He watched her for a moment, then turned back to the sink, emptying the mugs of bleach and rinsing them under the tap. He jerked his head toward the kettle. "Your mother would like a cup of tea, and I suggest you put several spoonfuls of sugar in it to bring up her energy levels. I also suggest you make one for yourself. The GP said he'd be here by eleven." He dried his hands on a tea towel and rolled down his sleeves.
"Where are you going?" she asked him.
"Up to the headland. I want to try and find out why Harding came back. Does your mother have any freezer bags?"
"No. We can't afford a freezer."
"Cling film?"
"In the drawer by the sink."
"Can I take it?" "
"I suppose so." She watched him remove the roll and tuck it under his arm. "What do you want it for?"
"Evidence," he said unhelpfully, making for the door.
She watched him in a kind of despair. "What about me and Ma?"
He turned with a frown. "What about you?"
"God, I don't know," she said crossly. "We're both pretty shaken, you know. That bloody man hit me, in case you've forgotten. Aren't the police supposed to stay around when women get attacked? Take statements or something?"
"Probably," he agreed, "but this is my day off. I turfed out to help you as a friend, not as a policeman, and I'm only following up on Harding because I'm involved in the Kate Sumner case. Don't worry," he said with a comforting smile, "you're in no danger from him, not while he's in Poole, but dial nine-nine-nine if you need someone to hold your hand."
She glared at him. "I want him prosecuted, which means I want you to take a statement now."
"Mmm, well, don't forget I'll be taking one from him, too," Ingram pointed out, "and you may not be so eager to go for his jugular if he opts to counterprosecute on the grounds that he's the one who suffered the injuries because you didn't have your dog under proper control. It's going to be your word against his," he said, making for the door, "which is one of the reasons why I'm going back up there now."
She sighed. "I suppose you're hurt because I told you to mind your own business?"
"Not in the least," he said, disappearing into the scullery. "Try angry or bored."
"Do you want me to say sorry?" she called after him. "Well, okay ... I'm tired ... I'm stressed out, and I'm not in the best of moods but"-she gritted her teeth-"I'll say 'sorry' if that's what you want."
But her words fell on stony ground, because all she heard was the sound of the back door closing behind him.
The detective inspector had been silent so long that William Sumner grew visibly nervous. "There you are then," he said again. "I couldn't possibly have drowned her, could I?" Anxiety had set his eyelid fluttering, and he looked absurdly comical every time his lid winked. "I don't understand why you keep hounding me. You said you were looking for someone with a boat, but you know I haven't got one. And I don't understand why you released Steven Harding when WPC Griffiths said he was seen talking to Kate outside Tesco's on Saturday morning."
WPC Griffiths should learn to keep her mouth shut, thought Galbraith in annoyance. Not that he blamed her. Sumner was bright enough to read between the lines of newspaper reports about "a young Lymington actor being taken in for questioning" and then press for answers. "Briefly," he said, "then they went their separate ways. She talked to a couple of market stallholders afterward, but Harding wasn't with her."
"Well, it wasn't me who did it." He winked. "So there must be someone else you haven't found yet."
"That's certainly one way of looking at it." Galbraith lifted a photograph of Kate off the table beside him. "The trouble is looks are so often deceptive. I mean, take Kate here. You see this?" He turned the picture toward the husband. "The first impression she gives is that butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, but the more you learn about her the more you realize that isn't true. Let me tell you what I know of her." He held up his fingers and ticked the points off as he spoke. "She wanted money and she didn't really mind how she got it. She manipulated people in order to achieve her ambitions. She could be cruel. She told lies if necessary. Her goal was to climb the social ladder and become accepted within a milieu she admired, and as long as it brought the goalposts closer, she was prepared to play-act whatever role was required of her, sex being the major weapon in her armory. The one person she couldn't manipulate successfully was your mother, so she dealt with her in the only way possible-by moving away from her influence." He dropped his hand to his lap and looked at the other man with genuine sympathy. "How long was it before you realized you'd been suckered, William?"
"I suppose you've been talking to that bloody policewoman?"
"Among other people."
"She made me angry. I said things I didn't mean."
Galbraith shook his head. "Your mother's view of your marriage wasn't so different," he pointed out. "She may not have used the terms 'landlady' or 'cheap boarding-house,' but she certainly gave the impression of an unfulfilled and unfulfilling relationship. Other people have described it as unhappy, based on sex, cool, boring. Are any of those descriptions accurate? Are they all accurate?"
Sumner pressed his finger and thumb to the bridge of his nose. "You don't kill your wife because you're bored with her," he muttered.
Galbraith wondered again at the man's naivete. Boredom was precisely why most men killed their wives. They might disguise it by claiming provocation or jealousy, but in the end, a desire for something different was usually the reason-even if the difference was simply escape. "Except I'm told it wasn't so much a question of boredom but more a question of you taking her for granted. And that interests me. You see, I wonder what a man like you would do if the woman you'd been taking for granted suddenly decided she wasn't going to play the game anymore."
Sumner stared back at him with disdain. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Or if," Galbraith went on relentlessly, "you discovered that what you'd been taking for granted wasn't true. Such as being a father, for example."
Ingram's assumption was that Harding had come back for his rucksack because, despite the man's claim that the rucksack found on board Crazy Daze was the one he'd been carrying, Ingram remained convinced that it wasn't. Paul and Danny Spender had been too insistent that it was big for Ingram to accept that a triangular one fitted the description. Also, he remained suspicious about why Harding had left it behind when he took the boys down to the boat sheds. Nevertheless, the logic of why he had descended to the beach that morning, only to climb up again empty-handed, was far from obvious. Had someone else found the rucksack and removed it? Had Harding weighted it with a rock and thrown it into the sea? Had he even left it there in the first place?
In frustration, he slithered down a gully in the shale precipice to where the grassy slope at the end of the quarry valley undulated softly toward the sea. It was a western-facing cliff out of sight of the sun, and he shivered as the cold and damp penetrated his flimsy T-shirt and sweater. He turned to look back toward the cleft in the cliff, giving himself a rough idea of where Harding must have emerged in front of Maggie. Shale still pattered down the gully Ingram himself had used, and he noticed what was obviously a recent slide farther to the left. He walked over to it, wondering if Harding had dislodged it in his ascent, but the surface was damp with dew and he decided it must have happened a few days previously.
He turned his attention to the shore below, striding down the grass to take a closer look. Pieces of driftwood and old plastic containers had wedged themselves into cracks in the rocks, but there was no sign of a black or green rucksack. He felt exhausted suddenly, and wondered what the hell he was doing there. He'd planned to spend his day in total idleness aboard Miss Creant, and he really didn't appreciate giving it up for a wild-goose chase. He raised his eyes to the clouds skudding in on a southwesterly breeze and sighed his frustration to the winds..