‘I’ll get the coffees this morning,’ says Olly. ‘My treat, for once.’
Karen appreciates the gesture and, if she’s honest, the cash. Her contribution to Broadchurch’s economy is growing by the hour, and she still has no idea if Danvers will honour the expenses at the end of it. She needs a lead, and fast.
Olly crosses the road to a nearby cashpoint but returns empty-handed. Karen knows the mortified expression of someone whose card has been declined when she sees it.
‘Machine’s out of order,’ he says, evidently unaware that it’s currently delivering a stack of crisp tenners to the next customer. ‘Maybe tomorrow.’
Karen pays cash for the drinks, pockets the receipt and together they walk to the harbour.
‘I looked at the Herald,’ says Olly. ‘You haven’t filed yet.’
She’s had time to prepare for this. ‘Don’t want to, till I’ve got the full background. I’m thinking about the family. I want to get it right.’
It’s important that Olly doesn’t realise that Karen needs him as much as he needs her. She might be the one with a shortcut to the nationals but she needs this local reporter onside to open doors for her. And they might yet be able to exploit his relationship with Detective Sergeant Auntie Ellie. ‘So can you help me with that?’ she presses. ‘Tell me who best to talk to.’
‘I suppose,’ Olly looks uneasy. ‘I know these people. You can’t stitch them up.’
‘You’ve read my stuff. You know I show people as they are. I’ve got no agendas.’
He’s still not convinced. ‘But… Danny died.’
Patience doesn’t come naturally to Karen, but she tries. ‘Listen, Olly. What you do this week will decide your whole career. I know you think I’m being really hard-nosed but opportunities like this don’t come along often. It doesn’t matter how it happened, or whether you feel comfortable. No one is better placed to do the right thing by the Latimers than you are.’ She’s almost got him, she can tell. ‘I’ll pay you. Finder’s fees. Proper rates.’
That decides him. ‘OK – well, I’ve got to go into the Echo now but shall we compare notes at lunchtime?’
The day stretches out in front of Karen. There’s a story hiding somewhere here. It is a point of pride that she puts the clues together faster than Alec Hardy.
Her first port of call is the newsagent. She picks a magazine at random and a Mars bar from the shelf. The man behind the counter has a blank expression that doesn’t change even when she turns her fullest smile on him.
‘You’re Mr Marshall, right? You run the Sea Brigade. Karen White, Daily Herald.’ She pockets her change and takes her business card from her purse. ‘I’m here covering Danny Latimer’s death.’
‘I don’t talk to the press,’ says Jack Marshall.
Karen turns her smile up a notch. ‘You’re a newsagent and you don’t talk to the people who make the stuff you sell?’
‘I sell ’em. I don’t want to be in ’em.’
‘Why?’ Her cheeks are starting to ache.
‘Don’t get smart.’
‘I’m only trying to find out about Danny. He did a paper round for you, didn’t he?’
‘Are you going to leave nicely, or do I have to ring the police? I’ve been courteous.’
She leaves her card anyway. ‘If you change your mind?’ She correctly predicts its trajectory into the bin. On the way out, she overhears Jack Marshall call her a parasite. She’s heard worse.
Outside, her phone buzzes. Work: the seventh call since yesterday. She lets this one go too, and deletes the subsequent voicemail. What can they do? They can’t technically pull her from the story, given that she’s here without their permission. One more day and she’ll have Len Danvers on the phone begging her for a double-page spread on deadline.
She’ll turn something up. She always does.
The British summer is living up to its reputation: soft light drizzle has turned to pouring rain. DS Miller wears a ridiculous bright orange coat and carries an umbrella. Hardy gets wet, although his feet, in the new boots Miller gave him, remain bone-dry. She keeps glancing down at the puddles and pulling a smug little face.
Here in the caravan park at the foot of the cliff, a handful of families are determinedly enjoying themselves despite the rain, but the parents keep their children close.
They approach Susan Wright’s wretched mobile home. Miller’s smile stays plastered on even when Susan greets them with an admonishment for waking the dog up.
‘You caught ’em yet?’ she says to Hardy. ‘There’s kids not safe out there.’
At least she won’t slow them down with pleasantries. ‘Did Mark Latimer fix a burst pipe at the hut on Briar Cliff a few weekends back? He says he got the keys from you.’
‘No. We never had a burst pipe up there.’
Beside him, Miller stiffens and he feels another wave of frustration at her refusal to take Latimer seriously as a suspect. The sooner the results on the blood from the boat come back the better.
‘When did you last clean up there?’
‘Ten days ago. Ain’t been nobody in since then.’
‘Who else has keys? We’re treating it as a possible crime scene.’ She has this way of looking at them, like they’re the ones under suspicion.
‘Me and the owners. That’s it.’
‘Right.’ Hardy snaps his notebook shut. ‘We’ll send someone along to take elimination prints.’
She doesn’t bat an eyelid. ‘We finished?’
The door is slammed in their faces before they can reply.
There is one more call to make before they get back to Mark. Miller gives him the lowdown in the car.
‘Nige moved back in with his mum, Faye, when his dad died a few years back. They’re ever so close. He’s worked for Mark for about three years. Mark trained him up. Nige drives the van. Keeps it parked on his drive.’
Mead View is a couple of blocks away from Spring Close but on a different scale: the bungalows crouch low and the cul-de-sac can’t accommodate the car-to-home ratio. Mark’s van is parked on a driveway that’s not quite big enough for it.
Miller disappears to talk to Faye while Hardy talks to Nige on the driveway.
The bloke’s a nervous wreck, his shaved head sheened in sweat. Hardy is on full alert.
‘Yeah, I was with Mark pretty much all night,’ he says. ‘We met up, had a drive, a bite to eat.’ He lets out a weird giggle: this poor sod makes Mark look like an accomplished liar.
‘See each other a lot socially?’
‘On and off.’
‘Where’d you meet him that night?’
‘Car park by Briar Cliff,’ says Nige, almost before Hardy’s finished talking. ‘It’s just convenient.’
Hardy doesn’t see anything convenient about a car park up a dirt track in the arse of nowhere.
‘What time did you get home?’
‘One-ish. Dunno.’
‘What were you doing till one?
‘Drinking, chatting, bite to eat.’ Nige looks miserable.
‘Where did you eat?’
‘Pub in the Vale. The Fox.’
‘What’d you eat?’
Nige’s eyes flick up like they’re pulling up a pub menu. ‘Chips… and a pie, steak pie.’
‘Lot of places open till one round here?’
‘We get lock-ins, at the Fox.’
‘So they’ll remember you, when we talk to them.’
Miller bursts out of the house. ‘Nigel, d’you want to stop pissing about? Your mum says you were in with her, till half ten. That you went out round the corner for last orders. Not with Mark.’
A sunbeam cuts the interview room in half: high noon. CDs are stacked on top of a winking digital recorder. Mark Latimer looks at his lap while DI Hardy tells him how it is.
‘Since we talked earlier, we’ve checked up on a couple of things. Number one, the woman who holds the keys to the hut on Briar Cliff has no memory of you fixing a burst pipe.’
‘What? That’s bollocks! I got the keys off her. She was in a caravan. She had a dog.’
‘She says not.’
‘Well, she’s lying.’ He keeps looking at Miller, like she’s going to save him.
‘Number two,’ and this is the big one, ‘your alibi is rubbish. Your mate Nige isn’t a good liar. Let’s not insult each other’s intelligence. Your son has been killed, so I’m a bit at a loss as to why you’d mislead us. Point three: we had a look at your boat. And there’s bloodstains in it.’ He sniffs to fill the dead air. ‘Whose blood is in the boat, Mark?’
‘Dan’s.’ He meets Hardy’s eyes without apology. ‘We took her out weekend before last, that hot spell. Me, Dan and Chloe, fishing about a mile offshore. Caught three bass, we took ’em back and barbecued ’em. Danny was messing about, caught the end of a line in the bottom of his foot. Gashed it open. He was all hopping around, yelling. Chloe was there, ask her.’
‘We will.’ Miller is soothing rather than threatening.
‘Why are you lying about where you were Thursday night?’ says Hardy. ‘We can’t rule you out until you tell us where you were.’
‘How is me being here helping you find Danny’s killer? Everything’s becoming part of this and it’s nothing to do with it.’ He brings his hand down hard on the desk.
‘Everything matters now,’ says Hardy. ‘Who did what, who was where. Everything connects and feeds this case. If we don’t get the truth, we won’t find who killed Danny. And that starts with you.’ He folds his arms and sits back.
Indignation pushes Mark’s voice up the scale. ‘I told you about the hut, and you’re saying I’m lying and I’m not!’
‘Mark,’ says Hardy softly. ‘My son dies, I’d tell a police officer everything. I just would. Why did you ask Nigel to give you a false alibi?’
Mark cricks his neck. ‘Everything I’m saying is getting twisted. I can’t think straight.’
‘Mark Latimer, I’m arresting you for obstruction of a murder inquiry.’
‘Sir, no, do we really need to —’ starts Miller.
‘Enough!’ barks Hardy, and she stops mid-sentence. ‘You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence —’
‘Is this what you do, Ell?’ says Mark.
‘Don’t make us hold you,’ she pleads. ‘Tell us the truth.’
‘Take his things, Miller.’
The uniforms put him in the cells.
Hardy’s alone with Miller in the interview room. He slides the disc from the machine and labels it.
‘You think he’s blameless now?’ he asks her. Surely she can’t still be in denial?
‘He’s in shock,’ says Miller feebly.
‘His son is dead. Why would he not tell the truth about where he was?’
He waits for her denial, but she can’t answer him. Hardy savours the moment. He might be making slow progress on the investigation, but for the first time there’s a glimmer of hope that he might make a good copper out of DS Miller.