"Why not? There was a case down here three years ago when a wife smashed her husband's Jag through the front door of his lover's house. Women can get pretty riled when they're given the elbow."
"Except he says he never slept with her."
"Maybe that was her problem."
"How come you're on his side all of a sudden?"
"I'm not. The rules say keep an open mind, and that's what I'm trying to do."
Galbraith chuckled. "He wants us to believe he's a bit of a stud, presumably on the basis that a man who has access to sex on tap doesn't need to rape anyone, but he can't or won't produce the names of women he's slept with. And neither can anyone else." He shrugged. "Yet no one questions his reputation for laddish behavior. They're all quite confident he entertains ladies on his boat even though the SOCOs couldn't come up with any evidence to support it. His bedlinen's stiff with dried semen, but there were only two hairs on it that weren't his, and neither of them was Kate Sumner's. Conclusion, the guy's a compulsive masturbator." He paused for reflection. "The problem is his damn boat's positively monastic in every other respect."
"I don't get you."
"Not a whisper of anything pornographic," said Gal-braith. "Compulsive masturbators, particularly the ones who go on to rape, wank their brains out over hard-core porn videos because sensation begins and ends with their dicks, and they need more and more explicit images to help them jerk off. So how does our friend Harding get himself aroused?"
"Memory?" suggested Ingram wryly.
Galbraith chuckled. "He's done some pornographic photoshoots himself but claims the only copies he ever kept were the ones he showed William Sumner." He gave a brief rundown of both Harding's and Sumner's versions of the story. "He says he threw the magazine in the bin afterward, and as far as he's concerned, porno shoots become history the minute he's paid."
"More likely he got rid of everything over the side when it occurred to him I might put his name forward for further questioning." Ingram thought for a moment. "Did you ask him about what Danny Spender told me? Why he was rubbing himself with the phone?"
"He said it wasn't true, said the kid made it up."
"No way. I'll stake my life on Danny getting that right."
"Why then?"
"Reliving the rape? Getting himself excited because his victim had been found? Miss Jenner?"
"Which?"
"The rape," said Ingram.
"Pure speculation, based on the word of a ten-year-old and a policeman. No jury will believe you, Nick."
"Then talk to Miss Jenner tomorrow. Find out if she noticed anything before I got there." He started to stack the dirty dishes. "I suggest you use kid gloves, though. She's not too comfortable around policemen."
"Do you mean policemen in general, or just you?"
"Probably just me," said Ingram honestly. "I tipped off her father that the man she'd married had bounced a couple of bad checks, and when the old boy tackled him about it, the bastard did a runner with the small fortune he'd conned out of Miss Jenner and her mother. When his fingerprints were run through the computer, it turned out half the police forces in England were looking for him, not to mention the various wives he'd acquired along the way. Miss Jenner was number four, although as he never divorced number one, the marriage was a sham anyway."
"What was his name?"
"Robert Healey. He was arrested a couple of years ago in Manchester. She knew him as Martin Grant, but he admitted to twenty-two other aliases in court."
"And she blames you because she married a creep?" asked Galbraith in disbelief.
"Not for that. Her father had had a bad heart for years, and the shock of finding out they were on the verge of bankruptcy killed him. I think she feels that if I'd gone to her instead of him, she could somehow have persuaded Healey to give the money back and the old man would still be alive."
"Could she?"
"I wouldn't think so." He placed the dishes in front of him. "Healey had the whole scam down to a fine art, and being open to persuasion wasn't part of his MO."
"How did he work it?"
Ingram pulled a wry face. "Charm. She was besotted with him."
"So she's stupid?"
"No ... just overly trusting..." Ingram marshaled his thoughts. "He was a professional. Created a fictitious company with fictitious accounts and persuaded the two women to invest in it, or more accurately persuaded Miss Jenner to persuade her mother. It was a very sophisticated operation. I saw the paperwork afterward, and I'm not surprised they fell for it. The house was littered with glossy brochures, audited accounts, salary checks, lists of employees, Inland Revenue statements. You'd have to be very suspicious indeed to assume anyone would go to so much trouble to con you out of a hundred thousand quid. Anyway, on the basis that the company stock was going up by twenty percent a year, Mrs. Jenner cashed in all her bonds and securities and handed her son-in-law a check."
"Which he converted back into cash?"
Ingram nodded. "It passed through at least three bank accounts on the way, and then vanished. In all, he spent twelve months working the scam-nine months softening up Miss Jenner, and three months married to her-and it wasn't just the Jenners who got taken to the cleaners. He used his connection with them to draw in other people, and a lot of their friends got their fingers burned as well. It's sad, but they've become virtual recluses as a result."
"What do they live on?"
"Whatever she can make from the Broxton House livery stables. Which isn't much. The whole place is getting seedier by the day."
"Why don't they sell it?"
Ingram pushed his chair back, preparatory to standing up. "Because it doesn't belong to them. Old man Jenner changed his will before he died and left the house to his son, with the proviso that the two women can go on living there as long as Mrs. Jenner remains alive."
Galbraith frowned. "And then what? The brother throws the sister on the streets?"
"Something like that," said Ingram dryly. "He's a lawyer in London, and he certainly doesn't plan to have a sitting tenant on the premises when he sells out to a developer."
Before he left to interview Maggie Jenner on Thursday morning, Galbraith had a quick word with Carpenter to bring him up to speed on the beached dinghy. "I've organized a couple of SOCOs to go out to it," he told him. "I'll be surprised if they find anything-Ingram and I had a poke around to see what had caused it to deflate, and frankly it's all a bit of a mess-but I think it's worth a try. They're going to make an attempt to reinflate it and float it off the rocks, but the advice is, don't hold your breath. Even if they get it back, it's doubtful we'll learn much from it."
Carpenter handed him a sheaf of papers. "These'll interest you," he said.
"What are they?"
"Statements from the people Sumner said would support his alibi."
Galbraith heard a note of excitement in his boss's voice. "And do they?"
The other shook his head. "Quite the opposite. There are twenty-four hours unaccounted for, between lunchtime on Saturday and lunchtime on Sunday. We're now blitzing everyone, hotel staff, other conference delegates, but those"-he leveled a finger at the documents in Galbraith's hand-"are the names Sumner himself gave us." His eyes gleamed. "And if they're not prepared to alibi him, I can't see anyone else doing it. It looks as if you could be right, John."
Galbraith nodded. "How did he do it, though?"
"He used to sail, must know Chapman's Pool as well as Harding, must know there are dinghies lying around for the taking."
"How did he get Kate there?"
"Phoned her Friday night, said he was bored out of his mind with the conference and was planning to come home early, suggested they do something exciting for a change, like spend the afternoon on Studland beach, and arranged to meet her and Hannah off the train in Bournemouth or Poole."
Galbraith tugged at his earlobe. "It's possible," he agreed.