"What the fuck do you think you're doing! I should kick your arse from here to London, you colossal … prick! Are you off your head? Did your brain melt? I can't believe …" Words failed him as Hardy pulled Tom along with a firm grip on his wrist. That little shite would not slip away from him, even if it meant he had to cuff him to the car. While ignoring the boy's complaints of police-brutality, he quick-dialled Miller on his phone. "Daisy, open the door," he snarled just as his partner picked up the line.

"Sir, it's Tom, he's…" Before he could process the tears and sheer terror in Miller's voice, he interrupted.

"He's here," he grunted and glared at the prat in question until said prat reluctantly and slightly ashamed slid into the backseat. Daisy, bless her, got in on the other side so he couldn't slip out again and take a run.

There was a moment of silence from the phone. "What do you mean, he's 'here'? Where's here, and why's he there, and what… is he okay, is he alright? Please … please…"

Everyone could be a murderer, given the right circumstance, he'd once said and still firmly believed. Right now, he felt the overwhelming urge to throttle Tom for making his mother sound like this. Not even after he'd told her Danny's murderer was her own husband had she sounded so small and breakable, and with a smothered curse, he slammed the car-door shut so he wouldn't be tempted to act on his anger and make everything worse by killing Miller's son.

"He's here, with me and Daisy. We're at a rest-area near Warrington, close to Liverpool, and he looks fine so far." Until I'm done with him, but he didn't add that. "I've got no idea… well. I've got some kind of an idea what he's doing here but no clue how he got here and when. I'll get it out of him, though, promise."

Hardy heard a sob from Miller and had to go kick the garbage-bin, he was so furious. With some of the tension gone – and being able to get really angry without fainting would never not be precious for him anymore – he put the phone back to his ear. "Do you want to talk to him?"

Miller gave a teary chuckle, then he heard her take a deep breath. "I don't know what I want to do right now. That boy is lucky he's so far away or I'd … I don't even know. God…" He pictured her wiping her face, maybe trying to contain the tears and the rising anger. "He left me a bloody note on the kitchen-table! Left his phone as well so nobody could track him. I've – Oh god, I'll have to call everyone, tell them they can stop looking. I feel like a fool…"

"Take a deep breath, calm down, Miller."

"Don't bloody tell me to bloody calm down! I can fucking well be upset when my bloody –" there was a second of indecision before she found the right word "wanker of a son decides to run off to find his even worse arsehole of a father with just a note on the bloody coffee-table! 'Off to find Dad, be back Sunday'! Who does that? Who taught that boy to do something like that? What… I…" She was gasping for breath – impressive amount of yelling, Hardy had to concede. He rubbed his aching neck and looked back towards the car where Daisy and Tom where still on the backseat, probably talking.

"Look," he spoke. "It's nearly eight now. You won't be able to come up here before deep in the night anyway and apart from yelling at him, your presence won't actually help any." He realized that even for him, that was insensitive. "Wait, hear me out. We're on our way to Birkenhead, Daisy and I, and rather than you coming up here and towing him back on his ears – which he deserves, no doubt about it – why don't you take the time to get your thoughts in order, lay out your arguments and all the punishment you deem fit and we'll deliver him back home to you on Sunday evening."

Silence.

Then a slow exhale. "You're offering to take my teenage son, who's just run away to find his murdering father with you to your sister's birthday? Voluntarily?" Hardy groaned. This was a mistake. "Who are you? What have you done to my boss?"

"Well, you can always come up here," he snarked back. "It's a very pleasant six-hour drive, with plenty of scenic roadworks and traffic-jams. I'm certainly not driving back to Broadchurch right now, so apart from putting your son in the local gaol for you to pick up, those are your options." God, his head hurt. He wanted a bed so much, the thought of it drove tears to his eyes.

Again, Miller took a deep breath. "No, of course. I'm sorry. If you're offering, I'll take it. I need some time to get drunk. You go find a hotel – I'll pay the extra for Tom's room, of course – and have him call me back the moment you reach it. The very moment! Don't let him do anything else but call me, because I'm bloody furious and you're right, and I'll deny to have ever said that, but I need to calm down before I talk to him." She sighed once more, then added "thank you. Thank you so much," before she hung up.

Taking a few deep breaths himself, Hardy steeled himself to go back to the car and deal with the moody problem of a lost boy, who needed a psychologist much more than he needed a grumpy copper.

Once he reached it, a look into the window had most of his anger evaporate and he decided to lay off the yelling and let Miller do it herself. Tom was openly crying. Big tears and runny nose, blotchy face and all, and to let himself go like this right next to a beautiful girl must mean he was truly, deeply upset. Dammit. Now he couldn't even be properly angry at him.

Instead of that, he got into the car and looked at the two kids on the backseat via the mirror. "You're coming with us to the hotel, Tom. The moment we're there, you call you mother and if the first words out of your mouth isn't an honest, meaningful apology, I'll let Birkenhead's police dump you in a cell overnight for … exposing yourself to a senior citizen. Understood?"

In the mirror, Tom nodded. "Good. Now, don't think that you're getting off lightly. You won't leave my sight for the whole weekend," and why he had to be punished as well as Tom was yet to be understood "and I demand a very good, very thorough explanation for your harebrained idea to go to Liverpool all on your own. You'll explain how you got here and why you need to talk to your father so desperately that you had your mother alert half of Dorset's police to see where you disappeared to and had her checking every corpse found anywhere in Britain." He was embellishing the truth a little – hopefully, Miller hadn't really been checking dead kids yet – but he was aiming to make the boy truly understand how much of a fuck-up his little trip had been. Tom, sensibly, remained silent and nodded towards the floor. "Good. Now, Daise, you want to sit in front again?" He left it open if she would offer more comfort to Tom or take the superior seat next to him, and he secretly smiled when his daughter patted Tom's shoulder and hurried up to the front.

Tom stayed, not saying a word for the remainder of the drive and neither did anyone else. After two miles of silence, Daisy put her music back on and they drove on, westwards.

By the time they arrived, Eminem had started to grow on him a little.

O

At the hotel, Hardy had to ask for an extra-bed to be put in the room for Tom. The concierge grumpled and gnarled at him, as if he'd just failed to mention a second child deliberately. To be fair, he hadn't told him that he'd picked up Tom at a rest-stop. It would probably paint a wrong and disturbing picture.

Up in the room, the bags had barely touched the floor, he handed Tom his phone and glared at him. "We'll be downstairs, getting a bite. Come down when you're done. That's not a request."

He nodded his head to Daisy, but she lingered. "I really need the loo, Dad. And I look like I've driven six hours – I want to change. If you want to look like a walking wrinkle, that's fine but please let me change first?" she begged and he relented.

"Ten minutes. Tom, your mom's on speed-dial, no need to delay."

With that, he left the room to look for a bathroom in the restaurant because Daisy had beaten him to the toilet upstairs. And maybe he could wash some of the tension off his face there, too. Bloody hell, he'd wanted to escape his sister's birthday by any chance he got, but now he'd rather listen to his stupid prick of a brother-in-law than deal with the mess Joe Miller had left when he'd proved not only a murderer but a coward as well.

Tom did not come down to eat. Hardy had half a mind to tell him off for it but decided against it when, after a good meal with Daisy and a lot of father-daughter-snarking back and forth, he found the boy curled up into his pillow on the pitiful cot by the window. Hardy was in too good a mood to wake him and resolved to have a talk with him tomorrow. With a sigh, he picked up Tom's discarded jacket and boots and put them on a chair to dry out.

His phone was on the dresser, already hooked up to the charger and if that mellowed him down further, just as well. Snooping was his profession, so he checked the call-log and found that Tom had talked with his mother for a good hour. Which should suffice for the night, he supposed. Since Daise'd had the opportunity earlier to use the bathroom, he took a quick shower and brushed his teeth before she could and went to bed. Originally, he'd planned to read a little but he barely heard Daisy come back into the bedroom before he was out.