A silence developed. Carpenter stared fixedly at Harding while he continued to play with the whisky bottle. "Were there any passengers on board your boat on Saturday?" he asked then.

"No."

"Are you sure about that, sir?"

"Of course I'm bloody sure. Don't you think I'd have noticed them? It's hardly the QE2, is it?"

Carpenter leafed idly through the logbook. "Do you ever carry passengers?"

"That's none of your business."

"Maybe not, but we've been led to believe you're a bit of a lad." He lifted an amused eyebrow. "Legend has it that you regularly entertain ladies on board. I'm wondering if you ever take them sailing with you"-he jerked his head toward the cabin-"or does all the action take place in there when you're moored up to your buoy?"

Harding took time to consider his answer. "I take some of them out," he admitted at last.

"How often?"

Another long pause. "Once a month, maybe."

Carpenter slapped the exercise book onto the table and drummed his fingers on it. "Then why is there no mention of them in here? Surely you have a responsibility to record the names of everyone on board in case of an accident? Or perhaps you don't care that someone might drown because the coastguards assume you're the only person they're looking for?"

"That's ridiculous," said Harding dismissively. "The boat would have to turn turtle for a scenario like that, and the log'd be lost anyway."

"Have any of your passengers ever gone overboard?"

Harding shook his head but didn't say anything. His eyes flickered with open suspicion from one man to the other, tasting their mood in the way a snake flicks his tongue to taste scent on the air. There was something very studied about every movement he made, and Galbraith regarded him objectively, mindful that he was an actor. He had the impression that Harding was enjoying himself, but he couldn't think why this should be unless Harding had no idea the investigation involved rape and murder and was merely using the experience of an interrogation to practice "method-acting" techniques.

"Do you know a woman by the name of Kate Sumner?" asked Carpenter next.

Harding pushed the bottle aside and leaned forward aggressively. "What if I do?"

"That's not an answer to my question. Let me repeat it. Do you know a woman by the name of Kate Sumner?"

"Yes."

"Do you know her well?"

"Well enough."

"How well is well enough?"

"None of your bloody business."

"Wrong answer, Steve. It's very much our business. It was her body you saw being winched into the helicopter."

His reaction surprised them.

"I had a feeling it might be," he said.

*9*

Ahead across the water, the lights of Swanage gleamed like brilliant jewels in the night. Behind, the dying sun dipped beneath the horizon. Danny Spender was yawning profusely, worn out by his long day and three hours' exposure to fresh sea air. He leaned against Ingram's comforting bulk while his older brother stood proudly at the wheel, steering Miss Creant home. "He was a dirty person," he confided suddenly.

"Who was?"

"That man yesterday."

Ingram glanced down at him. "What did he do?" he asked, careful to keep the curiosity out of his voice.

"He was rubbing his willy with his telephone," said Danny, "all the time the lady was being rescued."

Ingram looked at Paul to see if he was listening but the other boy was too enthralled by the wheel to pay them any attention. "Did Miss Jenner see him do it?"

Danny's eyelids drooped. "No. He stopped when she came around the corner. Paul reckons he was polishing it-you know, like bowlers do with cricket balls to make them turn in the air-but he wasn't, he was being dirty."

"Why does Paul like him so much?"

The child gave another huge yawn. "Because he wasn't cross with him for spying on a nudie. Dad would be. He was furious when Paul got hold of some porno mags. I said they were boring, but Paul said they were natural."

Detective Superintendent Carpenter's telephone rang. "Excuse me," he said, retrieving it from his jacket pocket and flipping open the mouthpiece. "Yes, Campbell," he said. "Right ... go on..." He stared at a point above Steven Harding's head as he spoke, his inevitable frown lengthened and deepened by the shadows thrown by the gaslight as he listened to his DS's report on his interview with Tony Bridges. He clamped the receiver tight against his ear as the name "Bibi" was mentioned, and lowered his eyes curiously to the young man opposite. Galbraith watched Steven Harding while the one-sided conversation proceeded. The man was listening acutely, straining to pick up what was being said at the other end, all too aware that the topic under discussion was probably himself. Most of the time he stared at the table, but once or twice he raised his eyes to look at Galbraith, and Galbraith felt a curious empathy with him as if he and Harding, by dint of their mutual ignorance of the conversation, were ranged against Carpenter. He had no sense that Harding was guilty, no intuition that he was sitting with a rapist; yet his training told him that that meant nothing. Sociopaths could be as charming and as unthreatening as the rest of humanity, and it was always a potential victim who thought otherwise.

Galbraith resumed his inspection of the interior, picking out shapes in the shadows beyond the gaslight. His eyes had become accustomed to the gloom, and he was able to make out a great deal more now than he had ten minutes ago. With the exception of the clutter on the chart table, everything else was neatly stowed away in lockers or on shelves, and there was nothing to indicate the presence of a woman. It was a masculine environment of wooden planking, black leather seats, and brass fittings, and no color intruded anywhere to adorn its austere simplicity. Monastic, he thought, with approval. His own house, a noisy toy-filled establishment created by a wife who was a power in the National Childbirth Trust, was too cluttered and ... God forbid, child-centered! ... for an endlessly weary policeman.

The galley, which was to starboard of the companionway, particularly interested him. It was built into an alcove beside the laddered steps and contained a small sink and Calor-gas hob set into a teak worktop with lockers below and shelves above. His attention had been caught by some articles pushed back into the shadows in the corner, and with the passage of time, he had been able to identify them as a half-eaten lump of cheese in a plastic wrapper with a Tesco's sticker and a bag of apples. He felt the shift of Harding's gaze as it followed his, and he wondered if the man had any idea that a forensic pathologist could detail what a victim had eaten before she died.

Carpenter disconnected and placed the telephone on the logbook. "You said you had a feeling the body was Kate Sumner's," he reminded Harding.

"That's right."

"Could you elaborate? Explain when and why you got this feeling?"

"I didn't mean I had a feeling it was going to be her, only that it was bound to be somebody I knew otherwise you wouldn't have come out to my boat." He shrugged. "Put it this way, if you do this kind of follow-up every time somebody makes an emergency call, then it's not bloody surprising the country's awash with unconvicted criminals."

Carpenter chuckled, although the frown didn't leave his face, and remained fixed on the young man opposite. "Never believe what you read in newspapers, Steve. Trust me, we always catch the criminals who matter." He examined the actor closely for several seconds. "Tell me about Kate Sumner," he invited. "How well did you know her?"

"Hardly at all," said Harding with airy unconcern. "I've met her maybe half a dozen times since she and her husband moved to Lymington. The first time was when she was having trouble pushing her little girl's buggy over the cobbles near the old Customs House. I gave her a hand with it, and we had a brief chat before she went on up the High Street to do her shopping. After that she always stopped to ask me how I was whenever she saw me."

"Did you like her?"

Harding's gaze strayed toward the telephone while he considered his answer. "She was all right. Nothing special."

"What about William Sumner?" asked Galbraith. "Do you like him?"

"I don't know him well enough to say. He seems okay."

"According to him, he sees you quite often. He's even invited you back to his house."

The young man shrugged. "So? Loads of people invite me to their houses. It doesn't mean I'm close mates with them. Lymington's a sociable place."

"He told me you showed him some photographs of yourself in a gay magazine. I'd have thought you'd need to be pretty friendly with a man to do that."

Harding grinned. "I don't see why. They're good photos. Admittedly he didn't think much of them, but that's his problem. He's pretty straight is old Will Sumner. Wouldn't show his tackle for anything, not even if he was starving, and certainly not in a gay mag."

"I thought you said you didn't know him well."

"I don't need to. You only have to look at him. He probably looked middle-aged when he was eighteen."

Galbraith agreed with him, which made Kate's choice of a husband even odder, he thought. "Still, it's an unusual thing to do, Steve, go around showing nude photos of yourself to other guys. Do you make a habit of it? Have you shown them around the yacht club, for example?"

"No."

"Why not?"

Harding didn't answer.

"Maybe you just show them to husbands, eh?" Galbraith lifted an inquiring eyebrow. "It's a great way to convince a man you've no designs on his wife. I mean if he thinks you're gay, he'll think you're safe, won't he? Is that why you did it?"

"I can't remember now. I expect I was drunk, and he was getting on my nerves."

"Were you sleeping with his wife, Steve?"

"Don't be stupid," said Harding crossly. "I've already told you I hardly knew her."

"Then the information we've been given that she wouldn't leave you alone and it was driving you mad is completely wrong?" said Carpenter.

Harding's eyes widened slightly, but he didn't answer.

"Did she ever come on board this boat?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

For the first time there was genuine nervousness in the man's manner. He hunched his shoulders over the table again and ran his tongue across dry lips. "Look, I don't really get what all this is about. Okay, somebody drowned and I knew her-not very well, but I did know her. Okay-too-I can accept it looks like a bizarre coincidence that I was there when she was found-but, listen, I'm always meeting up with people I know. That's what sailing's about-bumping into guys that you had a drink with maybe two years before."

"But that's the root of the problem," said Galbraith reasonably. "According to our information, Kate Sumner didn't sail. You've said yourself she was never on board Crazy Daze."

"That doesn't mean she didn't accept a spur-of-the-moment invitation. There was a French Beneteau called Mirage anchored in Chapman's Pool yesterday. I saw her through the boys' binoculars. She was moored up in Berthon at the end of last week-I know that because they have this cute kid on board who wanted to know the code for the lavatories. Well-Jesus!-those French guys are just as likely to have met Kate as I was. Berthon's in Lymington, isn't it? Kate lives in Lymington. Maybe they took her for a spin?"

"It's a possibility," agreed Carpenter. He watched Galbraith make a note. "Did you catch the 'cute kid's' name, by any chance?"

Harding shook his head.

"Do you know of any other friends who might have taken Kate out on Saturday?"

"No. Like I said, I hardly knew her. But she must have had some. Everyone around here knows people who sail."

Galbraith jerked his head toward the galley. "Did you go shopping on Saturday morning before you left for Poole?" he asked.

"What's that got to do with anything?" Truculence was back in his voice again.

"It's a simple question. Did you buy the cheese and apples that are in your galley on Saturday morning?"

"Yes."

"Did you meet Kate Sumner while you were in town?"

Harding hesitated before he replied. "Yes," he admitted then. "She was outside Tesco's with her little girl."

"What time was that?"

"Nine thirty, maybe." He seized the whisky bottle again and laid it on its side, placing his forefinger against the neck and turning it slowly. "I didn't hang around because I wanted to get off, and she was looking for some sandals for her child. We said hi and went our separate ways and that was it."

"Did you invite her to go sailing with you?" asked Carpenter.

"No." He lost interest in the bottle and abandoned it with its open neck pointing directly at the superintendent's chest like the barrel of a rifle. "Look, I don't know what you think I've done," he said, ratcheting up his irritation, "but I'm damn sure you're not allowed to ask me questions like this. Shouldn't there be a tape recorder?"

"Not when people are merely helping us with our inquiries, sir," said Carpenter mildly. "As a general rule, the taping of interviews follows the cautioning of a suspect for an indictable offense. Such interviews can only be conducted in a police station, where the proper equipment allows an officer to insert a new blank tape into the recorder in front of the suspect." He smiled without hostility. "However, if you prefer, you can accompany us to Winfrith, where we will question you as a voluntary witness under taped conditions."

"No way. I'm not leaving the boat." He stretched his arms along the back of the settee and gripped the teak edging as if to emphasize the point. The movemenl caused his right hand to brush against a piece of fabric that was tucked onto the narrow shelf behind the edging strip, and he glanced at it idly for a moment before crushing it in his hand.

There was a short silence.

"Do you have a girlfriend in Lymington?" asked Carpenter.

"Maybe."

"May I ask what her name is?"

"No."

"Your agent suggested a name. He said she was called Bibi or Didi."

"That's his problem."

Galbraith was more interested in what was crushed inside Harding's fist because he had seen what it was. "Do you have any children?"

"No."

"Does your girlfriend have children?"

No answer.

"You're holding a bib in your fist," the DI pointed out, "so presumably someone who's been on this boat has children."

Harding uncurled his fingers and let the object drop onto the settee. "It's been there for ages. I'm not much of a cleaner."

Carpenter slammed his palm onto the table, making the phone and the whisky bottle jump. "You're annoying me, Mr. Harding," he said severely. "This isn't a piece of theater put on for your benefit, it's a serious investigation into a young woman's drowning. Now you've admitted knowing Kate Sumner and you've admitted seeing her on the morning before she drowned, but if you've no knowledge of how she came to be lying on a shore in Dorset at a time when she and her daughter were assumed to be in Lymington, then I advise you to answer our questions as straightforwardly and honestly as you can. Let me rephrase the question." His eyes narrowed. "Have you recently entertained a girlfriend on board this boat who has a child or children?"