Broadchurch (17 page)

The phone call does not get off to a good start. ‘We’re chocka with domestic crime at the moment,’ he says. ‘And I specifically told you not to go.’

‘I’m on leave,’ she reminds him. ‘Len, this is heartland stuff. And the police are struggling. I don’t think this’ll be done in a day or two.’

‘Why will our readers care?’ he asks. She knows what he wants to hear and for once she can serve it to him on a plate.

‘Model family, two kids. Dad’s a plumber, quiet estate, idyllic market town, definition of normal. The mum’s very photogenic. English Rose. But… something might be up with the marriage.’

‘Trouble in paradise?’ says Len, and she knows that when he talks in headlines he’s already made the decision. ‘Go on, then. Get me an exclusive with the mum, nice photo and I’ll look at it. But you’re paying your own hotel bills.’

She exits through the school hall. It’s empty now apart from a woman staring forlornly at a basket full of footballs. Karen flips through her mind’s index until she locates her: Liz Roper, Danny’s grandmother, although she doesn’t look nearly old enough.

‘How are you coping?’ asks Karen. Liz looks up: clearly, she’s already used to strangers knowing who she is.

‘Me, I’m tough as old boots. It’s the others I worry about.’

In voicing her strength Liz has exposed her jugular: no one has thought about her.

‘You must miss him,’ says Karen, and Liz wells up.

‘My Geoff taught him how to kick one of these,’ she says, gesturing towards the footballs. ‘Two years old and he could dribble a ball from one end of the garden to the next. He was a little
star
.’ She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘I promised myself I wouldn’t do this. I’m the strong one in all this. I just want them to catch the sod who did it.’ She gives Karen a watery smile. ‘Sorry, I can’t remember your name.’ It’s the polite cover for someone who has met more new people in the last few days than in the previous decade.

‘I’m Karen. I work for the
Herald
.’

Liz recoils, as Karen knew she would. ‘We’re not talking to the press.’

‘I know. But can I say one thing? Be sure you’re getting the best advice. I’d hate for Danny to be ignored.’

She lets her hand rest briefly on Liz’s, then leaves her crying over the pile of scuffed footballs.

Beth pegs washing on the line in the back garden. Boys from Danny’s class play kickabout in the playing field. She’s battling the urge to vault the fence, run into the melee of boys, grab one – any one – and hold him so tight that she can feel his heart beat. Usually the football pitch is a kids-only zone, but today a handful of parents stand nervous sentinel on the sidelines.

Steve Connolly, chatting to Beth over her fence, attracts concerned glances. One father covertly takes a picture of him on his mobile phone. Everyone’s a witness now. Steve doesn’t notice; his focus is all on Beth, polite but insistent. ‘A few days ago I told the police about evidence they should look for,’ he says. ‘But they didn’t listen and it was burned before they got to it, so it’s harder for them to analyse it properly.’

He’s talking about the boat they found on fire, he must be. Everyone knows about it. ‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘Because I can help! I can help.’ Steve presses both hands to his chest in an almost priestly gesture. ‘But for that to happen I need to be taken seriously, and that’s not happening right now.’

Beth doesn’t know what to think. She drops her eyes. At the top of the laundry basket is the red dress she was wearing the day she saw Danny lying on the beach. She hangs it out even though she knows she will never wear it again.

‘What if you’re wrong?’

Steve shakes his head. ‘I’ve got no reason to lie to you. Beth, I wish, I
wish
, we’d never had cause to meet. But what I have told you is genuine. And you need to convince the police.’

Doubt and hope wrestle inside Beth. The things Steve deals in are too big for her to grasp, just as there is too much grief for her to process. It’s not that she doesn’t believe in them. It’s that she has never, until now, given it much thought. Her old, lovely life had no room for philosophy, and there were no ghosts.

Her life is suddenly all about trusting men she doesn’t know. Spilling confidences to the vicar. Depending on DI Hardy. And now this strange, serious man who says he has a line to Danny. She looks him straight in the eye. His return gaze is unflinching.

‘OK,’ she says.

With trust in her husband betrayed, it is strange men Beth puts her faith in now.

26

Hardy is furious and Ellie mortified. The press pulled up Jack Marshall’s previous while CID, still wading through a backlog of actions and checks, had not even thought to prioritise him. She’s sickened – physically sickened, she can’t finish her lunch – at the thought it might be Jack. This man has been in charge of her son, he’s taken all the Sea Brigade camping, zipped them into their sleeping bags, seen them change their clothes.

Jack has been in Broadchurch for so long that he is an honorary local, but of course he wasn’t always there: he took over the shop when Ellie was about seven. She remembers it happening now.

It’s warm in the interview room but Jack hasn’t even taken his coat off. If he’s guilty, this is one hell of a poker face.

‘Is this about the postman who was arguing with Danny?’ he asks.

‘No,’ says Ellie. ‘Though we did talk to him. He says he never had an argument with Danny that day.’

‘Load of rubbish. I know what I saw.’

There’s a beat while Ellie waits for Hardy to steer the interview. He clears his throat before he speaks. ‘Tell us about your conviction for sex with a minor, Jack.’

There’s no denial or surprise, only more of the same quiet control. ‘So we’re into the muck-raking, are we?’

‘Just want to establish the facts,’ says Hardy. ‘You didn’t mention it when we spoke.’

‘It’s nothing to do with Danny.’

‘You help with the Sea Brigade. That requires CRB checks, cross-referenced with the sex offenders register.’

Jack is contemptuous. ‘I am NOT a sex offender! That conviction was a farce. I’m not on any register.’

‘Only because it happened before the register came into being,’ says Hardy. ‘You should’ve declared it.’

‘What, when I moved into town? Put up a little sign, should I? Ex-convict here. I came here to get away from that. I am
not
what you are insinuating.’

Hardy shuffles the paper in front of him. ‘When did you last see Danny Latimer?’

‘I’ve told you, he did his paper round the day before he was found.’

‘What about the night of Danny’s death, where were you then?’

‘In, on my own, reading a book.’

‘Anyone vouch for that?’ says Hardy, in subtle mockery of the old man’s solitude.

‘Only the book.’ Jack purses his lips. ‘
Jude the Obscure
. You might not like it: not many pictures.’

Despite the situation, Ellie finds herself biting back a smile.

‘We’ve been told you’re a keen amateur photographer, Jack,’ says Hardy. ‘Took a lot of pictures of the boys in the Sea Brigade.’

Ellie is no longer smiling. Neither is Jack.

‘I really do pity you,’ he says. ‘Seeing depravity in perfectly normal behaviour. I’d hate to be in your mind. Now if you’ve an accusation or evidence to put to me, let’s hear it. Otherwise, let me go back to work.’

He rises from his seat. They have to let him go.

Karen is intrigued: Maggie has summoned her to the inner sanctum of the
Broadchurch Echo
, the editor’s office. It’s a mess of dusty potted plants and wooden cats, as far from Len Danvers’ leather and chrome dominion as can be.

‘Still want a desk?’ she asks her.

‘You’ve changed your tune.’

Maggie tips the dregs of her mug over a flourishing spider plant. ‘Olly would never have gone looking into Jack Marshall if it wasn’t for you,’ she says. ‘And it’s better to have you inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in, I suppose. But we all muck in. You can start with a round of tea. White, no sugar, for me.’

Karen has little choice but to suck it up. By the time she returns with the tea, Maggie’s gone for one of the cigarette breaks she still insists on taking outside the office, sucking hard at the e-cig: old habits die hard. Karen sets the steaming mug down on Maggie’s desk and automatically starts to riffle through the printouts Maggie’s working on. Topmost is an
Echo
article from three months ago about a Sea Brigade fundraiser: Jack Marshall’s there, with a handful of boys in uniform. There’s someone else in the picture, too. It’s that miserable woman with the dog, although it takes Karen a few seconds to recognise her because in the picture she’s smiling. And this, apparently, is Maggie’s line of enquiry. She’s circled the name ELAINE JONES in the caption with a red pen and scrawled in the margin
Why the name change? Gave her name as Susan Wright at briefing. Chase?

Karen takes a mental snapshot of the page. She will let Maggie do the legwork here and then, if it becomes relevant, she will take over. It’s an interesting sidebar. But it’s not the story. Something – experience combined with good old-fashioned gut instinct – tells her it’s Jack Marshall they should be looking for.

Back on the floor, Olly’s setting up a workstation for her.

‘So, have you talked to Jack Marshall?’ asks Karen as he does something with Control Alt Delete.

‘I thought we’d best leave it to the police.’

Karen sighs inwardly: for all Olly’s professed ambition, he still wants spoon-feeding.

‘But you’ve done the work, Olly. And you’ve got the connection. You were in the Sea Brigade. Don’t you want to follow it up? What if it turns out to be him, and you’ve missed the story?’

Olly is wide-eyed. ‘I don’t think Maggie’d go near it.’

Karen fights the urge to headbutt the desk.

Steve Connolly, sitting nervously on the edge of Beth’s sofa in his overalls, is an unlikely lifeline but she has to offer the police a second chance to grab hold of it. Pete Lawson is making faces behind Steve’s back. God knows, Beth understands his cynicism but they can’t afford to take a chance. They can’t prove what Steve says about getting messages from Danny, but they can’t
dis
prove it either. That must count for something. Even he admits he doesn’t know why or how it works, and Beth is encouraged by that. She’s impressed by things she doesn’t understand all the time. Even doctors don’t always know how certain drugs work, only that they do. Why should this be any different? She will not be fit to call herself a mother if she ignores Connolly and it turns out he’s right. DI Hardy promised he would leave no stone unturned in this investigation. Doesn’t this count?

She knows, as soon as Hardy sees her guest, that it’s going to be a struggle. He has made up his mind before Connolly opens his mouth.

‘This is what you asked us here for?’ he asks Beth, and then, to Pete, ‘And you’re a bloody idiot for letting him in.’

‘Just hear him out,’ asks Beth. Hardy scowls but shuts up.

Steve addresses the whole room. ‘Danny wants people to know he was killed by someone he knew.’

Hardy erupts. ‘This is offensive, I’m calling a halt right now —’

‘I told you about the boat,’ Steve cuts in. ‘You didn’t listen. And now you’ve found a boat.’

‘Lucky guess,’ says Hardy dismissively. He jerks his head in Ellie’s direction. ‘Tell her.’

Ellie takes both Beth’s hands in hers.

‘Beth, we checked out Steve’s record.’ The room begins the now-familiar tilt of shock. ‘He’s bankrupt, with prior convictions of vehicle theft, petty theft, and conspiracy to defraud.’

Steve jumps up. ‘That’s nothing to do with this!’ Instinctively Beth backs away from him, while Hardy advances.

‘I don’t know whether you’re mentally ill, a liar, or someone who believes they’re telling the truth,’ he spits into Steve’s face. ‘But I have to find this killer and prove my case in court. I deal in facts and all you’ve given her is fantasy. You are going to drive very far away from this house now. Final warning. I see you again, I will have you in prison.’

Pete takes Connolly by the arm and marches him out of the house. He is protesting his innocence and sincerity all the while. Beth puts a hand to the wall to steady herself. ‘What’s he got to gain?’ she asks Ellie. ‘I’ve not paid him.’

‘In two weeks he talks to the press,’ says Ellie. ‘Six months, he writes a book: “How I solved the Broadchurch murder”. Go into the bookshop in town, have a look, those books are in there.’

That hits home. Beth has seen those books, browsing the shelves back in the days when things weren’t so loaded with meaning; she’s seen the red-and-black paperbacks by former detectives and psychologists, the killer on the cover and the victims nowhere in sight. She understands with a chill that she doesn’t have to give Connolly cash for him to make money off her. Her grief is a commodity and he is a shark. How can anyone be so cynical? How could she have been so stupid?

There is a commotion outside the window as Pete pushes Connolly into the driver’s seat of his own van, one hand on his head like he’s bundling a suspect into a police car. The women watch through the glass as Connolly sits behind the wheel and throws what can only be described as a tantrum, rocking, shouting and pounding the dashboard with his fists.

Beth turns away from the window, an empty ringing in her head.

27

Hardy and Miller traipse through St Andrew’s churchyard where huge yews overhang crooked tombstones. Reverend Paul Coates has been flagged by the house-to-house enquiries as one of the few without an alibi for the night Danny was killed. Miller is wittering excitedly about their forthcoming dinner party, extolling the virtues of her domestic god of a husband. Hardy, still seething from the encounter with Steve Connolly, has tuned out.

‘Know this new vicar well?’ he asks her. The ground between graves is uneven and he almost turns his ankle in one of the divots.

‘No, he’s only been here a couple of years. We’re not big churchgoers. Midnight Mass… Easter, if we remember.’