In the event, the coastguards happily passed the buck to Ingram, claiming they had better things to do at the height of the summer season than look for imaginary "dinghies" in unlikely places. Equally skeptical himself, Ingram parked at Durlston Head and set off along the coastal path, following the route Harding claimed to have taken the previous Sunday. He walked slowly, searching the shoreline at the foot of the cliffs every fifty yards through binoculars. He was as conscious as the coastguards of the difficulties of isolating a black dinghy against the glistening rocks that lined the base of the headland, and constantly reexamined stretches he had already decided were clear. He also had little faith in his own estimate that a floating object seen at approximately 6:15 p.m. on Sunday evening, some three hundred yards out from Seacombe Cliff-his guess at where a Fairline Squadron might have been after ten minutes traveling at twenty-five knots from St. Alban's Head-could have beached approximately six hours later halfway between Blackers Hole and Anvil Point. He knew how unpredictable the sea was, and how very unlikely it was that a partially deflated dinghy would even have come ashore. The more probable scenario was that it was halfway to France by now-always assuming it had ever existed-or twenty fathoms under.
He found it slightly to the east of where he had predicted, nearer to Anvil Point, and he smiled with justifiable satisfaction as the powerful lenses picked it out. It was upside down, held in shape by its wooden floor and seats, and neatly stranded on an inaccessible piece of shore. He dialed through to DI Galbraith on his mobile. "How good a sailor are you?" he asked him. "Because the only way you'll get close to this little mother is by boat. If you meet me in Swanage I can take you out this evening. You'll need waterproofs and waders," he warned. "It'll be a wet trip."
Ingram invited along a couple of friends from the Swanage lifeboat crew to keep Miss Creant on station while he took Galbraith in to the shore in his own inflatable. He killed the outboard motor and swung it up out of the water thirty yards from land, using his oars to maneuver them carefully through the crops of jagged granite that lay in wait for unwary sailors. He steadied the little craft against a good-sized rock, nodded to Galbraith to get out and start wading, then followed him into the water and used the painter to guide the lightened dinghy onto what passed for a beach in that desolate spot.
"There she is," he said, jerking his head to the left while he lifted his inflatable clear of the waterline, "but God only knows what she's doing out here. People don't abandon perfectly good dinghies for no reason."
Galbraith shook his head in amazement. "How the hell did you spot it?" he asked, gazing up at the sheer cliffs above them and thinking it must have been like looking for a needle in a haystack.
"It wasn't easy," Ingram admitted, leading the way toward it. "More to the point, how the hell did it survive the rocks?" He stooped over the upturned hull. "It must have come in like this, or its bottom would have been ripped out, and that means there won't be anything left inside. Still"-he raised an inquiring eyebrow-"shall we turn it over?"
With a nod, Galbraith grasped the stern board while Ingram took a tuck in the rubber at the bow. They set it right-way-up with difficulty because the lack of air meant there was no rigidity in the structure and it collapsed in on itself like a deflated balloon. A tiny crab scuttled out from underneath and slipped into a nearby rock pool. As Ingram had predicted, there was nothing inside except the wooden floorboards and the remains of a wooden seat, which had snapped in the middle, probably on its journey to and fro across the rocks. Nevertheless, it was a substantial dinghy, about ten feet long and four feet wide, with its stern board intact.
Ingram pointed to the indentations where the screw clamps of an outboard motor had bitten into the wood, then squatted on his haunches to examine two metal rings screwed into the transom planking aft and a single ring screwed into the floorboarding at the bow. "It's been hung from davits off the back of a boat at some point. These rings are for attaching the wires before it's winched up tight against the davit arms. That way it doesn't swing about while the host boat's in motion." He searched the outside of the hull for any sign of a name, but there was none. He looked up at Galbraith, squinting against the setting sun. "There's no way this dropped off the back of a cruiser without anyone noticing. Both winching wires would have to snap at the same moment, and the chances of that happening would be minimal, I should think. If only one wire snapped-the stern wire, for example-you'd have a heavy object swinging like a pendulum behind you, and your steering would go haywire. At which point you'd slow right down and find out what the problem was." He paused. "In any case, if the wires had sheared they'd still be attached to the rings."
"Go on."
"I'd say it's more likely it was launched off a trailer, which means we need to ask questions at Swanage, Kimmeridge Bay, or Lulworth." He stood up and glanced toward the west. "Unless it came out of Chapman's Pool, of course, and then we need to ask how it got there in the first place. There's no public access, so you can't just pull a trailer down and launch a dinghy for the fun of it." He rubbed his jaw. "It's curious, isn't it?"
"Couldn't you carry it down and pump it up in situ?"
"It depends how strong you are. They weigh a ton, these things." He stretched his arms like a fisherman sizing a fish. "They come in huge canvas holdalls, but trust me, you need two people to carry them any distance, and it's a good mile from Hill Bottom to the Chapman's Pool slip."
"What about the boat sheds? The SOCOs took photographs of the whole bay and there are plenty of dinghies parked on the hard standing beside the sheds. Could it be one of those?"
"Only if it was nicked. The fishermen who use the boat sheds wouldn't abandon a perfectly good dinghy. I haven't had any reports of one being stolen, but that might be because no one's noticed it's missing. I can run some checks tomorrow."
"Joyriders?" suggested Galbraith.
"I doubt it." Ingram touched his foot to the hull. "Not unless they fancied the hardest paddle of their life to get it out into the open sea. It couldn't have floated out on its own. The entrance channel's too narrow, and the thrust of the waves would have forced it back onto the rocks in the bay." He smiled at Galbraith's lack of comprehension. "You couldn't take it out without an engine," he explained, "and your average joyrider doesn't usually bring his own means of locomotion with him. People don't leave outboards lying around any more than they leave gold ingots. They're expensive items, so you keep them under lock and key. That also rules out your pumping up in situ theory. I can't see anyone lugging a dinghy and an outboard down to Chapman's Pool."
Galbraith eyed him curiously. "So?"
"I'm thinking on the hoof here, sir."
"Never mind. It sounds good. Keep going."
"If it was stolen out of Chapman's Pool, that makes it a premeditated theft. We're talking someone who was prepared to lug a heavy outboard along a mile-long path in order to nick a boat." He lifted his eyebrows. "Why would anyone want to do that? And, having done it, why abandon ship? It's a bit bloody odd, don't you think? How did they get back to shore?"
"Swam?"
"Maybe." Ingram's eyes narrowed to slits against the brilliant orange sun. He didn't speak for several seconds. "Or maybe they didn't have to," he said then. "Maybe they weren't in it." He lapsed into a thoughtful silence. "There's nothing wrong with the stern board, so the outboard should have pulled it under as soon as the sides started to deflate."