Evening is closing in as Alec Hardy heads for the Broadchurch Echo office. With one more night left as a serving police officer he feels bound to grant the promised interview now, while his badge is still in his pocket. He wants to talk while he still counts for something.
No one will miss him from the office: every officer he can spare is out looking for Susan Wright and Nige Carter, both of whom appear to have skipped town. Together? Alive? Hardy has no idea.
Outside the Traders, he perks up at an email on his phone from Ruth Clarkson but slumps at its content. She’s confident she can retrieve the data from Tom Miller’s hard drive, but not until the early hours of tomorrow morning.
Maggie Radcliffe is waiting for him at the door. She leads him through the dark office to a back room where tall shelves packed with archive boxes form a coracle about the size of the interview rooms at Broadchurch nick. Maggie sits next to Olly Stevens: Hardy takes his place across the table. An old anglepoise trains an interrogatory light upon him.
‘Why were you in hospital?’ asks Maggie. When she’s not writing, she holds her pen like a cigarette.
‘I was pursuing a suspect,’ says Hardy. ‘There was an incident. I was injured.’
‘Can you name the suspect?’
If only I could, thinks Hardy, I wouldn’t be here. I’d be hammering on someone’s door with a van waiting outside. ‘No. I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘That’s all I can give you right now. I know it’s not what you want. I promise you’ll be the first to hear.’
That seems to satisfy Maggie.
Olly clears his throat. ‘The Sandbrook case fell apart at the trial.’ Hardy is jolted out of this case and into another. He still hasn’t learned to see the S-word coming, even though it lurks around every corner. ‘Tell me what went wrong.’
‘Channelling your friend Karen White?’ says Hardy, more to buy himself time than anything else.
‘No. I’m not her,’ says Olly firmly. The eager-to-please kid is developing a quiet authority. ‘We’ve seen you here. We know you’re doing the best for the family, for the town. And I don’t think that was any different on Sandbrook. So what happened? How did it go so wrong? You can’t keep it a secret for ever.’
Actually, Hardy had intended to keep it a secret for ever. But with his career in its death throes, he hears the siren call of impending relief.
‘Ach, maybe you’re right,’ he hears himself say. ‘Maybe it is time.’ Maggie and Olly, who are usually in constant communication through scribbled notes and secret glances, have not looked at each other once since he started talking. Sandbrook holds all journalists rapt.
‘We had our prime suspect, but all the evidence was circumstantial.’ He takes off his glasses to soft-focus the faces opposite him. ‘Then, during a search of a car he’d just sold, one of my DSes found the pendant belonging to one of the girls. There were clearly prints on it. It was the smoking gun. My DS was taking the bagged evidence back to HQ. And…’ He stops without warning, even to himself. He relives this story so often, but the difference between thinking it and saying it out loud, sharing it, is astonishing. He clears his throat. ‘… she stopped off at a hotel on the way, for a drink. And… her car was broken into.’ He can still picture the inside of that car better than the one he drives today. ‘Car radio, valuables and her bag were all taken. It was only a quick smash and grab – local kids, probably.’
‘And the pendant.’ Maggie guesses correctly.
‘Yeah. We could never make the case, after that. He’s still out there.’ Never mind the hours and the effort they put in. One fuck-up and the whole thing boils down into those last four words.
‘Why did she stop off at a hotel?’ asks Olly. The question scratches at Hardy’s bones, pricking the marrow. He looks at the shabby office furniture as though for an escape route and thinks seriously that if he’s going to have a fatal heart attack then now would be an opportune moment. But the shelves do not part to let him leave, and his heart beats limply on.
‘She was having an affair with one of the other DSs on the team,’ he says. ‘She thought she’d celebrate.’
Maggie falls on the half-truth like a bloodhound. ‘But this was all reported at the time. The Herald got the story, but they said it was you. Your car. You took the blame.’
‘It happened on my watch.’
‘But she deceived you.’ Maggie couldn’t have chosen a more apposite phrase. They’re so close to working it out for themselves, he wishes they’d just take a potshot guess and spare him the ordeal. Hardy grits his teeth.
‘That detective sergeant. She was my wife. We’ve got a daughter. I didn’t want her knowing that about her mother.’
He’s expecting to see triumph on their faces. Now their scoop has a sexy angle. The worst cop in Britain is a cuckold. But Maggie looks mortified on his behalf. ‘So you took the blame. For years. The family blame you, and it’s not your fault. This is what made you ill, isn’t it?’
Hardy’s vision blurs again, but this time it’s with tears. He tilts his chin upwards, as though he can divert the water back into his eyes, and keeps his head like that until the ceiling comes back into focus. ‘Do me a favour. Tell the Gillespie family before you publish, eh? Tell them I haven’t given up on Sandbrook and that the case is still open. Then after that, do whatever you like with it. On one condition. You do. Not. Name. That. DS.’
He points at the table, using his forefinger to poke each word home.