"Bluebeard, more like. She's fifteen."

"And looks twenty-five."

"If you believe Steve."

"Don't you?"

"Put it this way," he said dispassionately, "I wouldn't let him within half a mile of a daughter of mine. He's oversexed, deeply enamored with himself, and has the morals of an alleycat."

"A bit like the weasel I married, in other words?" she asked dryly.

"No question about it." He grinned up at her. "But then I'm prejudiced, of course."

There was a glint of amusement in her eyes. "So what happened? He got sidetracked by Paul and Danny and the whole thing was deep-sixed?"

He nodded. "He realized, when he had to identify himself, that there was no point going on with it and signaled to his girlfriend to abandon it. Since then, he's had one tearful conversation with her over his mobile on his way back to Lymington on Sunday night, and hasn't been able to talk to her since because he's either been under arrest or separated from his phone. The rule is, she always calls him, and as he hasn't heard from her he's terrified she's killed herself."

"Is it true?"

"No. One of the messages on his mobile was from her."

"Still ... poor boy. You've locked him up again, haven't you? He must be worried sick. Couldn't you have let him talk to her?"

He wondered at the vagaries of human nature. He would have bet on her sympathies being with the girl. "Not allowed."

"Oh, come on," she said crossly. "That's just cruel."

"No. Common sense. Personally, I wouldn't trust him farther than I could throw him. He's committed several crimes, don't forget. Assault on you, sex with an underage girl, conspiracy to abduct, not to mention gross indecency and committing lewd acts in public..."

"Oh my God! You haven't charged him with having an erection, have you?"

"Not yet."

"You are cruel," she said in disgust. "It was obviously his girlfriend he was looking at through the binoculars. On that basis you should have arrested Martin every time he put his hand on my arse."

"I couldn't," he said seriously. "You never objected, so it didn't constitute an assault."

There was a twinkle in her eye. "What happened to indecency?"

"I never caught him with his trousers down," he said with regret. "I did try, but he was too bloody quick every time."

"Are you winding me up?"

"No," he said. "I'm courting you."

Half asleep, Sandy Griffiths squinted at the luminous hands on her clock through gritty eyes, saw that it was three o'clock, and tried to remember if William had gone out earlier. Yet again, something had disturbed her intermittent dozing. She thought it was the front door closing, although she couldn't be sure if the sound had been real or if she'd dreamed it. She listened for footfalls on the stairs but, hearing only silence, stumbled out of bed and dragged on her dressing gown. Babies she thought she could probably cope with-a husband, never...

She switched on the landing lamp and pushed open Hannah's bedroom door. A wedge of light cut across the crib, and her alarm subsided immediately. The child sat in the concentrated immobility that seemed to be her nature, thumb in mouth, staring wide-eyed with her curiously intense gaze. If she recognized Griffiths, she didn't show it. Instead she looked through her as if her mind saw behind and beyond the woman images that had no basis in reality, and Griffiths realized she was fast asleep. It explained the crib and the locks on all the doors. They were there to protect a sleepwalker, she understood belatedly, not to deprive a conscious child of adventure.

From outside, muffled by closed doors, she heard the sound of a car starting, followed by gears engaging and the scrunch of tires on the drive. What the hell did the bloody man think he was doing now? she wondered. Did he seriously believe that abandoning his daughter in the early hours of the morning would endear him to social services? Or was that the whole point? Had he decided to ditch the responsibility once and for all?

Wearily she leaned against the doorjamb and studied Kate's blank-eyed, blond-haired replica with compassion and thought about what the doctor had said when he saw the smashed photographs in the fireplace. "She's angry with her mother for deserting her ... it's a perfectly normal expression of grief ... get her father to cuddle her ... that's the best way to fill the gap..."

William Sumner's disappearance raised a few eyebrows in the incident room at Winfrith when Griffiths notified them of it, but little real interest. As so often in his life, he had ceased to matter. Instead, the spotlight turned on Beatrice "Bibi" Gould, who when police knocked on hei parents' door at 7:00 a.m. on Saturday morning, inviting her back to Winfrith for further questioning, burst into tears and locked herself in the bathroom, refusing to come out. When threatened with immediate arrest for obstruction, and on the promise that her parents could accompany her, she finally agreed to come out. Her fear seemed out of proportion to the police request and when asked to explain it she said, "Everyone is going to be angry with me."

Following a brief appearance before magistrates on his assault charge, Steven Harding, too, was invited for further questioning. He was chauffeured by a yawning Nick Ingram, who took the opportunity to impart a few facts of life to the immature young man at his side. "Just for the record, Steve, I'd break your legs if it was my fifteen-year-old daughter you'd got pregnant. As a matter of fact, I'd break your legs if you even laid a finger on her."

Harding was unrepentant. "Life's not like that anymore. You can't order girls to behave the way you want them to behave. They decide for themselves."

"Watch my lips, Steve. I said it's your legs I'd be breaking, not my daughter's. Trust me, the day I find a twenty-four-year-old man besmirching a beautiful child of mine is the day that bastard will wish he'd kept his zip done up." Out of the corner of his eye he watched words begin to form on Harding's lips. "And don't tell me she wanted it just as much as you did," he snarled, "or I'd be tempted to break your arms as well. Any little jerk can persuade a vulnerable adolescent into bed with him as long as he promises to love her. It takes a man to give her time to learn if the promise is worth anything."

Bibi Gould refused to have her father in the interview room with her, but begged for her mother to sit with her and hold her hand. On the other side of the table, Detective Superintendent Carpenter and DI Galbraith took her through her previous statement. She quailed visibly in front of Carpenter's frown, and he only had to say: "We believe you've been lying to us, young lady," for the floodgates of truth to open.

"Dad doesn't like me spending weekends at Tony's ... says I'm making myself cheap ... He'd have gone spare if he'd known I'd passed out. Tony said it was alcohol poisoning because I was vomiting blood, but I think it was the bad E that his friend sold him ... I was sick for hours after I came around ... Dad would have killed me if he'd known ... He hates Tony ... He thinks he's a bad influence." She laid her head on her mother's shoulder and sobbed heartily.

"When was this?" asked Carpenter.

"Last weekend. We were going to this rave in Southampton so Tony got some E from this bloke he knows..." She faltered to a stop.

"Go on."

"Everyone's going to be angry," she wailed. "Tony said why should we get his friend into trouble just because Steve's boat was in the wrong place."

With considerable effort Carpenter managed to smooth his frown into something approaching fatherly kindness. "We're not interested in Tony's friend, Bibi, we're only interested in getting an accurate picture of where everyone was last weekend. You've told us you're fond of Steven Harding," he said disingenuously, "and it will help Steve considerably if we can clear up some of the discrepancies around his story. You and Tony claimed you didn't see him Saturday because you went to a rave in Southampton. Is that true?"

"It's true we didn't see him." She sniffed. "At least I didn't ... I suppose Tony might have done ... but it's not true about the rave. It didn't start till ten, so Tony said we might as well get in the mood earlier. The trouble is I can't remember much about it ... We'd been drinking since five and then I took the E..." She wept into her mother's shoulder again.

"For the record, Bibi, you're telling us you took an Ecstasy tablet supplied to you by your boyfriend, Tony Bridges?"

She was alarmed by his tone. "Yes," she whispered.

"Have you ever passed out before in Tony's company?'

"Sometimes ... if I drink too much."

Pensively, Carpenter stroked his jaw. "Do you know what time you took the tablet on Saturday?"

"Seven, maybe. I can't really remember." She blew her nose into a Kleenex. "Tony said he hadn't realized how much I'd been drinking, and that if he had he wouldn't have given it to me. It was awful ... I'm never going to drink or take Ecstasy ever again ... I've been feeling ill all week." She raised a wan smile. "I reckon it's true what they say about it. Tony thinks I was lucky not to die."

Galbraith was less inclined to be fatherly. His private opinion of her was that she was a blowsy slut with too much baby fat and too little self-control, and he seriously pondered the mysteries of nature and chemistry that meant a girl like this could cause a previously sane man to behave with insanity. "You were drunk again on Monday," he reminded her, "when DS Campbell visited Tony's house in the evening."

She flicked him a sly up-from-under look that curdled any remnants of sympathy he might have had. "I only had two lagers," she said. "I thought they'd make me feel better-but they didn't."

Carpenter tapped his pen on the table to bring her attention back to him. "What time did you come around on Sunday morning, Bibi?"

She shrugged self-pityingly. "I don't know. Tony said I was sick for about ten hours, and I didn't stop till seven o'clock on Sunday evening. That's why I was late back to my parents'."

"So about nine o'clock on Sunday morning then?"

She nodded. "About that." She turned her wet face to her mother. "I'm ever so sorry, Mum. I'm never going to do it again."

Mrs. Gould squeezed the girl's shoulder and looked pleadingly at the two policemen. "Does this mean she'll be prosecuted?"

"What for, Mrs. Gould?"

"Taking Ecstasy?"

The superintendent shook his head. "I doubt it. As things stand, there isn't any evidence that she took any." Rohypnol, maybe... "But you're a very stupid young woman, Bibi, and I trust you won't come whining to the police with your troubles the next time you accept unknown and unidentified tablets from a man. Like it or not, you bear responsibility for your own behavior, and the best advice I can offer you is to listen to your father once in a while."

Good one, guv, thought Galbraith.

Carpenter tented his fingers over Bibi's previous statement. "I don't like liars, young woman. None of us does. I think you told another lie last night to my colleague DI Galbraith, didn't you?"

Her eyes stretched in a kind of panic, but she didn't answer.

"You said you've never been on Crazy Daze when we think you have."

"I haven't."

"You volunteered a set of your fingerprints at the beginning of the week. They match several sets found in the cabin of Steve's boat. Would you care to explain their presence in light of your denial that you've never been there?" He scowled at her.

"It's ... Tony doesn't know, you see ... oh God!" She shook with nerves. "It was just... Steve and I got drunk one night when Tony was away. He'd be so hurt if he found out ... he's got this thing about Steve being good-looking, and it'd kill him if he found out that we ... well, you know..."

"That you had intercourse with Steven Harding on board Crazy Daze?"

"We were drunk. I don't even remember much about it, It didn't mean anything," she said desperately, as if disloyalty could be excused when alcohol loosened inhibitions. But perhaps the concept of in vino veritas was too obscure for an immature nineteen-year-old to understand.

"Why are you so frightened of Tony finding out?' asked Carpenter curiously.

"I'm not." Her eyes stretched wider in a visible demonstration that she was lying.

"What does he do to you, Bibi?"

"Nothing. It's just ... he gets really jealous sometimes."

"Of Steve?"

She nodded.

"How does he show it?"

She licked her lips. "He's only done it once. He jammed my fingers in the car door after he found me in the pub with Steve. He said it was an accident, but ... well ... I don't think it was."

"Was that before or after you slept with Steve?"

"After."

"So he knew what you and Steve had done?"

She pressed her hands to her face. "I don't see how he could have done ... he wasn't around for the whole week, but he's been-well, odd-ever since..."

"When did this happen?"

"Last half-term."

Carpenter consulted his diary. "Between twenty-four and thirty-one May?"

"It was a bank holiday, I know that."

"Fine." He smiled encouragingly. "Only one or two more questions, Bibi, and then we're done. Do you remember an occasion when Tony was driving you somewhere in Steve's car and Kate Sumner had smeared the passenger door handle with her daughter's feces?"

She pulled an expression of disgust. "It was horrible. I got it all over my hand."

"Can you remember when that was?"

She thought about it. "I think it was the beginning of June. Tony said he'd take me to the flicks in Southampton, but I had to wash my hands so much to get all the filth off that in the end we never went."

"After you'd slept with Steve then?"

"Yes."

"Thank you. Last question. Where did Tony stay while he was away?"

"Miles away," she said with emphasis. "His parents have a caravan at Lulworth Cove, and Tony always goes there on his own when he needs to recharge his batteries. I keep telling him he should give up teaching because he really hates children. He says if he has a nervous breakdown it'll be their fault, even though everyone else will say it was because he smoked too much cannabis."

Steven Harding's interview was tougher. He was informed that Marie Freemantle had given the police a statement about her relationship with him and that, because of her age, he could well face charges. Nevertheless, he declined the services of a solicitor, saying he had nothing to hide. He seemed to assume that Marie had been questioned as a result of his off-the-record conversation wth Nick Ingram the previous evening, and neither Carpenter nor Galbraith disabused him of the fact.

"You are currently in a relationship with a fifteen-year-old by the name of Marie Freemantle?" said Carpenter.

"Yes."

"Whom you knew to be underage when you first had sexual intercourse with her?"

"Yes."

"Where does Marie live?"

"Fifty-four Dancer Road, Lymington."

"Why did your agent tell us you have a girlfriend called Marie living in London?"

"Because that's where he thinks she lives. He got her some work, and as she didn't want her parents to know about it, we gave the address of a shop in London that acts is a postal drop."

"What sort of work?"

"Nude work."

"Pornography?"