Despite what people thought, Hardy was not a morning-person. Well… most people probably gathered that much from first meeting him. He had never been an early riser, usually worked better deep into the night and would have liked to sleep in long into the morning. Since his work-schedule hardly ever offered him such opportunities, it was no wonder people avoided him at seven in the morning at all costs.

His plan for the stay in Birkenhead had been to sleep until nine, have a good, long breakfast and then take his time to get ready for a party he was not particularly looking forward to.

Sadly, that well-thought-out plan was foiled at eight by his phone, which he had left switched on deliberately and for what he cursed himself now. He quickly left the room with the two sleeping teenagers, wearing only his pyjamas, shoes and his jacket to answer. He'd much rather have the conversation with Miller outside, far away from prying ears.

"Couldn't you let me sleep in, at least?"

"And good morning to you, Miller. How are you, have you slept at all after having your wits scared out of you yesterday? Well, thank you, sir, for kindly asking. I slept about an hour and have scrubbed the whole house, you?"

"You were the one who told me to let work rest for the weekend. Now you're sassing me for doing just that?"

"I am, indeed. Now, pleasantries out of the way – Fred, no, please don't eat the crayon, there's a good boy – have you talked to Tom?"

It was freezing outside. At least no rain, yet. "No. He was asleep when I came back. What's he told you?"

She sighed deeply and sounded old and worn. "He got a lift through a liftpooling-agency up to where you picked him up. He'd planned to hitchhike for the rest of the drive to where he was going. I didn't even know there were liftpools for the Broadchurch-area but given the number of tourists we get, it shouldn't be surprising. He apologized for scaring me and he cried a lot but he said he's going to see Joe no matter what, and I don't know how to stop him. He also refuses to tell me where he's going, though I guess I could find out-"

"Liverpool," he interrupted. "Joe's in Liverpool."

"How… how do you know?"

"Checked up on him a while ago. He's working as a security-guard, of all things."

"And you didn't tell me this why, exactly?"

"Because my memory works fine and you told me you didn't want to know or you'd drown him like a rat. Went on about rats afterwards. Didn't want to deal with the paperwork if you succeeded in getting rid of the bloody wanker."

"Oh. Well, fine. Liverpool then. Just as well that you're right next door, isn't it?"

Oh no. No no no no no. "No."

"He's determined. But if you tell Joe to refuse to see him, he can't and…"

"I can't just go and tell him, Joe won't listen. And I'm not threatening him!" First of all, he didn't have any jurisdiction, no leverage to compose a threat and this wasn't fucking America, so he didn't have a gun and even if he had, he wouldn't use it. While he would do an awful lot for Miller, there were limits. Seemed he'd just found one.

Hardy sighed, staring at the wet pavement with its disgusting fag-ends and soggy pieces of paper from a nearby garbage-bin. "I didn't even have breakfast yet."

"Nobody will notice, you don't eat anything anyway. Sir, you owe me for helping with the Sandbrook case. You know you do. I'm not going to, but I am not above cashing in every dept I have accumulated to get my boy back safely and away from his father, you hear me?"

His stomach rumbled and it was getting towards nine. So much for the needed sleep-in. Hopefully the coffee was good at this hotel, tea wouldn't cut it. He swiped his hand through his hair, noticing disgruntledly that they were sticking up all over the place. He probably looked like an angry hedgehog. "I'll call you back later. I've got to get ready to see my sister and her annoying husband, that'll take hours to prepare." If he were still allowed to drink, it would also take a bottle of Scotch. Through the line, he heard her take a breath. "Later, Miller. Don't make me switch off my phone. If you're bored, solve the chicken-murder."

He hung up on her, too weary for more back-and-forth with her. Instead he went back up to his room where the kids were still snoring and looking well-rested. For that, he let the door slam shut and felt a satisfying amount of glee when both of them shot up from the noise. "Get up, get done, we're having breakfast. Tom, I hope you've got some more clothes than this," he pointed to him, as he'd slept in jeans and shirt and jumper "because I won't be taking you to that party all wrinkly."

Daisy chortled from her bed and, still chuckling, padded into the bathroom. "That from the man wearing his jammies outside, looking like a grumpy echidna."

His glare missed her by miles and rebounded from the closed door. "Right. What've you got in there?"

Silently, warily, Tom went through the backpack and pulled out underpants, socks, another t-shirt with the Incredible Hulk on it and that was it. Kids these days… didn't even know how to run away properly.

While Hardy felt a tingle of amusement at the thought of Tom arriving at his sister's party with Hulk on his chest, he wouldn't let him do it. "Right. You got any money on you?" With averted eyes, the boy nodded. "How much?"

"Hundred pounds, sir. Well – sixty-eight now." At his raised eyebrow, Tom hurriedly added, "earned it, I swear! From doing the paper-rounds."

"Well, good for ya. Take a shower," he said just as Daisy came out of the bath, looking perky and smirking wildly and being his daughter who was living with him, which he still couldn't quite believe. "Get dressed and after breakfast, we'll have a quick trip to get you something more appropriate to wear for a fifty-fifth birthday. You're paying."

Daisy, who'd perked up at him mentioning shopping, sat down on her bed and stared at him as Tom slipped into the bathroom while looking gloomy and annoyed but smart enough to keep his trap shut. The headache was back, and Hardy wanted nothing more than to take a shower himself but he had to wait and instead sank down next to her.

"You're awfully nice, Dad. Are you okay?"

Hardy groaned. "Not you, too."

Daisy grinned. "Sorry. S' just… Don't be too harsh, yeah? He… well. He's an idiot for doing this, I agree, but hear him out before you really yell at him, okay?" She leaned over and put her head on his shoulder and something unpleasantly similar to contentment and happiness rose in his chest and made his heart skip a beat. He leaned over, too, cheek touching the top of her head, and grunted affirmation.

Being his daughter, she knew what he meant anyway.

O

After breakfast and a quick but thoroughly unpleasant shopping-trip that he would rather wipe out of his mind forever and which yielded not only a pair of black jeans and a sensible dress-shirt for Tom but also, for some reason, a new pair of shoes for Daisy which he'd paid for, they had about an hour left before they had to drive to his sister's party-location.

Tom was leafing through a tourist-magazine and looking more and more despondent the longer the day went and Hardy knew he'd have to talk to him before they went or the boy would make a runner the moment he was unattended.

It was either that or handcuff him to his wrist, but he felt he was already unduly punished for his good deeds. Then again, with a little felon chained to his side, at least he could prevent stupid Howard from being too annoying.

With a near-smile over that image, he stood from the bed and jerked his head towards the door. "Tom? Let's take a walk."

Huffing, Tom followed but once they'd reached the street outside, all bluster vanished from him. He looked, once more, like a truly sad and lonely boy who hadn't been able to get over all the shite life had thrown at him during the last years.

Hardy led them to a small park across the road and sat down on the bench, nodding for Tom to do the same. Then he waited.

He knew he could wait a long time. He had patience, more than most people believed he could muster, though the length of time Tom was able to stay silent until he fidgeted was impressive. "I… I'm sorry."

Well, that was a good start. "Go on."

"I'm sorry for scaring Mom. I… I apologized to her, but I guess she's still mad." Hardy raised his eyebrows. Sharp observation-skills there. "And I'm sorry I'm sorta ruining your weekend. It's… It's just, I did what you said, sir. I tried to talk to Mom about Dad, really, I did. Just…whenever I try, she shuts me up and changes the subject or gets angry or sad and… how'm I to ask her if maybe you all made a mistake? About… things. I mean, with all that happened, it's not like I can even suggest it. It'd make her all upset and sad."

He wasn't wrong.

"And if there was a mistake or Dad was covering someone… she wouldn't know, and neither would you… so… so I mean, there's only one person I can ask, is there? And I can't very well phone him, can I? So I thought, just a quick trip, talk, ask him all kinds of things and…" Tom sniffed. "I mean, I don't know. Maybe… I think… I'm not sure I even believe he didn't do it, but maybe there was a reason? Another than you all said there was. And… I mean…" He sniffed again and Hardy chanced a look over. Tom's eyes were glassy and red, not yet spilling over but close to. "I don't know, but… How can he … I mean, I know him, right? He's my dad. He…"

Now, the floodgates truly opened and the tears fell; big drops of deep misery and pain, and Hardy's heart once more did a funny thing and lurched towards this boy with sympathy. He kept silent though, because speaking would break the spell and change the rhythm between them, and right now, all this had to be said and spoken out loud.

He doubted Tom had ever said any of this to anyone. Who would he have talked to? Miller? Hardly. Not about this. And his friends had proven to be little pieces of shite, too. Well, maybe that was unfair. Hardy only knew of the one friend, it was possible there were others. It would still be very awkward to talk to teenage-boys about how your father had killed his then-best-friend because he'd fallen in 'love' with him.

"He's my dad," Tom breathed. "I can't believe he did what all say he did, and if he did…" He was sobbing now and if Hardy had been anyone else, he might have put his arm around him to give a hug. He wasn't very good with hugging, though, at least not to Millers, so he didn't.

Instead, when Tom had calmed down and it seemed he was lost for words, he started to tell a story. "When I was a kid, my parents used to fight all the time. Not just rows – really big fights. Yelling, throwing things, being mean and cruel. All the time. I can't remember a day they didn't at least slam doors or scream. My father always started it. Something always set him off; maybe the wrong colour on his towel or there was a plate on the table left over from breakfast."

The house had usually been spotless. As a kid, Alec had always made certain of that because while his father always started, his mother never backed down and gave back as good as she got and if things were perfect, maybe there would be less yelling? Never quite worked.

"He was a copper, too, and when he was gone to the pub after a row, my mother used to say that he wasn't really like this, that he just couldn't deal with all he saw each day on his job." He stopped, recalling vividly his mother's sad and resigned face when she had tried to console him after a particularly loud, cruel bollocking for some completely inane reason. He'd been … maybe thirteen? Hard to say, but definitely younger than Tom was now. Certainly smaller, he remembered. "And later, when I started in the police myself, back in Glasgow, people were all over me for being my father's son. 'What, you're Alan's son? Well done!'"

As if having been born was an accomplishment on its own. "And even people from the street, people he had met, were happy to tell me stories of how my father had done things for them and been kind and patient and had been there for them in their hours of need."

Hardy wasn't looking at the park anymore, just staring at the trees and trying to remember the face of his father, just like he had tried back then. "It's weird, you know? Here I was, having all those memories of him shouting and kicking the walls and punching the table," not punching people, at least not that he had been aware of, but the constant threat of violence had been so thick it could have been cut with a knife. "And there were people out there saying how great of a person he was to them. How much they admired him. Crime-victims, colleagues, even some criminals. Used to think they were wrong, that there must be another Alan Hardy out there."

There hadn't been. He'd checked.

Hardy exhaled slowly. "It took quite some time to understand that people can be two completely different things at once. They can be pieces of shite at home and kind and helpful at their job. You can be mean and angry all the time but in professional mode, you can shut it off and be what you wanted to be for those other people. And maybe he actually was a kind person and just, for some reason, couldn't be that with us?" Which would lay the blame on Alan's family, and that was just plain wrong. His father had been a raving lunatic, and nothing safe leaving him would have changed his behaviour. There was no one to blame but Alan Hardy. "Never figured out which was the real Alan Hardy."

Tom frowned, thinking. "Did you ever get to see the nice him?"

"No. He died when I was eighteen." About a year after his mother had, and he had certainly not been kind after her death. By then, Hardy had been living on his mate's couches more often than not and any notion of returning home to care for his widowed father had been destroyed after two seconds within meeting the old bastard.

"How… how did he die?"

Hardy chuckled. "Heart-attack," he said and felt Tom snicker beside him. Yeah. He'd been sharply reminded of the absurdity in that, back on the dock when his own ticker had threatened to kill him for being so bloody stubborn. It had been excruciating, and with that experience under his belt now, Hardy wasn't so sure anymore that the old codger had gotten off as lightly as he'd always assumed.

"So, what're you saying… is it that my dad can be a bad man and a good man all in one?"

"Hmhm." Though he'd have to stretch quite far to call Joe a 'good man'.

"But… which is the real Dad? I… all my life he was there, you know? He was always there when Mom was working, when we were sick. Did homework with me, cooked, changed Fred's diapers and cleaned and did all sorts of stuff. He…" Tom choked on the words, "he was a great dad." His voice broke then and he angrily wiped the tears away from his eyes. "He was a really great dad, always there for everything, every problem I had with school and other stuff. Never got really angry – I mean, sure, Mom and he fought but… you know, squabble. Nothing serious. And in court they said… this woman from Cardiff, she said he had a temper, but I never saw him like that. He didn't yell, except when I nearly drilled a hole in my leg with the power-drill, and he never hit me or Mom or … anything. He can't have done that, he can't… it doesn't make sense! He's my dad and…" Tom's eyes were red and liquid and he looked completely miserable and desperate for Hardy to understand what he was saying. "I love him. He's my dad."

And the awful thing was that he did. Hardy did understand and there was nothing he could say to Tom to make this better. Nothing.

But maybe… maybe he could do something.

Tom stood from the bench and walked a few feet away, probably trying to reign in his tears and calm down a little. Hardy's phone-alarm jingled its annoying tune to tell him they had to get back, and a plan was forming in his mind. A bad plan. A stupid plan. A plan that might actually help, but only if everything went right. A plan he'd need time to set up, preferably more than a few hours but that was all he had.

A plan that he needed Miller's blessing for, because it would go against all of her instincts and he wouldn't want to go behind her back with something like this. He didn't have enough friends to endanger even one of his friendships.

"Come on. We gotta go."