We’re looking at a suspect a day as we approach the final
episode of the enthralling ITV murder mystery Broadchurch. Today it’s the turn of self-asserted psychic Steve
Connelly played by Will Mellor.
Steve is a telephone engineer who lives 30 miles away from
Broadchurch and who claims he had no knowledge of the Latimer family before the
murder. Steve was present in the town the morning that Danny’s body was
discovered and Mark Latimer walked past him as they both made their way to
work.
Steve approached DI Hardy and DS Miller at Broadchurch
Police Station to tell them that he had some information about the case. The
information was in the forum of a psychic message that Danny was put in a boat
that night before he died. The detectives dismissed him as a timewaster, but
Steve had a parting message for Hardy “She says she forgives you about the
pendant” – something that rang very true with him.
After some quite menacing looking stalking of Beth Latimer
around the town, Steve approached the grieving mother and offered her his
services. She took offense at first, but later welcomed him into the family
home where he imparted the messages from his spirit guide. First, someone close
to Beth was trying to get through, perhaps a relative a relative connected to
the letters R and S, possibly a grandparent, possibly someone who played the
piano. The was all general broad stabs in the darks which drew a blank with
Beth. Then Steve passed on a message that he said had come from Danny: “Danny
wants you to know he’s OK. He’s being looked after now. He says don’t look for
the person who killed him because it won’t help, because it will only make you
upset. Because you know the person who killed him really well.”
Although there was nothing in Steve’s accounts were anything
more than vague generalisations, it was enough for Beth to call in the police
to work with Steve. However, in the meantime they had found that Steve was a
conman and a petty thief, the sort that would gain Beth’s trust, only to write
a bestselling book about it in the future.
Steve was working in the offices of the Broadchurch Echo the
morning that news of the murder broke. Later that week he was installing extra
phone lines in the police station. Therefore he had plenty of opportunity to
snoop and earwig and to gather scraps of information about the case. It wouldn’t
have taken much research for him to find out who Hardy was and maybe even to
find out the details of the pendant, which we later learn has significance for
the Sandbrook case. And as for the boat – it’s a coastal town, so it’s pretty
likely that Danny would have gone in one at some point. He didn’t say how far
before his death that it was either. So with a few bits of information and
enough vagueness he could easily have passed as a psychic to exploit the needy
Beth.
However, Steve seemed genuinely upset and frustrated when
Hardy turned him out of the Latimers’ house. And before long Hardy returns to
him to dig deeper into Steve’s message to him, and Steve gives him something
else that is apparently true. Hardy, who has been having dreams and visions of
his own, suddenly seems a little more open minded about Steve’s alleged
abilities.
The difficulty with Steve as a suspect would be his motive.
If he was unknown to the Latimers then it’s a random killing – but for what
purpose? And how did he find Danny in the early hours and gain access to the
hut, which was opened using a key and not broken into. Also, how would he have
known, as an outsider, of Olly’s boat? It’s possible that he has some
connection to Hardy and the Sandbrook case, but what is he trying to achieve
but offering to help? And if the Sandbrook case went to trial then we have to
assume that Hardy knows what the suspect looks like – unless, of course, they
had pulled in the wrong man. So, is Steve responsible? Are we going to find out
in the last episode that he is mixed up of something of which we are as yet
unaware? Or is he a crank or a conman, out for attention or to earn a few quid
by selling his story about how he helped trap the killer? Or does he genuinely
have an ability?
We last saw Steve in the early hours of the morning, in Paul's church, 30 miles from home, alone and praying. What absolution is he seeking?
To find out, watch
the final episode of Broadchurch on
ITV at 9pm, Monday 22nd April
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