The Breaker (14 page)

"Suitcases?"

"I don't think so."

"All right." He opened his briefcase on the sofa beside him. "I've some articles of clothing to show you, Mr. Sumner. Please tell me if you recognize any of them." He removed a plastic bag containing the flimsy blouse found on board
Crazy Daze
, which he held out for the other man to look at.

Sumner shook his head, without taking it. "It's not Kate's," he said.

"Why so positive," Galbraith asked curiously, "if you didn't notice what she wore?"

"It's yellow. She hated yellow. She said it didn't suit people with fair hair." He gestured vaguely toward the door. "There's no yellow anywhere in the house."

"Fair enough." He took out the bags containing the bra and panties. "Do you recognize either of these as belonging to your wife?"

Sumner reached out a reluctant hand and took both bags, examining the contents closely through the clear plastic. "I'd be surprised if they were hers," he said, handing them back. "She liked lace and frills, and these are very plain. You can compare them with the other things in her drawers, if you like. You'll see what I mean."

Galbraith nodded. "I'll do that. Thank you." He took out the bag with the child's shoes and laid them on his right palm. "What about these?"

Sumner shook his head again. "I'm sorry. All children's shoes look alike to me."

'They have H. Sumner printed inside the strap."

He shrugged. "Then they must be Hannah's."

"Not necessarily," said Galbraith. "They're very small, more suited to a one-year-old than a three-year-old, and anyone can write a name into some shoes."

"Why would they want to do that?"

"Pretense, perhaps."

The other man frowned. "Where did you find them?"

But Galbraith shook his head. "I'm afraid I can't reveal that at this stage." He held the shoes up again. "Would Hannah recognize them, do you think? They may be a pair of cast-offs."

"She might if the policewoman showed them to her," said Sumner. "There's no point in my trying. She screams her head off every time she sees me." He swept imaginary dirt from the arm of the chair. "The trouble is I spend so much time at work that she's never had the chance to get to know me properly."

Galbraith gave him a sympathetic smile while wondering if there was any truth in the statement. Who could contradict him, after all? Kate was dead; Hannah was tongue-tied; and the various neighbors who'd already been interviewed claimed to know little about William. Or indeed, Kate herself.

"To be honest I've only met him a couple of times and he didn't exactly impress me. He works very hard, of course, but they were never ones for entertaining. She was quite sweet, but we were hardly what I'd call friends. You know how it is. You don't choose your neighbors; they get thrust upon you..."
"He's not what you'd call sociable. Kate told me once that he spent his evenings and weekends working out formulas on his computer while she watched soaps on the telly. I feel awful about her dying like that. I wish I'd had more time to talk to her. I think she must have been quite lonely, you know. The rest of us all work, of course, so she was a bit of a rarity, staying at home and doing the housework..."
"He's a bully. He took my wife to task about one of the fencing panels between our gardens, said it needed replacing, and when she told him it was his ivy that was pulling it down, he threatened her with court proceedings. No, that's the only contact we've had with him. It was enough. I don't like the man..."
"I saw more of Kate than I saw of him. It was an odd marriage. They never did anything together. I sometimes wondered if they even liked each other very much. Kate was very sweet, but she hardly ever talked about William. To be honest, I don't think they had much in common..."

"I understand Hannah cried most of the night. Does she usually do that?"

"No," Sumner answered without hesitation, "but then Kate always cuddled her when she was upset. She's crying for her mother, poor little thing."

"So you haven't noticed any difference in her behavior?"

"Not really."

"The doctor who examined her after she was taken to the Poole police station was very concerned about her, described her as unnaturally withdrawn, backward in her development, and possibly suffering from some sort of psychological trauma." Galbraith smiled slightly. "Yet you're saying that's quite normal for Hannah?"

Sumner colored 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 favor 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 onto 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 blond-the conclusion was that, far from being the promiscuous stallion portrayed by the harbormaster, 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 semidigested 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 liter bottle of water in it, and he couldn't be bothered to lug it down to the boat sheds 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 blond 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."
 

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."