Broadchurch: The Letter: A Series Two Original Short Story Read Free

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