"Won't Steven Harding know you've been playing his messages when you give it back to him? Our answerphone never replays the ones you've already listened to unless you rewind the tape."
"Voice mail's different. You have to delete the messages if you don't want to keep hearing them." He grinned. "But if he's suspicious, let's just hope he thinks you buggered it up when you made your phone call."
"Why drag me into it?"
"Because he'll know you phoned me. My number's in the memory."
"Oh God," she said in resignation. "Are you expecting me to lie for you?"
"No." He stood up, lacing his hands above his head and stretching his shoulder muscles under his damp clothes. He was so tall he could almost touch the ceiling, and he stood like a Colossus in the middle of the kitchen, easily dominating a room that was big enough to house an entire family.
Watching him, Maggie wondered how she could ever have called him an overweight Neanderthal. It had been Martin's description, she remembered, and it galled her unbearably to think how tamely she had adopted it herself because it had raised a laugh among people she had once regarded as friends but whom she now avoided like the plague. "Well, I will," she said with sudden decision.
He shook his head as he lowered his arms. "It wouldn't do me any good. You couldn't lie to save your life. And that's a compliment, by the way," he said as she started to scowl, "so there's no need to hit me again. I don't admire people who lie."
"I'm sorry," she said abruptly.
"No need to be. It was my fault. I shouldn't have teased you." He started to gather the bits and pieces from the table.
"Where are you going now?"
"Back to my house to change, then down to the boat sheds at Chapman's Pool. But I'll look in again this afternoon before I go to see Harding. As you so rightly pointed out, I need to take a statement from you." He paused. "We'll talk about this in detail later, but did you hear anything before he appeared?"
"Like what?"
"Shale falling?"
She shook her head. "All I remember is how quiet it was. That's why he gave me such a fright. One minute I was on my own, the next he was crouching on the ground in front of me like a rabid dog. It was really peculiar. I don't know what he thought he was doing, but there's a lot of scrub vegetation and bushes around there, so I think he must have heard me coming and ducked down to hide."
He nodded. "What about his clothes? Were they wet?"
"No."
"Dirty?"
"You mean before he bled all over them?"
"Yes."
She shook her head again. "I remember thinking that he hadn't shaved, but I don't remember thinking he was dirty."
He stacked the cling film bundle, notes, and phone into a pile and lifted them off the table. "Okay. That's great. I'll take a statement this afternoon." He held her gaze for a moment. "You'll be all right," he told her. "Harding's not going to come back."
"He wouldn't dare," she said, clenching her fists.
"Not if he has any sense," murmured Ingram, moving out of her range.
"Do you have any brandy in your house?"
The switch was so abrupt that he needed time to consider. "Ye-es," he murmured cautiously, fearing another assault if he dared to question why she was asking. He suspected four years of angry frustration had gone into her punch, and he wished she'd chosen Harding for target practice instead of himself.
"Can you lend me some?"
"Sure. I'll drop it in on my way back to Chapman's Pool."
"If you give me a moment to tell Ma where I'm going, I'll come with you. I can walk back."
"Won't she miss you?"
"Not for an hour or so. The painkillers have made her sleepy."
Bertie was lying on the doorstep in the sunshine as Ingram drew the Jeep to a halt beside his gate. Maggie had never been inside Nick's little house, but she had always resented the neatness of his garden. It was like a reproach to all his less organized neighbors with its beautifully clipped privet hedges and regimented hydrangeas and roses in serried ranks before the yellow-stone walls of the house. She often wondered where he found the time to weed and hoe when he spent most of his free hours on his boat, and in her more critical moments put it down to the fact that he was boring and compartmentalized his life according to some sensible duty roster.
The dog raised his shaggy head and thumped his tail on the mat before rising leisurely to his feet and yawning. "So this is where he comes," she said. "I've often wondered. How long did it take you to train him, as a matter of interest?"
"Not long. He's a bright dog."
"Why did you bother?"
"Because he's a compulsive digger, and I got fed up with having my garden destroyed," he said prosaically.
"Oh God," she said guiltily. "Sorry. The trouble is he never takes any notice of me."
"Does he need to?"
"He's my dog," she said.
Ingram opened the Jeep door. "Have you made that clear to him?"
"Of course I have. He comes home every night, doesn't he?"
He reached into the back for the stack of evidence. "I wasn't questioning ownership," he told her. "I was questioning whether or not Bertie knows he's a dog. As far as he's concerned, he's the boss in your establishment. He gets fed first, sleeps on your sofa, licks out your dishes. I'll bet you even move over in bed in order to make sure he's more comfortable, don't you?"
She colored slightly. "What if I do? I'd rather have him in my bed than the weasel that used to be in it. In any case, he's the closest thing I've got to a hot-water bottle."
Ingram laughed. "Are you coming in or do you want me to bring the brandy out? I guarantee Bertie won't disgrace you. He has beautiful manners since I took him to task for wiping his bottom on my carpet."
Maggie sat in indecision. She had never wanted to go inside, because it would tell her things about him that she didn't want to know. At the very least it would be insufferably clean, she thought, and her bloody dog would shame her by doing exactly what he was told.
"I'm coming in," she said defiantly.
(Carpenter took a phone call from a Dartmouth police sergeant just as he was about to leave for Chapman's Pool. He listened to a description of what was on the Frenchman's video then asked: "What does he look like?"
"Five eight, medium build, bit of a paunch, thinning dark hair."
"I thought you said he was a young chap."
"No. Mid-forties, at least. His daughter's fourteen."
Carpenter's frown dug trenches out of his forehead. "Not the bloody Frenchman," he shouted, "the toe-rag on the video!"
"Oh, sorry. Yes, he's young all right. Early twenties, I'd say. Longish dark hair, sleeveless T-shirt, and cycling shorts. Muscles. Tanned. A handsome bugger, in fact. The kid who filmed him said she thought he looked like Jean-Claude Van Damme. Mind you, she's mortified about it now, can't believe she didn't realize what he was up to, considering he's got a rod like a fucking salami. This guy could make a fortune in porno movies."
"All right, all right," said Carpenter testily. "I get the picture. And you say he's wanking into a handkerchief?"
"Looks like it."
"Could it be a child's T-shirt?"
"Maybe. It's difficult to tell. Matter of fact, I'm amazed the French geezer spotted what the bastard was up to. It's pretty discreet. It's only because his knob's so damn big that you can see anything at all. The first time I watched it I thought he was peeling an orange in his lap." There was a belly laugh at the other end of the line. "Still, you know what they say about the French. They're all wankers. So I guess our little geezer's done a spot of it himself and knew what to look for. Am I right or am I right?"
Carpenter, who spent all his holidays in France, cocked a finger and thumb at the telephone and pulled the trigger-bloody racist, he was thinking-but there was no trace of irritation in his voice when he spoke. "You said the young man had a rucksack. Can you describe it for me?"