It was a while before Galbraith responded. He had been listening attentively and making notes, and he finished writing before he said anything. "Did you lend him a dinghy?" he asked.
"Sure."
"What did it look like?"
Bridges frowned. "The same as any dinghy. Why do you want to know that?"
"Just interested. What color was it?"
"Black."
"Where did you get it from?"
He started to pluck Rizla papers from their packet and make a patchwork quilt of them on the floor. "A mailorder catalogue, I think. It's the one I had before I bought my new rib."
"Has Steve still got it?"
He hesitated before shaking his head. "I wouldn't know, mate. Wasn't it on Crazy Daze when you searched it?"
Thoughtfully, the DI tapped his pencil against his teeth. He recalled Carpenter's words of Wednesday: "I didn 't like him. He's a cocky little bastard, and a damn sight too knowledgeable about police interviews." "Okay," he said next. "Let's go back to Kate. You say the problem was sorted. What happened then?"
"Nothing. That's it. End of story. Unless you count the fact that she ends up dead on a beach in Dorset the weekend Steve just happens to be there."
"I do. I also count the fact that her daughter was found wandering along a main road approximately two hundred yards from where Steve's boat was moored."
"It was a setup," said Bridges. "You should be giving William the third degree. He had far more reason to murder Kate than Steve did. She was two-timing him, wasn't she?"
Galbraith shrugged. "Except that William didn't hate his wife, Tony. He knew what she was like when he married her, and it made no difference to him. Steve, on the other hand, had got himself into a mess and didn't know how to get out of it."
"That doesn't make him a murderer."
"Perhaps he thought he needed an ultimate solution."
Bridges shook his head. "Steve's not like that."
"And William Sumner is?"
"I wouldn't know. I've never met the bloke."
"According to your statement you and Steve had a drink with him one evening."
"Okay. Correction. I don't know the bloke. I stayed fifteen minutes tops and exchanged maybe half a dozen words with him."
Galbraith steepled his fingers in front of his mouth and studied the young man. "But you seem to know a lot about him," he said. "Kate, too, despite only meeting each of them once."
Bridges returned his attention to his patchwork quilt, sliding the papers into different positions with the balls of his fingers. "Steve talks a lot."
Galbraith seemed to accept this explanation, because he gave a nod. "Why was Steve planning to go to France this week?"
"I didn't know he was."
"He had a reservation at a hotel in Concarneau, which was canceled this morning when he failed to confirm it."
Bridges' expression became suddenly wary. "He's never mentioned it."
"Would you expect him to?"
"Sure."
"You said you and he had grown apart," Galbraith reminded him.
"Figure of speech, mate."
A look of derision darkened the inspector's eyes. "Okay, last question. Where's Steve's lock-up, Tony?"
"What lock-up?" asked the other guilelessly.
"All right. Let me put it another way. Where does he store the equipment off his boat when he's not using it? His dinghy and his outboard, for example."
"All over the place. Here. The flat in London. The back of his car."
Galbraith shook his head. "No oil spills," he said. "We've searched them all." He smiled amiably. "And don't try and tell me an outboard doesn't leak when it's laid on its side, because I won't believe you."
Bridges scratched the side of his jaw but didn't say anything.
"You're not his keeper, son," murmured Galbraith kindly, "and there's no law that says when your friend digs a hole for himself you have to get into it with him."
The man pulled a wry face. "I did warn him, you know. I said he'd do better to volunteer information rather than have it dragged out of him piecemeal. He wouldn't listen, though. He has this crazy idea he can control everything, when the truth is he's never been able to control a damn thing from the first day I met him. Talk about a loose cannon. Sometimes, I wish I'd never met the stupid bugger, because I'm sick to death of telling lies for him." He shrugged. "But, hey! He is my friend."
Galbraith's boyish face creased into a smile. The young man's sincerity was about as credible as a Ku Klux Klan assertion that it wasn't an association of racists, and he was reminded of the expression: with friends like this who needs enemies? He glanced idly about the room. There were too many discrepancies, he thought, particularly in relation to fingerprint evidence, and he felt he was being steered in a direction he didn't want to go. He wondered why Bridges thought that was necessary.
Because he knew Harding was guilty? Or because he knew he wasn't?
*22*
A call from the Dorsetshire Constabulary to the manager of the Hotel Angelique in Concarneau, a pretty seaside town in southern Brittany, revealed that Mr. Steven Harding had telephoned on 8 August, requesting a double room for three nights from Saturday, 16 August, for himself and Mrs. Harding. He had given his mobile telephone as the contact number, saying he would be traveling the coast of France by boat during the week 11-17 August and could not be sure of his exact arrival date. He had agreed to confirm the reservation not less than twenty-four hours prior to his arrival. In the absence of any such confirmation, and with rooms in demand, the manager had left a message with Mr. Harding's telephone answering service and had canceled the reservation when Mr. Harding failed to return his call. He was not acquainted with Mr. Harding and was unable to say if Mr. or Mrs. Harding had stayed in the hotel before. Where exactly was his hotel in Concarneau? Two streets back from the waterfront, but within easy walking distance of the shops, the sea, and the lovely beaches. And the marinas, too, of course.
A complete check of the numbers listed in Harding's mobile telephone, which had been unavailable to the police at the time of his arrest because it had been under a pile of newspapers in Bob Winterslow's house, produced a series of names already known and contacted by the investigators. Only one call remained a mystery, either because the subscriber had deliberately withheld the number or because it had been routed through an exchange-possibly a foreign one-which meant the SIM card had been unable to record it.
"Steve? Where are you? I'm frightened. Please phone me. I've tried twenty times since Sunday."
Before he returned to Winfrith, Detective Superintendent Carpenter took Ingram aside for a briefing. He had spent much of the last hour with his telephone clamped to his ear, while the PC and the two DCs continued to dig into the shale slide and scour the shoreline in a fruitless search for further evidence. He had watched their efforts through thoughtful eyes while jotting the various pieces of information that came through to him into his notebook. He was unsurprised by their failure to find anything else. The sea, as he had learned from the coastguards' descriptions of how bodies vanished without a trace and were never seen again, was a friend to murderers.
"Harding's being discharged from the Poole hospital at five," he told the constable, "but I'm not ready to talk to him yet. I need to see the Frenchman's video and question Tony Bridges before I go anywhere near him." He clapped the tall man on the back. "You were right about the lockup, by the way. He's been using a garage near the Lymington yacht club. John Galbraith's on his way there now to have a look at it. What I need you to do, lad, is nail our friend Steve for the assault on Miss Jenner and hold him on ice till tomorrow morning. Keep it simple-make sure he thinks he's only being arrested for the assault. Can you do that?"