"Which was sometime toward the end of April?" Harding nodded. "But she didn't start this"-Carpenter sought a suitable phrase-" 'dirty campaign' until after she realized you weren't interested in pursuing a relationship with her?"
"It's not my fault," he said despairingly. "She was ... so ... fucking ... boring."
"The question I asked you, Steve," repeated Carpenter patiently, "was did she start her 'dirty campaign' after she realized you weren't interested in her?"
"Yes." He jabbed the heels of his palms against his eye in an effort to recall detail. "She just made my life hell until I couldn't stand it any longer. That's when I thought of persuading William to tell her I was an arse-bandit."
The superintendent ran a finger down Harding's statement. "Which was in June?"
"Yes."
"Any particular reason why you waited a month and a half to put a stop to it?"
"Because it was getting worse not better," the young man said with a sudden rush of anger as if the memory still rankled deeply. "I thought she'd run out of steam if I was patient, but when she started targeting my dinghy, I decided enough was enough. I reckoned she'd start on Crazy Daze next, and there was no way I was going to let her do that."
Carpenter nodded as if he thought the explanation a reasonable one. He pulled out Harding's statement again and ran his finger down it. "So you sought out William and showed him photographs of yourself in a gay magazine because you wanted him to tell his wife you were gay?"
"Yes."
"Mmm." Carpenter reached for Tony Bridges' statement. "Tony, on the other hand, says that when you told him you were going to report Kate to the police for harassing you, he advised you to move your car instead. According to him that's what sorted the problem. In fact, he thought it was pretty funny when we told him last night that your solution to Kate's harassment was to show William gay pictures of yourself. He said: 'Steve always was as thick as two short planks.' "
Harding shrugged. "So? It worked. That's all I was interested in."
Slowly, Carpenter squared the papers on the table in front of him. "Why do you think that was?" he asked. "I mean, you're not seriously suggesting that a woman who was so angry at being rejected that she was prepared to harass and intimidate you for weeks would meekly give up when she found out you were gay? Or are you? Admittedly I'm no expert in mental disorders, but I'd guess the intimidation would become markedly worse. No one likes to be made a fool of, Steve."
Harding stared at him in perplexity. "Except she did stop."
The superintendent shook his head. "You can't stop something you never started, son. Oh, she certainly wiped Hannah's nappy on your sheets in a moment of irritation, which probably gave Tony the idea, but it wasn't Kate who was getting her own back on you, it was your friend. It was a peculiarly apt revenge after all. You've been crapping on his doorstep for years. It must have given him a hell of a buzz to pay you back in your own coin. The only reason he stopped was because you were threatening to go to the police."
A sickly smile washed across Harding's face like wet watercolor. He looked ill, thought Carpenter with satisfaction.
William Sumner's mother had long since given up trying to induce her son to talk. Her initial surprise at his unheralded appearance in her flat had given way to fear, and like a hostage, she sought to appease and not to confront. Whatever had brought him back to Chichester was not something he wanted to share with her. He seemed to alternate between anger and anguish, rocking himself to and fro in bouts of frenetic movement only to collapse in tear-sodden lethargy when the fit passed. She was unable to help him. He guarded the telephone with the single-mindedness of a madman, and handicapped by immobility and dread, she withdrew into silent observation.
He had become a stranger to her in the last twelve months, and a kind of subdued dislike drove her toward cruelty. She found herself despising him. He had always been spineless, she thought, which was why Kate had gained such an easy ascendancy over him. Her mouth pinched into lines of contempt as she listened to the dry sobs that racked his thin frame, and when he finally broke his silence, she realized with a sense of inevitability that she could have predicted what he was going to say. "...I didn't know what to do..."
She guessed he had killed his wife. She feared now he had also killed his child.
Tony Bridges rose to his feet as the cell door opened and viewed Galbraith with an uneasy smile. He was diminished by incarceration, a small, insignificant man who had discovered what it meant to have his life controlled by others. Gone was the cocksure attitude of yesterday, in its place a nervous recognition that his ability to persuade had been blunted by the stone wall of police distrust. ''How long are you going to keep me here?"
"As long as it takes, Tony."
"I don't know what you want from me."
"The truth."
"All I did was steal a boat."
Galbraith shook his head. He fancied he saw a momentary regret in the frightened gaze that briefly met his before he stood back to let the young man pass. It was remorse of a kind, he supposed.
...I didn 't mean to do it. I didn 't do it-not really. Kate would still be alive if she hadn't tried to push me over the side. It's her fault she's dead. We were getting on fine until she made a lunge at me, then the next thing I knew she was in the water. You can't blame me for that. Don't you think I'd have drowned Hannah too if I'd intended to kill her mother...?"
*25*
Broxton House slumbered peacefully in the afternoon sunshine as Nick Ingram pulled up in front of the porticoed entrance. As always he paused to admire its clean, square lines and, as always, regretted its slow deterioration. To him, perhaps more than to the Jenners, it represented something valuable, a living reminder that beauty existed in everything; but then he, despite his job, was enduringly sentimental, and they were not. The double doors stood wide open, an invitation to any passing thief, and he picked up Celia's handbag from the hall table as he passed on his way to the drawing room. Silence lay across the house like a blanket of dust, and he worried suddenly that he had come too late. Even his own footfalls on the marble floor were just a whisper in the great emptiness that surrounded him.
He eased open the drawing-room door and stepped inside. Celia was propped up in bed, bifocals slipping off the end of her nose, mouth open, snoring quietly, with Bertie's head on the pillow beside her. They looked like a tableau out of The Godfather, and Nick was hard-pushed not to laugh out loud. The sentimentalist in him viewed them fondly. Maybe Maggie was right, he thought. Maybe happiness was more to do with bodily contact than with hygiene. Who cared about tannin in teacups when you had a hairy hot-water bottle who was prepared to lie with you and love you when no one else would? He tapped lightly on one of the door panels and watched with amusement as Bertie opened a cautious eye then closed it again in obvious relief when he realized Nick wasn't going to make demands on his loyalty.
"I'm not asleep, you know," said Celia, raising a hand to adjust her spectacles. "I heard you come in."
"Am I disturbing you?"
"No." She hoisted herself into a more upright position, tugging her bedjacket across her chest in a belated attempt to safeguard her dignity.
"You shouldn't leave your bag on the hall table," he told her, walking across to put it on the bed. "Anyone could steal it."
"They're welcome to it, my dear. There's nothing in it worth taking." She examined him closely. "I prefer you in uniform. Dressed like that, you look like a gardener."