Free The Breaker by Minette Walters

stupid cruiser any day," said Paul after helping the mighty policeman launch her down the Swanage slip. He had allowed the boy to operate the winch at the back of his ancient Jeep while he himself had waded into the sea to float her off the trailer and make her fast to a ring on the slip wall. Paul's eyes had gleamed with excitement because boating was suddenly more accessible than he'd realized. "Do you reckon Dad might buy one? Holidays would be great if we had a boat like this."
    "You can always ask," had been Ingram's response.
    Danny found the whole idea of sliding a long wriggling ragworm onto a barbed point until the steel was clothed in something resembling a wrinkled silk stocking deeply repugnant and insisted that Ingram do the business for him. "It's alive," he pointed out. "Doesn't the hook hurt it?"
    "Not as much as it would hurt you."
    "It's an invertebrate," said his brother, whp was leaning over the side of the boat and watching his various floats bob on the water, "so it doesn't have a nervous system like us. Anyway, it's near the bottom of the food chain so it exists only to be eaten."
    "Dead things are the bottom of the food chain," said Danny. "Like the lady on the beach. She'd've been food if we hadn't found her."
    Ingram handed Danny his rod with the worm in place. "No fancy casting," he said, "just dangle it over the side and see what happens." He leaned back and tilted his baseball cap over his eyes, content to let the boys do the fishing. "Tell me about the bloke who made the phone call," he invited. "Did you like him?"
    "He was all right," said Paul.
    "He said he saw a lady with no clothes on, and she looked like an elephant," said Danny, joining his brother to lean over the side.
    "It was a joke," said Paul. "He was trying to make us feel better."
    "What else did he talk about?"
    "He was chatting up the lady with the horse," said Danny, "but she didn't like him as much as he liked her."
    Ingram smiled to himself. "What makes you think that?"
    "She frowned a lot."
    So what's new?
    "Why do you want to know if we liked him?" asked Paul, his agile mind darting back to Ingram's original question. "Didn't you like him?"
    "He was all right," said Ingram, echoing Paul's own answer. "A bit of a moron for setting out on a hike on a hot day without any suntan lotion or water, but otherwise okay."
    "I expect they were in his rucksack," said Paul loyally, who hadn't forgotten Harding's kindness even if his brother had. "He put it down to make the telephone call, then left it there because he said it was too heavy to lug down to the police car. He was going to pick it up again on his way back. It was probably water that was making it heavy." He looked earnestly toward their host. "Don't you think?"
    Ingram closed his eyes under the brim of his cap. "Yes," he agreed, while wondering what had been in the rucksack that meant Harding hadn't wanted a policeman to see it. Binoculars? Had he seen the woman, after all? "Did you describe the lady on the beach to him?" he asked Paul.
    "Yes," said the boy. "He wanted to know if she was pretty."
 
    There were two hidden agendas behind the decision to send WPC Griffiths home with William and Hannah Sumner. The first derived entirely from the child's unfavorable psychiatric report and was intended to safeguard her welfare; the second was based on years of statistical evidence that showed a wife was always more likely to be murdered by her husband than by a stranger. However, because of the distances involved and the problems of jurisdiction-Poole being Dorsetshire Constabulary and Lymington being Hampshire Constabulary-Griffiths was advised that the hours would be long ones.
    "Yes, but is he really a suspect?" Griffiths asked Galbraith.
    "Husbands are always suspects."
    "Come on, guv, he was definitely in Liverpool, because I phoned the hotel to check, and it's a hell of a long way from there to Dorset. If he's driven to and fro twice in five days, then he's done over a