Broadchurch: Across the Pond

Chapter 15

TW: interrogation with some mind games, mention of hypothetical sexual assault (did not occur)

The interrogation room was one of the few places that Alec and Ellie were totally in sync. Ellie liked to call their method arsehole vs decent human being. She tempered Alec's rude, aggressive approach with motherly understanding—and some psychological manipulation. They were successful over half the time. This, Alec pointed out seriously, might be the exception. Sanchez was so supremely confident that he waived the right to a lawyer, facing Ellie and Alec with a vague smile on his face.

As Chief Boden watched via CCTV cameras, the Brits went to work.

"Detective Carlisle Sanchez." Alec put his reading glasses on to study the file in front of him. "On the force for ten years. Five commendations. Trained paramedic. Bit of an overachiever."

"You're trying to make me relax." Sanchez made a show of examining his fingernails. "There's not a single method you can use that I don't know inside and out."

"Interesting name," Alec continued. "Carlisle. Very British. Family name from your mum's side, I presume. Last name from your dad, then?"

"Textbook technique. Trying to build a rapport with the suspect."

Alec sat back and crossed his arms. "The thing about building rapport is that requires me to give a shit about you. I don't. I don't care about any method, or any rulebook. I only care about results"

"I bet Human Resources hates you."

"You have no idea," Ellie muttered.

"Why you didn't reveal that this woman--" Alec tapped the picture of Dawn Underwood "--is your niece."

"She's not my niece," Sanchez said easily.

"Then why did she call you Uncle Carlisle?"

"Nickname."

"You must care about her a lot," Ellie remarked gently.

"Very much."

"You know," Alec mused, "if someone I cared about was murdered, I'd tell the police everything. Why didn't you?"

Sanchez shrugged. "Didn't seem relevant."

"But it was relevant enough for you to hide the pictures." Ellie spread the photos out, so each one was visible. "You see why that's confusing."

"You must be easily confused."

"What we are, is easily annoyed," Alec retorted. "Especially by lying little pricks. You hid these pictures because they made you a person of interest."

"If you say so,"Sanchez said.

"I do say so." Alec set down the photo strip of Sanchez and Alice. "How long's that been going on?"

"No law against love," Sanchez pointed out with a scowl. He realised he was frowning and deliberately smoothed his face.

"Law, no," Ellie agreed. "Department policy, yes."

Alec circled back, hoping to catch Sanchez wrong-footed with a verbal one-eighty. "Where were you the night Dawn Underwood died?"

The gambit failed. "At a bar downtown."

"And were you alone at this bar?"

"All night."

Ellie set another picture on the table, this one a still from the Shamrock Shack's security camera showing Sanchez at a booth with Dawn Underwood. "This is at midnight, at the bar where Dawn's phone was last used. Dawn was killed between three and six am. That makes you the last person to see her alive."