There are twenty paces between interview rooms 1 and 2 in Broadchurch police station. Ellie walks on rubber legs, counting every step. Too soon she arrives at the door she’s touched a million times. Now it feels like a portal to another world. She lets her fingertips rest on the wood for a second.
‘You don’t touch him,’ warns Hardy at her shoulder. ‘You don’t do anything that might jeopardise a conviction.’
‘What am I gonna do? He’s bigger than me, there are cameras everywhere.’
Joe, ridiculous in his white boiler suit and canvas shoes, leaps to his feet at their entrance. A beast rears up inside Ellie at the sight of him; she is a wolf in a woman’s costume.
‘Sit down,’ she growls. He obeys. ‘Is it true?’ His inability to answer is the confirmation she needs. It is only anger that keeps her on her feet. Only the buzz of the CCTV cameras in the corner and the presence of Hardy keep her from lashing out.
‘I never touched Tom or Fred,’ says Joe. ‘I never touched Danny. Ell, I’ve always loved you —’
‘He was eleven!’ Her shriek cuts him dead.
‘I can’t explain it…’ he sobs, tilting his face up to her like one of the boys. He actually expects her to comfort him. ‘Can I see Tom?’
At this crass demand, the wolf rips through to the surface. Ellie lunges at Joe, knocking him off his chair. He curls up on the floor. Her first kick gets him in the balls, then she alternates between the head and the ribs. The aftermath of every beating she’s ever seen comes back to her so she knows exactly where to aim to cause him maximum pain. She doesn’t recognise the noises that come tearing out from a place inside she never guessed existed. It only lasts a few seconds: Hardy shouts for help and two PCs burst into the interview room to pull her off her worthless sick fuck of a husband. Their hands are on her arms when she brings her toes hard against his kidneys. Hardy steers her into the corridor and closes the door on Joe. The rage subsides as rapidly as it came. By the time she’s back in Hardy’s office, a strange, deep calm has descended and she concerns herself now with practicalities.
‘If there’s anything you need me to do on the paperwork or stuff I’ve been following up, my desk is a mess.’
‘It’s fine,’ soothes Hardy in the low hush of a father reading a bedtime story. His tenderness is more than Ellie can bear. She longs for the old world order, the sarcasm and the sparring and the knowledge that she could put up with his shit at work because she always had her family to go home to.
‘We’ve booked you a family room at the hotel by the roundabout,’ he continues softly. ‘Pete’ll meet you there with Tom and Fred. You can pick some stuff up on the way. Don’t talk to anyone. Shut the curtains, lock the door, don’t answer the phone to anyone who isn’t me. Do you understand?’ She can only nod. ‘Your car’s outside now. I’ll see you soon.’
Ellie has to walk through CID to get her coat and bag. She risks a glance around the office and sees not accusation but pain on the faces of her fellow officers, her friends. The framed family photograph on her desk has been rebranded with lies. She flips it face-down. As DS Ellie Miller leaves CID for the last time, there’s the sound of a woman weeping.
The police cordon has isolated the Millers’ house from the rest of Lime Avenue. Squad cars parked horizontally across the street make a roadblock. Her neighbours regard her with fear and accusation. Ellie remembers with a jolt how sure she was that Susan Wright must have known what her husband was up to. Now it seems that that weird, wretched woman is the only person in the world who might understand a little of what she’s going through.
Brian is in the hallway in his boiler suit, mask looped around his neck. He’s got Joe’s blue Dad Coat in an evidence bag. In a trance, Ellie accepts the forensic shoe covers and gloves.
‘I’ll accompany you round while you get your stuff,’ says Brian. ‘I’m so sorry, Ellie.’
In the sitting room, she picks up a couple of DVDs for the hotel. A fat black slug sits on the centre of the carpet. She brings the ball of her foot down hard on it; glistening white innards shoot out like ointment from a tube. Upstairs, she chooses the boys’ clothes with care but stuffs items from her own wardrobe into a suitcase at random.
In the porch, she looks back into her shabby home: the half-painted walls, the kids’ toys, the books and the music and the photographs. She tries to remember it the way she left it that morning, when it was a haven, a place of happiness, but it’s already too late for that.
In London, Karen White is heading north across Blackfriars Bridge in a taxi when DI Hardy calls her mobile. It’s a bad connection and the distortion makes him sound more robotic than ever.
‘You, mate, are a bastard,’ she greets him. ‘I’ve had Olly Stevens on the phone. You gave the Sandbrook story to him.’
‘We have Danny Latimer’s killer.’
Instantly Karen forgets about the story she was chasing. ‘Who is it?’
‘We’ll be making a statement in three hours. Nobody else will have advance warning. If you’re down here, you’ll have first access.’
‘Thanks,’ she says. ‘But why’d you call me?’ The phone goes dead. Karen looks in her handbag; there’s an unopened packet of Marlboro Lights, a fully charged iPad and her purse. Good enough. She knocks on the glass partition. ‘Waterloo, please.’
The cab makes an illegal U-turn and re-crosses the river.