Her correspondence was composed almost entirely of business letters, usually referring to work on the house, although there were a few private letters from friends and acquaintances in Lymington, her mother-in-law, and one, with a date in July, from Polly Garrard at Pharmatec UK.

Dear Kate, It's ages since we had a chat, and every time I ring, the phone's off the hook or you're not there. Give me a buzz when you can. I'm dying to hear how you and Hannah are getting on in Lymington. It's a waste of time asking William. He just nods and says, "Fine."

I'd really love to see the house since you've had all the decorating done. Maybe I could take a day off and visit you when William's at work? That way he can't complain if all we do is sit and gossip. Do you remember Wendy Plater? She got drunk a couple of weeks ago at lunchtime and called Purdy "a tight-arsed prick" because he was in the hall when she came staggering back late, and he told her he was going to dock her wages. God, it was funny! He would have sacked her on the spot if good old Trew hadn't spoken up for her. She had to apologize, but she doesn't regret any of it. She says she's never seen Purdy go purple before!

I thought of you immediately, of course, which is why I've been ringing. It really is ages. Do call. Thinking of you.

Love,

Polly Garrard

Attached to it by paper clip was the draft of an answer from Kate.

Dear Polly, Hannah and I are doing well, and of course you must come and visit us. I'm a bit busy at the moment, but will ring as soon as I can. The house looks great. You'll love it.

You promised on your honor The story about Wendy Plater was really funny!

Hope all's well with you.

Speak soon.

Love, Kate

The Spender brothers' parents looked worried when Ingram asked if he and DI Galbraith could talk to Paul in private. "What's he done?" asked the father.

Ingram removed his cap and smoothed his dark hair with the flat of his hand. "Nothing as far as I know," he said with a smile. "It's just a few routine questions that's all."

"Then why do you want to talk to him in private?"

Ingram's frank gaze held his. "Because the dead woman was naked, Mr. Spender, and Paul's embarrassed to talk about it in front of you and your wife."

The man gave a snort of amusement. "He must think we're the most frightful prudes."

Ingram's smile broadened. "Just parents," he said. He gestured toward the lane in front of their rented cottage. "He'll probably feel more comfortable if he talks to us outside."

But Paul was surprisingly open about Steven Harding's "friendliness." "I reckon he fancied Maggie and was trying to impress her by how good he was with kids," he told the policemen. "My uncle's always doing it. If he comes to our house on his own he doesn't bother to talk to us, but if he brings one of his girlfriends he puts his arms around our shoulders and tells us jokes. It's only to make them think he'd be a good father."

Galbraith chuckled. "And that's what Steve was doing?"

"Must have been. He got much more friendly after she turned up."

"Did you notice him playing with his phone at all?"

"You mean the way Danny says?"

Galbraith nodded.

"I didn't watch him because I didn't want to be rude, but Danny's pretty sure about it, and he should know because he was staring at him all the time."

"So why was Steve doing that, do you think?"

"Because he forgot we were there," said the boy.

"In what way exactly?"

Paul showed the first signs of embarrassment. "Well, you know," he said earnestly, "he sort of did it without thinking ... my dad often does things without thinking, like licking his knife in restaurants. Mum gets really angry about it."

Galbraith gave a nod of agreement. "You're a bright lad. I should have thought of that myself." He stroked the side of his freckled face, considering the problem. "Still, rubbing yourself with a telephone's a bit different from licking your knife. You don't think it's more likely he was showing off?"

"He looked at a girl through the binoculars," Paul offered. "Maybe he was showing off to her?"

"Maybe." Galbraith pretended to ponder some more. "You don't think it's more likely he was showing off to you and Danny?"

"Well ... he talked a lot about ladies he'd seen in the nude, but I sort of got the feeling most of it wasn't true ... I think he was trying to make us feel better."

"Does Danny agree with you?"

The boy shook his head. "No, but that doesn't mean anything. He reckons Steve stole his T-shirt, so he doesn't like him."

"Is it true?"

"I don't think so. It's just an excuse because he's lost it and Mum gave him an earbashing. It's got 'Derby FC' on the front, and it cost a fortune."

"Did Danny have it with him on Sunday?"

"He says it was in the bundle around the binoculars, but I don't remember it."

"Okay." Galbraith nodded again. "So what does Danny think Steve was up to?"

"He reckons he's a pedophile," said Paul matter-of-factly.

WPC Sandra Griffiths whistled tunelessly to herself as she made a cup of tea in the kitchen at Langton Cottage. Hannah was sitting mesmerized in front of the television in the sitting room, while Sandy was blessing the memory of whatever genius had invented the electronic nanny. She turned toward the fridge in search of milk and found William Sumner standing directly behind her. "Did I frighten you?" he asked as she gave a little start of surprise.

You know you did, you stupid bastard...! She forced a smile to her face to disguise the fact that he was beginning to give her the creeps. "Yes," she admitted. "I didn't hear you come in."

"That's what Kate used to say. She'd get quite angry about it sometimes."

Who can blame her...? She was beginning to think of him as a voyeur, a man who got his rocks off by secretly watching a woman go about her business. She had stopped counting the number of times she'd glimpsed him peering around a doorjamb like an unwelcome intruder in his own house. She put distance between herself and him by removing the teapot to the kitchen table and pulling out a chair. There was a lengthy silence during which he sulkily kicked the toe of his shoe against the table leg, shoving the top in little jerks against her belly.

"You're afraid of me, aren't you?" he said suddenly.

"What makes you think that?" she asked as she held the table firm against his kicks.

"You were afraid last night." He looked pleased, as if the idea excited him, and she wondered how important it was to him to feel superior.

"Don't flatter yourself," she declared bluntly, lighting a cigarette and blowing the smoke deliberately in his direction. "Trust me, if I'd been remotely afraid, I'd have taken your fucking balls off. Cripple first and ask questions later, that's my motto."

"I don't like you smoking or swearing in this house," he said with another petulant kick at the table leg.

"Then put in a complaint," she answered. "It just means I'll be reassigned." She held his gaze for a moment. "And that wouldn't suit you one little bit, would it? You're too damn used to having an unpaid skivvy about the place."

Ready tears sprang to his eyes. "You don't understand what it's like. Everything worked so well before. And now ... well, I don't even know what I'm supposed to be doing."

His performance was amateur at best, diabolical at worst, and it brought out the bully in Griffiths. Did he think she found male helplessness attractive? "Then you should be ashamed of yourself," she snapped. "According to the health visitor you didn't even know where the vacuum cleaner was, let alone how to work it. She came here to teach you elementary parenting and housekeeping skills because no one-and I repeat no one-is going to allow a three-year-old child to remain in the care of a man who is so patently indifferent to her welfare."

He moved around the kitchen, opening and shutting cupboard doors as if to demonstrate familiarity with their contents. "It's not my fault," he said. "That's how Kate wanted it. I wasn't allowed to interfere in the running of the house."

"Are you sure it wasn't the other way around?" She tapped the ash off her cigarette into her saucer. "I mean you didn't marry a wife, did you? You married a housekeeper who was expected to run this house like clockwork and account for every last penny she spent."

"It wasn't like that."

"What was it like then?"

"Living in a cheap boardinghouse," he said bitterly. "I didn't marry a wife or a housekeeper, I married a landlady who allowed me to live here as long as I paid my rent on time."

The French yacht Mirage motored up the Dart River early on Thursday afternoon and took a berth in the Dart Haven Marina on the Kingswear side of the estuary, opposite the lovely town of Dartmouth and alongside the steam railway line to Paignton. Shortly after they made fast, there was a blast on a whistle and the three o'clock train set off in a rush of steam, raising in the Beneteau's owner a romantic longing for days he himself couldn't remember.

By contrast his daughter sat sunk in gloom, unable to comprehend why they had moored on the side of the river that boasted nothing except the station when everything that was attractive-shops, restaurants, pubs, people, life, men!-was on the other side, in Dartmouth. Scornfully, she watched her father take out the video camera and search through the case for a new tape in order to film steam engines. He was like a small boy, she thought, in his silly enthusiasms for the treasures of rural England when what really mattered was London. She was the only one of her friends who had never been there, and it mortified her. God, but her parents were sad!

Her father turned to her in mild frustration, asking where the unused tapes were, and she had to admit there were none. She'd used them all to film irrelevancies in order to pass the time, and with irritating tolerance (he was one of those understanding fathers who refused to indulge in rows) he played the videos back, squinting into the eyepiece, in order to select the least interesting for reuse.

When he came to a tape of a young man scrambling down the slope above Chapman's Pool toward two boys, followed by shots of him sitting alone on the foreshore beyond the boat sheds, he lowered the camera and looked at his daughter with a worried frown. She was fourteen years old, and he realized he had no idea if she was still innocent or whether she knew exactly what she'd been filming. He described the young man and asked her why she had taken so much footage of him. Her cheeks flushed a rosy red under her tan. No particular reason. He was there and he was-she spoke with defiance-handsome. In any case, she knew him. They'd introduced themselves when they'd chatted together in Lymington. And he fancied her. She could tell these things.

Her father was appalled.

His daughter flounced her shoulders. What was the big deal? So he was English. He was just a good-looking guy who liked French girls, she said.

Bibi Gould's face fell as she swung lightheartedly out of the hairdressing salon in Lymington where she worked and saw Tony Bridges standing on the pavement, half turned away from her, watching a young mother hoist a toddler onto her hip. Her relationship, such as it was, with Tony had become more of a trial than a pleasure, and for a brief second she thought about retreating through the door again until she realized he had seen her out of the corner of his eye. She forced a sickly smile to her lips. "Hi," she said with unconvincing jauntiness.

He stared at her with his peculiarly brooding expression, taking note of the skimpy shorts and cropped top that barely covered her tanned arms, legs, and midriff. A blood vessel started to throb in his head, and he had trouble keeping the temper out of his voice. "Who are you meeting?"

"No one," she said.

"Then what's the problem? Why did you look so pissed to see me?"

"I didn't." She lowered her head to swing her curtain of hair across her eyes in a way he hated. "I'm just tired, that's all ... I was going home to watch telly."

He reached out a hand to grip her wrist. "Steve's done a vanishing act. Is he the one you're planning to meet?"

"Don't be stupid."

"Where is he?"

"How would I know?" she said, twisting her arm to try to release herself. "He's your friend."

"Has he gone to the caravan? Did you say you'd meet him there?" Angrily, she succeeded in tugging herself free. "You've got a real problem with him, you know ... you should talk to someone about it instead of taking it out on me all the time. And for your information, not everyone runs away to hide in Mummy and Daddy's sodding caravan every time things go wrong. It's a dump, for Christ's sake ... like your house ... and who wants to fuck in a dump?" She rubbed her wrist where his fingers had left a Chinese burn on her skin, her immature nineteen-year-old features creasing into a vicious scowl. "It's not Steve's fault you're so spaced-out most nights you can't get it up, so don't keep pretending it is. The trouble with you is you've lost it, but you can't bloody well see it."

He eyed her with dislike. "What about Saturday? It wasn't me who passed out on Saturday. I'm sick to death of being fucked about, Beebs."

She was on the point of giving a petulant toss of her head and saying sex with him had become so boring that she might as well be comatose as not when caution persuaded her against it. He had a way of getting his own back that she didn't much like. "Yeah, well, you can't blame me for that," she muttered lamely. "You shouldn't buy dodgy E off your dodgy mates, should you? A girl could die that way."

*16*

FAX:.

From: PC Nicholas Ingram

To: DI John Galbraith

Date: 14 August-7:05 p.m.

Re: Kate Sumner murder inquiry

Sir, I've had some follow-up thoughts on the above particularly in relation to the pathologist's report and the stranded dinghy, and as it's my day off tomorrow I'm faxing them through to you. Admittedly they are based entirely on the presumption that the stranded dinghy was involved in Kate's murder, but they suggest a new angle which may be worth considering.

I mentioned this a.m. that: 1) there's a possibility the dinghy was stolen from Lulworth Cove at the end of May, in which case the thief and Kate's murderer could be one and the same person; 2) that if my "towing" theory was correct, there was a good chance the outboard engine (make: Fastrigger; serial no: 240B 6006678) was removed and remains in the thief's possession; 3) you take another look at Steven Harding's log to see if he was in Lulworth Cove on Thursday, 29 May; 4) if he had a second dinghy stowed on board Crazy Daze-which only required a foot pump to reinflate it-it would solve some of your forensic problems; 5) he probably has a lock-up somewhere which you haven't yet discovered and which may contain the stolen outboard.