Karen White is waiting for Hardy in the hotel bar. ‘What time d’you call this?’
‘No.’ After the way she turned him over last time, he’ll never give her more than a single syllable again. Knowing her, she’ll even find a way to twist that. ‘Come on,’ she wheedles. ‘Five minutes. Couple of quotes. Tell me where you’ve been, what you’ve been up to.’
She’s like a little mosquito buzzing around, looking for blood. He flaps his hand through the air between them. ‘I will not let you distract me from the job in hand.’
‘You let the Sandbrook families down,’ she says from her high horse. ‘They still don’t have closure, because of you. And I am not going to let you do that to another family.’
He is tempted to shove her to one side. He is tempted to tell her the truth about Sandbrook. God knows no other journalist wants it more. But he’s powerless on both counts, so he settles for a bitter, ‘Get out of my way,’ and drags his exhausted body up the stairs. He should pause to breathe at the top of the mezzanine but she’s watching him. The push up another flight almost finishes him off, but he counts that as a necessary exertion.
In his room, he takes a shower and falls between the perfect sheets where he achieves precisely thirty-seven minutes of deep and dreamless sleep before his phone rings, jolting him awake. His heart taps a feeble protest on his ribcage. Waking up suddenly is one of the worst things he can do, up there with caffeine, smoking and – ha! – stress.
‘Hardy,’ he barks into the mouthpiece. It’s Bob Daniels. He’s down on the beach. There’s something Hardy needs to see, now.
As he struggles back into his suit, he notices his hair is still damp. He regrets that shower now, and the ten minutes’ sleep it stole from him.
On Harbour Cliff Beach, Danny’s shrine is untended. Pinwheels twirl in the breeze, their sails a blur. The candles have all burnt out. A couple of hundred yards out to sea, a boat burns like a beacon, the flames pouring liquid gold on the surface of the sea. Chunks of flaming wood splinter and sizzle into the water.
‘No sign of anyone on it,’ says Bob.
They can’t afford to wait until the tide washes it in.
‘Call the coastguard or whoever,’ says Hardy. ‘I need people out there now, collecting every piece.’
Beth sleeps fitfully, dreaming Danny back to life then waking up to the loss of him again and again. All she thinks about is swapping places with her son. Over and over, she offers up a silent bargain: Let me be taken instead of him. Let me absorb his pain and his fear. She lists all the things she would endure on Danny’s behalf. She’d be raped, she’d have a gang of men on her, she’d be beaten and left for dead if it meant he was safe. The scenarios get harsher and harsher. Beth never knew she had such a vivid imagination.
While she tortures herself, Mark snores loudly beside her. Lying so close to him makes her skin itch. She gets up and opens the curtains. Pale light leaks between the torn flesh of the clouds and there’s no point even trying to go back to sleep. There is only one thing for it.
Run.
Her sports bra is tight around tender breasts and the waistband of her running tights is snugger than usual but she fills her bottle and strikes out in the rain, breaking straight into a hard run, no warm-up, no stretching. Her feet take her away from Harbour Cliff Beach, along the concrete esplanade with its ugly railings where the tourists don’t go. The rain falls hard and the sea spray cools her.
Running used to empty her mind. Work, kids’ stuff, rows with Mark, general stress: there would come a point on any run when she’d become one with her footfall. Today, her body quits before she can reach that state. It’s the first time she’s been out for a few weeks. She hasn’t eaten, she hasn’t slept and the pregnancy is slowing her down. After fifty minutes her legs stop cooperating. A full hour has passed by the time she comes panting through the patio door. Ellie and DI Hardy are waiting for her on the sofa.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ says Mark in the controlling voice he uses on Chloe.
‘Running,’ she hits back in the stroppy voice Chloe uses on Mark. ‘Am I not allowed to run any more?’ She turns to the police. ‘I didn’t know you were coming.’
‘Just bringing you up to date,’ says Ellie. ‘We’ve asked Forensics to examine Danny’s clothes in greater detail. We’re following up on leads from the house-to-house and we’ve got a number of interviews scheduled today.’
‘Now you’ve stopped messing around with me.’ Mark folds his arms.
‘Don’t be a wanker, Mark,’ snaps Beth, shocking him into silence. Chloe’s eyes saucer; Beth thinks she detects approval in Ellie’s.
Hardy cuts the tension. ‘We found five hundred pounds cash in Danny’s room.’
‘What was he doing with that sort of money?’ Mark looks to Beth and for a minute they’re co-parents again, united in their bewilderment.
‘We were hoping you could tell us,’ says Hardy.
Beth looks the question at Chloe.
‘He never told me about it,’ says Chloe.
DI Hardy’s face is inscrutable. ‘We’re holding a public meeting today at the school, to keep the town up to date, answer any questions,’ he says. ‘You don’t need to be there.’
‘I’ll go, on behalf of all of us,’ says Liz, before anyone else can volunteer. Beth recognises the need to stay busy and doesn’t challenge it.
‘Why isn’t there more in the paper about Danny?’ Mark wants to know. ‘It’s like page twelve, couple of paragraphs. Doesn’t he matter?’
Hardy frowns. ‘Don’t judge this investigation by what appears in the press.’
‘We were saying, though,’ continues Mark, ‘if there was more in the papers, it might jog people’s memories? What if there’s someone out there who saw something but doesn’t realise it? If we had more —’
Hardy cuts him off. ‘Please, let us deal with the media. We have the experience in this.’
He might know his way around the media, but Ellie certainly doesn’t. Beth feels a disloyal surge of gratitude that this man is in charge of the investigation. Because right now, it’s authority and experience they need and Ellie looks like she’s floundering. Really, she would have been brilliant at Pete’s job, as a bridge between the family and the detectives. Not that she’d dream of telling Ellie this. It is what it is. But when it comes to finding Danny’s killer, Beth knows that everything rides on Detective Inspector Alec Hardy.
SOCO want Hardy down at Harbour Cliff Beach. The tide is out and they’ve brought the boat in. Miller fields a long phone call as they pick their way over the cobbles.
‘Confirmation that we can’t trace any of the banknotes from Danny’s room,’ she reports as they round the jetty. ‘They’ve all been in circulation for ages, can’t get anything back on them.’
Hardy strokes his chin. ‘Where could Danny have got five hundred pounds from? What about his phone and his skateboard? He was riding that down the street, last moment we saw him. What happened to it?’
‘We’re still looking at all other CCTV on possible routes but so far, nothing,’ she says. ‘I’ve also got the team checking on teachers and teaching assistants at the school. Classmates, family babysitters. Mark’s plumber’s mate, Nige.’
A Forensics van is parked up by the water. SOCO Brian and his team are poring over the charred remains of the boat.
‘Is this it?’ Hardy asks.
Brian is affronted. ‘On Earth, we say good morning and how’re you doing?’ he sniffs.
‘I’ve told him,’ Miller rolls her eyes. ‘Makes no difference.’
‘Is it connected to the Latimer death?’
Hardy’s question trips Brian into professional mode. ‘Traces of accelerant suggest the boat was doused in petrol. I’m finding flecks of glass, fibres of cloth within the wood. If I had to guess, I’d say a lit rag inside a bottle was used to ignite it.’ Now his voice has the excited pitch of a geek in his element. ‘Molotov cocktail. A classic.’
Miller stoops to examine the boat. ‘If they took it that far out, at what, 4 a.m., to burn it, how’d they get back?’ she says.
‘Rear section has marks where an outboard motor might have gone,’ says Brian. ‘They probably used that to get back on another boat. But look, this might hold the key.’ He holds up a fragment of blackened wood. ‘Look in the grain. Strands of hair.’
Hardy squints to see a single dark filament caught in a splinter. He feels something approaching pleasure for the first time in months. ‘Outstanding, out bloody standing!’ he says, clapping Brian on the back. ‘Oh, Miller, we’ve got them. Keep going, I want to know as soon as you have confirmation. Come on, Miller, don’t hang about.’
As they head for the station, Miller has to trot to keep up with Hardy: Hardy’s mouth has to work hard to keep up with his brain. ‘A hundred quid says that’s the boat they used and those hairs belong to Danny Latimer. They’re panicking, Miller. Panicking’s fantastic, exactly what we want. They’re starting to show themselves. I’ll tell you what else: they’re amateur, they haven’t done this before. It’s too clumsy, burning it like that, and so soon.’
She doesn’t share his euphoria. ‘You mean it’s somebody here. They were out last night. We could be walking past them now.’ She casts wide eyes balefully around the harbour.
‘I’m sure of it now,’ he says.
The killer’s mistake is oxygen to Hardy. He fills his lungs with Broadchurch air and for the first time since his arrival in this shitty little town, it tastes good.