"Everybody Wants To Rule the World"
Chapter 1
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"You know this town. You're used to the ordinary—look for out of the ordinary. Follow your instincts."
-Broadchurch, episode 2
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Ellie Miller was not in the best of moods.
Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that it was three in the morning, or very near to it, and she wasn't quite fully awake. Not going to bed until one in the morning had not been a good idea. It did have something to do with the fact that it had been a call-in from headquarters saying that they had discovered something worth investigating. Ever since Danny Latimer's body had been found on the each every phone call scared her.
Sometimes, she hated the fact that she had agreed to come back to Broadchurch's police force.
Alec was waiting for her near the front doors, nearly blending into the dusky black of night from his dark suit.
"Sir," she greeted him shortly as she approached. She said it not unkindly.
"Miller." His greeting was the same as always, just as gruff and brusque as the first day she'd met him over Danny's body; but like her own, his tone was one of familiarity. He met her at the top step, windswept and unkempt but as alert as he always was. "They need us at the warehouses."
The warehouses at the water, where the boats were docked. Ellie felt her stomach clench. "What's happened?"
He shrugged, scowling slightly. "Don't know. HQ got a call-in emergency thirty minutes ago saying that there was suspicious activity along one of the docks."
She raised her eyebrows when he paused. "That's it?" She didn't suppose so, but she'd been called in for stranger reasons.
He shook his head. "The caller went to check it out—and then he yelled and the line went dead."
Ellie blinked. "'He'?"
"Definitely know that the caller was a he, but we couldn't get any identification before the call was cut off."
Ellie didn't say anything in reply to that but she didn't need to to know that the aborted call was not a good sign at all. She supposed that there was a possibility that the anonymous caller had merely slipped on the dock and knocked himself unconscious, but no one was ever that lucky.
She slipped into the passenger seat and looked out at the sky. The stars were hidden. They were calling for rain during the following late morning, early afternoon forecast, which meant a grey dreary day. She sighed.
Alec glanced over at her. "You alright?"
She glanced over at him, then away again. He asked her that every so often, when it was only the two of them, and she was usually a mix of touched and exasperated by it. She never snapped at him for the question, however, simply because he never showed he genuinely cared for her in any other way.
"Fine."
She had good days and bad days. On her good days she could almost smile with enthusiasm and feel almost like the old Ellie Miller who could see the good in everything and everyone and always greeted the day with a smile. On her bad days, however, she felt brittle and the old sense of betrayal choked her until she felt like she couldn't breathe. On those days she could barely manage to drag herself out of bed.
Surprisingly, it was Alec who helped her the most. When the whole town looked at her as the wife of a murderer, sometimes shunning her company like a plague, he was there. Whether it was simply listening to her rant when needed or purposely bickering with her to shift her attention elsewhere, he never looked at her any differently. And that helped.
They were quiet for the most part driving down to the docks, Alec asking only once about Tom and Fred, her sons. Ellie struggled to wake up a little more, focusing on what the phone-call and its implications might mean.
Then he turned the headlights off right before they turned into the drive leading to the docks, long before he cut the engine. Ellie looked at him in confusion.
"Just a feeling," he muttered quietly.
Ellie nodded. As a man who followed his instincts on a daily basis, she knew he often did things a little unconventionally. She silently followed his lead as they left the car and headed for the docks. The sea was lapping soothingly below their feet, faint beneath the sounds of their footsteps. Their torches splashed the wooden walkway faint white before them. Nothing seemed amiss.
And then halfway to the first warehouse, Ellie's torchlight fell upon a pool of wet blood. She breathed in sharply through her nose, turning to Alec, but he had already stepped up beside her, face grim.
"An attack?" Ellie asked him lowly. "Or could the caller have simply hurt himself and managed to walk off?"
He shook his head. "Attacked," he answered just as quietly. He turned his torch farther up the dock and she saw what he had already noticed—a trail of blood was leading away up to the warehouse, smudged dark against the wood. Like a carcass being dragged.
"Any sign of his phone?" She turned her light around, looking for the glint of metal.
He joined her in her search for a moment before shaking his head again. "Must've dropped off into the water," he said, looking back at the blood trail. "Come on, Miller."
Carefully navigating past the smears, the two of them slowly made their way along, closer and closer to the warehouse that, in Ellie's mind, was quickly gaining a sinister edge.
The door, when they came to it, had been broken down, nearly splintered from its hinges as if in a fit of rage. Ellie paused for just a moment, taken aback by the surprising brutality of such an action, before Alec looked back at her, silently urging her on.
And then the stench hit them.
Ellie nearly gagged as the smell of scorched flesh and spilled blood wafted past the torn-up door, overwhelmingly thick and cloying down the back of her throat.
"Miller, call for back-up," Alec instructed her hoarsely; in the pale light she saw he had paled considerably. "Now!"
Privately relieved that she didn't have to go in there yet, she did as she was told—and turning back to the doorway realized that he had already climbed over the wreckage and was inside. "Sir!" The exclamation was louder than she'd intended, and she winced, lowering her voice to continue. "For God's sake, what are you doing?!"
He ignored her. "Stay there."
She growled exasperatedly in the back of her throat, cursing his stupidity, but nonetheless did as he'd ordered, shining her torch down at the threshold. Blood wetly shone on the splintered edges, and looking closer realized that it had to be arterial blood from how dark it was. So if it was an attack they were dealing with someone who knew the major spots of the body.
Hurried footsteps coming back told her of Alec's approach, just as the sirens of the approaching police cars and ambulance came up to the water's edge. More concerned with Alec's return, she shone her torchlight into the warehouse.
"What is it/" she called, trying not to breathe.
He came into view, white and thin-lipped, very close to being sick himself. He staggered over the threshold, allowing Ellie to give him a hand keeping his balance, before practically falling against the side of the warehouse. There was something in his dark eyes that she couldn't place but nonetheless sent a chill shivering down her spine.
"There's definitely a body down there," he told her quietly. "It's Steve Connelly."