Karen White is no longer the only national newspaper journalist in Broadchurch. The town is crawling with them now, print and television. She knows half of them from years covering the courts, but while the rest of the pack catch up over drinks in the Traders, she’s in the inner sanctum of the Echo office, jealously guarding her exclusive. This afternoon she got a lead on something that will keep her ahead of the game, but it’s a long time now since she took the call and she’s starting to get nervous.
Olly wheels his chair across to Karen’s desk so that he’s virtually sitting in her lap. ‘It’s late,’ he says, placing his hand over hers. ‘How about we go back to —’
‘No,’ says Karen, firmly removing his hand. ‘We’re waiting for someone.’ She doesn’t confide her fears that they’ve had a change of heart.
‘Oh?’ says Olly. His obvious disappointment is shot through with intrigue.
‘Mm-hmm. Two people, actually.’
Right on cue, the door swings wide and a teenage couple walk hand in hand through the darkened newsroom, crash helmets swinging from their free hands. Olly’s eyes saucer in recognition.
‘Dean’s got something to tell you,’ says Chloe Latimer, nodding at the tall, good-looking youth at her side. ‘Tell her what you told me.’
Karen looks Dean up and down. The first she heard of his existence was in Chloe’s phone call. He’s a couple of years older than Chloe. Seventeen at least if he’s riding a motorbike. From the corner of her eye, she notices Olly’s raised eyebrows and silently wills him to stop. His poker face needs work.
‘I was in the Sea Brigade,’ says Dean. He has a strong local accent. ‘Jack Marshall threw me out.’
‘Go on,’ says Karen.
‘He was always wanting hugs from the boys,’ says Dean. ‘And he’d love to watch us getting in our trunks when it was hot. That’s when he’d go round, putting his arms on our shoulders. I was like, “No thanks, mate. No hugs from me.”’ He gives a little quiver of revulsion. ‘He took against me after that. Kept asking what was wrong with me.’
Karen stifles a whoop. She needs to get this straight. ‘This happened more than once, Dean?’ she asks.
‘Loads.’ Dean turns to Olly. ‘You must’ve seen it, during your time.’
Olly looks uncomfortable. ‘Maybe. A bit,’ he admits. ‘I didn’t think of it like that.’
‘I need this corroborated, I can’t just take your word for it,’ says Karen, but Chloe, media savvy now, is one step ahead of her. She has made a list of names and numbers of boys who were in the Brigade at the same time as Dean. Some of them have got stars beside them.
‘They’re the ones who’ve said they agree with Dean, and they’ll talk to you,’ says Chloe. Karen is momentarily lost for words. ‘Everyone knows he did it. Well, everyone apart from my nan, and that’s only ’cause he’s a Bible-basher like she is. They took my dad in when there’s a paedo on the loose. We all know what he’s like and the police are doing nothing.’
‘Have you been to the police with this?’ asks Karen.
Chloe shakes her head. ‘You gonna use it?’
Karen looks at the clock, then back at the list. If she and Olly work fast, this will make tomorrow’s front page. It will strike a blow for the Latimer family and against Alec Hardy. Thought about in those terms, the decision is easy.
‘OK, let’s do it,’ says Karen. ‘People should know. When we’re finished here, you need to put this in a statement to the police, OK?’
They hit the phones as soon as Chloe and Dean have gone. One boy after another confirms Dean’s statement. Their quotes make perfect copy and Karen knows as the words fill the screen that the Herald won’t have to change a single one. Some stories sensationalise themselves.
She hits send in time to make tomorrow’s first edition. It will be on the presses within the hour, on the vans just the other side of midnight and online not long after that. The other journalists will spend the night playing catch-up.
Ellie walks down her garden path, one hand rooting in her bag for her house keys. The security light is activated as she gets to the porch.
‘Bloody hell, you work late.’
If she didn’t recognise the voice, Ellie would have screamed. As it is, her heart rate doubles. Lucy steps out from behind a bush, as though Ellie has failed to honour a long-standing appointment to meet in a dark suburban garden after midnight. Shadows rush in to fill the hollows of her cheeks.
‘You’re back, are you?’ says Ellie. She finds the right key and slides it into the lock.
‘Are you interested in what I’ve got to say?’
‘Keep your voice down,’ hisses Ellie under her breath. They’re directly underneath Fred’s bedroom. She might miss him, but that doesn’t mean she wants to spend quality time with him in the small hours of the morning. ‘That depends,’ she says. ‘Are you willing to give me back the money you stole from my children? Are you willing to seek proper help?’
‘How many times?’ says Lucy. ‘I didn’t take your sodding holiday money.’ Ellie gives an inward screech of frustration: the repeated denials are almost worse than the original theft. ‘And I don’t need that sort of help.’
She is lying on both counts but with such conviction that Ellie wonders, not for the first time, if she actually believes herself. Lucy leans in and speaks in a gruff whisper.
‘I saw something, Ell. I think you’ll want to know. The night Danny Latimer got killed.’ Ellie freezes with one foot inside the porch, hope soaring inside her. It doesn’t do, with Lucy, to let your desperation show, so she merely raises her eyebrows expectantly.
‘I just need a bit of money to stand me up again,’ says Lucy. ‘Only nine hundred pounds. A thousand. Lend it to me and I’ll tell you.’
Ellie is too disgusted to reply. She closes the door in Lucy’s face. Nothing changes. Even with everything that’s going on, Lucy only cares about herself. She would even use a boy’s death to her own ends. Ellie is ashamed to be her sister.