The Breaker (3 page)

"Good morning, Miss Jenner," he said with exaggerated politeness.

She gave a small nod in return. "Nick."

He turned inquiringly to Harding. "Can I help you, sir?"

"I don't think so," said the young man with an engaging smile. "I think we're supposed to be helping you."

Ingram was Dorsetshire born and bred and had no time for wankers in dinky shorts, sporting artificial tans. "In what way?" There was a hint of sarcasm in his voice that made Maggie Jenner frown at him.

"I was asked to bring these boys to the police car when I made the emergency call. They're the ones who found the dead woman." He clapped his hands across their shoulders. "They're a couple of heroes. Maggie and I have just been telling them they deserve medals."

The "Maggie" wasn't lost on Ingram, although he questioned her enthusiasm for being on Christian-name terms with such an obvious poser. She had better taste, he thought. Ponderously, he shifted his attention to Paul and Danny Spender. The message he had received couldn't have been clearer. Two boys had reported seeing their mother fall from a cliff while using a pair of binoculars. He knew as soon as he saw the body-not enough bruises-that it couldn't have fallen, and looking at the boys now-too relaxed-he doubted the rest of the information. "Did you know the woman?" he asked them.

They shook their heads.

He unlocked his car door and retrieved a notebook and pencil from the passenger seat. "What makes you think she was dead, sir?" he asked Harding.

"The boys told me."

"Is that right?" He examined the young man curiously, then deliberately licked the point of his pencil because he knew it would annoy Maggie. "May I have your name and address, please, plus the name of your employer if you have one?"

"Steven Harding. I'm an actor." He gave an address in London. "I live there during the week, but if you have trouble getting hold of me you can always go through my agent, Graham Barlow of the Barlow Agency." He gave another London address. "Graham keeps my diary," he said.

Bully for Graham, thought Ingram sourly, struggling to suppress rampant prejudices against pretty boys ... Chippendales ... Londoners ... actors ... Harding's address was Highbury, and Ingram would put money on the little poser claiming to be an Arsenal fan, not because he'd ever been to a match but because he'd read
Fever Pitch
, or seen the movie. "And what brings an actor to our neck of the woods, Mr. Harding?"

Harding explained that he was in Poole for a weekend break and had planned to walk to Lulworth Cove and back that day. He patted the mobile telephone that was attached via a clip to his waistband, and said it was a good thing he
had
, otherwise the boys would have had to hoof it to Worth Matravers for help.

"You travel light," said Ingram, glancing at the phone. "Aren't you worried about dehydrating? It's a long walk to Lulworth."

The young man shrugged. "I've changed my mind. I'm going back after this. I hadn't realized how far it was."

Ingram asked the boys for their names and addresses together with a brief description of what had happened. They told him they'd seen the woman on the beach when they rounded Egmont Point at ten o'clock. "And then what?" he asked. "You checked to see if she was dead and went for help?"

They nodded.

"You didn't hurry yourselves, did you?"

"They ran like the clappers," said Harding, leaping to their defense. "I saw them."

"As I recall, sir, your emergency call was timed at ten forty-three, and it doesn't take nearly three-quarters of an hour for two healthy lads to run around Chapman's Pool." He stared Harding down. "And while we're on the subject of misleading information, perhaps you'd care to explain why I received a message saying two boys had seen their mother fall from a cliff top after using a pair of binoculars?"

Maggie made a move as if she was about to say something in support of the boys, but Ingram's intimidating glance in her direction changed her mind.

"Okay, well, it was a misunderstanding," said Harding, flicking his thick dark hair out of his eyes with a toss of his head. "These two guys"-he put a friendly arm across Paul's shoulders-"came charging up the hill shouting and yelling about a woman on the beach beyond the Point and some binoculars falling, and I rather stupidly put two and two together and made five. The truth is, we were all a bit het-up.
They
were worried about the binoculars, and
I
thought they were talking about their mother." He took the Zeisses from Paul's hands and gave them to Ingram. "These belong to their father. The boys dropped them by accident when they saw the woman. They're very concerned about how their dad's going to react when he sees the damage, but Maggie and I have persuaded them he won't be angry, not when he hears what a good job they've done."

"Do you know the boys' father, sir?" asked Ingram, examining the binoculars.

"No, of course not. I've only just met them."

"Then you've only their word that these belong to him?"

"Well, yes, I suppose so." Harding looked uncertainly at Paul and saw the return of panic in the boy's eyes. "Oh, come on," he said abruptly. "Where else could they have got them?"

"Off the beach. You said you saw the woman when you rounded Egmont Point," he reminded Paul and Danny.

They nodded in petrified unison.

"Then why do these binoculars look as if they've fallen down a cliff? Did you find them beside the woman and decide to take them?"

The boys, growing red in the face with anxiety about their Peeping Tom act, looked guilty. Neither answered.

"Look, lighten up," said Harding unwarily. "It was a bit of fun, that's all. The woman was nude, so they climbed up for a better look. They didn't realize she was dead until they dropped the binoculars and went down to get them."

"You saw all this, did you, sir?"

"No," he admitted. "I've already told you I was coming from St. Alban's Head."

Ingram turned to his right to look at the distant promontory topped by its tiny Norman chapel, dedicated to St. Alban. "You get a very good view of Egmont Bight from up there," he said idly, "particularly on a fine day like this."

"Only through binoculars," said Harding.

Ingram smiled as he looked the young man up and down. "True," he agreed. "So where did you and the boys run into each other?"

Harding gestured toward the coastal path. "They started shouting at me when they were halfway up Emmetts Hill, so I went down to meet them."

"You seem to know the area well."

"I do."

"How come, when you live in London?"

"I spend a lot of time here. London can be pretty hellish in the summer."

Ingram glanced up the steep hillside. "This is called West Hill," he remarked. "Emmetts Hill is the next one along."

Harding gave an amiable shrug. "Okay, so I don't know it
that
well, but normally I come in by boat," he said, "and there's no mention of West Hill on the Admiralty charts. This whole escarpment is referred to as Emmetts Hill. The boys and I ran into each other approximately there." He pointed toward a spot on the green hillside above them.

Out of the corner of his eye, Ingram noticed Paul Spender's frown of disagreement, but he didn't remark on it.

"Where's your boat now, Mr. Harding?"

"Poole. I sailed her in late last night, but as the wind's almost nonexistent and I fancied some exercise"-he favored Nick Ingram with a boyish smile-"I took to my legs."

"What's the name of your boat, Mr. Harding?"

"
Crazy Daze
. It's a play on words. Daze is spelled D-A-Z-E, not D-A-Y-S."

The tall policeman's smile was anything but boyish. "Where's she normally berthed?"

"Lymington."

"Did you come from Lymington yesterday?"

"Yes."

"Alone?"

There was a tiny hesitation. "Yes."

Ingram held his gaze for a moment. "Are you sailing back tonight?"

"That's the plan, although I'll probably have to motor if the wind doesn't improve."

The constable nodded in apparent satisfaction. "Well, thank you very much, Mr. Harding. I don't think I need detain you any longer. I'll get these boys home and check on the binoculars."

Harding felt Paul and Danny sidle in behind him for protection. "You will point out what a good job they've done, won't you?" he urged. "I mean, but for these two, that poor little woman could have floated out on the next tide, and you'd never have known she was there. They deserve a medal, not aggro from their father."

"You're very well informed, sir."

"Trust me. I know this coast. There's a continuous south-southeasterly stream running toward St. Alban's Head, and if she'd been sucked into that, the chances of her resurfacing would have been nil. It's got one hell of a back eddy on it. My guess is she'd have been pounded to pieces on the bottom."

Ingram smiled. "I meant you were well informed about the woman, Mr. Harding. Anyone would think you'd seen her yourself."
 

*3*

Why were you so bard on him?" asked Maggie critically as the policeman shut the boys into the back of his Range Rover and stood with eyes narrowed against the sun watching Harding walk away up the hill. Ingram was so tall and so solidly built that he cast her literally and figuratively into the shade, and he would get under her skin less, she often thought, if just once in a while he recognized that fact. She only felt comfortable in his presence when she was looking down on him from the back of a horse, but those occasions were too rare for her self-esteem to benefit from them. When he didn't answer her, she glanced impatiently toward the brothers on the backseat. "You were pretty rough on the children, too. I bet they'll think twice before helping the police again."

Harding disappeared from sight around a bend, and Ingram turned to her with a lazy smile. "How was I hard on him, Miss Jenner?"

"Oh, come on! You all but accused him of lying."

"He
was
lying."

"What about?"

"I'm not sure yet. I'll know when I've made a few inquiries."

"Is this a male thing?" she asked in a voice made silky by long-pent-up grudges. He had been her community policeman for five years, and she had much to feel resentful for. At times of deep depression, she blamed him for everything. Other times, she was honest enough to admit that he had only been doing his job.

"Probably." He could smell the stables on her clothes, a musty scent of hay dust and horse manure that he half liked and half loathed.

"Then wouldn't it have been simpler just to whip out your willy and challenge him to a knob-measuring contest?" she asked sarcastically.

"I'd have lost."

"That's for sure," she agreed.

His smile widened. "You noticed then?"

"I could hardly avoid it. He wasn't wearing those shorts to disguise anything. Perhaps it was his wallet. There was precious little room for it anywhere else."

"No," he agreed. "Didn't you find that interesting?"

She looked at him suspiciously, wondering if he was making fun of her. "In what way?"

"Only an idiot sets out from Poole for Lulworth with no money and no water. That's twenty-five miles."

"Maybe he was planning to beg water off passersby or telephone a friend to come and rescue him. Why is it important? All he did was play the Good Samaritan to those kids."

"I think he was lying about what he was doing here. Did he give a different explanation before I got back?"

She thought about it. "We talked about dogs and horses. He was telling the boys about the farm he grew up on in Cornwall."

He reached for the handle on the driver's-side door. "Then perhaps I'm just suspicious of people who carry mobile telephones," he said.

"Everyone has them these days, including me."

He ran an amused eye over her slender figure in its tight cotton shirt and stretch jeans. "But you don't bring yours on country rambles, whereas that young man does. Apparently he leaves everything behind except his phone."

"You should be grateful," she said tartly. "But for him, you'd never have got to the woman so quickly."

"I agree," he said without rancor. "Mr. Harding was in the right place at the right time with the right equipment to report a body on a beach, and it would be churlish to ask why." He opened the door and squeezed his huge frame in behind the wheel. "Good day, Miss Jenner," he said politely. "My regards to your mother." He pulled the door closed and fired the engine.
 

The Spender brothers were of two minds whom to thank for their untroubled return home. The actor, because his pleas for tolerance worked? Or the policeman, because he was a decent bloke after all? He had said very little on the drive back to their rented cottage other than to warn them that the cliffs were dangerous and that it was foolish to climb them, however tempting the reason. To their parents he gave a brief, expurgated account of what had happened, ending with the suggestion that, as the boys' fishing had been interrupted by the events of the morning, he would be happy to take them out on his boat one evening. "It's not a motor cruiser," he warned them, "just a small fishing boat, but the sea bass run at this time of year, and if we're lucky we might catch one or two." He didn't put his arms around their shoulders or call them heroes, but he did give them something to look forward to.