Broadchurch: The Letter: A Series Two Original Short Story (3 page)

‘It is for medicinal use,’ bleats Jan. ‘I wouldn’t do it if I wasn’t desperate. I don’t enjoy consuming it and I
certainly
don’t enjoy the process of obtaining it.’

That’s a good point, thinks Maggie. ‘How did you know where to get it?’

Jan’s blush mottles her whole face. ‘He waits outside Cliffside, looking for people to sell to,’ she says. ‘I followed him home.’

The calculated premeditation of it takes the edge off Maggie’s compassion. ‘I could hang you out to dry,’ she says.

She’s expecting crocodile tears, but what she gets is far humbler.

‘I know,’ says Jan simply. She tries to shrug but the gesture clearly pains her too much and it turns into a grimace. Maggie swings back towards sympathy. This is an old woman, on the edge of retirement, in terrible pain. ‘I’ve known since the first day I went there. But I’ve got a standing here. People have put their faith in me. I can’t just go back on my word.’

The idea – a third way of dealing with this story – comes to Maggie so clearly she can almost hear the light bulb pop over her head.

‘Actually, that’s exactly what you’re going to do.’ Jan blinks twice. ‘You’re going to save Cliffside. You could do it with a phone call. You can do it this afternoon.’

‘But I …’ Jan’s left leg begins to twitch. Maggie recognises the tell as panic, not arthritis, and briefly considers the ethics of pressurising someone who’s high as a kite. But only briefly.

‘Or you could be on the front page of the
Echo
for all the wrong reasons.’

‘Are you
blackmailing
me, Maggie Radcliffe?’

Maggie snaps a custard cream in half. ‘You bet your arse I am.’

But behind the outward triumph, Maggie only feels hollow. Time was when she would’ve taken pleasure in dropping Jan Barnsley in the shit. Now she’s let her off the hook. Maybe it’s not just the industry that’s going soft. Maybe it’s her.

Back in the office, Lucy’s in full flow, using an impressive telephone voice that Maggie hasn’t heard before. ‘Yeah, but listen, we’re about to be covering the biggest story Broadchurch has ever seen, the print run’s gone up, you’d be mad not to advertise with us.’ Lucy nods through a pause. ‘If you take out an eight-week option, I can give a discount.’ She’s gone off-script and it’s working. Olly looks up from his smartphone with what can only be described as pride. ‘Yes, I am Ellie Miller’s sister. Obviously there’s loads I could tell you but, you know, obviously I can’t
at the moment.
’ Lucy is exhibiting uncharacteristic subtlety, treading the fine line between exploiting her connection with Ellie and crossing into betrayal. She catches Maggie’s eye and winks. ‘Double page? You’ve made the right choice. Absolutely. We’ll catch up soon.’ It’s the lift Maggie needs. Maybe Lucy’s gift of the gab can be harnessed for everyone’s good.

Maggie shuts herself into her new office for the first time. The walls are still bare, her possessions in boxes. There’s a view of the harbour up here, Jurassic cliffs rippling away into the distance. At seven, as the sun sinks outside, still light, Olly and Lucy leave for the King’s Arms, Olly to canvas local opinion on the eve of the trial, Lucy to congratulate herself on a job well done.

Maggie puts in a call to the station; Bob Hutton picks up and she tells him everything she knows about the cannabis farm. That done, she clamps her e-cig between her lips, biting down hard on the plastic as she polishes the stories she’s been working on all day. Words trimmed to fit, photographs in position, she lays out the flatplan for the whole newspaper, thumbnail icons that spread out the next edition over one vast screen. Three headlines leap out:

COUNCILLOR’S REHAB U-TURN

CANNABIS FARM IN LOCAL BEAUTY SPOT

LOCAL MAN ON TRIAL

The space below this last headline is blank, the text to come tomorrow as the trial kicks off. Maggie’s eyes settle on the accompanying pictures: a family photograph of Joe – they’ll get a pap shot of him arriving at court tomorrow, she doesn’t care what it costs her – and, slightly bigger, Daniel Latimer’s last school photograph. She puts her hand on the screen and traces her fingers over his head, as though to smooth down his hair. When she looks up from her computer, true night has fallen outside. There is no moon and the cliffs are in darkness. Maggie stares through her reflection into the black beyond.

A ringing telephone jolts her out of her trance.

‘Maggie, it’s Carmel here from Cliffside,’ says the caller. ‘Sorry to call so late but I just saw Olly outside the pub and he said you’d still be at your desk. You work too hard. Anyway. I wanted to let you know we’ve had a reprieve. Barnsley’s changed her mind about closing us down.’

‘That’s brilliant news,’ says Maggie, and there’s a sense of that hollowness inside her slowly filling.

‘I can’t tell you what it means to us,’ Carmel says, choking on her emotion. ‘Will you come for a drink? Come on. I’ll be here till last orders.’

‘I’d love to,’ Maggie tells her. ‘Mine’s a large Merlot.’

And in the silence that follows, Maggie forgets about budget cuts, Twitter, management consultants and falling revenue, and returns to the truth: she has been thinking of her job as a profession, when it has only ever been a vocation. Of course she hasn’t lost her touch. She’s still brilliant, her only weakness was self-doubt. It’s only a young journalist who sees in black and white terms. If anything, she’s got something new to offer now: humanity. The whole point of maturity is that sometimes those choices, those compromises, are the right things to do. And maybe staying is a compromise, a choice.

She rummages in a cardboard box for her front covers – framed scoops that start with the Yorkshire Ripper case in the eighties, include the aftermath of Princess Diana’s death in the nineties and into the twenty-first century. Her Press Gazette award stands proudly alongside them. At the end of the shelf, she gently places a smaller framed photograph: the picture of Daniel Latimer in his football kit that once advertised his condolence book. She has a duty to her community and that extends to telling the public what’s happening in court. A duty to make sure the world remembers Danny Latimer. They still need her here. For the duration of this trial and beyond, she will be the bloody-minded, brilliant pain in the arse her community needs her to be. The letter in her computer seems to rewrite itself, the words reforming in her mind’s eye. She’ll still write to Rory bloody Costello, but it’ll be a letter that sets out her new terms rather than one that surrenders to his.

Maggie Radcliffe locks up her new office. She glances up at the cliff-top: Jocelyn’s house and Jan’s are both in darkness. Taking her time, Maggie walks the perimeter of the lamplit harbour to the King’s Arms, where she will join her colleagues and friends, and drink to the unknowable tomorrow.

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