Chapter Nine Dead Air #2
But Harrison told Murray to keep close to him. FLO coverage would continue around the clock, and Harrison wanted to know if anything changed.
So by twenty-one hundred, he’d pushed for land ownership data bordering the woodland perimeter.
It wasn’t suspicion yet, more instinct. He didn’t like blank edges on maps.
At twenty-two hundred, he reviewed the search logs line by line.
Where officers had walked. Where they hadn’t.
Which patches of undergrowth were too dense for a quick sweep and would require daylight and proper resources.
After midnight the station quietened.
That was when his real work had begun.
Not visible work. Thinking work.
He’d spread Emily’s timeline across the desk and worked through it piece by piece, pressing on the weak spots.
Testing for gaps. Assumptions. Anywhere the story might bend.
If she’d planned to leave voluntarily, there would usually be signs.
Preparation. Money withdrawn. Clothes missing.
Digital chatter with friends about where she was going or how she’d get there.
So far, there had been none of that. No missing belongings.
No unusual banking activity. No messages suggesting she’d been planning an escape.
So he’d requested deeper background checks. Not because there was an obvious suspect—Deacon’s alibi with his girlfriend checked out, meaning he was off the official suspect list—but because the absence of one bothered him.
Around half-past one, the Robyn Whitton case file arrived, dropped onto Harrison’s desk by an overly eager constable who looked pleased to have been trusted with it.
He already had access to the digitised material in the system, but old investigations lived differently on paper.
Original statements. Hand-drawn maps. Search logs.
Decision records. Sometimes the truth sat in the margins of those.
So he hadn’t started with the witness statements.
He’d started with the search strategy.
That was where investigations failed. Not in what people said, but in the decisions made about where to look.
The initial perimeter map lay folded inside the file, yellowing at the edges. Harrison had flattened it across the desk.
The search boundary stopped cleanly at the edge of the private estate land.
Public woodland: thoroughly searched.
Beyond the estate boundary: no search activity recorded.
He’d pulled up the modern digital map beside it and laid them side by side, tracing the same boundary with his finger. He wasn’t criticising the original team. Search perimeters always had to start somewhere. But they also had to justify where they stopped.
Thirteen years apart.
Exactly the same line.
By two he’d made notes in the margin of Emily’s action log: Reassess perimeter at first light.
Confirm access permissions to adjacent land.
Then he’d re-briefed the night DS before she took over operational coordination.
Emphasised preservation. No contamination of potential secondary scenes.
Log every movement in and out of the woodland. Keep visibility high.
He should’ve gone home then.
Instead, he’d made several phone calls after three in the morning.
One to confirm overnight forensic availability if needed, one to push for priority processing on any digital returns, and one to check the availability of additional search resources if daylight expansion became necessary.
Then, somewhere between reviewing Robyn’s post-disappearance media strategy and comparing it to the draft he’d approved tonight, he might have closed his eyes.
Pollard jerked his chin towards the door. “You’ve been here long enough.”
“We’re within the first twenty-four hours, sir.” Harrison stroked down his tie as if ready to continue where he’d left off.
“And you’re no good to anyone running on empty. You have the night team. Go home and get some shuteye. Come back refreshed.”
“But you’re still here?”
“I’ve been home. Had dinner with the wife, even had sex, then came back because she kicked me out of the room for snoring. Figured I’d be useful instead of in the spare room.”
Harrison snorted. Then he looked at the boards again. Nothing had changed in the fifteen minutes he’d been still. No sudden breakthrough. No flashing revelation. All he had were the names of two young women last seen in the same woodland.
Pollard gave him a look. “If this is you trying to impress me on your first day, consider it done. Now go.”
Harrison gathered Emily’s file first and, after a moment’s hesitation, slid Robyn Whitton’s back into its box. “I want perimeter reassessment at first light.”
“It’s logged.” Pollard sighed, scrubbing a hand down his face. “Go home, Harrison.”
Home.
He wasn’t sure he had one. What he had was a new cottage with a leaking roof and boxes to unpack. A place to go, sure, but home…? He’d left that a long time ago. But he switched off the incident room lights anyway, the whiteboard falling into shadow, timelines and names dissolving into grey.
When he stepped outside, it was gone five.
First light bled through the drizzle, the sky the colour of old tin and the air felt damp and metallic, rain-soaked and cold against his skin.
Maybe he’d get used to the air in Yorkshire.
The drizzle. The cold. He drove on autopilot.
Mind still in the woodland. On grid references, search perimeters.
The hard line where public land stopped and private began.
He replayed it again and again, tracing the edge in his thoughts as if it might change if he pressed hard enough.
But when he turned onto Larkspur Lane, more intrusive thoughts crept in.
The reality of where he was heading. Home.
Unlike Pollard, and unlike the life Harrison had lived three years ago when a long shift on a live case meant returning to warm kitchen light spilling through the curtains, there wouldn’t be any glow waiting for him.
No plate left on the counter with a note telling him to eat.
No quiet voice asking how the case was going.
No arms pulling him close when he finally crawled into bed and needed something solid to hold on to.
And certainly, no sex.
No. All he had was a damp front room, probably ruined boxes, and rainwater soaking through a roof he hadn’t yet had time to fix properly.
The downpour hadn’t eased all night, and the bowl he’d left beneath the leak would no doubt have filled up around midday.
He almost turned around to go back to the station. There wasn’t anything here for him.
Nothing at all.
But as he got closer to his cottage, cutting his headlights through the drizzle, he caught the shape of a white Transit van parked outside his house and realised something was there waiting for him.
Or rather, someone. His pulse gave a small, involuntary kick.
Utterly ridiculous. Then he pulled in, killed the engine, and stepped out into the rain to look up.
His breath left him.
There, silhouetted against the thinning grey of dawn, kneeling on the slick incline of his roof, was Jake Whitton.
Dark hair, unruly and defiant, hung heavy and saturated around his face and collar.
Rain sheeted over him in silver lines, and he had one knee braced against the slates, boots planted wide for balance, body angled low against the pitch as if he were part of the roof itself, fixing his bloody roof.
Harrison could see the quick, competent movement of Jake’s hands as he slid a new tile into place, hooked it, tested it, then tapped it home with the flat edge of a roofing hammer.
He moved with the unconscious grace of someone who had done this a thousand times, muscles adjusting automatically to the slope, weight distributed perfectly.
But it wasn’t only that catching Harrison’s attention.
It was how soaked through he was.
“Hey!” Harrison called up, blinking through the drizzle, rainwater splashing into his mouth.
Jake stilled mid-motion, glancing down as if dragging himself back from somewhere deeper. He swiped his forearm across his face, shoving rain-heavy curls out of his eyes and baring the sharp cut of his jaw, water tracking along it in thin, steady lines.
“Hey,” he called, voice roughened by the weather. “I’ll, er…won’t be long.”
“Why are you on my roof?”
“Fixing it.” Jake slid a slate into place and tapped it firm, precise.
“At five a.m.?”
“Like early starts.”
“In this?”
The rain thickened without warning, turning from a steady fall into a heavier downpour.
Proper Yorkshire weather. It soaked Jake through in seconds, his T-shirt darkening and clinging tight to his back and chest, mapping the movement beneath it.
The roll of muscle, the pull of his shoulders, rainwater running in rivulets down his top, disappearing beneath the waistband of his trousers.
Harrison swallowed, forcing himself back into line. Jake Whitton, on his roof, soaked through to skin and sinew, was not something he needed to notice.
“Jesus,” he muttered to himself, then called up. “Come down.”
“It’s alright.” Jake blew rain from his lips, squinting through it. “Nearly there.”
“You can’t work in this. You’ll slip.”
Jake glanced down, and a half-smile broke through his concentration. Easy, teasing, and completely at odds with the weather. Not to mention entirely unhelpful.
“Done enough jobs in it, mate. I’m northern.” Jake shifted his footing, steady as a pillar. “Unlike you southern softies, if we don’t work in the rain, we don’t work.”
“Granted. Fine. You’re tougher than us. Colour me impressed by your Northern manliness.” Harrison spread his hands as another wave of rain lashed down. “But I can’t have you breaking your neck on my property. Come down. I’ll make you a cup of tea? Maybe get you a towel. You can wait it out.”