Ellie watches the team gather for the briefing, notebooks on laps. She’s never known an atmosphere like this in the station and it’s not only because one of the town’s children has been murdered. Hardy’s history charges the room with tension. Despite that, there’s something compelling, almost inspiring, about him as he paces in front of them, firing out lists.
‘Was Danny Latimer abducted? Did someone gain access to the house; if so, how?’ His accent becomes more pronounced as he warms to his theme. ‘And if it wasn’t forced entry, who has a key? We need to collect any CCTV from a mile radius around the house. Miller: the family, where were they?’
Ellie doesn’t like addressing the whole team at the best of times, let alone being thrust into the limelight without notice. ‘Mother and daughter were in, watching telly.’ She hears the stammer in her voice and cringes inwardly. DCs Frank Williams and Nish Patel, both keen – they’ve only been out of uniform for a couple of months, and this is their first big case – take detailed notes, piling on the pressure; Ellie feels as though every word out of her mouth has to be precise, useful, motivating. ‘They say that they didn’t leave the house till school the next morning. Dad was out on an emergency call-out – he’s a plumber; he got in around three. Neither parent thought to check on Danny. Grandma lives nearby, she was in all night…’
Hardy glares at his team. ‘Until we’re ready, all this remains confidential, no gossip. Understand? Right, go on.’ He flicks his hand as though shooing chickens. ‘You – Miller, come with me.’
They pass Bob Daniels coming out of the Gents. Bob’s an old-fashioned copper, big and blunt. He plays on the same five-a-side team as Joe and Mark Latimer and his boy Jayden is part of Tom and Danny’s gang. The thought of the boys reminds Ellie – she’s been pushing the knowledge away all morning – that tonight, when she gets in, she’ll have to tell Tom that his friend is dead. She has never dreaded a conversation more.
Bob’s eyes are pink and he gives the involuntary jagged in-breath of someone who has been sobbing his heart out. The ripples this casts will be as wide as they are deep. In Broadchurch there are only ever one or two degrees of separation. Big men will cry tonight.
They need to control how the word gets out. Speculation will already be rife, but the statement isn’t scheduled until this evening. Ellie feels strongly that local people, especially Danny’s classmates, should be given the news early and without equivocation. She’ll need to ask the press office how they do this. There is no precedent. Should they ring the school? And if so, then what? Urgent information is usually disseminated to parents by text message, but that would be an insult to everyone. If she could, she’d knock on every door, do it face-to-face, mother-to-mother, family by family. But she can’t. She is needed here.
On the short walk to Jack Marshall’s newsagent’s, Hardy is deep in glum silence. After all her attempts at small talk miss the mark, Ellie gives up and lets her own thoughts brew.
She is trying very hard to persuade herself that this was done by a random opportunist, an out-of-towner, a passing care-in-the-community case. But with that theory comes an immediate counter-argument. For a start, you don’t just pass through Broadchurch. And there are no lights on Harbour Cliff Beach at night. You’d need to know the place pretty well to find your footing, let alone leave a body behind and cover your tracks.
Who, then? Hardy, who has made no secret of his dislike of Broadchurch, is working on the theory it’s someone local. The only person in the town on the sex offenders register is some old lech who’s been bedbound in a nursing home for the past year. Like any town, Broadchurch has a handful of troublesome families but there is nothing in their history of infighting and petty drug-dealing to suggest progression to a child murder. That must mean it’s someone respectable, or at least someone with no previous.
Ellie looks around. With the sun high overhead, the quayside is as pretty as ever, but suspicion is a filter placed over the paintbox cottages and picture-book boats, distorting and darkening everyone in the frame. Danny’s killer could be any one of the men in sight. That middle-aged man balancing a crate of fish on his shoulder; the young bloke up a ladder cleaning windows. A vaguely familiar man in a suit drinking coffee from a styrofoam cup walks towards them. Does he look capable of strangling a little boy? He nods hello; Ellie’s cheeks burn as if he’s read her mind, and she looks down at the cobbles. At the time when she most needs to be observant, it seems that she can’t look anyone in the eye.
She realises with a sinking sensation that it’s probably someone she knows. Not well, not by name, but it could be someone like Mr Styrofoam there, someone she sees every week, someone she is on nodding terms with, someone who’s never given them any trouble until now. And if she knows the killer, then so will half the town. The residents of Broadchurch are not so much close-knit as enmeshed.
But who?
Hardy breaks into Ellie’s thought process at the moment it begins to repeat itself.
‘Your son, Miller,’ he says. ‘He and Danny were friends. I’ll need to talk to him.’
We’ll see about that, thinks Ellie, although she doesn’t say anything. There must be someone else who can interview Tom; maybe one of the female DCs. There’s no way this brittle, surly man who can’t even use anyone’s first name will be able to communicate gently or effectively with a bereaved child.
If he stopped talking like a sergeant major, that would be a good start. It’s worth a try. Ellie gathers her nerve.
‘Sir, d’you mind not calling me Miller? I don’t really go for the surname thing. I prefer Ellie.’ The pause lasts so long that she wonders if he heard her at all.
‘Ellie.’ Hardy pronounces it with caution, like it’s his first go at speaking a new language. ‘Ellie.’ He wrinkles his nose. ‘No.’
He makes her feel like a probationer. She bites her tongue until it hurts.
Jack Marshall runs the Sea Brigade as well as the local newsagent’s and though he’s technically an outsider, he’s been here for so many years that he’s a Broadchurch institution. Adults find him dour, but kids love him: there’s a fairness about him that they warm to. Outside his shop, bucket-and-spade sets and postcards are for sale along with old-fashioned shrimping nets and pinwheels. Inside, jars of sweets are stacked floor-to-ceiling behind the counter. Jack thinks that self-service pick-’n’-mix is a haven for bacteria, so he weighs the sweets out himself, like they used to in shops when Ellie was little. He continues to display the old imperial measurements alongside the metric. Tom still loves coming here, asking Jack for his treats by name and hearing the clatter of boiled sugar as they hit the scales.
Their entry sends a breeze through the shop, rippling the plastic curtain of rainbow ribbons that separates the floor from the storeroom out the back. Jack is in the shirt, tie and cardigan he wears all year round. He looks like he’s been expecting them; his seventies throwback shoulder-length hair has been brushed for once.
‘Danny didn’t turn up for his paper round this morning,’ begins Ellie.
‘I assumed he was sick.’ His face and voice are utterly without expression.
‘Did he often miss his round?’
‘They all do, one time or another.’ He seems determined to use as few words as possible. Ellie looks to Hardy for help, but he’s browsing magazines, seemingly not listening.
‘But you didn’t ring to check?’
‘I don’t have time, only me here.’
It occurs to her that Jack hasn’t asked what this is all about yet. ‘How was Danny yesterday?’
Jack puts his hands in his pockets. ‘No different from usual.’
‘Did you notice anything on his mind in the last couple of weeks?’
‘He was only in here fifteen minutes, first thing. I’m not a psychiatrist.’ Jack has never been the life and soul but this chippiness is new.
Hardy looks up. ‘You married?’ The way he says it, it’s a question with no right answer. Jack returns his stare.
‘No. Are you?’
Hardy doesn’t answer. Ellie glances down at his left hand. Bare.
‘They brought him in here, Mark and Beth,’ says Jack, unprompted. ‘Three days old, he was…’ His tone has barely changed, but his eyes have lost their focus. He’s staring into the distance, as though at a ghost.