Danny lies on a slab in the pathology lab, a white sheet pulled up to his little round shoulders. He seems to have shrunk since Ellie saw him in the chapel of rest. Whether it’s the size of his body in relation to the slab, the fact that he’s naked, or the first diminishments of death, she can’t say. Now, there is no mistaking death for sleep and that sense she had before, that he might jump up and surprise her, is gone.
She has never met the pathologist, James Lovegood, before. There’s a sour, aseptic smell in here and she wonders if it clings to his clothes and his hair when he goes home. She can feel it seeping into her pores.
‘Seven weeks I’ve got left,’ he says. ‘They asked me to stay on an extra three months, while they find a new chap. I thought seven weeks, round here, should be fine.’ He wipes his eyes. ‘It’s the children that upset me. Always have.’
‘What’ve you got?’ Hardy cuts in. There’s a corresponding shift in Lovegood’s tone.
‘Superficial cuts and bruises to the face. No injuries consistent with a fall. Cause of death was asphyxiation. He was strangled. Bruising around the neck and the windpipe, and at the top of the spine. Pattern of bruises suggests large hands, I’d suggest male assailant. It would’ve been brutal. The angle suggests he would’ve been facing his attacker. He would’ve known.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘Sorry. Mercifully, there was no sexual violence.’
Beneath the relief of this, Ellie’s mind whirrs. What does this mean for other children? Terrible things rarely happen in a vacuum. Patterns, that’s what you’ve got to look for. Repetition and parallel. What if another little boy is out there now, holding close the knowledge that Danny can no longer share? The thought of a child keeping such a big, dark secret makes Ellie want to bawl.
‘Time of death?’ says Hardy, as though they’re discussing bus timetables.
‘I’d put it between 10 p.m. Thursday night and 4 a.m. Friday morning.’ He sighs from his boots. ‘We don’t get these around here. Make sure you find him.’
‘We will,’ vows Ellie. SOCO are combing the beach, all leave has been cancelled and every officer is either on house-to-house or the phones. Who knows what’s come to light while she and Hardy have been out? With luck, they will have made an arrest by nightfall.
Chloe has changed from her school uniform into her other uniform of jeans and a hoody. ‘We’re out of milk,’ she says, head in the fridge. ‘I’ll go down the shop —’
Mark’s off his feet and into the kitchen before she can finish her sentence. ‘You’re not going anywhere.’
Chloe’s gentle response shows that she understands. ‘Dad, nothing’s going to happen to me. Please. I need some air.’ She holds up her phone to show she’s taking it with her. ‘I won’t be too long, I promise.’
She lets herself out of the back door. In the alleyway at the side of the house, she opens her bag and checks inside. Big Chimp, kidnapped from the crime scene of Danny’s bedroom, looks up at her with button eyes. She keeps one hand in her bag, holding on to the toy’s little paw, as she walks past the corner shop. Streets give way to lanes and lanes thin to alleyways as Chloe climbs the gentle slope that takes her to the top of the town.
Dean is waiting for her, leaning against an upturned boat. His motorbike is parked next to him, the helmet he customised for her hanging on the back. He opens his mouth to speak but nothing comes out, so he kisses her instead.
‘I know,’ she says. ‘Doesn’t feel real.’ They stay where they are for a while, the town they both grew up in spread before them. Dean brushes fair hair from Chloe’s eyes.
‘Are the police round?’ he asks, an edge to his voice. ‘Do they know about us? You ain’t sixteen yet.’
‘Nobody knows,’ says Chloe. She slings one leg over his bike. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Are you sure?’
She brings her visor down over her face in reply.
Down on the beach, nothing looks the same and it’s all too real. A crowd shifts at the edge of the police tape. On the other side of the divide, at the foot of the bluff, a large white evidence tent has been set up where Danny’s body was found. People in white suits move in and out of it.
Chloe gets as close as she can without being noticed and stops by a lifebelt. She lays Big Chimp underneath it and kneels there. Her face is smooth for a few seconds and then the effort of holding back the tears is too much. Dean kneels beside her. She collapses into him and he half-carries her back to the bike. Big Chimp stays put, his mouth in a patient half-smile.
Somebody sees them go.
Olly Stevens is part of the crowd, his Broadchurch Echo lanyard swinging around his neck. His mouth falls open in horror. He gets his phone from his pocket without taking his eyes off the young couple and calls his contact on the Wessex Police force, who also happens to be his mum’s sister.
Ellie answers in that terse way she has when she’s on duty, so he goes straight into reporter mode.
‘I’ve just seen Chloe at the beach,’ he says. ‘Is it Danny Latimer?’
‘I can’t talk to you. This isn’t appropriate, Oliver.’ Oliver. Not one professional to another but an aunt telling off a naughty nephew. Olly bristles. ‘This is not confirmation, I am not confirming that!’ she says. It’s all the confirmation he needs. He ends the call. Seconds later, Ellie calls him back but he switches the ringer off.
Dean’s bike roars off, Chloe’s head buried in his shoulder. The tyres send sand billowing in their wake. Olly looks the other way, at the tent beneath the cliffs. He shakes his head. He stares at his phone for a while, then so slowly it’s almost furtive, he pulls up the Broadchurch Echo Twitter account.
@broadchurchecho sources suggest body found on Harbour Cliff Beach is 11-year-old Daniel Latimer. Cause of death unexplained. More to follow.
His finger hovers over the glowing tweet button for half a minute before he presses send. He makes eye contact with Danny’s toy chimp and his expression changes from triumphant to guilt-stricken. Staff reporter Oliver Stevens has got his first big scoop, but the cost is written all over his face.
Beth’s home is a crime scene, Danny’s bedroom door barred with a crossbones of police tape. She watches it all through a haze as Scene of Crime Officers in white suits traipse up and down their stairs.
They ask for a recent photograph and, as she flicks through the pictures on her phone, she realises it’s been a while since they took any formal photographs of Danny. When did they stop documenting their children’s every move? Even pictures from six months ago are unreliable likenesses. He was changing so fast.
In the end, she hands over the school photo. In it, Danny’s hair is smoothed down. She remembers brushing it into a parting on the morning of the shoot and making him promise he wouldn’t muss it up until after the photograph was taken. Her delight when he obeyed turned into dismay when they got the picture back; the smiling, tidy child in the picture bore no resemblance to her scruffy, cheeky Danny. But it’s only a month old and it’s the cleanest, the highest resolution. And it feels appropriate. That’s what they always have, isn’t it, a school photo?
Liz is making tea and toast, channelling everything she’s feeling into feeding and mothering. They have all stopped asking her to stop. DI Hardy accepts the cup she gives him without thanks and sets it down on the side. He steeples his fingers and looks Beth and Mark in the eye.
‘We have some preliminary findings,’ he says. ‘We’re treating Danny’s death as suspicious. We think he may have been killed.’
It’s like Hardy’s reading from a script. Perhaps he is, in a way: saying the things you have to say to people in her position. Beth doesn’t know how to react so she just stands there. She wishes that someone would hand her a script so that she could say the right things, act like a grieving mother is supposed to, and then they might all leave her alone.
‘My boy,’ cries Mark beside her, and Beth envies him his tears.
‘What happens now?’ she says. She means the rest of her life, but Hardy takes it more literally.
‘Well, we’ll have to announce it to the public soon, but we won’t do that without your permission,’ says Hardy. He knows the ropes, Beth thinks. This once-in-a-lifetime tragedy is all in a day’s work for him. The thought is as comforting as it is shocking. ‘For now, we need to gather as much evidence as we can. I’m going back to the station, give Brian space to work.’ He gestures to one of the men in white suits, who pulls down his face mask and becomes a human being. ‘We’ll be in touch soon. Soon. I promise, we’ll find the person responsible. You have my word.’
Beth clings to DI Hardy’s word. She almost likes the cold, detached way he speaks to them all. It’s reassuringly professional.
When Hardy goes, Liz pours his untouched tea down the sink and immediately refills the kettle, then saws at a fresh loaf with a bread knife. Beth watches the long, serrated blade flash under the kitchen light and thinks about turning it on herself. She wonders, if she plunged it into her – for a second she thinks belly but remembers and settles on thigh – would she feel anything. The warm yeasty smell of toast fills the room. Another plate is put in front of Beth and pushed gently away.
Brian Young comes down the stairs so quietly that Beth doesn’t notice him until he clears his throat. ‘We’re going to take Danny’s computer away for examination,’ he says softly. His gloved hands hold a battered old laptop, covered in Man City stickers.
‘Will they get it back?’ says Liz.
‘Once we’ve finished examining it.’
Uneasiness steals over Beth as Brian slides the laptop into a clear evidence bag. Headlines flash through her mind about cyber-bullying, trolls and chatrooms, grooming. She and Mark never really go through the kids’ computers, partly to respect their privacy and partly because they don’t know what to look for or how to look for it. Danny is the tech-head in the family.
Danny is.
Danny was.
The pain of the shifting tense makes her cry out. It is the first sense of the numbness starting to lift and she suddenly, desperately, wants it back.
Chloe is in the lounge, smartphone in her hand, eyes blazing.
‘Why’ve you released his name?’ she shouts at Brian, shoving the screen under his nose. ‘It’s on Twitter. From the Broadchurch Echo.’ All four of them round on Brian. He flounders.
‘You need to talk to the officer in charge,’ he says.