that. Things got out of control for a while-I mean I panicked like hell when I thought Hannah was dead-but by the time it was dark I'd got it all worked out. I told Kate that if she promised to keep her mouth shut I'd take her to Poole and let her and Hannah off there. Otherwise, I'd say she came on board willingly, and as Tony Bridges knew she had the hots for me, no one would believe her word against mine, particularly not William..."

"He says he promised to take Kate to Poole, and she may have believed him, but we don't think he had any intention of doing it. He's a good sailor, yet he steered a course that brought him back to land to the west of St. Alban's Head when he should have been well to the east. He's arguing that he lost track of his position because Kate kept distracting him, but it's too much of a coincidence that he put her into the sea where he did, bearing in mind he was planning to walk there the next morning."

"She should have trusted me. I told her I wasn't going to hurt her. I didn't hurt Hannah, did I...?"

"He says she lunged at him and tried to push him overboard, and in the process went over herself."

"I could hear her shouting and thrashing about in the water, so I brought the helm around to try and locate her. But it was so dark I couldn't see a damn thing. I kept calling to her but it all went silent very quickly and in the end I had to give up. I don't think she could swim very well..."

"He's claiming he made every attempt to find her but thinks she must have drowned within a few minutes. He refers to it as a terrible accident."

"Of course it was a coincidence we were off Chapman's Pool. It was pitch black, for Christ's sake, and there's no lighthouse at St. Alban's Head. Have you any idea what it's like sailing at night when there's nothing to tell you where you are? I hadn't been concentrating, hadn't taken the tidal drift and wind changes into account. I was pretty sure I'd sailed too far west which is why I altered course to sail due east, but it wasn't until I came within sight of the Anvil Point lighthouse that I had any idea I was within striking distance of Poole. Look, don't you think I'd have killed Hannah as well if I'd meant to kill Kate...?"

When Galbraith fell silent, Sumner finally dragged his gaze away from the ceiling. "Is that what he'll say in court? That she died by accident?"

"Probably."

"Will he win?"

"Not if you stand up for her."

"Maybe he's telling the truth," said the other man listlessly.

Galbraith smiled slightly. Kindness
was
a mug's game. "Don't ever say that in my presence again, William," he said with a rasp in his throat. "Because, so help me God, I'll beat the fucking daylights out of you if you do. I saw your wife, remember. I wept for her before you even knew she was dead."

Sumner blinked in alarm.

Galbraith straightened. "The bastard drugged her, raped her-several times we think-broke her fingers because she attempted to release her daughter from the rucksack, then put his hands around her neck and throttled her. But she wouldn't die. So he tied her to a spare outboard his friend had given him and set her adrift in a partially inflated dinghy." He thumped his fist into his palm. "Not to give her a chance of life, William, but to make sure she died slowly and in fear, tormenting herself about what he was going to do to Hannah and regretting that she'd ever dared to take revenge on him."

"The kid never cried once after I took her out of the rucksack. She wasn't frightened of me. As a matter of fact I think she felt sorry for me because she could see I was upset. I wrapped her in a blanket and laid her on the floor in the cabin, and she went to sleep. I might have panicked if she'd started crying in the marina, but she didn't. She's a funny kid. I mean she's obviously not very bright, but you get the feeling she knows things..."

"I don't know why he didn't kill Hannah, except that he seems to be afraid of her. He says now that the fact she's alive is proof he didn't want Kate to die either, and he may have decided that as she was never going to be a threat to him he could afford to let her live. He says he changed her, fed her, and gave her something to drink from the bag that was on the back of the buggy, then took her off the boat in his rucksack. He left her asleep in the front garden of a block of flats on the Bournemouth-to-Poole road, a good mile from Lilliput, and seems to be more shocked than anyone that she was allowed to walk all the way back to the marina before anyone questioned why she was on her own."

"There was some paracetamol in the buggy bag, so I dosed her up with it to make sure she was asleep when I took her off the boat. Not that I really needed to. I reckon the Rohypnol was still working, because I sat and watched her in the cabin for hours and she only woke up once. There's no way she could have known where Salterns Marina was, so how the hell did she find her way back to it? I kept telling you she was weird. But you wouldn't believe me..."

"On the trip back to Lymington he put everything overboard that could connect him in any way at all with Kate and Hannah-the dinghy holdall, Kate's clothes, her ring, the buggy, Hannah's dirty nappy, the rug he wrapped her in-but he forgot the sandals that Kate left behind in April." Galbraith smiled slightly. "Although the odd thing is he says he did remember them. He took them out of a locker after he left Hannah asleep on the cabin floor and put them in the buggy bag, and he says now that the only person who could have hidden them under the pile of clothes was Hannah."

"I got sidetracked worrying about fingerprints. 1 couldn't make up my mind whether to clean the inside of
Crazy Daze
or not. You see, I knew you'd find Kate and Hannah's fingerprints from when they were on board in April, and I wondered if it would be better to pretend that visit had never happened. In the end I decided to leave it exactly the way it's been for the last three months because I didn't want you lot imagining I'd done something worse than I had. And I was right, wasn 't I? You wouldn't have released me on Wednesday if you'd found any evidence that I set out to hurt Kate the way you're saying I did."

Sumner's eyes welled again but he didn't say anything.

"Why didn't you tell me Kate and Harding had had an affair?" Galbraith asked him.

It was a moment before William answered and, when he did, he lifted a trembling hand in supplication, like a beggar after charity. "I was ashamed."

"For Kate?"

"No," he whispered, "for myself. I didn't want anyone to know."

To know what? Galbraith wondered. That he couldn't keep his wife interested? That he'd made a mistake marrying her? He reached over and took the telephone from Sumner's lap. "If you're interested, Sandy Griffiths says Hannah's been walking around the house all day, looking for you. I asked Sandy to tell her I'd be bringing you home, and Hannah clapped her hands. Don't make a liar out of me, my friend."

He shook with grief. "I thought she'd be better off without me."

"No chance." He raised the man to his feet with a hand under his arm. "You're her father. How could she possibly be better off without you?"
 

*27*

Maggie lay on the floor stretching her aching back while Nick meticulously poked a loaded paintbrush into all the nooks and crannies that she'd missed. "Do you think Steve would have done it if Tony Bridges hadn't wound him up by smearing crap all over the place?"

"I don't know," said Nick. "The superintendent's convinced he's an out-and-out psychopath, says it was only a matter of time before his obsession with sex spilled over into rape, so maybe he'd have done it anyway, with or without Tony Bridges. I suppose the truth is Kate was in the wrong place at the wrong time." He paused, remembering the tiny hand waving in the spume. "Poor woman."