A strangled sob issued from the other man's mouth, "I've been hating her so much ... I knew he was more than a casual acquaintance when she said she didn't want him in the house anymore. She used to flirt with him at the beginning, then she turned vicious and started calling him names ... I guessed he'd got bored with her..."
"Is that when he showed you the photographs?"
"Yes."
"Why did he do that, William?"
"He said he wanted me to show them to Kate but..." He lifted a trembling hand to his mouth.
Galbraith recalled something Tony had said the previous evening. "The only reason Steve does pornography is because he knows it's inadequate guys who're going to look at it. He doesn 't have any hang-ups about sex, so it gives him a buzz to think of them squirming over pictures of him..."
"But he really wanted to show them to you?"
Sumner nodded. "He wanted to prove that Kate would sleep with anyone-even a man who preferred other men-rather than sleep with me." Tears streamed down his face. "I think she must have told him I wasn't very good. I said I didn't want to see the pictures, so he put the magazine on the table in front of me and told me to"-he struggled with the words, closing his eyes in pain, as if to blot out the memory-" 'suck on it.' "
"Did he say he'd slept with Kate?"
"He didn't need to. I knew when Hannah let him pick her up in the street that something was going on ... she's never let me do that." More tears squeezed from his tired eyes.
"What did he say, William?"
He plucked at his mouth. "That Kate was making his life hell by smearing Hannah's nappies on his possessions, and that if I didn't make her stop he'd go to the police."
"And you believed him?"
"Kate was-like that," he said with a break in his voice. "She could be spiteful when she didn't get her own way."
"Did you show her the magazine?"
"No."
"What did you do with it?"
"Kept it in my car."
"Why?"
"To look at ... remember..." He rested his head against the back of the chair and stared at the ceiling. "Have something to hate, I suppose."
"Did you tackle Kate about it?"
"There was no point. She'd have lied."
"So what did you do?"
"Nothing," he said simply. "Went on as if nothing had happened. Stayed late at work ... sat in my study ... avoided her ... I couldn't think, you see. I kept wondering if the baby was mine." He turned to look at the policeman. "Was it?"
Galbraith leaned forward and clamped his hands between his knees. "The pathologist estimated the fetus at fourteen weeks, making conception early May, but Kate's affair with Harding finished at the end of March. I can ask the pathologist to run a DNA test if you want absolute proof, but I don't think there's any doubt Kate was carrying your son. She didn't sleep around, William." He paused to let the information sink in. "But there's no doubt Steven Harding accused her wrongly of harassment. Yes, she lashed out once in a moment of pique, but probably only because she was annoyed with herself for having given in to him. The real culprit was a friend of Harding's. Kate rejected him, so he used her as a shield for his own revenge without ever considering the sort of danger he might be putting her into."
"I never thought he'd do anything to her ... Jesus! Do you think I wanted her killed? She was a sad person ... lonely ... boring ... God, if she had anything going for her she kept it well hidden ... Look, I know this sounds bad-I'm not proud of it now-but I found it funny the way Steve reacted. He was shit-scared of her. That stuff about dodging around corners was all true. He thought she was going to attack him in the middle of the street if she managed to catch him unawares. He kept talking about the movie Fatal Attraction, and saying Michael Douglas' mistake was not to let the Glenn Close character die when she tried to kill herself."
"Why didn't you tell us this before?" Carpenter had asked.
"Because you have to believe someone's guilty before you get yourself into trouble. In a million years I wouldn't have thought Steve had anything to do with it. He doesn't go in for violence."
"Try violation instead," Carpenter had said. "Offhand, can you think of anything or anyone your friend has not violated? Hospitality ... friendship ... marriage ... women ... young girls ... every bloody law you can think of ... Did it never occur to you, Tony, that someone so intensely sociopathic as Steven Harding, so careless oj other people's sensibilities, might represent a danger to a woman he thought had been terrorizing him?"
Sumner continued to stare at the ceiling, as if answers lay somewhere within its white surface. "How did he get her onto his boat if she wasn't interested anymore?" he asked flatly. "You said no one had seen her with him after he spoke to her outside Tesco's."
She smiled at me as if nothing had happened," Harding had told them, "asked me how I was and how the acting was going. I said she had a bloody nerve even talking to me after what she 'd done, and she just laughed and told me to grow up. 'You did me a favor,' she said. 'You taught me to appreciate William, and if I don't hold any grudges, why should you?' I told her she knew fucking well why I held a grudge, so she started to look cross. 'It was payment in kind,' she said. 'You were crap.' Then she walked away. I think that's what made me angry-I hate it when people walk away from me-but I knew the woman in Tesco's was watching, so I crossed High Street and went down behind the market stalls on the other side of the road, watching her. All I planned to do was have it out with her, tell her she was lucky I hadn't gone to the police..."
"Saturday's market day in Lymington High Street," said Galbraith, "so the place was packed with visitors from outside. People don't notice things in a crowd. He followed her at a distance, waiting for her to turn toward home again."
"She looked pretty angry, so I think I must have upset her. She turned down Captain's Row, so I knew she was probably going home. I gave her a chance, you know. I thought if she took the top road I'd let her go, but if she took the bottom road past the yacht club and Tony's garage I'd teach her a lesson..."
"He has the use of a garage about two hundred yards from your house," Galbraith went on. "He caught up with her as she was passing it and persuaded her and Hannah to go inside. She'd been in several times before with Harding's friend Tony Bridges, so it obviously didn't occur to her there was anything to worry about."
"Women are such stupid bitches. They'll fall for anything as long as a bloke sounds sincere. All I had to do was tell her I was sorry and squeeze a couple of tears out-I'm an actor so I'm good at that-and she was all smiles again and said, no, she was sorry, she hadn't meant to be cruel and couldn't we let bygones be bygones and stay friends ? So I said, sure, and why didn't I give her some champagne out of Tony's garage to show there were no hard feelings? You can drink it with William, I said, as long as you don't tell him it came from me. If there'd been anyone in the street or if old Mr. Bridges had been at his curtains, I wouldn't have done it. But it was so bloody easy. Once I'd closed the garage doors, I knew I could do anything I wanted..."