Broadchurch: The Letter: A Series Two Original Short Story (2 page)

Maggie is silenced. Olly instinctively navigates this new world of hits and live feeds. The advertising revenue that had been in freefall is slowly creeping up again thanks to his relentless online marketing of his own byline.

‘Fine,’ she says. ‘I’ll go myself. I’m not above doing a bit of grunt work.’ Immediately her conscience twinges. She
shouldn’t
be above doing a bit of grunt work. It might even give her a taste of what life will be like after resignation. Who knows what form a freelance career would take these days?

Driving past Roger Wilson’s house is a balancing act; slow enough that he can see her, fast enough that he doesn’t have time to sprint down his drive and engage her in conversation. She parks her own car in a turning next to a five-bar gate and completes the journey to Crown Farm on foot.

The offending car is a bashed-up SUV and Roger is right: it does block the public footpath. Walkers would have to climb its bonnet to access the trail. Close up, it’s clear why the tenants can’t park on their own land; the driveway outside the property is piled high with a mouldering three-piece suite, two stained mattresses and the jagged matchwood of a dining set. The house itself is an ugly pebbledashed cube, the opposite of the chocolate-box cottage that tourists love to associate with this part of the world. Steam billows from a vent in the wall; who would have the heating on in May? She tries to peer through the windows but they are all sealed, even the upstairs ones, plastic sheeting taped up inside. A smell leaks from the house, pricking Maggie’s antennae. Dry, sweet and unmistakable, it was once the scent of her youth but these days she’s more likely to catch a whiff of it when passing teenagers at a bus stop. Maggie puts her hand on the wall of the house – it’s hot as a kiln. She knows immediately what she’s dealing with: drug farming. She’s read about these people who turn their homes into hothouses for cannabis plants, and now she’s found one on her own doorstep. The cottage can’t have more than two bedrooms: it’s hardly
Breaking Bad
, but it’s pretty hardcore for Broadchurch.

Her knock goes unanswered. The smell grows stronger as she rounds the back garden, making her feel lightheaded. She hears the dog before she sees it; a snarling Rottweiler straining at its leash. The man who looms behind it looks like his dog, a huge chest, neck and arms on top of skinny legs. He’s all dressed in black but filthy, like a nightclub bouncer who’s been rolling in mud. Instinctively, Maggie steps back.

‘You’d better get the fuck off my property,’ he says in a strong Bristolian accent.

‘Maggie Radcliffe, I’m from the—’ she starts to say, with a confidence she doesn’t feel, before the bruiser folds his arms and interrupts her.

‘You’ve got one minute to piss off, or he’s off the lead,’ he says. On cue, the dog growls louder. Maggie walks backwards, retracing her footsteps in the soft earth. She’s seen enough for now.

She takes the camera out of her car – she carries a top-end Nikon everywhere she goes now that she can’t afford a photographer – and puts the strap around her neck. She’s no paparazzo but she still gets a couple of good exterior shots, one of the car in front of the footpath and another that shows the junk in the front garden.

It’ll be a good piece; something to dilute the tension of the Miller trial. She’ll do some digging at the office, try to talk to the landlord, so her story is ready to roll when she calls the police.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’

The bloke from the cottage is pelting down the lane towards her; at speed, he seems even bigger than he looked up close. Heart thudding, Maggie leaps into her car. Behind the wheel, she makes a split-second decision to reverse and drives blind around a V-shaped corner before pulling backwards into a bridleway. Checking her rearview mirror for horses and finding the way clear, she reverses into the hedgerow until her car is almost completely hidden by undergrowth. She holds her breath as he runs past her, and only exhales when, minutes later, he trudges back towards the cottage, evidently giving her up for lost.

She’s still waiting for her heart rate to return to normal when a car she recognises drives slowly past. There’s something familiar about the big green Land Rover, or rather, the figure hunched in the driver’s seat: grey pudding-bowl haircut, severe black glasses. Looks like Jan Barnsley’s been listening to Roger after all. The irony of West Dorset’s most strident anti-drugs campaigner unwittingly driving past a forest of cannabis plants makes Maggie smile. But amusement turns to shock when Jan rolls to a stop opposite the house, then walks slowly up to the front door. Is she on some kind of vigilante mission? They’ll eat her alive.

Maggie gets out of the car and watches from behind a hedge. Her camera is dangling around her neck, lens cap still off. She’s too far away to see what’s happening but she can watch through the viewfinder if she pulls the zoom function. Her fingers snap the shutter, a journalist’s reflex action. All the while, she’s ready to overcome her own fear and sprint to Jan’s rescue if that’s what’s needed. She might hate Jan’s politics but that doesn’t mean she’ll stand by and watch her get savaged by the Rottweiler. Concern gives way to bewilderment as the door is opened; instead of the bust-up Maggie feared, some kind of exchange takes place. It takes maybe fifteen seconds, and Jan’s off again, something clutched in her fist. What the hell? It’s over so quickly that Maggie doesn’t have time to process it. It’s only when Jan has driven off in the opposite direction that Maggie zooms in on the image on her camera and gets confirmation that Jan is indeed carrying a little plastic bag stuffed with green herbs. Maggie is willing to bet it isn’t basil. What the hell is she playing at? Is she trying to set up some kind of sting? Is she having the drugs tested? Maybe she’s making some kind of undercover documentary, or at the very least doing some kind of ill-advised field research. It is so completely out of character that Maggie checks the camera again to confirm she’s got the right person.

Maggie decides to go back to the office and do some digging, see if the tenant or the owner of Crown Farm raises any red flags. Her sixth sense is tingling and she knows that, whatever’s going on here, she’s sitting on a scoop. She knows that she won’t be able to stop until she’s solved this mystery in print. Sod digital, you have to go out and
find
leads, they don’t just fall in your lap in front of a computer. She has spent too long worrying about budgets and spreadsheets recently. In her battle to keep the paper going, she has forgotten that ‘grunt work’ is not only the backbone of her profession, it’s the most fun you can have and get paid for it. She feels the familiar bloodhound twitch of a big story and it’s the happiest she’s been in months.

She thinks about her resignation letter waiting patiently on her desktop. She stands by every word. But suddenly it doesn’t seem so urgent.

When Maggie’s chasing a story, she has the focus of sunlight through a magnifying glass. Lucy and Olly are little more than background noise as she runs Land Registry and electoral roll checks to see if the names raise any red flags, but nothing comes up. Next, she’s into the digital archive, pulling up everything they’ve ever done with Jan Barnsley’s name on it. Their server hasn’t liked the move from the old newsroom any more than Maggie, and she stares hypnotised as a little wheel buffers in the middle of the screen.

Bingo! The system finally delivers. The stories go back twenty-five years: Anti-single mothers, anti-nightclub, anti-immigrant. At least she’s consistent. Here’s an in-depth interview with Jan Barnsley about how drugs are the scourge of rural England and having the Cliffside centre in Broadchurch is an open invitation for criminals. It only makes Jan’s little deal at Crown Farm all the more bewildering. She’s so narrow-minded and unimaginative. Nothing in her career so far has suggested she’s capable of this kind of enterprise. Maggie dials the council.

‘Is this Jan Barnsley’s phone?’

‘She’s working from home,’ comes the reply. ‘She’s not to be disturbed.’

Is she bollocks, thinks Maggie, and she makes for her second doorstep of the day.

Jan Barnsley lives on the cliff-top. Hers is the only house in Broadchurch that looks down on Jocelyn Knight’s. Passing Jocelyn’s, Maggie automatically checks to see if she’s in but the curtains are drawn; she’ll be preparing for the trial. It must be about fifteen years since Maggie last saw Jocelyn at work. She’s only ever seen her in the Old Bailey before. Jocelyn Knight in Wessex County Court will be like seeing Katharine Hepburn in weekly rep.

The Land Rover is outside the Barnsley house, and the television flickers blue in the sitting room, but there’s no response to Maggie’s knocking. She bends to the letterbox and the smell hits her; fresh and dry this time, not just the sweet reek of plants in growbags. What the fuck? Jan Barnsley lives alone. If there’s a joint on the go around here, it’s hers. Maggie is stunned. She had taken wild conjecture as her starting point only because she had never for a second considered that Jan would actually be using the drug herself. She wonders, for a second, if the lady has been protesting too much, if Jan Barnsley’s anti-drug rhetoric has been a massive blind to distract from a raging habit. But it doesn’t ring true. Jan Barnsley is one of those people you imagine being
born
middle-aged, attending the Women’s Institute when other girls her age were getting drunk at discos.

‘Councillor Barnsley?’ she calls. ‘Maggie Radcliffe,
Broadchurch Echo
. I’d like a word.’ There’s no reply but the television is instantly muted. ‘I’ve just come from Crown Farm,’ she adds. Through the door Maggie hears a prolonged hiss; it takes her a few seconds to identify the noise of an aerosol being sprayed. When Jan eventually opens the door, Maggie sees a can of air freshener tucked behind a china shepherdess on the hall table.

‘Maggie,’ she says. Her eyes are bloodshot but apart from that she doesn’t seem high. ‘I was just making tea. Come in.’ Jan walks gingerly in mauve carpet slippers. She waves Maggie into the sitting room where a synthetic magnolia scent does not quite cover the telltale smell of cannabis. Even in her shock, Maggie smiles to think of Jan trying to Febreze over the smoke like a teenager. There is no drug paraphernalia that Maggie can see, only a box of matches on the mantelpiece next to a carriage clock. As Jan carries in a full tea set, complete with custard creams on real lace doilies –
doilies
, for fuck’s sake – the smell is the elephant in the room. She winces as she sets the tray down – in embarrassment, thinks Maggie, although it’s nothing to how she’ll feel when this makes the
Echo
.

‘So, Miss Radcliffe,’ says Jan, ‘what can I do for you?’ The words are all in the right order, but Jan’s like a record being played at the wrong speed and she can’t make eye contact. Maggie realises that her initial assessment was off the mark. Jan’s as high as a kite but it’s a dark, paranoid state, far removed from the usual giggly daze.

Maggie has two options: a direct challenge about Jan’s cannabis use or a more circuitous line of questioning. She goes for the latter; she’s enjoying herself, she realises. She wants to eke out the sport. She sets her teacup down and poises her pen above her notebook. ‘I’ve had a very interesting morning.’ Jan flinches but she’s not giving anything away – yet. ‘And on the strength of what I saw, I wondered if we could have a chance to chat through the proposed closure of the Cliffside drop-in centre? I believe you’re voting tomorrow.’

Maggie can almost feel the rope spooling through her hands; let Jan hang herself with it.

‘It’s not a vote winner,’ Jan begins in that same stretched-out voice. ‘My constituents strongly believe …’ She trails off.

Maggie feels that she’s losing the scent and needs a more direct approach to hook Jan back into the conversation.

‘Jan, please,’ says Maggie. ‘You need to be honest with me. Because I promise that whatever’s really going on, I’ve thought of a thousand explanations and none of them look good for you.’ She pulls from her handbag a sheaf of papers; topmost is the printout of Jan’s big anti-drug rant from last year. Jan’s eyes skitter across the newsprint. ‘“There are no circumstances in which we can condone illegal drug use”,’ Maggie reads aloud. ‘“Zero tolerance is the only approach if we are to save Broadchurch from the tide of addiction that has destroyed life in the big cities.”’

Jan looks around the empty room, as though someone’s going to come and save her, and then her shoulders drop, like she’s let something heavy go.

‘The anti-inflammatory drugs gave me mouth ulcers, stomach cramps. I could barely function, let alone work. This way I can sleep at night. Do you know what it’s like to be in so much pain you can’t sleep?’ Jan lays her gnarled hands on her lap for Maggie to study. She tries to spread them and there’s no faking the wince of pain but her fingers remain crooked, some locked almost at right angles.

Maggie has a sudden flashback: her father’s hands, fingers like knots in string, screaming in the night because of the pain. The situation turns a half-circle.

‘Arthritis,’ says Maggie. How could she have missed the signs? She nursed her father through a hip replacement operation and later, when it had spread to his hands, the indignity of watching her once-strong father ask for her help opening his childproof medicine bottle. She’s got a standing order to Arthritis UK, for goodness’ sake. She worries about it herself, diagnosing rheumatism at the slightest twinge. The disease is her Achilles heel. She can’t crucify Jan over this.

‘I used to think that the best thing about this house was the view,’ says Jan, nodding to the big picture window. ‘Now I’m only grateful that I have no neighbours.’ Maggie raises her eyebrows. ‘Because it means I can scream when I have to,’ Jan says.

Maggie’s father’s moans echo in her mind. How has Jan hidden suffering on that scale from public life? She is made of even stronger stuff than Maggie suspected. She presses on with her prepared speech, but she’s lost her sense of attack.

‘You are aware of the staggering hypocrisy of you smoking this illegal drug while publicly denouncing those who have addictions?’