Jack Marshall’s infamy has spread. His picture is on the front of all the papers, not just the Herald, although Karen White’s report, with its headline HUGS FOR THE BOYS is the only one with the right to the word exclusive. The paparazzi have his shop surrounded.
Ellie and Hardy stand on the shop floor, blinking in the gentle strobe of flashbulbs. The photographers are silhouetted against the roller blinds, their cameras turning them into alien shadow puppets. They call Jack’s name repeatedly, but in very different tones to the ones they used to get Beth’s attention at Danny’s memorial. This is what a witch-hunt feels like, thinks Ellie.
‘I need protection,’ begs Jack. ‘I’m under siege!’
She asks the questions that protocol demands of her. ‘Has anyone threatened you or physically intimidated you?’ she says, even as the glass in the window shakes.
‘Stay inside,’ says Hardy, as though Marshall has a choice. He can’t take his eyes off the window either, flinching with every flash. ‘With a bit of luck it’ll all abate soon enough.’ He doesn’t sound convinced.
‘You’re doing this deliberately to see if I’ll crack. You’ve got me marked and nothing I say makes any difference.’
Hardy regains his composure. ‘Cooperate with us a bit more, then, and we can clear you of suspicion.’
‘You think I haven’t heard that before!’ snorts the old man. ‘Cooperate and we’ll make it all right. Next thing, I’m being charged.’
Hardy sighs. ‘All I want is to get to the truth of Danny Latimer’s death. If you’re not involved —’
‘I am not involved! I told you, I was in all night. If I’d been out, it’d be on my security cameras.’
Hardy and Ellie look to each other in disbelief, then back to Jack. ‘On your what?’ asks Hardy.
‘Security cameras, front and back. Had them installed after a break-in. Cost me a fortune. But my front and back doors are on there. If I’d left, it’d be there.’ Jack begins his sentence with the contempt of someone who’s stating the obvious, but he falters as he goes on. You see it all the time, people missing something vital because they take it for granted the police see their tiny worlds from the same angle they do. Sometimes literally, in this case.
‘Why didn’t you mention them before?’ Hardy doesn’t hide his exasperation.
‘I forgot,’ admits Jack. ‘I was angry. You had me all confused.’
His defensiveness lays bare his vulnerability. Ellie sees the chance to ask him about his past again and takes it.
‘Why don’t you tell us what happened, Jack?’ she says, her softness a deliberate contrast to Hardy’s severity. Jack’s face remains impassive but there is a tiny shift in his posture, a fractional lowering of the shoulders, and when he speaks the relief is clear.
‘I was a music teacher. Rowena was a pupil. A girl. No boys involved. I’m sure you can fill in the gaps. It was a relationship.’
‘And you had sex, how many times?’ asks Hardy.
Jack wrinkles his nose in disgust. ‘You think I put notches on my bedpost?’
Hardy folds his arms. ‘Who told the police?’
‘Her father.’ Jack’s defiant stare suddenly gives way to an unfocused glaze; Ellie shifts into his line of sight, but she can’t make him meet her eye again. ‘I was made an example of. Served a year. I was lucky to make it out alive. She was fifteen years and eleven months. Four weeks and a day later, nothing would’ve been amiss. I served my time.’
‘Did you ever have contact with the girl after you were released?’ asks Ellie.
‘I married her.’ This catches Ellie off guard, and she consciously steels herself against what might yet turn out to be a sob story. ‘The week after I came out of prison. She was seventeen, I was forty.’
Reverend Paul Coates is braving the crowds outside the newsagent’s to wait for the police.
‘You need to protect him,’ he says as Ellie and Hardy shoulder their way through the scrum. ‘He’s my parishioner. He’s scared stiff.’
Hardy looks Paul up and down. His eyes linger on the dog collar like it’s a stain. ‘You’re certain he’s innocent, are you?’
Paul is unbowed. ‘You’re certain he’s not?’
‘Your concern’s noted.’
Ellie follows Hardy back to the nick in a hail of bullet-points. ‘What he said doesn’t alter the facts,’ he says. ‘Jack Marshall has a conviction. He’s still a suspect. We can’t be distracted by his convincing sob story, or this press. We persevere with the evidence. Williams is going over the CCTV as we speak.’
As if on cue, SOCO Brian is waiting for them upstairs.
‘Next time you have a crime scene on a beach, call someone else,’ he says. ‘It’s been a bloody nightmare. Layers, moving, shifting, it’s impossible. We’ve eliminated about four hundred separate pieces of evidence as detritus or irrelevant.’
‘I prefer relevant,’ scowls Hardy. Brian holds up a clear bag containing four cigarette butts.
‘All within three feet of one another. Four feet from where the body was found.’
‘What makes them special?’ says Ellie.
‘Timing. If they’d been there more than a couple of hours earlier, they would’ve been washed away by the high tide. But there’s no trace of tidewater on them, so they must’ve been left there that morning. Around the same time the body was. They’re high-tar cigarettes which is quite unusual these days. If they were bought locally, you might be in with a shout of people remembering the purchaser.’
Hardy says what they’re all thinking: ‘All that way to drop off a body, then stand and smoke. It doesn’t make sense.’
When Brian has finished, Hardy retreats to his office. He pulls closed the Venetian blinds then turns out the light, so that only pinstripes of white leak between the slats. There’s a sofa in one corner, and he lies awkwardly down on it, long legs dangling over the edge.
He closes his eyes and has his suspects line up in an imaginary identity parade. It’s a little technique he’s used since day one on the job whenever there’s more information coming in than he can process. It served him well in the early stages of Sandbrook and he hopes it will bring him a similar clarity now.
Mark Latimer naturally remains in the frame. Obeying the axiom that the closer to home, the greater the likelihood of guilt, he is a prime suspect. Even with Becca Fisher’s testimony, there is still a two-hour gap in his alibi. He hit Danny on one occasion. Correction: he hit Danny on one occasion that they know of.
Jack Marshall is equally plausible, although for very different reasons. A bachelor from out of town with a conviction for sex with a minor who was later persuaded to marry her abuser, suggests that Marshall is a skilled groomer. Just because Danny’s body showed no signs of sexual assault doesn’t mean that none took place. Experienced abusers know that there’s more than one way to molest a child. Experienced criminals of any persuasion know how to make contact without leaving a trace. As leader of the Sea Brigade, Jack Marshall had little boys on tap. He had Danny alone in his shop every morning and the boy’s phone in his possession after he died. His house is a stone’s throw from the deposition site. He has obstructed the investigation at every opportunity: the longer Hardy thinks about Marshall’s forgetfulness, the more convenient it seems.
Reverend Paul Coates takes his place next to Jack. His lack of alibi is a red flag and the church is a minute’s walk across the field from the Latimers’ house. He had a relationship with Danny and dozens of other boys through the computer club. But it’s his eagerness to get his voice on the airwaves and his face on camera that really disturbs Hardy. He’s seen this before, the urge the guilty have to perform for the media. It’s a kind of sick pride in what they’ve done, an inability to let their involvement go unacknowledged, no matter how tangentially.
Nige Carter is borderline. Terminally single, by all accounts, he lives with his mum and clings to the Latimer family like a limpet. Next to Mark, Nige was probably the most prominent adult male in Danny’s life. He has lied to the police already, ostensibly to protect Mark, and Hardy can’t shake the feeling he’s still holding something back, something big. Of course, Nige has an alibi, but Hardy is inclined to dismiss it; he has long held that an alibi provided by someone’s mother is not worth the paper the statement is written on.
Finally, Hardy thinks long and hard about Steve Connolly. That business about the boat was either a lucky guess or a witness statement, which means Connolly is either a charlatan or withholding evidence. With no confirmation of the latter, Hardy ought to conclude he is the former, and dismiss him. And he will, as soon as he has determined how Connolly knows about Pippa Gillespie’s pendant. Late at night, alone in the office, Hardy has searched extensively for a link between Connolly and Sandbrook and found none, either to the case or the place. Until that happens, Connolly remains, if not officially a suspect, then deeply suspicious.
It is times like now, when everyone else has gone home, that he misses Tess the most. He misses the informal debriefing at the end of the day, the final volley of ideas and theories. He has yet to meet a copper so entirely on his own wavelength. Even towards the end, they always had work in common. It was the last thing to go.
Feeling sorry for himself won’t get this killer caught. Hardy takes off his glasses, closes his eyes. Mark Latimer, Jack Marshall, Paul Coates, Nigel Carter and Steve Connolly stand shoulder to shoulder in Hardy’s imagination. He lets his mind’s eye travel along the line-up and they always come to rest on the same man. He massages his temples, wishing that something would bloody happen. It doesn’t need to be dramatic. A grain, a single cell, of proof, would do. And soon. Now. His case is slipping away from him.