Broadchurch (21 page)

Still, she eats. Her appetite is coming back in ways that have nothing to do with her. She falls on the lamb and the potatoes: she wants meat, fat, iron and carbs. The parasite is making its presence felt.

Mark’s plate is virtually untouched. Joe, topping up the wine glasses, lays a supportive hand on his friend’s shoulder and Chloe reaches for her dad’s hand and squeezes it. Beth is momentarily shocked out of her own grief and into Mark’s. Then anger eclipses her sympathy, and the scream shifts closer to her lips.

The plates are cleared – no one will let her lift a finger – and Tom disappears to the toilet before the apple crumble and custard come out. Beth slips away while the others are passing bowls and spoons around. She is waiting for Tom when he comes out of the downstairs loo.

‘All right, sweetheart?’ she says. His eyes dart around, looking for help. He can sense what’s inside Beth: the need that pours out of her like smoke from an oven.

‘Yep,’ he says. ‘You OK?’

‘Can I ask you something? You can say no.’ Tom looks suspicious, frightened even and there’s no need, it’s such a simple and harmless thing she needs from him. ‘Can I have a hug?’

Sweet, soft little Tom; she can see him swallow his awkwardness and embarrassment in his desire to make her happy. She opens her arms to him and wraps him tight. He smells all wrong, the wrong fabric conditioner and shampoo and the wrong base note, the wrong hair and skin, but it will do, he’s the right size and so warm. ‘I miss his hugs,’ she says. Tom seems to squirm but even that reminds her of Danny. Just as Tom is beginning to hug her back, the doorbell chimes and he leaps from her arms.

‘I’d best get that,’ she says. Tom can’t get back to the dining table fast enough. Beth can’t decide if she feels better or worse.

Jack Marshall is at the door, unexpected but then so is everything now. She waves him into the living room, wondering if he’s eaten. He’s not exactly the life and soul, but it seems rude not to ask. There is plenty of food left and they can squeeze one more place setting around the table. She’s about to ask Jack, but something in the way he’s holding himself – perfectly upright – tells her this isn’t a social call after all.

When Beth steps aside to reveal their guest, Mark jumps up from his chair, almost upsetting his plate. ‘Everything all right?’ he asks. His cold manner suggests the opposite. Beth looks to Ellie; she is ashen.

‘I found this,’ replies Jack, uncurling his palm to reveal a small black box. Beth leans in and then jumps back. It’s a phone. Danny’s battered old Nokia. ‘I heard a beeping coming from the delivery bags. I found this at the bottom. He must’ve left it on his last round. The battery was going, that’s what the beeping was.’

Ellie flies across the room in her haste to retrieve the phone but it’s too late: it’s gone from Jack’s hand to Mark’s. She all but snatches it from Mark: he holds it for a fraction too long before releasing it. She wraps it carefully in a paper napkin.

Mark’s voice is measured,
too
measured. ‘Why’ve you got this, Jack?’

The old man looks at them all in turn. ‘Mark, Beth, they’re going to say things about me. And those things aren’t true.’

Beth’s stomach contracts around the greasy paste in her stomach. What the hell is going on? Ellie doesn’t look surprised and neither does Mark. She feels her gorge rise.

‘Get him out,’ Ellie orders Liz, who is clearly as much out of the loop as Beth is. Still, she does what she’s told, gently guiding Jack to the front door.

‘Something happened before I was here,’ he says over his shoulder. ‘And they’ll be saying I did it. I’m looking you in the eye, because he was your boy, and I’m telling you I’m not that kind of man.’ There’s a commotion outside and the now-familiar click of camera shutters starts up. Joe Miller pulls the living-room curtain closed. ‘Please believe me,’ pleads Jack Marshall, as he steps into the barrage of press. ‘Beth. Mark. You have to believe me.’

Before Beth can process what’s happened, there’s another click and a flash from the opposite direction. All heads turn to look at the back garden, where a photographer on a ladder peers over the back fence. Seconds later, another head appears at his side. They’ve got the house surrounded.

‘
Bastards
,’ says Mark, making a run for the back garden, Joe and Nige at his heels. ‘Get out!’ he roars. ‘Go on! Before I smash all that!’

He doesn’t get a chance to make good his threats. Joe charges at the fence with the garden hose in his hand. He lets a cannon of water fly over the fence, drenching the photographers. The mood shifts suddenly; the men’s laughter is catching: even little Fred is cheering. ‘Genius!’ says Mark, clapping Joe on the back.

The lightness is short-lived. ‘What’ve we done to ourselves, eh?’ says Mark. This, realises Beth, is the consequence of talking to the press. These are the floodgates that Ellie warned them not to open. They issued the invitation themselves.

But floodgates work both ways. Finally, eleven days after Danny was left on the beach, a proper press conference has been called.

It is the first time Beth has been back to South Wessex Primary since that morning. The playing field where she brought his lunchbox, where Beth knew her last few seconds of peace, is sunbleached and empty now. Beth can’t bear to look at it, but inside it’s worse: this is the school hall where she watched assemblies, nativity plays, end-of-year concerts. She used to perch on these undersized chairs, camera phone in hand, recording Danny’s off-key singing. Now she is on stage in a performance no parent should ever have to give, sitting behind a black cloth between her husband and daughter as Pete pins microphones to their collars. Karen White is in the front row. Beth mouths a ‘thank you’ to her and gets a warm, encouraging smile in return.

‘Why do they need all of us?’ asks Chloe. She is pale with nerves: her freckles stand out even under thick make-up.

‘So people understand how much losing Danny meant to us,’ says Mark. ‘How strong a family we are.’

His hypocrisy is more than Beth can take. The tiger crouching in her throat will not stand for this, but now is not the time to free the scream. Instead, Beth leans in to her husband and whispers, so quietly that only he can hear her: ‘I know about you and Becca Fisher.’

Her words gouge lines on his face, giving her a rush of sick satisfaction. There’s a buzz of feedback as the microphones go live, a storm of flashbulbs, and they’re on.

Not much grows in the modest yard behind Jack Marshall’s house on the edge of the beach. The paved area is cluttered with boating paraphernalia, frayed ropes and broken machinery. An old metal bin serves as a brazier. Jack watches as the flames lick the air.

A battered cardboard box stands on a warped wooden table. From it Jack takes a pile of photographs and sifts slowly through them. Boys in their swimming trunks. Danny changing out of a wetsuit. Jack with his arms around Tom Miller. These pictures did not make it on to Danny’s memorial wall outside the Sea Brigade hut.

In amongst these is another picture which makes Jack catch his breath: with shaking hands he puts it to his lips and kisses it, letting his eyes close for a long time. When at last he opens them, it’s to stare at the photograph some more, as if debating what to do with it. Finally he secretes it in his pocket.

The rest of the pictures he throws into the smoking brazier. The glossy paper burns slowly at first, then quickly. Ashy flakes swirl around Jack and settle in sooty deposits on his collar. The picture of Danny with no top on is the last to go, curling at the edges before shrivelling to nothing.

33

It is eleven o’clock on an August night but Broadchurch is a ghost town. No cars pass by. No drinkers spill from the pubs. The restaurants are empty. White fairy lights twinkle on the box trees outside the Traders Hotel but the terrace is deserted.

A lone child stands at the top of the High Street, skateboard under his arm. He’s wearing a thin grey T-shirt, black jeans and blue trainers with a yellow flash. He sets down his skateboard, steps on and glides down the dead centre of the empty street. The rumble of plastic wheels on tarmac is the only sound.

But his hair is blond, not brown. This is Tom Miller, not Danny Latimer. And despite the late hour, he is not alone.

A procession of adults follow. Ellie Miller heads the sad little parade, her eyes never leaving Tom. Alec Hardy and a handful of officers watch everyone
but
Tom.

The Latimers are there, distraught but strong, hands held in solidarity.

Nige tags along behind Mark.

Reverend Paul Coates is not far behind, his professional, sombre face on.

Joe Miller pushes a sleeping Fred in his buggy.

Karen White walks alone.

As Tom passes, people emerge from doorways to watch him. Olly Stevens and Maggie Radcliffe stand side by side outside the
Broadchurch Echo
, then fall into step with the others at the rear.

Becca appears in the doorway of the Traders. She catches Mark’s eye and a look of sorrow passes between them before they can stop it. Beth notices and drops Mark’s hand. Becca lowers her gaze and steps back into the shadows.

Susan Wright and Vince watch from a distance like a witch and her familiar.

Beth turns to Ellie. ‘Tell me this’ll make a difference,’ she begs.

Ellie threads her arm through Beth’s. ‘I’m sure it will.’

Tom rounds the corner towards the harbour. Union flags and bunting flutter noisily, competing with the sea’s roar. Tom hits the cobbles and the clatter of his wheels drowns out everything else. A news crew, their camera balanced on a dolly grip, trundle after him as he passes the chip shop.

Beth blinks away tears. ‘I can’t bear to think of him, out here alone, this time of night.’

Tom cruises past the newsagent’s. Jack Marshall is outside, hair lank around his shoulders and soot dusting his collar. He mutters the Lord’s Prayer under his breath. ‘And lead us not into temptation,’ he murmurs, ‘but deliver us from Evil.’

Mark Latimer falls into step with Hardy. ‘Do you think it’s him?’ he asks.

‘I’m not speculating about anyone,’ says Hardy, but he doesn’t take his eyes off the old man.

‘You might not be, but everyone else is,’ says Mark. ‘They’ll calm down as soon as you arrest someone.’

At the jetty, Tom skids to a halt. They are now in the territory that CCTV does not cover, and they have re-enacted the last of Danny’s known movements. He jumps down from his skateboard and turns to look at his parents, who nod their pride and approval. Tom gives a weak smile of relief.

Jack Marshall’s hands are clasped so tightly in prayer that the bones glow through his skin. ‘For thine is the kingdom,’ he intones, ‘the power and the glory, now and for ever. Amen.’

Eleven thirty p.m. and CID is buzzing after the reconstruction. DS Ellie Miller is wide awake. While she was out, Frank put up a list of boats reported missing in the last month. There are no matches; nothing even comes close.

She goes through the next file. More notes from Forensics, and they’re hard going. She is the wrong kind of alert: she’s too wired to concentrate and it won’t go in. If only she had a spare hard drive that she could plug into her brain. She worries that she simply can’t retain this much information, that some vital clue will go unnoticed. She takes a deep breath and starts the file again from page one.

They’ve got the prints back on the phone that Jack Marshall gave them. Something about that phone’s been bugging Ellie since she saw it in Jack Marshall’s hand, and she realises now, realised when she saw Tom with his phone earlier. She’s puzzled because although Mark confirmed that this was Danny’s phone,
she
always saw Danny with a smartphone, the same as Tom’s. They even got different covers in case they got muddled up.

There’s no data to be retrieved from the bog-standard one they’ve got. No texts, contacts or call logs. It’s set to forward all calls and texts to another number – a pay-as-you-go SIM card, turned off so there’s no signal. She puts it on the grid anyway. If it turns up they need to be able to move fast. She scoots across the office on her chair to bring Hardy up to date. The wound on the back of his head has been cleaned up, but the rest of him is still a mess. His shirtsleeves have been shoved up to his elbows and sweat patches yellow his armpits.

‘Mark’s fingerprints were on the phone, but he handled it, I saw him do it, he took it off Jack at the house. And Danny’s DNA. And Jack Marshall’s, too. Although that tallies with him finding it.’

She can almost see the light bulb ignite over Hardy’s head. ‘Or Jack
claimed
to find it because he knew his DNA was already on it,’ he says. ‘Why does a kid his age have two phones? How could he afford this other one?’

‘The cash we found in his room?’ suggests Ellie.

‘Could that money have come from Jack Marshall?’ asks Hardy. ‘You know him, what do you think?’

Ellie doesn’t feel she knows anyone outside her own front door any more.

‘He had regular contact with Danny,’ she considers, ‘but what’s his motive? Anyway, Danny was asphyxiated. Jack’s frail. I can’t see him dragging a body two miles down the coast.’

‘Accomplice?’ Hardy fires back. ‘We don’t know there’s only one killer. You talk to your son at the end tonight?’

The last thing Ellie wants is to discuss Tom’s emotional state with Hardy.

‘A bit,’ she says. ‘He just wanted to get home.’

‘He’s a good lad,’ says Hardy, throwing a file down on to her desk. ‘Tell him from me: he did right by Danny.’

To Ellie’s shame, her eyes start to well. She can handle the relentless sarcasm and the impatience. But kindness from DI Hardy? It’s more than she can bear.

34

Unlike Alec Hardy’s investigation room, the
Broadchurch Echo
does not have a clean-desk policy. Karen and Olly, going hard after Jack Marshall, are drowning in paperwork. Every surface is awash with Post-its, web printouts, newspapers and notes spilling from box files. It seems to multiply when they’re not looking, as do the dirty mugs that pile up around them.