Phoenix Rising Chapter 2, a broadchurch fanfic

A/N1 - Did I happen to mention that this fic is a bit more crack-y than I usually write? Well...it is...a little bit. :)

*/*/*/*/*

Ellie raises an eyebrow when she sees Hardy's number pop up on her phone.

"Another bloody reporter?" asks her partner, glancing away from the road and giving her a slightly cruel smirk.

Ellie rolls her eyes and shakes her head in response. After six weeks, she's heartily sick of the still-steady stream of phone calls and e-mails from reporters wanting an interview, the constant ribbing from her co-workers, and the seemingly endless cruising of the back roads of Devon searching for traffic violations. The job had been just what she needed after the shit-show her life had become immediately after Joe's arrest, but now she feels like it's just a matter of time before it all drives her completely mad.

She picks up the call.

"Hello."

"You wanted me to tell you when that show was going to be broadcast."

"I'm fine, Hardy, how are you?" she says sarcastically.

"What?"

She sighs, "Never mind."

There's puzzled silence on the other end of the phone, then Hardy says, "Friday evening. Seven o'clock."

"Awright. Have you seen it?"

"God, no! I'm not watching the bloody thing!"

She almost smiles at the horrified disgust in his voice. "Well, think of it this way: you'll finally be on telly."

"I've been on telly before, Miller."

Any urge to smile disappears as she remembers when and why he's made other television appearances.

"Right," she mumbles.

"Miller..." he hesitates and for a second she can see him as clearly as if he was standing in front of her, struggling to determine what to say next. "Warn the Latimers, awright?" he finally says. "According to Isabella, the series has quite a good reputation. She swears it's not sensationalist, for an American series about real murders, anyway."

"Well, that's something, at least."

"Not enough," he says morosely.

"I'll let them know," she says. "Any idea yet when they're going to let you back on the force?"

He snorts. "Not any time soon. Now it's because I've been too much in the press and my notoriety might interfere with my ability to do my job. For God's sake. At least the requests are starting to ease off, now they've pled guilty and are just waiting to be sentenced."

"And it only took six weeks. I'm impressed with Sandbrook's efficiency."

"The case was deemed high priority given the public's extreme interest in both the crimes and the arrests."

"That sounds suspiciously like a prepared statement."

"I see you haven't lost your detecting skills, Miller," he says, a thread of amusement in his voice.

"Not yet, anyway." She glances over at her avidly listening partner. "I have to go," she says, suddenly brisk. "Friday?"

"Yah. At seven. Warn the Latimers."

"I will."

They end the call, and she gives her partner a non-committal smile before pointedly turning her head to look out the window.

*/*/*/*/*

They gather at Lucy's. It's a neutral location, or at least more neutral than Beth and Mark's place, or Ellie's. They're a bit cramped in the small living room: Beth, Mark and Chloe on the couch, with baby Lizzie cooing on a blanket on the floor beside Fred, and Ellie and Lucy on the loveseat, while Ollie has the armchair and Tom is perched on a chair brought in from the kitchen.

It would look like a party if they weren't so nervous. They make desultory conversation and go abruptly silent as the episode begins.

*/*/*/*/*

{{A bland, well-groomed man of indeterminate age stands in front of a large screen with the series' title.}}

Jeffery: Good evening, I'm Collin Jeffery. Tonight, on a special, two-hour edition of Close to Home, we go across the sea to Great Britain. In a small English city, two girls go missing. One is found in a river three days later but the other has disappeared without a trace. An arrest, a scandal, and the case falls apart. A year later, a boy is murdered in a sleepy tourist town on the south coast of the country. Two unrelated crimes, connected in a way that no one would expect. This is the story of three families touched by tragedy, two communities changed forever...and one man who links them together. Here is Grace Heath.

{{Grace Heath is a polished blonde woman, also of indeterminate age. Over photographs of Pippa and Lisa and their families, footage of scenes in and around Sandbrook, as well as interviews with friends and family, Grace calmly lays out the tangled history of the Gillespie, Newberry and Ashworth families prior to the disappearance of the two girls. She then describes the course of the investigation and the evidence, including the discovery of Pippa's body, Lee Ashworth's arrest, and the beginning of his trial.}}

Grace (voice-over): The case against Ashworth is circumstantial at best, but everyone involved is convinced he's the right man. This belief seems to be confirmed when the police finally catch a break: in the back of a car Lee Ashworth had recently sold, they find the pendant Pippa Gillespie was wearing the day she disappeared. Is this the smoking gun they've been waiting for?

Grace (voice-over) cont'd: Then…disaster.

Grace (voice-over) cont'd: An illicit affair between detectives. A decision to stop for a clandestine tryst, with essential evidence in a murder case left in the back seat of the car. A theft. A scandal. A case in tatters. And one man taking the fall.

{{Blurred footage of the back of a tall, lanky man, walking towards a chair. He comes in to focus as he turns and sits down, looking distinctly uncomfortable as he stares into the camera with wide eyes.}}

/ Ellie catches her breath. It's been weeks since she's seen him and while he's still scruffy, he's at least combed his hair. But he looks so different somehow...must be because he's on telly. /

Grace (voice-over) cont'd: This man: Detective Inspector Alec Hardy, the man in charge of the team of police investigating the crime.

Grace (to Hardy): How did you feel when you realized the pendant had been stolen?

{{Hardy's face fills the screen as he stares at her in silence, dark eyes wide, lips pressed into a tight, thin line.}}

/ "Blimey, I think he's going to cry, Ell," Lucy mutters.

Ellie hushes her without taking her eyes from the screen. She feels as if she's seeing the man for the first time, and maybe she is. It's certainly the first time she's looking at him without resentment ("You took my job."), grief ("I know that boy!"), anger ("...knob..."), horror ("No! Not Joe!"), or through the veil of shit that had become her life after the confession and during the trial. /

Hardy: That's a {{bleep}} stupid question!

/ Everyone in the living room blinks and rears back, then exchange rueful grins.

"Well," Ellie says, "maybe not cry." /

{{On-screen, Hardy glares at the interviewer, almost visibly vibrating with righteous outrage.}}

Hardy: How do you think I felt? My only piece of physical evidence-gone. Knowing the case would fall apart without it. Knowing I had a missing girl I still needed to find, and a- {{his voice cracks but he doesn't waver}} -a dead child who still needed justice, families that still needed answers. How do you think I felt? If all your questions are going to be this bloody stupid, we can end this right now.

Grace (voice-over): Hardy has good reason to be sensitive to the question.

{{Montage of headlines and news clips illustrating the anger and vitriol in the press and the community in the immediate aftermath of the theft.}}

Grace (voice-over) cont'd: When the theft came to light and the trial fell apart, he alone took the blame-and the fallout. Pilloried in the press and by the community, asked to resign, his marriage broken from the strain, Alec Hardy slunk out of Sandbrook to start over, to put the Gillespie/Newberry case behind him.

Grace (voice-over) cont'd: A little over a year after Pippa Gillespie was murdered and Lisa Newberry went missing, Alec Hardy arrives here, a new Detective Inspector in a sleepy little tourist town where nothing much ever happens. A small village in Dorset, Broachurch is a popular tourist destination known for its dramatic landscape and not much else.

Grace (voice-over) cont'd: Until July 2013, when the body of a boy is found on the beach. Danny Latimer, eleven years old. Strangled to death. And the person in charge of the case is none other Alec Hardy, who's been in Broadchurch for less than three weeks.

/ No one in Lucy's living room can take their eyes off the screen. Ellie's fingers curl into tight fists as Grace Heath relays the story of Danny's murder in her dispassionate voice. Ellie starts when Lucy reaches over and puts her hand over hers.

She unfurls her fingers and the sisters hold hands as the documentary continues. /

{{Grace describes the course of events during the investigation into Danny's murder, and delves into Ellie's role, Jack Marshall's suicide, Hardy being labelled The Worst Cop in Britain, and goes on to describe Joe's arrest, trial and acquittal.}}

/ Ellie's breathing heavily by the time the segment is over. It isn't until she hears Lucy say a very quiet, "Ow," that she realizes how tightly she's clutching at her sister's hand and makes a conscious effort to relax her grip. /

Grace (voice-over): There, by rights, should be where these stories end, but in many ways, it's where they begin...again. Because unknown to anyone there, Alec Hardy had a secret. Several, in fact, and how those secrets would impact both of these cases would surprise everyone.

Grace (voice-over) cont'd: His first secret was he was hiding a life-threatening heart condition, and had been from the moment he arrived in Broadchurch. The entire time he was hunting for Danny Latimer's killer, he had a ticking time bomb in his chest. Not that that fact helped him during Joe Miller's trial.

Grace (to Hardy): You were accused of beating a confession out of Joe Miller.

Hardy: Yes.

Grace: Where were you, barely forty-eight hours before you arrested Joe Miller?

Hardy: In hospital. I had been injured while pursuing a suspect.

Grace: By injured, don't you mean heart attack?

Hardy: It wasn't exactly a heart attack.

Grace: Your heart stopped beating. Isn't that the very definition of heart attack?

Grace: Would you have been in any shape to beat a confession out of Joe Miller?

Hardy: I'm not in the habit of beating anybody, whether I'm in shape for it or not.

/ As he warily responds to the interviewer, Ellie thinks whoever's running the camera must have a crush on him, because the angles they choose puts him to his best advantage. Still scruffy, yes, but better groomed than in Broadchurch and almost...Ellie hesitates...handsome.

If you like the scruffy, too-tall, too-much-of-a-wanker kind of men.

Which she doesn't. /

Grace: You were also accused of having an affair with Joe Miller's wife, Ellie, the Detective Sergeant who helped you investigate Danny Latimer's murder.

Hardy {{rolls eyes}}: Just the defense team throwing {{bleep}} hoping something would stick.

Grace: The Defense alleged that Ellie spent more than two hours in your hotel room with you the evening Joe was arrested. Is that true?

Hardy: I didn't really notice the time.

Grace: So it's true.

Hardy: Like I said, I didn't notice how long she stayed, but the fact she was there? Yes.

Grace: But the not the rest.

Hardy: No.

Grace: Why should we believe you?

Hardy: Because, as you pointed out earlier, not even forty-eight hours earlier I'd been in the hospital after being injured while pursuing a suspect.

Grace: You mean after your heart attack.

Grace (voice-over): Hardy's second secret was that he didn't come to Broadchurch alone. He rented an isolated cottage just outside the village for Claire Ripley, the same Claire Ripley who was married to Lee Ashworth and was a key witness against her husband during his trial.

{{Grace explains how and why Hardy began hiding Claire, then moves to Ellie's involvement in the Sandbrook investigation, the resulting revelations about the case, the arrests and the subsequent confessions from Lee, Ricky and Claire.}}

Grace (voice over): The third secret Hardy was hiding was that the pendant hadn't been stolen out of his car. He hadn't been the one who stopped for a drink with critical evidence left on the back seat. Instead, it had been two Detective Sergeants, involved in an illicit affair, who had stopped for a tryst at a hotel.

Grace (to Hardy): You took the blame.

Hardy: It happened on my watch. It was my responsibility.

Grace: It seems to be a rather drastic step, taking the blame to protect two Detective Sergeants who should have known better than to stop somewhere while they were transporting vital evidence in a criminal investigation.

Grace: Is there something about the theft of the pendant that you're still not sharing?

Grace: You tried to take the blame during Joe Miller's trial as well. When they questioned you about Detective Sergeant Ellie Miller being allowed access to her husband immediately after he had confessed to murder, you said it was your fault then, too.

Hardy: Yes.

Grace: You seem to have a habit of making bad decisions during criminal investigations.

Grace: Are you working right now?

Hardy: No.

Grace: Do you think your record of poor judgment may play a role in your failure to find a job?

Hardy: It's more likely because I haven't started looking yet.

Grace: Right. You're still recovering from heart surgery.

Grace: You did just have surgery to put in a pacemaker, didn't you?

Grace: You have nothing to say about that?

Hardy: Just that we have privacy laws in this country and I'm thinking you may have broken a few in order to get that information.

Grace: So it's true.

/ Lucy says, "He's a bitch to interview, but he looks really good while he's ignoring the questions."

Beth and Ellie exchange amused glances while Ollie scrunches up his face with disgust and says, "Mom!"

Lucy waves a hand, her eyes still focused on the telly. /

Grace: Was it worth it? After everything you lost, after everything that happened...was it worth the price you paid?

{{Hardy stares silently at the interviewer, the camera catching every emotion on his face and in his eyes.}}

Hardy (slowly): It wasn't worth the pain I caused my daughter. I didn't realize how bad it would get and how much it would impact her.

Grace: What about the impact on you?

Hardy: I had to get justice for Pippa and Lisa. I saw a chance and took it. Was it worth the price I paid? Aye, in the end. Was it worth the price other people paid? {{shrugs slightly}} I can't speak for them.

Grace: Do you think you'll find another job? As a Detective Inspector?

Hardy: I'm hopeful.

Grace: Have you been cleared, medically, to return to the force?

Hardy: Yes.

Grace: Then you'd only have to worry about your reputation as the worst cop in Britain?

Hardy {{rolls eyes}}: It was one bloody newspaper!

Grace (voice over): To say Alec Hardy is a mystery wrapped in an enigma would be an understatement. Grumpy and taciturn to a fault, over the course of a sometimes difficult four-hour interview, however, it became clear that beneath the gruff exterior and the unwavering, passionate devotion to getting justice for the victims and their families, there's a tentative, almost shy charm and a wry sense of humor.

Grace (to Hardy): You say it was worth it, in the end. Except you lost your family, your job, your reputation, almost your career. Yet you still didn't give up on the case. You took advantage of the opportunity to keep Claire Ripley close to you, to keep your connection to her alive.

Hardy {{shrugs}}: I did what anyone else would have done.

Grace: Except no one else was doing it. Your ex-wife was promoted to your old position. Do you know how many times she turned down requests to re-open the case?

Hardy: Probably none, because no one wanted to touch it.

Grace: Except you. That's true devotion.

Hardy: We-ell, you call it devotion now. Others called it obsession.

Grace: It got the job done.

Hardy: Na. Outstanding detective work got the job done.

Grace: Yours?

Hardy {{rolls his eyes}}: Miller's, of course! She's the one who made the connection we'd all missed the first time round.

Grace (to Hardy): We sent multiple requests for an interview to Ellie Miller. She refused with…some…rather colourful expletives followed by a direct threat to our producer's testicles if our staff came anywhere near her.

Hardy {{Close-up of Hardy's face as he slowly smiles then laughs.}}: Wish I'd thought of that.

/ Every woman in Lucy's living room audibly gasps, including Ellie.

Lucy elbows her sister and says, "Told you!"

Ellie rolls her eyes in response and ignores the curious look Beth sends in her direction. /

Grace (voice over): During our interview, Alec Hardy repeatedly insisted the cases weren't about him. He asked us to focus on the victims and their families, on the lessons learned from these tragedies, on the damage done to the communities as a result of these senseless crimes. He continually down-played his own role in keeping the Sandbrook case alive when everyone around him had given up, and reminded us to give credit to Ellie Miller, the woman he claims was the final catalyst needed to solve the case.

Grace (voice over) cont'd: Whatever may be next for this detective who is almost as doggedly determined to avoid taking the credit as he is willing to shoulder the blame, we're sure he'll continue to do what he does best: work tirelessly for the victims and their families.

Jeffery: Joe Miller left Broadchurch after his acquittal. Efforts to find him for this program were unsuccessful. Ricky Gillespie, Lee Ashworth and Claire Ripley have pled guilty to the charges against them and are currently awaiting sentencing. This is Collin Jeffery for Close to Home. Thank you for watching. Goodnight.

*/*/*/*/*

Ellie feels like a wet rag after the program ends and the television is turned off. She looks at Beth, who's pale but composed.

"That wasn't so bad, yah?" Ellie says.

Beth wipes at her eyes. "It was...better than I expected."

"Hardy seems to be everywhere these days," Mark says thoughtfully.

Ellie pulls a face. "Under orders of the South Mercia constabulary. Personally, I think they're trying to save face."

"Save face?" Ollie asks. "How do you mean?"

She shoots him a warning look. "They gave up on the case," she says, "and Hardy didn't. It looks bad on them that they didn't keep trying to solve it. Trust me, he can't wait until the frenzy dies down and he can get back to a real job."

"Well, it's got to calm down soon," Beth says.

"I certainly hope so," Ellie sighs, and gratefully takes the drink Lucy hands her.

*/*/*/*/*

She wanders aimlessly from her kitchen to the living room and back again once Fred's down for the night and Tom's up in his room. Ellie's vaguely worried about Tom; he'd been even quieter than usual on the way home.

She understands.

Even she sometimes has a difficult time reconciling the Joe they'd known—loving, supportive, fun-loving, happy Joe—with the man who claimed to have fallen in love with an eleven-year-old boy and then murdered him rather than face the truth about their relationship, or have it exposed. It's confusing and unsettling and may always stay that way.

Maybe, as Hardy said that awful night, some things are just unknowable.

She wanders back into the living room and sighs as she grabs the phone.

He picks up on the second ring.

"Yah?"

"Did you watch it?"

"I'm fine, Miller, how are you?"

"What?" she demands then stops as she realizes what she's done. She chuckles and to her surprise there's a sound on the other end of the phone, warm and husky, almost like he's chuckling, too.

"You're a bad influence," she tells him.

"Me? I'm not even there!"

She sinks down on to the sofa with a smile, puts her feet up on the coffee table, and begins to trade barbs with her former boss.

*/*/*/*/*

A/N2 - As I mentioned in my Author's Notes for Empty Spaces, I watch waaaayyyy too many real crime documentaries. When the premise of this story came to me, I knew I wouldn't be able to resist writing a version of a documentary about Sandbrook and Broadchurch and Alec Hardy/Ellie Miller. Hopefully I managed to make it understandable (since I didn't feel like putting it in proper script format). :D