"What for?"

"A miraculous cure or a request for a walker. She's not stupid, Maggie. Logic will prevail once she gets over her irritation with you, me, and the doctor. Meanwhile, be kind to her. She crippled herself for you this morning, and a little gratitude and TLC will probably have her on her feet quicker than anything."

"I've already told her I couldn't have done it without her."

He looked amused. "Like mother like daughter, eh?"

"I don't understand."

"She can't say sorry. You can't say thank you."

Sudden light dawned. "Oh, I see. So that's why you went off in a huff two hours ago. It was gratitude you wanted. How silly of me. I thought you were angry because I told you to mind your own business." She wrapped her arms about her thin body and gave him a tentative smile. "Well, thank you, Nick, I'm extremely grateful for your assistance."

He tugged at his forelock. "Much obliged I'm sure, Miss Jenner," he said in a rolling burr. "But a lady like you don't need to thank a man for doing his job."

Her puzzled eyes searched his for a moment before it occurred to her he was taking the piss, and her overwrought nerves snapped with a vengeance. "Fuck off!" she said, landing a furious fist on the side of his jaw before marching into the hall and slamming the door behind her.

Two Dartmouth policemen listened with interest to what the Frenchman told them, while his daughter stood in embarrassed silence beside him, fidgeting constantly with her hair. The man's English was good, if heavily accented, as he explained carefully and precisely where he and his boat had been the previous Sunday. He had come, he said, because he had read in the English newspapers that the woman who had been lifted off the shore had been murdered. He placed a copy of Wednesday's Telegraph on the counter in case they didn't know which inquiry he was referring to. "Mrs. Kate Sumner," he said. "You are acquainted with this matter?" They agreed they were, so he produced a videocassette from a carrier bag and put it beside the newspaper. "My daughter made a film of a man that day. You understand-I know nothing about this man. He may-how you say-be innocent. But I am anxious." He pushed the video across the desk. "It is not good what he is doing, so you play it. Yes? It is important, perhaps."

Harding's mobile telephone was a sophisticated little item with the capacity to call abroad or be called from abroad. It required an SIM (Subscriber Identification Module) card and a PIN number to use it, but as both had been logged in, presumably by Harding himself, the phone was operational. If it hadn't been, Maggie wouldn't have been able to use it. The card had an extensive memory and, depending on how much the user programmed into it, could store phone numbers and messages, plus the last ten numbers dialed out and the last ten dialed in.

The screen was displaying "5 missed calls" and a "messages waiting" sign. With a wary look toward the door into the hall, Ingram went into the menu, located "voice mail" followed by "mailbox," pressed the "call" button, and held the receiver to his ear. He massaged his cheek tenderly while he listened, wondering if Maggie had any idea how powerful her punch was.

"You have three new messages," said a disembodied female voice at the other end.

"Steve?" A lisping, lightweight-foreign?-voice, although Ingram couldn't tell if it was male or female. "Where are you? I'm frightened. Please phone me. I've tried twenty times since Sunday."

"Mr. Harding?" A man's voice, definitely foreign. "This is the Hotel Angelique, Concarneau. If you wish us to keep your room, you must confirm your reservation by noon today, using a credit card. I regret that without such confirmation the reservation cannot be honored."

"Hi," said an Englishman's voice next. "Where the fuck are you, you stupid bastard? You're supposed to be kipping here, for Christ's sake. Dammit, this is the address you've been bailed to, and I swear to God I'll take you to the cleaners if you get me into any more trouble. Just don't expect me to keep my mouth shut next time. I warned you I'd have your stinking hide if you were playing me for a patsy. Oh, and in case you're interested, there's a sodding journalist nosing around who wants to know if it's true you've been questioned about Kate's murder. He's really bugging me, so get your arse back PDQ before I drop you in it up to your neck."

Ingram touched "end" to disconnect, then went through the whole process again, jotting down bullet points on the back of a piece of paper which he took from a notepad under the wall telephone. Next he pressed the arrow button twice to scroll up the numbers of the last ten people who had dialed in. He discounted "voice mail" and made a note of the rest, together with the last ten calls Harding had made, the first of which was Maggie's call to him. For further good measure-To hell with it! In for a penny, in for a pound!-he scrolled through the entries under "names" and took them down together with their numbers.

"Are you doing something illegal?" asked Maggie from the doorway.

He had been so engrossed he hadn't heard the door open, and he looked up with a guilty start. "Not if DI Galbraith already has this information." He flattened his palm and made a rocking motion. "Probable infringement of Harding's rights under the Data Protection Act, if he hasn't. It depends whether the phone was on Crazy Daze when they searched it."

"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?"

"Standard camping type. Green. Doesn't look as if it's got much in it."

"Big?"

"Oh, yes. It's a full-size job."

"What did he do with it?"

"Sat on it while he jerked himself off."

"Where? Which part of Chapman's Pool? Eastern side? Western side? Describe the scenery for me."

"Eastern side. The Frenchman showed me on the map. Your wanker was down on the beach below Emmetts Hill, facing out toward the Channel. Green slope behind him."

"What did he do with the rucksack after he sat on it?"

"Can't say. The film ends."

With a request to send the tape on by courier, together with the Frenchman's name, proposed itinerary for the rest of his holiday, and address in France, Carpenter thanked the sergeant and rang off.

"Did you make this yourself?" asked Maggie, peering at the Cutty Sark in the bottle on the mantelpiece as Ingram came downstairs in uniform, buttoning the sleeves of his shirt.

"Yes."

"I thought you must have done. It's like everything else in this house. So"-she waved her glass in the air-"well behaved." She might have said masculine, minimal, or monastic, in an echo of Galbraith's description of Harding's boat, but she didn't want to be rude. It was as she had predicted, insufferably clean, and insufferably boring as well. There was nothing to say this house belonged to an interesting personality, just yards of pallid wall, pallid carpet, pallid curtains, and pallid upholstery, broken occasionally by an ornament on a shelf. It never occurred to her that he was tied to the house through his job, but even if it had, she would still have expected splashes of towering individualism among the uniformity.

He laughed. "Do I get the impression you don't like it?"

"No, I do. It's-er-"

"Twee?" he suggested.

"Yes."

"I made it when I was twelve." He flexed his huge fingers under her nose. "I couldn't do it now." He straightened his tie. "How's the brandy?"

"Very good." She dropped into a chair. "Does exactly what it's supposed to do. Hits the spot."

He took her empty glass. "When did you last drink alcohol?"

"Four years ago."

"Shall I give you a lift home?"

"No." She closed her eyes. "I'm going to sleep."

"I'll look in on your mother on my way back from Chapman's Pool," he promised her, shrugging on his jacket. "Meanwhile, don't encourage your dog to sit on my sofa. It's bad for both your characters."