Broadchurch (25 page)

Nige Carter is borderline. Terminally single, by all accounts, he lives with his mum and clings to the Latimer family like a limpet. Next to Mark, Nige was probably the most prominent adult male in Danny’s life. He has lied to the police already, ostensibly to protect Mark, and Hardy can’t shake the feeling he’s still holding something back, something big. Of course, Nige has an alibi, but Hardy is inclined to dismiss it; he has long held that an alibi provided by someone’s mother is not worth the paper the statement is written on.

Finally, Hardy thinks long and hard about Steve Connolly. That business about the boat was either a lucky guess or a witness statement, which means Connolly is either a charlatan or withholding evidence. With no confirmation of the latter, Hardy ought to conclude he is the former, and dismiss him. And he will, as soon as he has determined how Connolly knows about Pippa Gillespie’s pendant. Late at night, alone in the office, Hardy has searched extensively for a link between Connolly and Sandbrook and found none, either to the case or the place. Until that happens, Connolly remains, if not officially a suspect, then deeply suspicious.

It is times like now, when everyone else has gone home, that he misses Tess the most. He misses the informal debriefing at the end of the day, the final volley of ideas and theories. He has yet to meet a copper so entirely on his own wavelength. Even towards the end, they always had work in common. It was the last thing to go.

Feeling sorry for himself won’t get this killer caught. Hardy takes off his glasses, closes his eyes. Mark Latimer, Jack Marshall, Paul Coates, Nigel Carter and Steve Connolly stand shoulder to shoulder in Hardy’s imagination. He lets his mind’s eye travel along the line-up and they always come to rest on the same man. He massages his temples, wishing that something would bloody happen. It doesn’t need to be dramatic. A grain, a single cell, of proof, would do. And soon. Now. His case is slipping away from him.

39

Frank finally gets to the end of Jack Marshall’s CCTV footage. There is no sign of Jack leaving or entering his house on the night that Danny was killed. They have examined every angle, but they can’t find a blind spot. Ellie turns to Frank.

‘He’s innocent,’ she says in amazement.

While she’s dashing off an email to let Hardy know, a call comes through from Bob Daniels. There is what he describes as ‘unrest’ outside the Sea Brigade hut. Ellie sends her email and runs from the station, Frank at her heels.

The men have gathered on the unmade road outside the hut. The angry mob of villagers wield camera phones, the twenty-first-century equivalent of pitchforks and flaming torches. Ellie recognises these men as individuals – they are school dads, shopkeepers, uncles, blokes from the five-a-side league – but collectively, they are terrifying, loaded with violence, faces twisted in hate. She has never seen anything like this in Broadchurch before. Bob, unusually ill-at-ease in his uniform, looks like he wants to join his mates on the other side of the divide.

Tonight is when the Sea Brigade usually meet, and although Jack has put on his uniform and opened the doors, not a single boy is in attendance. It is a huge misjudgement. What looks, now, to Ellie, like an innocent man refusing to let allegations get the better of him, has been interpreted by the mob as provocation. The men throw accusations like stones. The press, naturally, are loving every second. The angrier the men get, the more the cameras click. A scruffy photographer has his lens virtually up Nige Carter’s nose as he snarls threats.

Ellie has called for backup but the first car on the scene is not a police vehicle but her own battered family car and her husband is at the wheel.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asks Joe. Mark Latimer emerges from the passenger side. A vein pulses on his forehead like a worm trapped under his skin.

‘I couldn’t stop him,’ says Joe. ‘And then, I couldn’t let him come on his own.’ But he is helpless as Mark shoulders his way through the rabble to the front. Ellie’s pulse quickens. Where the hell is her backup?

If Mark loses his temper, this lot will be on Jack like hounds on a fox.

‘There’s no meeting here tonight, Jack,’ Nige Carter shouts. A fleck of spittle flies out of his mouth and lands at Jack’s feet. ‘No boys are coming. We don’t feel safe with that.’

‘You don’t even have kids, Nigel,’ says Jack. His tone is one of weariness, almost boredom. He doesn’t help himself. Ellie wills him to show some emotion other than arrogance. ‘You didn’t even get a badge for knots.’

‘I can speak for those that do,’ counters Nige.

‘Not really, Nige,’ says Mark Latimer with a quiet control that astonishes Ellie. ‘Boys,’ he addresses the crowd. ‘Stand down, eh?’

If they don’t quite fall silent, they at least begin to mumble their abuse rather than shout it.

‘You don’t need to be involved, mate!’ says Nige. ‘We’re doing this for you!’

‘Get back!’ Mark raises his voice in a warning shot and this time everyone obeys. Joe puts his palms up in pacification.

‘They’re saying a lot of stuff about you, Jack.’ Mark speaks evenly but a muscle at the side of his mouth is in spasm, his face betraying the exhaustion and the emotions that toil on him.

‘I am not what they’re calling me,’ says Jack. ‘And I did not go near your boy.’

‘You had Dan’s phone.’ An upward flick at the end of Mark’s statement turns it into a question.

‘He left it in the bottom of the delivery bag. I swear.’

‘You been to prison though, ain’t you? Eh?’ says Mark.

Jack straightens his back. ‘There was a girl. We had a relationship. She was fifteen, nearly sixteen. The same age as Beth when you met her.’ Mark takes a few seconds to swallow and digest this. ‘Mark, we married, we had a son together.’

Mark’s suspicious again. ‘Yeah, where’s he now, then? Why aren’t they with you?’

‘He died, the day after his sixth birthday.’ Jack drops his voice so that only those closest can hear. ‘Car accident. She was driving. They both went through the windscreen. She survived; he didn’t. The grief ripped us apart. So I came here. New start.’ His eyes take on that distant look that has frustrated them so much throughout the course of this investigation, but where Ellie previously saw evasion or disconnectedness she now sees a man staring into his own past. ‘They’re saying I wanted to hug the boys because I’m a paedophile. It was never that. I missed my boy. I missed touching him, holding him. I miss my boy every day. What sort of world is this, Mark, where it’s wrong to seek affection? I would never harm Danny. We’re the same, Mark. No parent should outlive their child. Your boy, he was a good boy.’

Mark struggles to control his face. Nobody speaks. Waves slap against the harbour wall. Even the cameras hold fire for a few seconds. Finally, the silence is broken by Joe, who takes a tentative step into a lion’s den.

‘You OK, Mark?’

Mark knuckles away a tear but then answers in a roar. ‘Go home, boys!’ he shouts so loudly that a nearby seagull takes flight. ‘The lot of you.
Now
.’

They retreat and then disperse, but the threats keep coming, angry voices riding the early evening breeze. It’s obvious that the temporary ceasefire is for Mark’s benefit. The two men look at each other, united in membership of the club every parent dreads joining.

‘You’re not safe here, Jack. You’re dead, mate.’ Mark’s words are harsh, but his tone is soft. He is passing on the threat rather than making it.

Jack stands his ground. ‘This is my home now.’

‘People have made up their minds,’ says Mark. ‘You want to stay safe? Get as far from here as you can.’

He leaves Jack standing proud but pathetic in his Brigade leader’s uniform, outside the hut Ellie knows he will never fill again. Jack must know it too, but he is too proud to show it. There is something military about his bearing: ramrod spine, eyes front, shoulders pulled back.

The photographers get one last shot of him, then down their cameras and go to the pub.

The dusk and the drizzle have driven the vigilantes home. Only Nige Carter is still out, his engine idling on the edge of the caravan park. For a long time, he watches the rain obscure caravan number 3 before the wipers reveal it again. Then something inside him propels him out of the van. He is at the caravan in three long strides, beating the door with large fists.

Susan Wright does not look surprised to see him although her welcome is cool: she folds her arms and blocks the doorway.

‘Can’t live without me?’ she scowls.

‘I’m not staying.’ Nige is virtually running on the spot in his impatience to leave. ‘There’s things that’re happening, I need to see to. So I want you to take that and go.’ He holds out a thick A4 envelope. ‘Five hundred quid.’

‘Is that what I’m worth? You’re lucky I’ve got a sense of humour,’ she says, but she doesn’t crack a smile. She stares him out, as calm as he is agitated. If her plan is to tip him over the edge, it works. His arms begin to flail.

‘See that van?’ he shouts. ‘I’ve got a crossbow in that van. I’m not messing around here.’

Susan looks at him evenly. ‘I don’t think you should be saying those sorts of things to me, Nigel. We need to find a way of working this out together.’

Nige knows when he’s beaten. He climbs back into the van and slams the door, throwing the envelope down on the passenger seat. He makes a messy three-point turn on the sand and drives off.

Susan stands in her doorway until Vince breaks her trance, winding his way around her legs.

40

Oliver is waiting in reception. Ellie braces herself for a tussle. Either he’s after inside knowledge or Lucy’s sent him to do her dirty work. She isn’t sure she has the energy to fight him on either count. She doesn’t even have the energy to walk down the stairs. Waiting for the lift, she is suddenly aware of her body: the gnawing hunger in her belly, the acid tug of too much coffee. She has half a mind, as she descends to the ground floor, to give Olly the scoop on Jack Marshall’s alibi right now and let the press exonerate him. They’ve still got time to make the papers. It’s clear that the public pay more heed to the
Echo
or the
Herald
than any statement from the Wessex Police. But she’s not convinced that they’d run with it: Jack Marshall’s innocence gives the lie to their smear campaign, so they’ll probably just bury the story. Dirty old men sell papers; doddery old victims don’t. What’s more, she hasn’t let Hardy know about the CCTV yet, and she wants to do this by the book. By the time the lift doors open, Ellie has made her decision. She will log it all properly tonight and, if Hardy approves, feed it to the press in the morning.

Oliver isn’t wearing his wheedling, give-me-a-story expression, so this must be about Lucy. Ellie’s heart plummets.

‘Your mum can come to me if she wants,’ she snaps. ‘I’m a bit busy, in case you hadn’t noticed.’

Olly clicks his tongue. ‘It’s nothing to do with her. It’s about Danny. Well, it might be. Have you identified that burning boat yet?’

So he
does
want a scoop. ‘Oliver, what have I told you about giving you preferential treatment?’ She’s overcompensating because she came so close to doing just that. ‘We’ll call a press conference when we’ve got something to say.’

He is up in arms. ‘Would you just hear me out before you go making accusations? It’s my dad’s boat. She’s missing.’

The conversation flips 180 degrees as Ellie realises the implications of this. ‘Why didn’t you tell me sooner?’ she asks, but she should have checked herself. Half of Broadchurch knew about that boat. Half of Broadchurch have taken it out.

‘I sort of went off her after Dad left. I don’t go on the water from one week to the next these days.’

‘I don’t suppose you’ve got a picture, have you?’ says Ellie.

Olly scrolls through the camera roll on his phone and comes up with a picture of himself and Tom in the little dinghy, surrounded by tackle. ‘This do you?’ He attaches it to a text message and puts Ellie’s name in the recipient box but he dangles it like a carrot. ‘If you find out it was Dad’s boat, can I have the story? Don’t announce it. Give it to me.’

‘You’re incredible,’ she says.

The chastisement works. Olly hits the right key and seconds later a buzz in Ellie’s pocket heralds the picture’s arrival in her own phone.

Upstairs, she emails the picture through to SOCO and spends the interim drafting a document for the press office about the new development with Jack Marshall. She emails it through, knowing it won’t be read until the morning but satisfied that one more job has been crossed off the list.

Brian comes up to CID to give her the news in person. She has never seen him out of his boiler suit before: he looks odd in normal clothes.

‘It’s the same boat,’ he says. ‘I’d bet my mortgage on it.’ It’s the first positive lead they’ve had in days. Ellie feels weak with relief. She slumps back in her chair, catching a glimpse of herself in the window as she does. God, she looks like shit: matted hair, no make-up. On her next day off she’s going to book herself in for a haircut. Not with Lucy. Somewhere posh. Somewhere they do your nails at the same time. Brian breaks into her reveries of a makeover.

‘Listen, d’you fancy a drink one night?’

‘Sorry, what?’ It takes five seconds for her brain to catch up with the words. ‘I’m married, Brian.’ She cocks her head towards the picture on her desk: all four Millers, grinning at the camera.

‘That’s an issue, is it?’ He perches on the edge of her desk.

‘
Happily
married, Brian.’

‘Oh, OK. Fair enough.’ He slides off her desk and retreats from the brink of harassment. ‘Well, there we go. D’you want anything from the kitchen, cup of tea…?’ Somewhere beneath Ellie’s indignation is a ridiculous flare of offence that he’s willing to give up so easily.

‘No,’ she says. ‘I’m fine.’ Brian saunters back to his lab and Ellie puts her face in her hands, trying to process the surreal little interlude. She quickly gives up. Her priority now is to tell Hardy about the boat.

‘Something weird,’ she pokes her head around his office door. ‘We’ve got an ID on the burned boat. It used to belong to Olly’s dad.’