Tom Miller carries his red skateboard into the police station like a security blanket. Hardy says nothing as Joe, the appropriate adult, hands the little one – Alfie? George? – to Ellie for the duration of the interview. He notices the food stains on Joe’s top and the rushed, patchy shave. He honestly doesn’t know if he envies Joe the time he spends with his children or pities it.
They do the interview that Miller insists they call a chat in the family room. Grubby toys that wouldn’t entertain a pre-schooler are piled in one corner. The Venetian blinds are pulled flat.
‘Just took him to the skate park,’ confides Joe as Hardy fiddles with the video camera. ‘Thought it’d take the edge off his nerves, you know. But instead the other kids were crowding round him, grilling him about Danny. They think he’s got insider knowledge because of who his mum is.’ He sighs from his belly. ‘I shouldn’t have taken him there. I was only trying to do something normal, you know?’
Hardy, checking to make sure Tom is in shot, nods absently. The boy blinks nervously into the lens.
‘You last saw Danny when?’ Hardy begins. Joe flinches, as though he was expecting a more gentle build-up.
‘Before we went on holiday,’ says Tom.
‘When was that?’
Joe answers for him. ‘Three and a half weeks ago. We went on Thursday morning.’
Hardy seethes inwardly. Sometimes the parent is not the most appropriate adult. He saw this when he was interviewing Pippa Gillespie’s friends, the protective instinct of the parent overriding everything else. It’s actually easier to talk to a kid who’s in care: at least a social worker lets him get on with his job.
‘Sorry,’ says Joe, apparently reading Hardy’s mind. He sits back in his seat.
‘Three and a half weeks ago,’ Tom echoes his father. ‘We went on the Thursday morning. The afternoon before, we went to the Lido.’
‘Did he have his phone on him?’
‘Don’t know.’ Tom bites the inside of his cheek.
‘But Danny had a phone.’
Tom nods.
‘What did you talk about?’
‘Football. Xbox. Usual.’
‘What else? Girls?’
‘No!’ It’s the first unguarded response Tom’s had. Joe, shifting in his seat, doesn’t take his eyes off his son.
‘Did he say he was worried about anything?’
‘No,’ says Tom.
‘Did you argue?’
‘No!’ Again, the word comes too quickly.
‘Can you think of anyone who’d want to hurt Danny?’ Tom doesn’t answer but his eyes triangulate between Hardy, the camera, and his father. ‘How’d he get on with his dad?’
Joe, who’s been good for the last few questions, now takes a breath in as though he’s about to speak, but Hardy shushes him with a look. His mind is racing: whatever Tom’s holding back, Joe knows too. He’ll have to get Joe on his own if Tom doesn’t spill, but it’s better coming straight from the boy.
‘Anything you say here is absolutely confidential.’
Tears rinse the blue of Tom’s eyes. ‘He said his dad hit him,’ he mumbles. ‘He gave him a split lip.’
Inwardly, Hardy is cheering. It is the nature of a detective’s work that sometimes he will feel elated at the news that a little boy was hit by a grown man. This is such a time.
‘So he hit him more than once?’ he asks Tom. These things escalate, and not always gradually. There is nothing in Danny’s medical records about a split lip, and if Mark had been charged with it they would have picked it up five minutes into this investigation. And neither Beth nor Chloe have said anything about domestic violence. Sometimes, all it takes is for a man to get away with it once for the slope to become slippery.
‘I dunno,’ says Tom. ‘He just said his dad got into bad moods sometimes.’
He breaks down and becomes incoherent. Hardy recognises a witness who has reached his limit.
‘OK. Thank you, Tom.’
The video camera is turned off. Miller’s waiting outside, praising Tom before handing over the toddler – Charlie? Archie? – and waving her family off with promises of being home for teatime that she must know she won’t be able to keep.
Hardy brings her up to speed. ‘Tom says that Mark hit Danny. And we know that Pete had to pull Mark off Paul over the weekend.’
Miller looks sadly at a printout in her hand.
‘What’s that?’
‘Nish did a search while you were interviewing Tom,’ she says reluctantly. ‘Mark’s got a record for a pub fight about ten years ago,’ she says. ‘But —’
‘Tell Forensics we need blood analysis on the boat – see how old those stains are. Check Danny Latimer’s pathology report for any signs of a gash on the foot. Mark’s not going anywhere for now.’
When she’s gone, he pulls out the letter one more time. It’s in two pages: one, the formalised script of a medical professional, setting out the diagnosis and offering to have him invalided out of the force. The second is a handwritten note from the doctor he’s been seeing since it all fell apart. The greeting is fond but the warning is stark: no stress, no pressure, no unnecessary exertion. The language pulls no punches: there is a bomb in his system and he’s kicking it harder and harder.
Hardy puts both pages in the shredder. If Jenkinson gets wind of this, it’s all over. Destroying the letter can’t erase the words from his mind. The brutal sign-off: if he doesn’t stop of his own accord, his body will do it for him. And he will stop. As soon as he’s nailed this killer. He owes it to the Latimers.
He owes it to the Gillespies as well. Thinking about the Sandbrook families is like a blade in his side. But this case is his penance, and that is the point of punishment. It is supposed to hurt.
I’ve got a message for you. From Danny. Beth has always been a cynic but she can’t shake this morning’s encounter from her mind. She veers between outrage that someone could harass a grieving mother and something else. Doubt wrestles with hope. If there is a one per cent chance that Danny’s spirit is out there, somewhere, sending Beth a message and wondering why she isn’t listening… the idea is too big and frightening for her to cope with. It is too big and frightening for her to ignore.
Pete enters the living room. His phone is off, but it’s pressed to his chin as though he’s thinking deeply. It is the first time Beth has seen evidence of Pete thinking deeply. Something is wrong.
‘They want you to know Mark’s been arrested,’ he says.
The carpet turns to sponge beneath Beth’s feet.
‘What?’ says Chloe. ‘What for?’
‘He won’t account for his movements the night before Danny was found. Arrested doesn’t mean charged. It’s one step up from being interviewed under caution.’
‘So – he’s a suspect?’ Beth is fishing for a contradiction. She doesn’t get one.
Suddenly the chink of Mark’s absence cracks wide like a bursting dam and Beth feels the rising flood return, a repeat of the panic she felt when she first realised Danny was missing.
‘Let’s see where we are, once they’ve finished talking,’ says Pete. ‘I’m sure it’ll all get sorted.’
Chloe explodes. ‘Sorted? My brother’s dead.’ Beth finds herself dragging Chloe by the arm up the stairs and into the bathroom. She bolts the door and takes Chloe’s face in her hands. ‘From now on, you say nothing in front of Pete,’ she says, locking on to her daughter’s eyes. ‘He’s looking at us, all the time. He’s not our friend. He’s their spy. God knows what they’re thinking. I won’t have them going through our knicker drawers, thinking the worst of us. We stay tight. Even just you and me, if necessary.’
She realises the impact of her words as Chloe crumples before her.
‘You don’t think it’s Dad.’ It kills Beth to do this to Chloe, but this is the last place she can be honest. It’s for Chloe’s good, possibly her own survival.
‘You never really know someone, not even after all this time.’ Chloe tries to shake her head but Beth tightens her grip on her jaw. ‘We have to be so strong now. You have to be older than you are. ’Cause I don’t know where this ends.’
Later, when the fingerprints on her cheeks have faded, Chloe sits up in bed, Big Chimp on her lap, phone in her hand. She frowns at the text message she has spent the last half hour composing.
If you know where my dad was last Thursday you have to tell the police.
Important. No one else has to know.
She takes a deep breath and presses send.