"Right, well, erm, if you do need anything, you know where you can find me." Hardy listened to Detective Sergeant Fields thank him, and promise to call if she had any questions. He hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair. Yet another case for which his expertise was expressly not required. He sighed, stood up, and for the umpteenth time that morning, looked through his office window to the bullpen where the other officers sat, taking phone calls, making notes, and conducting actual police work.

His new position with the Avon and Somerset Constabulary in Bristol was turning out to be much less eventful – and much less interesting – than he'd anticipated. He had known, of course, that he would not be regularly called into the field; that had been a condition of his medical clearance to work following his pacemaker surgery and his departure from Broadchurch. But even he had not expected to be predominantly desk-ridden, only periodically consulting on higher-profile cases and more often than not providing interrogation training to the newer officers. He was at once resentful of his relegation to his position, and embarrassed to feel such resentment; after everything that had happened in Sandbrook and Broadchurch, he supposed he should feel lucky to even retain his rank as DI.

A knock at his office door pulled him from his restless thoughts.

"Yes – come in!"

A young officer cautiously opened the door, and timidly stepped inside.

Hardy looked up and squinted at the young officer. "Yes, erm, DC…uh…"

"It's –"

"No, no, don't tell me. DC Finnegan!" Hardy declared triumphantly. In his boredom over the past eight months, he had made a competition with himself to remember his colleagues' names. As it was a competition with himself, he wasn't sure if he was winning or losing, but figured either way that it was about par.

"Yes, Sir, thank you. Um, I'm just passing around this card for Donna. She's going on maternity leave in a couple of weeks, so we're all, just, well, you know." Finnegan stepped forward and placed the card and attached interoffice envelope on Hardy's desk. "If you would just cross your name off of the list and pass it along when you're done, Sir."

Hardy looked down at the card and envelope and tried to hold in a sigh. He realized that a part of him had hoped that Finnegan was coming to him for help, for a consult, or – and he barely dared to dream of it – an actual case that he could actually work on.

"Yes, very well, thank you…Finnegan." He stated the name again, noting somewhere in his mind that he deserved double the points for remembering it twice.

Finnegan nodded and stepped backward through the doorway, closing it softly behind him. Hardy dropped back into his desk chair, heaved a sigh, and placed his forehead down on his desk. So far, other than reviewing other detectives' reports and doing some of his own filing, his only task for the day was to sign a congratulatory card for an officer whom he didn't think he would know from Adam, drop five or ten quid into an envelope, and pass it along to some officer who probably had actually police business to conduct.

Hardy had hoped that things would be going better, but after eight months in Bristol, he still felt isolated from the rest of the constabulary, who knew him primarily via gossip, rumours, and misinformation, and he hadn't made as much headway with Daisy as he had hoped. He opened up his most recent email from her, confirming the details for her stay at his flat that weekend. It provided some hope, he supposed, that she had agreed to stay with him one weekend per month, and he reminded himself that the purpose of moving to Bristol in the first place was to be closer to her.

He briefly considered emailing Miller to check in, but then thought better of it. She had been kind enough to respond to his emails over the past eight months, and they'd even had coffee a couple of times, but he could tell that she felt impatient to be around him, as she tried to rebuild her own life and her own relationships with her own children. He was increasingly and unhappily aware that his presence seemed to make people uncomfortable. In a distant part of his mind, he was cognisant of the fact that he hadn't made a habit of getting very close to people, or allowing them to become close to him, but in a more conscious way, he was irritated that efforts to have a relationship with him thus far seemed to be a mostly one-way street.

On a lark, he had asked a woman on a date a few months after moving to Bristol. They had met in an antique book store, during one of his many long walks alone through the city, and after engaging in pleasant conversation for a while, he unshackled himself from his self-consciousness and asked if she would like to have coffee with him. She was a pleasant person, and he imagined that any other person would have quite enjoyed the date, but he simply felt awkward, unable to answer any basic questions about his profession, his family, or even his interests, without feeling that he was stumbling over a lot of omissions. They exchanged phone numbers, but they had agreed through their mutual phone silence thereafter that they would not be seeing one another again.

Hardy looked at the clock on his computer and sighed. It was only 10:00 am on a Wednesday morning. The work week was not yet halfway done, and if not for Daisy visiting him on the weekend, he wouldn't have anything else to look forward to until the next work week began on the following Monday. Resigning himself to his current professional station, he picked up a banker's box from the floor, heaved it onto his desk, and began the tedious process of filing.