Hardy pushes the police station door, the back of his left hand still sticky from the dressing and weeping slightly where he pulled out the IV line. The medics’ voices, imploring him not to discharge himself, echo in his head. They will have called Jenkinson, which means he is no longer counting down the days until he is off this case but the hours, possibly even the minutes. The hospital tag is still on his right wrist. He bites through it and spits it into a litter bin in the corridor.
The hum of chatter in CID goes quiet when he enters, and the phones no longer ring off the hook. The effort of crossing the silent room nearly topples him. Everything he’s got left goes into breathing slowly in, slowly out. He will not be beaten by this.
Jenkinson’s at his door before he’s had time to take his jacket off. She enters without knocking. Her face zooms in and out of focus.
‘I’ve referred you to the Chief Medical Officer, first thing tomorrow.’ It’s better than he thought: a one-day stay of execution.
‘I’m not leaving till this is solved.’
‘You don’t get a choice. As soon as he sees you, you’re done, Alec.’ She shakes her head. ‘Why take this job, if you knew you were this ill?’
‘I can still solve this, otherwise… why am I still here?’ He doesn’t just mean in the police station. He must solve this if it kills him. He notes privately that the phrase is no longer a mere figure of speech to him.
Jenkinson leaves him at his desk, where the wasted man-hours of Operation Cogden manifest themselves in towers of futile paperwork. Evidence and procedure have let him down. Desperation circles around him. Alone in his office, DI Hardy has a crisis of faith; he abandons himself to it.
They meet at the cob wall on the far side of Harbour Cliff Beach. It is low tide and the black rocks are exposed. They look like the rotten teeth of a huge sea beast, lying in wait. Clouds overhead threaten rain and a strong wind blows. It feels more like October than August. Now that the holiday season is too far gone to recover, it’s as though the sun has decided not to squander itself on Broadchurch. Hardy’s coat billows like a sail and he feels as though a strong gust will knock him to the ground.
Steve Connolly, feet planted firmly apart, hands in pockets, looks like not even a hurricane could shift him. Hardy has a sudden vision of how foolish he would look if anyone saw him. Anyone from the station. One of the Latimer family. Christ, imagine if Karen White turned up. It doesn’t bear thinking about.
‘You were the last person I expected to call,’ says Steve.
‘Surely nothing’s a surprise to you,’ says Hardy. Sarcasm is a reflex he can’t help.
‘That’s very funny,’ says Steve. ‘Never heard that before. What do you want?’
‘The Latimer case,’ he says, and somewhere deep inside he feels the heavy thud of a man hitting rock bottom. ‘I’m running out of time. If you have anything, give it to me now.’
Connolly doesn’t bother to hide his surprise. ‘Well, thank you. It’s about time.’ To his credit, he doesn’t gloat. He looks Hardy square in the eye. ‘Look, that message from Danny, about it being close to home. That felt the strongest.’
Hardy shouts to drown out the oncoming wind. ‘What does that mean? Close geographically? Family, friends, what?’
‘I don’t know,’ admits Connolly. ‘Just don’t ignore it.’
‘Prove to me you’re not a bullshitter.’
Now Connolly’s earnestness gives way to indignation. ‘I gave you something. I said, she forgives you for the pendant.’ Hardy fights to swish away the image the word pendant invokes: Pippa Gillespie’s face in the press photograph. ‘I told you, and you pretended to ignore it.’
Hardy is spooked for a second, but then his belief system overrides it. Shysters study body language, that’s how they work. It doesn’t mean anything that Connolly knew he’d hit a nerve.
‘And what does that mean?’ he challenges.
‘You already know,’ says Connolly. ‘I can see it. I haven’t got a clue what it means, all I get are fragments. And that’s what I got off you… that, and you’ve been here before.’ It’s a casually thrown dart that pierces the bullseye and Hardy can’t cover his shock in time. There’s no one else alive who knows about his first visit to Broadchurch. ‘You have!’ Connolly is delighted and angry at the same time. ‘You’ve been here before. I’m right, aren’t I?’
Hardy, no longer trusting himself to speak, looks out to sea. There is no warmth on anything today, only shades of blue and grey. Even the sun is ice-white. Suddenly Connolly’s eyes on his are too much and he turns to go while he can still walk, leaving Connolly triumphant on the harbour.
When Hardy spots Olly Stevens standing outside the police station, his stomach tightens. He can’t deal with the press right now. The feeling clearly isn’t mutual though, as when Olly clocks Hardy, he straightens up and clicks a pen out of his breast pocket.
‘No,’ says Hardy. He cannot think of a question Olly could come up with that would have another answer.
‘You must be feeling better, to discharge yourself from hospital.’
How the hell does he…? For a town so full of secrets, there’s fuck-all privacy in this place. Hardy yanks Olly’s arm and pulls him away from the station doors.
‘Look, I don’t want to stitch you up. Genuinely,’ says Olly. In his free hand he waves his reporter’s notebook like a white flag. Hardy doesn’t release his grip but it’s weakening by the second, and it must be surprise or some latent respect for the law that stops Olly breaking free.
‘So what do you want?’ asks Hardy.
‘An exclusive.’