"DI Hardy, does this have anything to do with the Latimer verdict?" Ellie was fairly certain that was Olly's muffled voice in the background overlapping Hardy's goodbye – if you could even call it that since Hardy didn't bother with trivial niceties like 'hello' and 'goodbye' – and she definitely heard Hardy's curt "no comment," just before the line went quiet. She pulled the phone away from her ear and looked over the river from the stoop of Hardy's pathetic little blue rental house. The wave of anger she'd worked herself into at the thought that he'd left without a word receded back into the sea of mistrust that had been constantly lapping at the back of her mind since she'd found out her husband was a monster. A new wave of suspicion began to rise.

Was Hardy on a case? He'd been released from active duty ages ago and their Sandbrook investigation had been purely under the table until they'd pulled Tess in right at the end. It couldn't be a case. But why else would he want to meet at the station that neither of them worked at anymore? What else would Olly have to be interrogating him over? She turned to make her way over to the station but checked herself when she remembered he'd said an hour. With a sudden sinking sensation she realized she had nowhere to be and nothing to do for the next hour. Everything she'd filled her time with since she'd found out the horrible truth about her husband was unavailable. Joe's case was over. She'd gotten leave from the Devon police for the duration of the trial, so she couldn't get the satisfaction of over-penalizing speeders. The Sandbrook case was solved. Tom was at Lucy's. She could pick Fred up from the child minder's, but if Hardy was working on a case that might be premature. She wasn't meant to meet up with the Lattimers for hours. And then there was Hardy …

Hardy was 'in the middle of something' … something that he couldn't talk about. She'd thought they'd broken down most of the secrets between the two of them over the duration of the trial. They'd certainly broken down barriers as they'd spent nearly the whole span of the trial in each other's company. Between his heart condition and desperation to solve the case that ruined his life and her social isolation and desperation to prove that she wasn't just the shit detective who'd spent months sleeping next to the murderer she was investigating they'd needed each other.

She sunk down into the sad folding chair as she realized that he'd got past that now. He had a functioning heart and closure on the case. With Joe's trial over and Claire Ripley in custody there was nothing keeping him here now. She, on the other hand still had a shattered life. True, she'd gotten Tom back and reclaimed their house … but that just meant she had to live in this town. Sure, she'd gained some peace with Beth and Mark but everyone in this town would always look at her with some level of suspicion. Somehow that had been bearable when she had Hardy walking alongside her pushing Fred's pram. She laughed at the irony that DI Hardy, the damaged hard-boiled detective who was suspicious of everybody, was the only person in her life who hadn't been treating her with suspicion for the past several months. He said he'd be sticking around for a bit but that could be anything from a few hours to a few weeks, months maybe if she was lucky. Whatever the actual unit of time, a bit had a finite quality to it. He was still leaving eventually.

She sat there outside of that sad little house for far too long irrationally wanting to freeze it in time. Preserve it as Hardy's shitty little house, a little time capsule in which to keep her only real supporter through her roughest time. She shook her head of these silly notions and tried to set herself to rights, wiping the tear tracks from her cheeks and turning toward the station.

She realized as she walked into the station that she had no clue where she was meeting Hardy and that she no longer had free roam of the building. "Hiya," she said to Tom at the dispatch desk, "I'm meant to meet Hardy, do you know where to find him?"

"Hi Ellie, it's good to see you back. DI Hardy's up in CID." Tom's words were kind, but she'd noted the sad rueful look that had accompanied them. She was so focused on the perceived disapproval on the faces of her former colleagues as she passed that it didn't hit her until the closing lift doors gave her some solitude that he'd referred to Hardy as a DI.

She made her way through the CID desks falling back on her typical crutch of overcompensated cheer as her former peers greeted her. She glanced around, noting her own desk empty and abandoned as the day she'd cleared it out, before finally settling her eyes on Hardy sitting in his office as if nothing had changed.

Hardy stared down at the staggering list in front of him of people that Sharon Bishop had pissed off during the trial:

*Mark Lattimer: Accused of murdering his own son to cover an affair
*Nigel Carter: Accused of disposing of the body
*Beth Lattimer: Forced to disclose her husband's affair publicly, then had said husband accused of murder
*Lucy Stevens: Accused of perjury
*Tom Miller: Coerced into perjury by defense team that was exposed by prosecution
*Becca Fisher: Had her affair brought to light – negative impact on her business
*Susan Wright: Called by defense but torn apart by prosecution, generally shite behavior
*Chloe Lattimer: Watched the defense tear her family apart
*Jocelyn Knight: Came out of retirement for one last case and lost to former protégé (weaker motive)
*Half the bloody town (including above): angry that she set a murderer free
*Ellie Miller: Accused of police brutality to force a confession, framing her husband for murder to cover an affair/having an affair with a superior officer, bribing a witness for testimony against the defendant

He sighed deeply looking at the last name that he hadn't wanted to write down but had the most motive. He trusted Miller with his life, with Daisy's life even, but certainly not with Joe Miller's life and perhaps that extended to the woman who got him out of prison. This could get ugly for her if she didn't have a good alibi

"What, they just let anybody in here now?" she joked from the doorway as if his sour meditations had conjured her.

"Miller, good, close the door will you?"

She narrowed her eyes as she complied, "what's all this about?"

He took his glasses off and gestured with them to the chair across from him, "sit down, will you?" She sat down warily. "Where were you between half three and four pm this afternoon?" He asked and watched her face transform into that stunned, horrified disbelief that she'd worn when he'd told her about Joe.

"What is this?" She asked with an unsteady voice, "you're reminding me of the worst day of my life right now and you wouldn't do that for no reason." He opened his mouth to say something reassuring but she cut him off, "don't you dare try to call me Ellie right now!"

"Miller," he said with a sigh, "just answer the question and I can fill you in on what's going on. You were with me until about three then had to leave, where did you go after that?"

She took a moment to process the question and stiffened a bit. "I was with Beth and Mark Lattimer."

That answer threw him, he'd known she'd made some attempts to reconnect, but the last he'd seen them together Beth was actively pushing away Miller's help while she was in labor. "Where were you at?"

"Is this an interrogation?"

"Not an interrogation," he gave a feeble shrug trying to indicate that he had no choice here, "but I do need to eliminate you as a suspect. Please, Miller, just answer the question."

"Don't be nice to me, you never say please!" she quipped in some surprise. A succession of emotions crossed her face before landing on resolution. "At the hut on Briar Cliff beach."

"You were at the scene of Danny Lattimer's murder with his parents on the day his murderer was set free?" He asked in shock, "Why?"

She sighed, and continued reluctantly: "we were having a chat with Joe, ensuring he knew the consequences of remaining in town," she looked at him defiantly as if he would challenge her on this.

On the contrary, he was rather impressed with their tactics. "Quite right," he said with a hint of a smile before returning to the matter at hand, "so it was you, Beth Lattimer, Mark Lattimer, and Joe Miller?"

"It was the four of us inside, but outside there was Chloe and Tom, Lucy, Olly, Nige Carter ..." he felt his hopes sinking as he checked off the names on his list of suspects, "let's see … Paul Coates, Maggie Radcliff, and Becca Fisher."

"Bloody hell Miller, you can't just alibi the whole damn town!"

"I can if they were there!" she replied frankly.

He squinted his eyes at her and ran a hand over his face, "sounds like quite the party."

"More like a show of force, everyone was ready to see the back of Joe. We put him in a cab and sent him off to one of Paul's vicar friends who set him up in a halfway house far far away."

"I suppose they'll all corroborate this?"

"Likely, but the CCTV from the hut should show us all as well. It has a good view of the parking lot as I recall."

He gave a prolonged grunt, "you've just eliminated most of my suspects with motive!"

"Motive for what?"

Hardy sighed and looked at Miller, he trusted her and was fairly certain her alibi would check out, though she couldn't officially investigate the crime until it was corroborated. He decided to just bite the bullet and give her the news now. "Someone's gone and pushed Sharon Bishop off a cliff."

"Well," the look of honest shock and confusion on her face confirmed to him – if not a jury – that she'd had no prior knowledge of the crime, "couldn't have happened to a nicer person."

"We don't choose the victim Miller, and we've got to investigate all the same."

"Still though, she'd probably be second on my list of people I'd like to see take that fall, after Joe of course."

He shook his head, glad that this interview wasn't being recorded, "you're lucky you've got witnesses Miller."

"And lucky that most of my friends do as well," she smiled in that wide, easy way of hers, "how'd you end up clear of suspicion and back in that seat?"

"I was here staring down Lee Ashworth when it happened. They hadn't filled the DI position yet, so they had nobody to do the job and Jenkinson asked me nicely to stay."

"Ah, and I'm sure you weren't quite so nice in your acceptance?"

"She did sack me not too long ago!" He said defensively.

"Yeah, after your heart exploded on the job."

"It dinn'a explode," he groused, "just went a bit wobbly. Anyway, with a clean bill of health and a solid alibi I was her best option." Remembering Jenkinson's plans for the position he added, "temporarily," to tide off any complaints about job theft.

Rather than relief he saw her smile falter for a moment. "Right, you're still leaving then. After the case?"

"Well …" he shrugged, "...Daisy."

"Yeah," she said quietly.

"Anyway," he said as he hopped up from his chair and moved to the door, "I'm off to get the CCTV from the Hut. In the meantime, check in with Jenkinson to get yourself reinstated then see if you can track down Susan Wright and Jocelyn Knight since you've gone and cleared all of my other suspects."

"Hang on, I've got a job thank you. You can't just give me orders anymore."

He rolled his eyes at her, "if you'd seriously rather resume traffic duty as a DC in Devon than be a DS in criminal investigation in Broadchurch it's your prerogative," he knew that anger was the best fuel to keep her moving right now, so he added as he walked down the hall: "a stupid choice, but yours to make." He hurried to the lift picturing her indignant face behind him.

"I'm not calling you 'Sir' anymore," she called after him as the lift doors opened and he smiled to himself.

Notes: The timeline on the show isn't terribly clear if the confrontation with Joe happened later the day he was released or the next day. For this fic, I'm just saying that everything happened that same day.