Hardy arrives for dinner still in his suit. He’s got flowers, a bottle of wine, a box of Matchmakers and the expression of a man facing the gallows.
What the fuck was Ellie thinking, asking him into her home? It’s bad enough she has to put up with him all day at work without actually inviting him into the house voluntarily. She looks daggers at Joe. It’s his bloody fault, telling her to be kind. Look where it’s got them.
‘You can come again!’ says Joe, relieving Hardy of his burdens.
‘I can call you Alec tonight, can’t I?’ Ellie takes his jacket. ‘I can hardly call you “sir”! Here’s your dinner, sir!’ She feels like a dick. This is definitely Joe’s fault.
‘I don’t like Alec,’ says Hardy, following them into the kitchen. ‘Never liked Alec. Alec.’ Even his own name is sour in his mouth. ‘Why does everyone have to use first names so much? Like we all work in marketing or something? I mean, if you’re looking at the person, if I’m looking at you,’ and he pauses for effect, his eyes boring into Ellie’s soul and out the other side again, ‘you know I’m talking to you, I don’t need to say your name three times, just ’cause I’m congratulating myself on remembering it to create this, what, false intimacy.’
Ellie is grimly satisfied to watch Joe realising that she has not been exaggerating.
‘I’ll show you to the dining room.’
Joe’s done her proud: candles dotted around the room to hide the dust, a spread of the best Mexican food this side of Guadalajara. It goes unremarked upon.
‘How’d you two meet?’ says Hardy, in the same tone he uses in the interview room. He’s right, thinks Ellie, he’s not an Alec.
‘Through the job,’ she says. ‘Joe used to be a paramedic.’
‘Not any more?’ he asks and she braces herself for the judgement.
‘Gave it up when Fred came along,’ says Joe. ‘I was getting a bit jaded anyway. Too much red tape, stuff that stopped us being able to help people, masquerading as Health and Safety.’
Joe’s drinking quickly; even if it weren’t for his rapidly emptying glass, Ellie would know by the way his accent comes crawling out of the shadows.
‘Where you from, originally?’ says Hardy.
‘Cardiff. Moved down here thirteen years ago for the work. I met Ellie, and the rest is history. You married?’
Hardy swallows. ‘Great food. Make this yourself?’
‘Self-taught,’ says Joe. ‘Mexican’s my speciality. We should really be having margaritas.’
‘No,’ says Hardy.
‘Not margaritas?’
‘Not married. Not any more.’ It’s the first Ellie’s heard of a wife.
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ says Joe. ‘What was it, pressures of work?’
‘Sort of. This job does it to you.’
‘Not to us!’ says Ellie brightly. She’ll be damned if she ends up like Hardy in any respect.
‘Any kids?’ asks Joe. Red wine has painted an exaggerated smile on his lips.
‘I’ve got a daughter,’ says Hardy, to Ellie’s astonishment. Joe’s got more out of Hardy in five bites of chimichanga than she’s managed in over a week. ‘She’s fifteen. She lives with her mother.’
She tries to imagine Hardy as a father. ‘Dad’ no more suits him than ‘Alec’. As for ‘Daddy’… forget it.
Hardy swigs his wine. She hopes that Joe will be sensitive enough to put him out of his misery and she feels a rush of love for him when he changes the subject.
‘You think you’re gonna solve this case?’
Hardy seems almost relieved to be back on the safe neutral ground of murdered children. ‘Certain.’
‘Good,’ says Joe. He pours more wine. Hardy puts his hand over his glass.
‘I’m not supposed to —’
‘Shuddup and drink.’ They’ve finished the first bottle already – nerves – and by the time Ellie comes back from the kitchen with the second, they’re laughing. Clearly they’ve created some private joke in the ten seconds it’s taken her to uncork the Pinot. She’s annoyed with Joe now. She wanted him to bond with Hardy, but not at her expense.
Later, when he goes to leave, she tries to get him a taxi but he’s not having any of it.
‘Walk’ll be good,’ he says. ‘See you in the morning. This was nice. Thanks, Miller.’
They manage not to laugh until he’s out of earshot.
‘I love you, Miller,’ slurs Joe.
‘Don’t you start,’ she says. ‘You and your new bloody little mate.’
Maggie taps away at her computer with a glass of wine to hand and her electronic cigarette resting on her mouse mat. Even Olly has finally admitted exhaustion and gone home, leaving absolute quiet behind. Olly has his own little repertoire of noises. He’s always tapping: his pen on the edge of the desk, his fingers over the keyboard or, more likely, on the screen of his phone. He bounces on his chair and makes it squeak. Maggie is always aware of him in the periphery of her hearing. Sometimes he’s an irritation, but more often than not he’s a comfort, and his absence has put her on edge.
The usual white noise of an August evening is missing, too. There is nobody on the street, no drunken arguments to reassure her that life is still going on as normal outside, not so much as a single footstep. Maggie shudders. Silence has always freaked her out. Give her hustle and bustle over silence any day. It’s when it’s quiet that the bad stuff happens.
She rises from her desk, links her fingers and stretches her arms above her head. Then she looks over the darkened newsroom. Her domain does not offer its usual comforts. This story has got under her skin in a way that no other has. Of course child murder is as bad as it gets, but Maggie hasn’t got kids so why does she feel such acute fear? Why is she taking it personally? Not even working the Yorkshire Ripper story – which is still, thirty-odd years later, the most savage and gruesome crime she’s ever covered – shook her up like this. She’s still keeping it together at work, but Lil knows how hard she’s taking it.
It’s partly because it’s happened to Beth, lovely Beth who she saw every day at work. But more than that, it’s because it’s home. It’s because whatever happens – whether they catch the killer or not – Broadchurch will never be the same after this. It has changed already. No one is unaffected, from the small business owners who won’t survive this slow summer to the parents who haven’t slept since it happened, the single blokes who find themselves suddenly drinking alone in the pub. And then there’s the children. Who knows what all of this is doing to the children?
The silence around Maggie builds and grows.
She has worked herself up into a fever of speculation when the telephone on her desk shrills. Maggie rushes to answer it, her pulse fast in her fingertips. It’s Lil, asking when she’s going to be home. She can’t quite hide her disappointment when Maggie tells her it’s going to be another late one. She’s been dropping hints lately about Maggie taking early retirement. She’s been with the same newspaper group for over thirty years, and a bloody good pension awaits her. Maggie has always insisted they’ll have to drag her out of the Broadchurch Echo kicking and screaming (that’s actually happened to a few of her colleagues in the provincial press lately, even generous redundancy not enough to soften the blow of a closing paper). But now, for the first time, alone in a darkened newsroom, Maggie gives retirement serious consideration. She is tired, and she is constantly anxious.
Maybe. But not now. She will see this story through to its conclusion. She takes a sip of her wine and a drag of her fag, palms her dry eyes and returns to the screen. A loud noise, like the bang of a door or something falling, makes her jump in her seat. Creeping out of her office, her eyes are unaccustomed to the relative darkness and she peers into the pitch. Turning on the main lights confirms that she’s alone. She smiles to herself, visibly relieved. The lights are flicked off, and she goes back to her computer.
‘Why’re you so bothered about me?’
Maggie wheels around to see Susan Wright standing in the corner of her office. Small eyes glitter dangerously in an otherwise expressionless face. Maggie’s heart hurls itself against her ribs.
‘How did you get in here?’ Maggie asks, though she knows the answer. She’s always had an open-door policy at the Echo – the best stories about a community come from the community, after all – and too late, she sees the folly of it. There’s a murderer on the loose, for Christ’s sake. Why wasn’t it bolted from top to bottom? She curses her own naivety as she presses herself against the far wall.
Susan takes a step closer. ‘You’re gonna stop asking questions about me.’
‘Why would I do that?’ A tremble in Maggie’s voice undermines the words.
Susan curls her lip. ‘I know about you.’
Maggie might be afraid, but she isn’t fazed by this one-size-fits-all threat. There’s not that much to know and nothing she’s ashamed of. Is that all you’ve got? she thinks, and she’s about to say it when Susan leans forward. Instinctively Maggie recoils from the whiff of stale tobacco. Now Susan’s breath is hot in Maggie’s ear. ‘I know men who would rape you.’
She lets her threat – as convincing as it is unexpected – hang heavy in the air between them for a long time. Images of the Ripper case, never too far from her subconscious, assault Maggie’s memory and her breathing turns shallow. Susan doesn’t blink. ‘And if you start asking questions, or go to the police, they’ll come after your mate as well.’
Without another word, Susan disappears back into the darkness. Heavy footsteps echo as she crosses the newsroom. The door bangs closed behind her.
Maggie is left shaking and alone. She picks up the phone to call Ellie Miller. She’s got Broadchurch CID on speed-dial. It only takes one button but her forefinger quivers above it for nearly a minute and eventually she has to accept that she can’t do it. She can’t take a chance. Lil knew, when they got together, that late nights, cancelled holidays and a large wine bill were part of the deal, but she didn’t ask for any of this.
She drops the receiver back in its cradle and a tear oozes its way out of her eye. Maggie is crying with shame as well as fear. She doesn’t recognise herself. It’s this bloody story. It has changed her on a deeper level than she realised.
No one and nothing around here will ever be the same again.
The wine was a mistake. It’s all Hardy can do to put one foot in front of the other. On the High Street a lone figure emerges from the Broadchurch Echo office but his vision blurs before he can even determine whether it’s a man or a woman. Somehow he makes it through the hotel reception and up the stairs without being intercepted. He’s drenched in sweat by the time he crashes into the bedroom and through to the en suite where his medication is.
Vertigo turns the little bathroom into a hall of mirrors, walls seeming to curve and the surfaces to tilt at crazy angles. Vision failing, he feels for the blister pack of pills but it’s empty. Where are the spares? Where the fuck are his spare pills? Hardy’s last thought, as he gives into gravity, is of the packet in his desk drawer at work. He cracks the back of his head on the bath as he falls. Darkness is instant and total.