Chloe is crying in her bedroom, soft ladylike sobs – even her crying is grown-up now – occasionally punctuated by the ping of texts hitting her phone.
‘Do you want a cuddle?’ Beth whispers through the keyhole. ‘You know I’m here when you need me.’
The crying stops for a second. ‘I’ll come down in a bit,’ says Chloe. In the next instant, her phone rings out and she answers it, speaking so quietly that Beth can’t even pick up her tone, let alone her words. Who’s she talking to? What’s she saying? It guts Beth to know that Chloe’s friends, who are good girls, but only children themselves, are giving consolation when Beth is not allowed to. Still, she respects the closed door. She wants more than anything to hold her daughter, to receive comfort as well as to give it, but she mustn’t let Chloe see this. She’s only fifteen. Her brother has died. That’s enough to cope with, without knowing how much responsibility she now bears for her mother’s state of mind. So Beth backs away and goes downstairs, her arms heavy and useless at her sides; at the same time she carries an unbearable surplus of love.
Mark is in the hall, staring at his phone.
‘Every time it goes, I think it’s Danny.’ He has it set up so that every number in his phone book has a different alert. A klaxon for Nige, jingle bells for Beth. Danny’s number the cheer of a crowd. They’ll never hear it again. ‘I keep thinking he’s going to walk back in,’ says Mark.
They’ve been having this conversation, or a circular version of it, all day, batting denial back and forth between them.
‘Did you touch him? At the…’ She can’t finish. Mark shakes his head.
‘They wouldn’t let me.’
They wouldn’t have been able to stop her. Now that one terrible question is out there, the next follows almost without her permission. ‘Why didn’t you look in on him last night?’
‘Beth,’ says Mark, but she’s started now.
‘You always look in on him, when you come to bed.’ As the words spill, she realises that she didn’t actually hear Mark come to bed. Not that that’s unusual; she rushes past the thought on the way to the accusation. ‘Why didn’t you see he was gone?’
‘Why didn’t you?’ says Mark. It cuts her between the ribs.
Neither of them has an answer. Blame and counter-blame. Is this really what they are going to do to each other? Silently she vows not to let her marriage be destroyed by this. They owe it to Danny to stay strong and stay together. She needs Mark by her side and on her side if she is to survive this.
Karen White stands on the beach, shakes loose her ponytail and lets the salt wind blow London from her hair. The sun is a semi-circle on the horizon. A shrine has sprung up, as she knew it would. Cellophane rustles around supermarket flowers and tea lights gutter in jam jars. At the centre of it all sits a little toy chimp. A couple of kids tape a card to the lifebelt and leave, arm in arm, one crying into the other’s shoulder, then Karen is alone. She approaches the sad memorial and drops to her knees as though in prayer. Glancing over her shoulder to make sure that nobody is watching, she picks up the chimp and puts it in her handbag. She uses the map on her phone to find her way to the media briefing at the school hall.
The place looks tiny, as primaries always do. Hardy sits behind a microphone, his Chief Super beside him in dress uniform. Behind them is a board bearing the insignia of Hardy’s new force, the Wessex Police. Behind that, a jumble of PE apparatus.
Hardy stares past the assembled press to the far side of the room where paper fish swim across the wall. It’s not a full house. There’s a single camera crew and a handful of print journalists. It looks like the rest of Fleet Street concurs with Len Danvers. Good, thinks Karen. Less competition for the story. She’ll show him. She sticks to the back of the hall, taking care not to be seen.
She recognises Olly Stevens from his website and guesses that the tall blonde woman next to him, matching Broadchurch Echo lanyard hanging around her neck, must be a colleague. She’s on her feet with a question as soon as Hardy has been introduced.
‘Maggie Radcliffe, editor of the Broadchurch Echo,’ she says. The name rings a bell although Karen can’t place it. ‘What advice do you have for people in the town, particularly parents?’
Hardy addresses his reply to the camera. ‘The crime rate in this area is one of the lowest in the country. This is a terrible anomaly. We’re in the early moments of what may be a complex investigation.’ He breaks eye contact with the lens for a few seconds and scans the room. The little flinch he gives when he spots Karen is not picked up by the camera, but she notices it with satisfaction. He blinks and continues. ‘Danny’s life touched many people. We’ll be looking at all those connections. If you or someone you know has any information, has noticed anything unusual, please come forward now. I’d urge everyone: don’t hide anything.’ The cameraman goes in close so that Hardy’s face fills the monitor. ‘Because we will find out. We will catch whoever did this.’
Night finally falls on Harbour Cliff bay. The colours of day have faded but the evidence tents are lit from within, turning the white canvas a pale pink. They glow like jellyfish as SOCO work into the night.
Danny’s death is the lead item on the ten o’clock news. The Latimers watch from the sofa, all three faces wearing the same stupid, stunned expression.
Up at the farm, cows graze in peaceful bovine ignorance as Dean watches on his phone.
Becca Fisher has the news on the computer at hotel reception. She takes a large tug on a neat whisky and checks her phone for text messages for the third time in five minutes.
Olly Stevens and Maggie Radcliffe, finalising the front page layout in the Echo office, down tools and watch in silence.
Nige Carter, working through the night to cover Mark’s absence, sees the news in someone else’s house, some woman who didn’t even know Danny. She is crying but Nige is dry-eyed.
Jack Marshall, alone on the empty shop floor, listens to the radio, hands in his cardigan pockets, mouth set.
Paul Coates watches on his iPad in the vestry where the stone walls hang with photographs of his frocked predecessors.
Susan Wright watches on the portable television in her static caravan, the dog’s head on her lap and a cigarette in her hand. She shakes her head, then exhales a long slow thread of smoke.
Joe Miller, clearing up the sitting room, is frozen to the screen, a stuffed toy in each hand.
Upstairs in his bedroom, Tom Miller stares at his phone for a long, long time. He chews his lip in deliberation, then his expression hardens. He checks behind him to make sure that Joe isn’t lurking on the landing. All clear. Now he has made his decision he acts quickly. First he deletes all Danny’s text messages, a record of friendship that goes back years. Then he’s on his laptop, hitting the keys in a series of actions reserved only for emergencies. The warning message fills the screen: ‘Are you sure you want to reformat the hard disk? You will lose all your data.’ Tom clicks yes.
He looks over his shoulder again. That’s not grief on his face. That’s fear.