Broadchurch (31 page)

The cliffs loom high above them, clouds scudding fast behind, giving the impression that the rock face is constantly falling forward but never hitting the ground. When they arrive at the caravan, they find an envelope taped to the glass front door. Susan tears it off, and open, in one movement, reading its contents in seconds. She turns up her nose but otherwise her expression does not change.

She beckons Tom through the door and checks behind her one more time before closing it. No one sees him go in. The curtains are drawn. Inside, there are tatty pine cupboards, messy worktops and no photographs anywhere. It does not look like Susan and Vince have many visitors: she has to clear a space on the cluttered banquette for Tom to sit down. She shows Tom where the dog’s food is kept, in a big plastic box underneath the fire extinguisher. When Vince has finished eating, he engages Tom in a game of tug-of-war with an old rope. She watches them in silence before setting down a plate of biscuits.

‘You can take him out for a walk any time you like, now you know where we are.’ She pushes the biscuits towards Tom and leaves her fingers on the edge of the plate until he takes one. ‘Did you really know that boy that died?’ she says. ‘It can’t have been nice for you.’

Tom nods through a mouthful of custard cream. ‘My mum’s in the police. She’s a detective on the case.’

‘Is she now?’ Susan stands up. She seems to fill the tiny space; she stands before the window and everything darkens a shade. ‘Come over here, Tom. I want to show you something. Come on, don’t be shy.’

Reluctantly Tom ends his game with the dog and lets Susan put her hand on his shoulder and steer him towards a slim cupboard by the front door that is fastened with a shiny new padlock. She rattles the key in the lock and pulls the door. There, slanted against the wall, is a skateboard whose yellow underside is painted with a distinctive geometric blue pattern.

‘It’s Danny’s,’ says Tom. He is bewildered rather than afraid.

‘That’s right,’ Susan is close behind him. ‘I’ve been looking after it. But if you were his friend, I think it’s only right that you should have it. Don’t you think?’

‘Right, I’m not having this,’ says Mark. ‘We’re going out.’

Beth and Chloe look up from the daytime TV show they’ve been watching for two hours, although Beth couldn’t describe anything that’s happened in it.

‘Where are we going?’ says Chloe.

‘It’s a surprise,’ says Mark. There’s a spark in his eye that Beth hasn’t seen for a long time. He’s up to something, and in a good way. He keeps the mystery going as he marches them towards the seafront. A boy on a skateboard whizzes past on the opposite pavement.

Danny! Hope dances wildly in Beth’s chest. She whips around to catch him but it’s only Tom Miller – she recognises his camouflage backpack – winding his way along the pavement. The Danny reflex is still strong in her cruel subconscious. Tears prick. She barely looks at her surroundings after that, so it’s with horrified surprise that she learns where Mark is taking them.

‘Here we are,’ he says with a flourish outside the amusement arcade.

‘Are you serious?’ asks Chloe.

‘Trust me.’ Mark is well prepared, taking pound coins from a little bag in his pocket. ‘Fiver each. Don’t spend it all at once. You’ll get most value out of the 2p machines.’ Beth opens her mouth to protest. ‘Trust me,’ he repeats.

She wants to, but she can’t trust her own judgement these days, let alone anyone else’s. Is this appropriate? Or is it deeply fucked-up? What will people think? But Mark and Chloe are already inside and she would rather be with them than out here on her own, tortured by the sight of a little boy with a mop of dark brown hair begging his mum for another go on the dolphin ride. She forces herself in.

Like the rest of the tourist spots this summer, the arcade is half-empty and Beth’s grateful for that. There are only a handful of people and nobody they know. She starts off humouring Chloe who is in turn humouring Mark. She is going through the motions: feeding coppers into the cascade machines and watching them fall. But as Chloe and Mark stalk the various piles, taking bets on which one will fall first, a little miracle happens. Chloe starts to have fun and it’s infectious. She spends her last pound on an Air Hockey tournament. Beth takes a moment to notice what fun she’s having and that’s when Chloe slams the puck into the goal. She holds her fingers to her forehead in an L for Loser, laughing. Beth had forgotten how pretty Chloe is when she laughs. She catches Mark’s eye and beams over a silent thank you. It’s still too soon for a happy room at home, but he’s done his best to create that space for her somewhere new.

He draws them both into a bear hug and utters the immortal word, ‘Chips.’ A few minutes later the three of them sit side by side on the sea wall, lunch on their laps.

‘Was that good, or was that good?’ asks Mark.

‘It was good,’ Chloe admits.

‘We used to do this all the time, when you were little,’ says Mark. ‘When it was pissing down with rain. All four of us.’ He uses the old number without thinking and it’s as if the wind has died down. They sit in silence for a few minutes.

‘Danny would’ve spent it all on the grabbers,’ says Chloe.

‘And lost,’ says Mark.

Beth arrives at her decision suddenly and with such powerful certainty that she is astonished there was ever any room for doubt.

‘We’ll have to take the baby in, when it’s born,’ she says into her chips. ‘It’ll love all that noise and flashing lights.’

In her peripheral vision she can see the smile that passes between Chloe and Mark.

‘Yeah,’ says Mark. ‘We’ll have to do that.’

50

The door bangs, heralding Tom’s return. ‘Dad, come and have a look at this!’ he shouts from the porch. Ellie braces herself for a gruesome find; Tom’s taste and beachcombing skills have yet to mature. In the spring he brought home a crab shell complete with putrefying insides. She scoops Fred into her arms so that, if it’s something gross, Joe will have to deal with it.

But what she sees turns her blood to ice. Her little boy, clearly delighted with himself, has something tucked underneath his arm that Ellie would know anywhere: there are pictures of its blue-and-yellow markings all over the incident room. She could almost draw the pattern from memory.

‘It’s Danny’s skateboard,’ says Tom, the look of triumph slowly disappearing from his face in response to his mother’s expression.

Joe appears at Ellie’s side. ‘Mate, what the hell are
you
doing with it?’ he asks. He holds out his arms for Fred: Ellie hands him over and then approaches Tom, so carefully that she’s almost on tiptoe.

‘Put it down, Tom. Put it down, gently, nobody else is going to touch it.’ Slowly, he sets it down on the carpet. ‘You won’t be in trouble if you tell the truth. Where did you get that from?’

‘That woman up at the caravan park. She’s
nice
.’ A stammer undermines his protest. ‘She said I could feed her dog.’

Ellie’s legs almost give way. Her hands shake as she calls Hardy. She gives him the facts without elaboration, even as she screams at herself inside her head. She can’t believe how stupid she’s been. How could she have ignored the warning signs? Why didn’t she prioritise Maggie’s complaint? Of course they’ve warned Tom against talking to strangers but from day one it’s the bad
man
you warn your kids about. When they’re lost you tell them to find a mum, and if you can’t see a mum you at least make sure it’s a lady. But women hurt children too. And Susan Wright chills her more than almost any other woman she’s ever met.

‘What were you even doing out on your own?’ She directs the question at Joe. She’ll have his bollocks for this.

‘He said he was meeting Jayden,’ says Joe as Tom hangs his rucksack on the peg, then smooths his jacket over the top. ‘I was going to see him off but there was orange juice everywhere.’

Orange juice? Jesus. Ellie pencils in a row about priorities for later that evening. Right now, she needs to deal with this skateboard.

‘Did you carry it or ride it?’ she asks Tom.

‘Rode it.’ The enormity of what he has done is finally beginning to sink in. ‘Should I not have?’

She fights the urge to shake her son, and instead just shakes her head.

A squad car pulls up outside and once the skateboard is bagged and stowed in the boot, they turn on the blues and race to the caravan park.

The uniforms already have Susan’s trailer surrounded.

Did Danny come here the night he died? The thought of Tom being in this place makes her flesh crawl.

Hardy calls Susan’s name and when there’s no response, gives the uniforms the go-ahead. The glass door easily gives way and the officers pour in. Susan’s not there and neither is the dog, but the fridge and the wardrobe are both full, her purse is on the sideboard and there’s a half-eaten bowl of dog food in one corner.

‘Get SOCO here,’ shouts Hardy. ‘We have to find her. She can’t be far.’

As they head back to the station in the back of a squad car, they trade increasingly wild theories about where she might have gone. On the High Street they pass a brown dog tied up outside the
Echo
office. Ellie almost doesn’t register it, then —

‘Shit!’ She puts her foot to the floor even though she’s not driving. ‘Stop! I know where she is.’

‘Why would she —’ begins Hardy, but she’s out of the car, forcing him to catch up with her. The door of the
Echo
is ajar. Ellie hesitates, afraid of what she might find. If Susan has made good on her threat against Maggie she will never forgive herself.

Hardy twitches beside her but follows her silent lead, tiptoeing after her through the newsroom to the back. In a dark messy corner, Maggie, Olly and Susan Wright sit in awkward conference around the meeting table. Ellie can smell the stale tobacco even from here.

‘Thank you for popping in, Susan,’ Maggie is saying. She sounds like her old, confident self. ‘I did a little digging on you. I’ve got friends in low places, see. Half the local papers in the country are run by my friends. So I know about your husband. And your children. And what was said, but never proved, about you.’

Olly slides a sheet of paper across the desk to Susan. From where she stands, Ellie can tell that it’s newsprint but not what it says.

‘What do you want from me?’ asks Susan mechanically.

‘You threatened me and
I
nearly let you get away with it.’ Maggie’s anger is directed as much at herself as Susan. ‘I’m going to tell the police about this.’

‘No need,’ says Hardy. Olly is astonished to see the detectives. Maggie looks as though she expected nothing less. Susan remains inscrutable.

‘Susan Wright. You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

He radios to the car outside. Doors slam in the street.

‘You can have this,’ says Maggie. ‘I’ve made copies.’

‘Thanks,’ is all Ellie can say. It’s an Essex paper, nearly two decades old, but Susan Wright is instantly recognis-able. There’s a one-word headline above her mugshot: MONSTER. A dozen vile words leap out of the text at Ellie. How could they have missed this?

Susan doesn’t resist arrest but accepts the handcuffs meekly. Once in the street, though, it’s a different story.

‘Where’s my dog?’ she yells. ‘Who took my dog?’

Ellie stares at the lamppost. Vince has gone, along with his collar and lead. She asks the uniforms if they know anything about it and is met with blank looks. Susan Wright thrashes and cries, demanding to know what’s happened to her dog.

Back at the station, they hold Susan Wright in the cell while they cobble together a case. She has gone from being an afterthought to priority number one. They have to wait for her alibi to check out, which means uniform doing house-to-house in the caravan park. They also need to get the files from Essex police to back up the headlines. Nish is on the case.

And even when they’ve got the police records, Ellie knows from their experience with Jack Marshall that even the facts are of limited use if the suspect won’t talk.

All the while, Susan Wright remains mute unless it’s on the subject of Vince the dog. She won’t tell them why she had the skateboard. They need to find the dog. Where’s it gone? Who would
want
it?

Late at night, the children’s playground is deserted. Leaves on the trees crackle like static on a radio. Every now and then a strong gust pushes the empty swing and its chains creak.

Mark Latimer’s van pulls up in the adjacent car park. A hooded figure gets out, walking boots crunching on the gravel. He takes the crossbow from the passenger seat. He opens the back door. Inside, Vince looks quizzically at his new master.

Nige slips the hood from his head and aims his crossbow at the dog’s head. ‘What we gonna do with you boy, eh?’ he says.

Mark Latimer has left Beth and Chloe sleeping. Beer bottles are stacked like soldiers ready to be recycled. He pulls another from the fridge. He stares at the flickering telly. Then something in him snaps. He throws on a hoody against the cold night, stuffs his feet into walking boots and sets out across the field. The grass is a swathe of green against black. Soon Mark is swallowed by the night.

On the other side of the field, Paul Coates pushes away a glass of orange juice and looks at it as though he wants something stronger. He lets his head fall into his hands. Then, as though he has come to a decision, he is up. Acting quickly, as though he wants to do this before he can change his mind, he covers his dog collar with a hood and pulls walking boots on to his feet. He winds through the unlit gravestones without a single misstep. Here is a man who comes to life after dark.

51

Monster. If Susan Wright is guilty of the things the press accused her of, there is no other word for her. No wonder she gave a false name to the photographer from the
Echo
. Ellie looks at the dossier that Maggie Radcliffe gave her, aware that this is just the stuff that made it into print. God knows what the press held back. She won’t know either until the police files come through, but the archives are shut till tomorrow morning and the computer system in a faraway station has crashed, leaving the digital notes trapped in the glitch. Any minute now, says the stressed-out sergeant in Essex. She’s been saying that for two hours. At ten o’clock, Ellie calls Joe and tells him to eat without her, to go to bed without her. He says he doesn’t mind in a way that conveys the opposite. Everyone involved in the case is talking like this now, saying the right things but letting the subtext leak out in tone and body language where they can’t be called out on it. She spares a thought for poor Bob, doing door-to-door looking for Vince the dog, while Lindsey and the kids sit at home forgetting what he looks like.