Broadchurch (4 page)

‘It’s Danny, isn’t it?’ cries Beth. ‘I saw his shoes.’

Liz makes the sign of the cross.

‘Plenty of kids have those shoes,’ says Mark, and then to Hardy. ‘I’m sorry, you talk.’

‘We believe it’s Danny’s body,’ says Hardy. Ellie waits for the condolence, but no, that’s it, the bare and brutal fact.

‘Was it him, Ellie?’ asks Beth. At Ellie’s nod, Beth collapses as though her spine has been unstrung, her mouth stretched around a silent scream. Chloe makes a choking sound and turns wide frightened eyes up to her father. Mark hooks his right arm around his wife and she leans in to his chest. His left arm reaches round to include Chloe and Liz and he mutters over and over the wretched little lie that everything’s all right.

Ellie is rooted and helpless as she watches them grasp at each other, raw in their grief, a terrible family portrait that will never be complete again. Her own tears are hot in her skull. She wonders how she will ever contain them and, as the picture before her blurs, she realises she has failed.

A cup of tea. It’s all she can think of to do. Ellie feels like a WPC from the seventies as she rootles through Beth’s cupboards, looking for the sugar.

The tears give way to mute shock surprisingly quickly. Beth and Chloe hold hands so tightly that their fingertips are purple with trapped blood.

‘Was it an accident?’ Beth asks. ‘Did he fall?’

She addresses the question to Ellie but Hardy responds. ‘We don’t know yet,’ he says. ‘Can you think why he might’ve been up on the cliffs last night or this morning?’

‘He
wouldn’t
have been,’ says Beth.

‘Well, he obviously was,’ snaps Mark. Hardy’s eyebrows shoot up. Ellie resolves to explain how Mark’s bark is worse than his bite. Then she remembers the way he shouted at Nigel in the van that morning, and feels a chill in the pit of her belly.

‘How was Danny these past few days?’ says Hardy. ‘Was anything bothering him?’

‘He didn’t kill himself, if that’s what you’re suggesting,’ says Mark. ‘He wouldn’t. He knows he can talk to us about anything.’

‘He’s been just… normal,’ says Beth. The word sounds funny, as though she knows that normal is a word that will never apply to her again.

‘And you last saw him, when?’ presses Hardy.

‘I looked in on him about nine o’clock last night,’ says Beth. ‘He was in bed reading. And this morning…’ Beth falters, and it breaks Ellie’s heart to see the self-blame begin to take hold. ‘He’s up and out before anyone else, on his paper round. But he didn’t turn up for that.’

She opens her face up to Hardy: Ellie reads her blind faith and her spirits plummet further. Now obviously isn’t the time, but at some point soon she will have to learn about Hardy’s last case. Ellie hates him for putting her in this position.

Hardy pencils something in his notebook. ‘Any signs of forced entry or disturbance around the house?’

‘Nothing.’ Mark acts like it’s a stupid question. Silence hangs. ‘I want to see the body.’

Five pairs of eyes swivel in his direction. ‘You might be wrong.’ He shrugs. ‘So I want to be sure. I want to see.’

5

Ellie drives Mark Latimer to the cottage hospital. It’s a low flint building with shiny NHS plaques and signs tacked on to the old stone. Trees rustle overhead as they walk through the tiny car park. Mark’s expression is blank. The only sign of what he’s going through is a slight hesitation on the threshold.

‘How many times have you done this, El?’ he asks her.

‘I haven’t,’ she admits. Naturally she’s been in the mortuary before, for traffic accidents, a couple of drownings and an overdose. But never murder, never a child and, dear God, never a friend. They trained her for this particular crime, of course they did, but that was years ago and this is rural Dorset. She had more or less accepted that she would never have to deal with something like this. Beneath the shock and grief, she’s panicking. She can barely remember the procedure, let alone the right way to talk to the violently bereaved.

The viewing room has a churchy hush to it. The curtain is pulled slowly back to reveal Danny on the other side of the window. His face is still dirty: earth dulls his baby complexion while grains of sand glow like sequins. He looks younger than she has seen him in years. He looks
alive
. She half-expects him to jump up and shout ‘Surprise!’ A few years ago he and Tom played a game of hide-and-seek that covered both their homes and the playing field. Tom once got stuck in the Latimers’ wheelie bin and Danny sprained an ankle jumping from a tree to surprise his friend. The memory makes the room swim before her.

She looks at Mark instead and it’s almost worse. That face she has seen in laughter and song, drunk and happy, is contorted with grief.

‘All this way I thought it wouldn’t be him,’ whispers Mark. ‘My Danny.’

Copper’s intuition or maybe a parent’s instinct tells Ellie what’s coming next. ‘Can I touch him?’ Mark asks, and she has to shake her head.

‘Why him?’ says Mark, turning his anger on Ellie. ‘He’s only little. He’s just my little boy.’ He kneels by Danny’s face and although it’s Ellie’s job to supervise she feels a sense of trespass. ‘Listen, boy. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. You’re my boy and I let you down. And I’m so, so sorry, Danny. I love you zillions, superstar. I always will.’ Mark gives in to noisy crying and his words roll into one another. They stay like that for thirty minutes.

Ellie says nothing. Tears soak her collar.

DI Hardy, looking down at the latex gloves on his hands and the plastic shoe covers on his feet, is transported against his will to another child’s bedroom, another crime scene. He wants –
needs
– to sweep this room himself before SOCO get here.

He pushes open the door to Danny’s room, childish stickers peeling under his gloved fingertips. Inside, an alarm clock flashes the wrong time. The window is ajar, key still in the lock. From it he can see kids kicking a football in the playing field out the back. Children run in and out of the gardens that line the field’s edge. How long will that last, once word is out?

A school tie describes an S on top of the chest of drawers. A battered laptop computer and games console lie next to a telescope and a flip video camera. Sporting trophies jostle for space on shelves and the windowsill, and photographs of Danny in the pool or on the football pitch breathe life into the body on the beach. There are traces of his early childhood everywhere: an old, well-thumbed Pokémon sticker album is close to the top of the pile of magazines, and a cuddly toy chimp waits patiently on the pillow.

To one side of the door frame Danny’s height has been recorded through the years, inked on the wall from his fourth birthday to a couple of months ago. The first few dates and measurements are in adult handwriting but most are in Danny’s own, a round childish scrawl slowly evolving into a distinct hand. The lines come to an abrupt halt somewhere near Hardy’s elbow. Heavy sadness pierces his professional armour and he sinks on to the bed and lets his head drop into his hands. For some people tears dam behind the eyeballs but when Hardy wants to cry he has to hold them in using the back of his throat. He sometimes feels it’s the only strong muscle in his body.

When he looks up again, Beth is on the landing, staring right at him. He’s seen that expression before, on another mother, and he has to turn his face away. It’s not the grief he can’t handle. It’s the trust, the unquestioning trust she has already put in him.

Later, Hardy’s on the quayside waiting for his boss. The conversation with Chief Superintendent Jenkinson is inevitable and he can predict her lines as well as his own. To his left is the beach where Danny was found, so he keeps his gaze dead ahead. Little dinghies swerve to avoid the motorboats that cleave their way through the still waters of the harbour. In front of him, jagged black rocks have been piled into sea breaks.

When Jenkinson comes his way she’s carrying – Christ on a bike – two ice creams with flakes sticking out of them. One is clearly intended for him.

‘Given the nature of this case, it probably makes sense for you to hand it on to another lead officer,’ she says, handing him the cone. He tries not to let his boss see his distaste.

‘No.’ He’s been preparing the one-word response since he first saw the body.

‘It’s not a question of your ability,’ she says, pushing her expensive sunglasses up on to her head. ‘We just don’t want Sandbrook to become a thing.’

‘I was completely exonerated.’ If only he’d had a fiver for every time he’s had to say that.

She licks her ice cream. ‘Alec, you came here to lie low.’

She couldn’t be more wrong. ‘I
came
to do whatever the job requires.’

‘But in terms of public perception, you may be vulnerable. I’m giving you the chance to step back. Nobody would blame you. This happened a stone’s throw from your station.’

‘I’ve met
your team. There’s no one as qualified as me.’ She doesn’t contradict him. She can’t. ‘Sandbrook doesn’t make me vulnerable. It makes me the best man for the job. You want to stop me, you’re welcome to try.’ He holds her gaze to call her bluff. Nothing. ‘Thanks for the ninety-nine.’

He turns back to the station. When he rounds the corner out of Jenkinson’s sight, he throws the cone into the harbour, where it lands with a splash before melting away to nothing.

6

Ellie watches the team gather for the briefing, notebooks on laps. She’s never known an atmosphere like this in the station and it’s not only because one of the town’s children has been murdered. Hardy’s history charges the room with tension. Despite that, there’s something compelling, almost inspiring, about him as he paces in front of them, firing out lists.

‘Was Danny Latimer abducted? Did someone gain access to the house; if so, how?’ His accent becomes more pronounced as he warms to his theme. ‘And if it wasn’t forced entry, who has a key? We need to collect any CCTV from a mile radius around the house. Miller: the family, where were they?’

Ellie doesn’t like addressing the whole team at the best of times, let alone being thrust into the limelight without notice. ‘Mother and daughter were in, watching telly.’ She hears the stammer in her voice and cringes inwardly. DCs Frank Williams and Nish Patel, both keen – they’ve only been out of uniform for a couple of months, and this is their first big case – take detailed notes, piling on the pressure; Ellie feels as though every word out of her mouth has to be precise, useful, motivating. ‘They say that they didn’t leave the house till school the next morning. Dad was out on an emergency call-out – he’s a plumber; he got in around three. Neither parent thought to check on Danny. Grandma lives nearby, she was in all night…’

Hardy glares at his team. ‘Until we’re ready, all this remains confidential,
no gossip
. Understand? Right, go on.’ He flicks his hand as though shooing chickens. ‘You – Miller, come with me.’

They pass Bob Daniels coming out of the Gents. Bob’s an old-fashioned copper, big and blunt. He plays on the same five-a-side team as Joe and Mark Latimer and his boy Jayden is part of Tom and Danny’s gang. The thought of the boys reminds Ellie – she’s been pushing the knowledge away all morning – that tonight, when she gets in, she’ll have to tell Tom that his friend is dead. She has never dreaded a conversation more.

Bob’s eyes are pink and he gives the involuntary jagged in-breath of someone who has been sobbing his heart out. The ripples this casts will be as wide as they are deep. In Broadchurch there are only ever one or two degrees of separation. Big men will cry tonight.

They need to control how the word gets out. Speculation will already be rife, but the statement isn’t scheduled until this evening. Ellie feels strongly that local people, especially Danny’s classmates, should be given the news early and without equivocation. She’ll need to ask the press office how they do this. There is no precedent. Should they ring the school? And if so, then what? Urgent information is usually disseminated to parents by text message, but that would be an insult to everyone. If she could, she’d knock on every door, do it face-to-face, mother-to-mother, family by family. But she can’t. She is needed here.

On the short walk to Jack Marshall’s newsagent’s, Hardy is deep in glum silence. After all her attempts at small talk miss the mark, Ellie gives up and lets her own thoughts brew.

She is trying very hard to persuade herself that this was done by a random opportunist, an out-of-towner, a passing care-in-the-community case. But with that theory comes an immediate counter-argument. For a start, you don’t just pass through Broadchurch. And there are no lights on Harbour Cliff Beach at night. You’d need to know the place pretty well to find your footing, let alone leave a body behind and cover your tracks.

Who, then? Hardy, who has made no secret of his dislike of Broadchurch, is working on the theory it’s someone local. The only person in the town on the sex offenders register is some old lech who’s been bedbound in a nursing home for the past year. Like any town, Broadchurch has a handful of troublesome families but there is nothing in their history of infighting and petty drug-dealing to suggest progression to a child murder. That must mean it’s someone respectable, or at least someone with no previous.

Ellie looks around. With the sun high overhead, the quayside is as pretty as ever, but suspicion is a filter placed over the paintbox cottages and picture-book boats, distorting and darkening everyone in the frame. Danny’s killer could be any one of the men in sight. That middle-aged man balancing a crate of fish on his shoulder; the young bloke up a ladder cleaning windows. A vaguely familiar man in a suit drinking coffee from a styrofoam cup walks towards them. Does he look capable of strangling a little boy? He nods hello; Ellie’s cheeks burn as if he’s read her mind, and she looks down at the cobbles. At the time when she most needs to be observant, it seems that she can’t look anyone in the eye.

She realises with a sinking sensation that it’s probably someone she knows. Not well, not by name, but it could be someone like Mr Styrofoam there, someone she sees every week, someone she is on nodding terms with, someone who’s never given them any trouble until now. And if she knows the killer, then so will half the town. The residents of Broadchurch are not so much close-knit as enmeshed.