A week passed and Tom and Joe were being shoved aside by the life and crimes of Broadchurch. Miller was trying to be funny and sneaky, for some reason determined to make him eat something sugary or fatty at work. Daisy kept trying to set him up with women to date – why she cared was a mystery, he didn't feel the particular urge for either love nor sex right now, and it was disturbing what strange desires his daughter was projecting on him. She'd even dropped a very non-subtle hint that she wouldn't care if he'd rather take a peek at the other side of the fence. Which was good to know, but no.

Broadchurch suffered a slew of break-ins and people were getting angry and suspicious of each other. Maggie kept trying to channel the fear through her blog but the comments were getting rougher and nastier and Hardy feared they would face another lynch-mob if they didn't find some clues soon. It wasn't his case, though as the senior detective it somehow still was his responsibility.

For himself, and oddly unrelated to the other crimes so far, there was a break-in at Harrington's farm where the culprits had run off with ten Speckled Sussex which, Harrington insisted, where especially beautiful and therefor priceless chickens.

They had stolen ten and left two, an oddly specific number. Who stole ten chicken when they could have just as easily taken twelve? And why take the cock and nine hens and not ten hens to at least get some more eggs? After checking with Nigel Carter and confirming his really solid alibi for the night of the theft, he was out of ideas.

As he was musing over the notes from the farm and thinking of actually having to talk to other farmers and chicken-breeders for a suspect – and how had his life turned into this, chasing chicken-thieves – Miller stormed into the office with a mighty scowl on her face. Everything about her screamed 'Out of the way, you wankers!' in capital letters, and Hardy decided that he should really check up on Harrington personally, preferably now. Couldn't let some scoundrel run off with nine hens and a cock, after all.

"Orrin, if you can't throw out the bloody old coffee-grains when you take the last cup, I'll dump the mouldy shit right into your drawer, understand me?" Miller's yell was loud enough to be heard downstairs. Hardy winced and pretended he hadn't heard until there was a loud crash and a louder swear from their coffee-area and he realized that he needed to be the boss right now.

He caught her on her way back to her desk, fuming, and waited until she'd slammed the mug onto the table before approaching. Better have the thing out of immediate throwing-distance. "Miller, a word?"

With a put-upon sigh and gritted teeth, she stood and followed into his office, slumping into the guest-chair with her arms crossed, glaring. "What?" She snapped when he continued to stay at the closed door to take her in.

Her hair was unusually dishevelled and it looked like she had tried to put on mascara in the dark. "You look like shit," he stated, ignoring the glower she shot him. "What's crawled into your breakfast today?"

"With all due respect, sir, that's none of your bloody business."

"With no respect at all, it bloody well is when you make it my bloody business by snapping at everyone and destroying office-equipment."

"I dropped a bloody plate, not shot the copier. Get some perspective. Sir." He raised his eyebrow and she scowled again. "And it's not like you're one to judge, coming in here snappish and brooding six days of the week. How many plates have you dropped?"

"None," he said, feeling uncomfortably smug about such a petty little win. "But even if I had," he continued, "this isn't about me. So – back to my question. What's bothering you? And if you really don't want me to know, fine. But stop letting your mood out on the others, or stay home if you can't. Understood?"

She still glared, but it was more of a pout now. "Yes, sir."

"Good." Hardy took his seat and went back to the files about the chickens. This town …

It took him a while to realize Miller was still in the chair opposite. He pulled off his glasses and pressed his fingers into the corner of his eyes. "Miller?" he asked, maybe slightly less gruff. At least, he tried for less gruff. Might have missed by miles. Wouldn't surprise him.

"It's Tom," she murmured, shifting about. Oh, dear God… what had the daft lad done now?

"What's he done now?"

"He told me he wants to talk to Joe."

Ah, crap.

Feeling a headache approach, Hardy tried to wait her out. But Miller was the mother of two boys and made of better waiting-stuff, so he had to finally relent. "Has he told you why?"

Miller shifted uncomfortably in her seat, twiddling with a pencil. "Might have buggered that one up," she admitted. "When he told me, I forbade him to do it." Quite right to, Hardy thought but let her speak. "Which led to yelling and doors slamming and we had a big row about it and now he won't talk to me anymore."

This was a mess, indeed. He'd feared that it was the reason Tom had even tried to find his father, and for a moment, he felt guilty for not telling Miller about it. But it was fleeting. He'd promised Tom, and the kid had a hard-enough stand as it was, without everyone running to his mother for every trespass he committed.

Being a teenager was difficult already, he remembered. Being the son of a police-officer made it worse, he'd always thought. Not having anyone to really talk to without people passing judgement must be a nightmare. He winced. "Do you know where Joe is?"

"No," Miller growled, "and I bloody well don't want to know. If I did, I might go there and drown him like the rat he is. Except I would never drown a rat, they're cute when they're not in my garden. Or the shed. Come to think of it, Joe's not even fit enough to be called a rat!" She sniffed and rubbed her nose. "Would still drown him, though."

Supressing a grin, Hardy wanted to tell her that she should look up her ex-husband's location since her son already knew it, but just then Orrin Hagarth knocked on his door and came in. "Sorry, sir, but someone found one of the chickens. It's dead, the vet's looking it over in her office."

Miller raised her eyebrow, amused. Hardy sighed. Maybe investigating chicken-theft would get her out of the mood she was in – and if not, she would at least not bite anyone's head off but his. He could take it – the rest of the office might not.

He stood and pulled on his jacket. "Care to join me in the new and exciting crime-spree of Broadchurch?" he asked, once more suppressing a smile when she tried to seem put-upon while hurrying eagerly over to her desk to get her coat.

"I better do. You wouldn't find the vet if someone chucked you right in front of the door."

She wasn't all wrong, truthfully. He had lived here long enough to feel reluctant to ask for the vet's office at the front-desk downstairs.

O

His resolve to subtly hint at Miller to better check for Joe's new location, just in case, was thwarted by Bertha, the Speckled Wessex. Not by her, personally, as she was quite dead, but by the circumstances of her passing.

Whatever those were, it looked like it had been horrific. What lay on the table was a butchered mess of feathers, guts and blood, and Dr Ingram looked ready to kill someone when she spotted them.

"I know this isn't the same as a dead person, and your priorities lie with people," she growled through gritted teeth, "not lifestock, DI Hardy. But this poor thing suffered terribly and unnecessarily until she died, and you better catch the bastards who did it or I'll go find them myself." She carefully tried to sort the feathers on what remained of the bird's wings but gave up when all it did was move the appendage in ways even Hardy knew wings didn't move. "And nobody will find them when I'm done," she added quietly before she took a breath and went to her desk to get the written report.

Ingram was five-foot two in thick-soled boots and of slight built, kind and compassionate. He wholeheartedly believed her capable of vigilante justice.

"We'll treat it seriously, I promise," he said when he and Miller left with the written report and many disgusting photos. They would, too. Killing a chicken for fun was bad enough. Torturing a chicken for fun was certainly grounds enough to get the culprit off the street, lest he or she decided birds weren't cutting it anymore.

The rest of the day and the following week was spent looking for leads, getting mocked by SOCO and trying to comfort heartbroken Mr Henderson when he asked for the body of his bird and was told she was currently frozen as evidence. He left the consolation to Miller, taking her glare gladly in exchange for not having to deal with a grizzled farmer crying on his shoulder and instead attempted to get more resources assigned for a case of missing chickens.

If he'd been hard-pressed to get enough for the Latimer-case, he'd be truly lucky to get a traffic-warden for this.

By Friday, Alison and Happy-go-Lucky had joined Bertha in chicken-heaven, their bodies similarly mangled, their lives snuffed out in equal if not more disturbing ways. Even Brian and … what's his name, Bob? John? – one of those – had stopped clucking when he or Miller were in their presence. He'd have liked to stop them earlier but knew from experience that it was better to let such things run its course than make an arse of himself by demanding respect.

Respect was earned, he knew. If he hadn't by now for his work, he would hardly get it for being prissy.

On the following Thursday evening, without any more leads and no progress on the burglaries, he was sifting through his files back home on his couch when Daisy dropped next to him with a huff, causing the cushions to dip and him to lose his place. "Hm?" he asked, by now used to his daughter's way of starting a conversation.

"Why didn't you pack yet?"

Frowning, he looked up. "… what?"

"Ugh, seriously. Don't tell me Mom was right and you've forgotten! That would be typical…"

Hardy took off his glasses and swiped at his face, twice for good measure. "Forgotten what?" he had to ask when his brain didn't supply anything even after that. It couldn't be her birthday, could it?

No, it couldn't. He was fairly certain she was a summer-child, born in July. Also, Daisy was more amused than angry, and if he'd forgotten her birthday she would certainly not be smiling. She shook her head at him and tousled his hair – why she kept doing that was as much a mystery as her dating-advice – and grinned. "Aunt Abby's fifty-fifth, Dad. Remember her? Your sister?"

He groaned. Of course, he remembered. Now. To be fair, he and Abby had a fantastically distant relationship, her far away in Birkenhead and him down here in bloody Dorset. This way, he managed to be civil with her husband, that shite-eating wanker. But he'd promised her to be at least at her fifty-fifth, and while he certainly wouldn't win a brother-of-the-year-award, he didn't want 'worst brother in Britain' to be added to his resumé.

Still, he had to at least try. "This case…"

"Dad. It's chickens. You're not seriously trying to ditch your only other living relative's birthday for a few chickens?"

Put like that, he didn't have much of a choice. "Right. You're right. I'll better pack, don't I?"

Daisy giggled. "Yeah, you better. And take your jacket! I know you love it, don't even pretend you don't. It'll be lousy in Birkenhead, I checked the weather-app."

"Well, that's very much not a surprise," he mumbled and went to his room to stuff some clothes into an overnight-bag, memory of the birthday-details suddenly crawling up. Dammit, he'd actually booked a hotel to stay at, he recalled. Where had he put the reservation?

O

Miller was unfairly amused when he told her he'd be gone for the weekend and would leave earlier that day. "Having plans that don't include work is a good thing, Hardy. If it takes you away for a few days, that's even better. And now I know you've got a sister – that's like Christmas and Easter packed in one!" she cackled, not at all impressed by his glare.

"I'll be back Monday, but if anything happens…"

"I have your number. Which I won't call, because I'm a grown-up and actually know my job. And if anyone needs some time away from here, it's you. Take it as father-daughter-bonding time and try to enjoy yourself. I know it will be hard, but at least try to smile once."

Cheeky woman.

First, he'd thought about taking the train, reducing the stress and annoyance of traffic on a mid-Friday. But the schedule to Birkenhead was terrible and would take even longer than driving, and at least in a car he'd only have to suffer one person at his side instead of hundred sweaty, smelly, chatty bodies pressed against him. And this way, he and Daisy might even chat a little and have … well, he would never admit it to Miller, but her suggestion of bonding-time actually sounded nice. He'd not had a good talk with his daughter since Leo Humphries had been arrested, though if asked, he'd say they were doing fine.

Better at least than Tess had predicted when he'd suggested taking Daisy with him to Broadchurch, about a year ago. "You'll send her back within a month," had been her exact words, and he took an extraordinary amount of pleasure from succeeding where Tess'd had to throw in the towel.

To be fair to her, most of the tension between Daisy and Tess originated from finding out that her mother had not just cheated on her father but also cost them the Gillespie-case and that had ultimately led to him leaving Sandbrook. Since it put the blame for their wrecked marriage more into Tess's side of the field, he had an easier standing with their daughter right now than she did.

A better man than him would probably not feel as content about it and might even take Tess's side more often.

He didn't particularly feel the urge to be that good.

"So…" he started after they'd left the area and were on their way to Charmouth. It would take them up to six hours to get to their hotel in Birkenhead with this traffic, and while it had been tempting to make a stopover somewhere in the middle, it would mean for him to hurry even more on Saturday to reach the bloody restaurant where his sister's party was being held. Who in their right mind planned their birthday for twelve o clock on a Saturday? He just bet it was Howard, her arrogant of a tosser husband. His teeth ached just thinking about that twat. Last time, he'd at least not been alone.

Well, he wasn't alone now, was he? "How's golf?"

For some incomprehensible reason, Daisy had taken up golfing as a hobby. The nearby golfclub had nothing to do with the golf clubs of that tangerine cocksplat from across the pond, all posh and snobbish and white-dress and alcoholic beverage at seven in the morning. It was, like most everything in the area, robust and tourist-orientated, with a youth-team and bi-monthly fun-tournaments with all sorts of funny and inventive rules. Instinctively, he'd wanted her to find another hobby, but after taking a look at the club and the instructor and the open fields of green, he'd had to admit that it could definitely be worse.

This month, she'd come home from her practice soaked to the bone more often than not, but always happy, always smiling brightly, and if he had to look up the prices for golf-equipment now and learn the jargon a little to know what it actually was she wanted for Christmas – well. Nobody had to know.

"Oh, it's so cool! Last week we had a pit-off, and Benny and Samantha were in a team and they had no chance against me and Chloe! We kicked their asses!"

"Language", he reprimanded without real heat behind it and she stuck her tongue out and grinned.

Daisy babbled on about golf and Chloe and Beth and Mark Latimer's marriage and how Mark was staying with them for the weekend. Hardy didn't like gossip very much, even though his work relied on it heavily more times than not. But in this particular case, he was glad he got an insight into Chloe's family without having to pry. It was, after all, not really any of his business and he never felt truly comfortable in the vicinity of Beth or Mark Latimer.

Even though they never said it outright and were too good to do it anyway, he couldn't help but feel like he'd failed them. He'd promised, and he'd delivered in one way but botched it up so much that they wouldn't ever get justice.

Miller said Beth didn't care too much about it, but he knew Mark was a different matter. It had hit him hard, hearing at the trial that he'd been so close to his son's murder-site without knowing, without being able to do something, without even a chance to do something because Danny had been dead already at the time. He'd withheld that detail deliberately before, not realizing it would come up during the trial. I

So getting some inside-scoop from his daughter was all the information about the Latimers' fate he'd allow himself to gather.

In exchange for it, he told her about the chickens. A long time ago, he and Tess had sworn that they'd never involve their daughter in their work, but by now Daisy was seventeen and smart and curious, and instead of actively pretending he wasn't reading case-files at home some days and hide them, he'd started telling her the bare basics of it just to satisfy her curiosity. He'd made her promise to never read his files or look at the pictures or talk to anyone about it, and so far, she'd not broken it, ever. Of course he locked them up at night. There was caution and there was stupidity.

By the time they'd reached Taunton, Daisy was getting hungry. She demanded a proper sit-down and a toilet, so they stopped at a chippy in town and continued on to the M5. Near Bristol, he stopped at a rest-area to put the L-sign in the car and let her take the wheel, feeling mighty fatherly and happy at her beaming smile and eager little skip when she went to the right side of the car. They'd switch back once they were past Birmingham or whenever she tired, but Daisy drove really well and very attentive. She also didn't complain about him being a terrible backseat-driver, so at least something positive had come from the time he hadn't been allowed to drive.

Near Warrington, where they switched from the M6 to the M56, they took another, longer break. Daisy had put her USB-drive on and they'd been listening to her music for a while, and while some was really cringe-worthy, Hardy had found that he quite liked her taste. Nevertheless, he was getting tired and grumpy.

"Dad, if you don't stop at the next opportunity and get a coffee or something, I'll f… ecking walk the rest of the trip! You're grumpier than ever, it's getting on my nerves," she'd said and when he found himself scowling at her, ready to tell her to just do it he'd had to admit she had a point.

Now, she was inside the little shop to get a snack for him – against his wishes, but that was Daisy and he would probably eat it because she could make him do things nobody, not even Miller, could get him to do. Hardy fiddled with his phone, which he'd turned to silent for the drive. He'd barely left, surely nothing could have happened that would demand his immediate attention.

To his surprise, once he'd turned off the airplane-mode, the darn thing started beeping and bleeping, notifying of missed calls and texts. "What?" he muttered, feeling dread rise in his chest. That couldn't be good.

All of it was from Miller's phone, except the one from the station. No. No, not good at all. "Bloody hell," he started, ready to read the first text when Daisy tugged on his sleeve.

"Hey, Dad, isn't that Tom Miller?"

With trepidation, he looked up. Ah, crap. "Crap, crap, crappity crap. And yes, that's him. Shit."

Hardy was very certain he knew what all the calls were about.