Broadchurch (14 page)

Joe, who’s been good for the last few questions, now takes a breath in as though he’s about to speak, but Hardy shushes him with a look. His mind is racing: whatever Tom’s holding back, Joe knows too. He’ll have to get Joe on his own if Tom doesn’t spill, but it’s better coming straight from the boy.

‘Anything you say here is
absolutely
confidential.’

Tears rinse the blue of Tom’s eyes. ‘He said his dad hit him,’ he mumbles. ‘He gave him a split lip.’

Inwardly, Hardy is cheering. It is the nature of a detective’s work that sometimes he will feel elated at the news that a little boy was hit by a grown man. This is such a time.

‘So he hit him more than once?’ he asks Tom. These things escalate, and not always gradually. There is nothing in Danny’s medical records about a split lip, and if Mark had been charged with it they would have picked it up five minutes into this investigation. And neither Beth nor Chloe have said anything about domestic violence. Sometimes, all it takes is for a man to get away with it once for the slope to become slippery.

‘I dunno,’ says Tom. ‘He just said his dad got into bad moods sometimes.’

He breaks down and becomes incoherent. Hardy recognises a witness who has reached his limit.

‘OK. Thank you, Tom.’

The video camera is turned off. Miller’s waiting outside, praising Tom before handing over the toddler – Charlie? Archie? – and waving her family off with promises of being home for teatime that she must know she won’t be able to keep.

Hardy brings her up to speed. ‘Tom says that Mark hit Danny. And we know that Pete had to pull Mark off Paul over the weekend.’

Miller looks sadly at a printout in her hand.

‘What’s that?’

‘Nish did a search while you were interviewing Tom,’ she says reluctantly. ‘Mark’s got a record for a pub fight about ten years ago,’ she says. ‘But —’

‘Tell Forensics we need blood analysis on the boat – see how old those stains are. Check Danny Latimer’s pathology report for any signs of a gash on the foot. Mark’s not going anywhere for now.’

When she’s gone, he pulls out the letter one more time. It’s in two pages: one, the formalised script of a medical professional, setting out the diagnosis and offering to have him invalided out of the force. The second is a handwritten note from the doctor he’s been seeing since it all fell apart. The greeting is fond but the warning is stark: no stress, no pressure, no unnecessary exertion. The language pulls no punches: there is a bomb in his system and he’s kicking it harder and harder.

Hardy puts both pages in the shredder. If Jenkinson gets wind of this, it’s all over. Destroying the letter can’t erase the words from his mind. The brutal sign-off: if he doesn’t stop of his own accord, his body will do it for him. And he
will
stop. As soon as he’s nailed this killer. He owes it to the Latimers.

He owes it to the Gillespies as well. Thinking about the Sandbrook families is like a blade in his side. But this case is his penance, and that is the point of punishment. It is supposed to hurt.

I’ve got a message for you. From Danny.
Beth has always been a cynic but she can’t shake this morning’s encounter from her mind. She veers between outrage that someone could harass a grieving mother and something else. Doubt wrestles with hope. If there is a one per cent chance that Danny’s spirit is out there, somewhere, sending Beth a message and wondering why she isn’t listening… the idea is too big and frightening for her to cope with. It is too big and frightening for her to ignore.

Pete enters the living room. His phone is off, but it’s pressed to his chin as though he’s thinking deeply. It is the first time Beth has seen evidence of Pete thinking deeply. Something is wrong.

‘They want you to know Mark’s been arrested,’ he says.

The carpet turns to sponge beneath Beth’s feet.

‘
What?
’ says Chloe. ‘What for?’

‘He won’t account for his movements the night before Danny was found. Arrested doesn’t mean charged. It’s one step up from being interviewed under caution.’

‘So – he’s a
suspect
?’ Beth is fishing for a contradiction. She doesn’t get one.

Suddenly the chink of Mark’s absence cracks wide like a bursting dam and Beth feels the rising flood return, a repeat of the panic she felt when she first realised Danny was missing.

‘Let’s see where we are, once they’ve finished talking,’ says Pete. ‘I’m sure it’ll all get sorted.’

Chloe explodes. ‘Sorted? My brother’s
dead
.’ Beth finds herself dragging Chloe by the arm up the stairs and into the bathroom. She bolts the door and takes Chloe’s face in her hands. ‘From now on, you say nothing in front of Pete,’ she says, locking on to her daughter’s eyes. ‘He’s looking at us, all the time. He’s not our friend. He’s their spy. God knows what they’re thinking. I won’t have them going through our knicker drawers, thinking the worst of us. We stay tight. Even just you and me, if necessary.’

She realises the impact of her words as Chloe crumples before her.

‘You don’t think it’s Dad.’ It kills Beth to do this to Chloe, but this is the last place she can be honest. It’s for Chloe’s good, possibly her own survival.

‘You never really know someone, not even after all this time.’ Chloe tries to shake her head but Beth tightens her grip on her jaw. ‘We have to be so strong now. You have to be older than you are. ’Cause I don’t know where this ends.’

Later, when the fingerprints on her cheeks have faded, Chloe sits up in bed, Big Chimp on her lap, phone in her hand. She frowns at the text message she has spent the last half hour composing.

If you know where my dad was last Thursday you have to tell the police.

Important. No one else has to know.

She takes a deep breath and presses send.

21

Olly and Karen are the only people in the bar at the Traders. Tea lights flicker on the table between them as they discuss Jack Marshall.

‘What is it then, Sea Brigade?’ she asks. She’s got a vision of little boys in sailor suits with blue collars.

‘Pretty much Scouts with added boats…’ begins Olly, then falls silent. There is an apparition at their table; Maggie Radcliffe, glass in hand.

‘Don’t mind if I join, do you?’ she says, sitting between them. She gives Karen a long look. ‘I had your boss on the phone to me. Saying he’d been trying you with no joy. But he had a hunch you’d make contact with the local press. Apparently you’ve gone AWOL.’

Karen thinks fast: lie to them now and she’ll lose them for ever. ‘OK, you’ve got me,’ she says, palms up in conciliation. ‘I took leave, I’m here off my own bat. You know I used to write crime for the broadsheets? Well, I thought moving to the
Herald
would be a step in the right direction, more readers, but there’s no money for reporting, it’s all been cut, no specialisms, we all just regurgitate press releases. I should never have moved.’

‘But why’d you come here?’ asks Olly. ‘There can’t be any shortage of crime to cover in London.’

She swills her drink around in her glass. In for a penny… ‘Alec Hardy. I followed him, profiled him, on his last case.’ They look blank. ‘Sandbrook.’

Maggie claps a hand to her forehead. ‘Of
course
,’ she says.

‘He’d had this amazing career and then he all but vanished after the trial.’ It’s a relief to say it out loud to someone who she knows will get it. ‘Now suddenly he’s here. I was in court when it all fell apart. He failed those families. I saw it happen. And I’m worried he’s going to do it again here.’

Maggie nods grimly. Karen finishes her gin and tonic so fast that the ice hurts her teeth. ‘Same again?’

Becca Fisher is behind the bar but she’s lost in the screen of her mobile. Even though there are no other patrons, Karen has to shout twice to get service. With trade so slow, you’d think she’d be falling over herself to look after the few customers she has. What’s Becca looking at that’s more important than her business?

Liz has gone home, Pete has finally gone off shift and Chloe is asleep in her bedroom, knocked out by a half-dose of her mother’s prescription sedative.

Beth is alone for the first time since losing Danny. She eyeballs an uncapped bottle of red. Obviously she knows she shouldn’t drink. The flipside of oblivion is the loss of what fragile control she still has. And of course there’s the baby to consider. Not that anyone knows yet, not that anyone will judge her. But it’s getting dark now, Mark remains in custody and the unanswered questions swarm vaguely in her head. She needs
something
. She pours and drinks. It is strong but not sweet: is it guilt or hormones that sour the grape?

When the doorbell rings, she takes the glass with her to answer it, and there under the porch light is Reverend Paul, the one person in the world who knows she shouldn’t be drinking.

‘Am I intruding?’ he says. His eyes flick from her belly to her hand but he’s clever, or kind, enough to hide any judgement. ‘Thought I’d see how you were.’

She has to wonder about that. ‘How am I? I think, numb.’ She waves him into the sitting room. ‘I never said thank you. You were nice the other day. Want some wine?’

‘No,’ he says quickly. ‘So. I was thinking about Danny. I know a funeral isn’t possible until the police have finished their investigation. But we could hold a memorial service. For his life. A celebration, here. For you. For the town. For Danny.’ He’s using Danny’s name and not talking in euphemism; he isn’t scared of her grief and she appreciates it. But is she ready for what he’s suggesting? ‘There’s a wider community, which you’re part of. And which loves you, and is hurting with you.’ She’s getting a bit sick of this, the idea that Danny’s death is a community tragedy. She doesn’t notice anyone else with a kid in the mortuary. It is the Latimers’ loss and no one else’s. Sometimes Beth feels that it is hers alone. ‘Communal memorial
can
help.’ It occurs to Beth that a memorial service might get everyone off their backs and leave them to grieve in peace.

‘Maybe. Let me talk to Mark.’ She’s not sure he has forgiven Reverend Paul for talking to the reporters the day after it happened, for muscling in on the tragedy. And then there’s the God issue.

‘How… religious would it be?’

‘Whatever you like.’ It’s not the answer she was expecting. ‘We can plan it so it reflects who you are, who Danny was.’

The use of the past tense is like opening a vein. ‘I just want to feel him close to me. I want to hear his voice. I want to know how he is.’

‘He’s with God now.’

‘Tell God, give me a signal, something, let me know he’s OK.’ But she knows it doesn’t work like that, if it works at all. She wishes she could believe in God if only to rage at him for taking her baby away.

When Paul has gone, Beth wonders if she ought to pray, but she can’t find it in herself. What’s the point? There’s only one thing she wants and she doesn’t think God still does miracles. Instead, she spends an hour or so slumped in front of the television, flicking from one news channel to another, her miserable trance broken only by the rattle of the letterbox. She checks the time in the corner of the news: three minutes past ten. The trickle of sympathy cards from well-meaning strangers is constant and this late, it feels intrusive. But in place of the expected stiff white rectangle on the doormat, she finds a folded scrap of paper. She opens it to reveal neat round handwriting.

I didn’t mean to scare you. Danny wants to contact you. Please call.
 

STEVE

There’s a mobile number carefully printed overleaf.

Beth holds the note in shaking hands, remembering her words to Paul Coates: Tell God, give me a sign. She doesn’t believe in this sort of thing. Never has. But what if? What
if
?

22

It is a quarter past ten at night. DS Ellie Miller broke her promise to be home for teatime, then another to make it back for bedtime. Tom says he understands but she doesn’t know if he’s trying to make it easier for her. Kids do that more than we give them credit for, and lately Tom has been more sensitive to adult emotions than he used to be, maybe because he’s on the cusp of them himself. She comforts herself that Fred, at least, won’t remember the missed bedtimes and won’t feel them as keenly as Tom would have at the same age. When Fred wakes in the night, it’s Joe he cries for.

She stumbles down the station steps to reception. Becca Fisher has asked for her by name. Ellie rubs her eyes, glad there are no mirrors around. Becca always has the immaculate, put-together look of a woman who doesn’t have kids.

‘Chloe Latimer texted me.’ Becca looks pained. ‘It’s about Mark. He was with me, that night, till about one.’

The mystery of the clifftop tryst is solved. Ellie’s first reaction is relief. An affair: awful, but better than the scenarios she had begun to imagine. That is swiftly chased by pre-emptive sorrow on Beth’s behalf. This will destroy her. From that comes anger, a rushing rage. How dare they?

Ellie wants Becca to say it out loud. ‘What were you doing?’ She confines her contempt to a sneer, something that can’t be quoted and used against her.

‘Having sex.’ Becca juts her chin, but defiance is quickly replaced by regret. ‘I know. Worst decision of my life.’

They bring Mark back out of the cell. After dark, the interview room ceases to act as a sundial. The only light that penetrates is the faint unmoving glow of the street lamps outside, and it feels like time has stopped.

‘Why didn’t you tell us you were with Becca Fisher on Thursday night?’ says Hardy.

‘Why d’you think? If this got out…’

Hardy lets out a whistle of incredulity. ‘You were worried about
gossip
?’

‘Not gossip,’ says Mark. ‘
Lives
. My family. Becca’s business. If you haven’t lived in Broadchurch, you don’t understand how these things stick.’ He looks to Ellie. ‘You can’t tell Beth. It was the first time I’d been with anyone else. I’ve had
chances
, but I never did anything.’ Ellie’s blood boils on Beth’s behalf. What does he want, a medal for all the times he resisted?