Chapter Eleven Cross-Contamination
Cross-Contamination
Harrison was back at the station by ten a.m.
He’d slept, under the blanket Jake Whitton had laid over him, for approximately forty-five minutes.
That was enough.
He refused to indulge in anything more than that.
Wouldn’t give himself more rest. Nor any awareness of the strange feeling that Jake had come inside, seen him asleep, and quietly taken care of things by washing the mugs, stacking the boxes out of the way, and covering him as if that was his normal setting.
Harrison had no space in his life for that kind of thought.
So he showered, drank a brutally strong coffee, picked up a breakfast muffin from the bakery on Market Street, and arrived at the station determined to be functional.
Refreshed might have been pushing it.
But he was here.
The station hummed alive when he walked in.
Busy in that tight, focused way meaning everyone understood the stakes.
Phones rang. Printers spat out fresh paperwork.
Officers hovered between desks with takeaway coffees clutched in tired hands.
The briefing room was back in motion. The map of the woodland had been pinned across the whiteboard with coloured markers dividing the search areas into grids with the list of volunteers sitting on the side table where the local search team had signed in.
DCI Pollard spotted him and waved him over. “Harrison. Get some sleep?”
“Enough,” Harrison lied.
Pollard nodded at the map. “Search teams covered the western sector overnight. Dogs went through the lower trail after dawn.”
“And?”
Pollard gave a small shake of his head. “Nowt yet.”
Harrison examined the board for a moment, noting the search grids, the times logged beside each one. “CCTV?”
“We’ve started pulling what we can. Petrol station on the B-road. A couple of houses with door cams near the path entrance. Traffic cameras further out.”
Right. That was where patterns began.
People vanished on foot.
Vehicles told the story.
At the far end of the desk a young DC lifted a sheet of paper. “Sir, this is the preliminary vehicle log from the petrol station camera. Cars passing the woodland turnoff between nine and midnight.”
Harrison took the page.
It was exactly what he expected: registration numbers, vehicle descriptions, timestamps.
A short list. Rural roads rarely saw much traffic after dark.
He scanned it once. Then again. But none of it meant anything to him.
He had no local context here. In his old patch, something might have stood out.
A familiar name, a vehicle known to officers, one that had come up before.
But these were just cars. Ordinary ones.
The sort filling a Tesco car park on any weekday afternoon.
No battered Transit. No cloned plates. No vehicle slipping through the system without registration or insurance.
Everything looked… normal.
And in Harrison’s experience, that was often the most frustrating part of the job.
Because whatever had happened to Emily Fisher had almost certainly arrived on four wheels.
If she hadn’t been found in the woodland yet, and no camera had picked her up leaving the other side on foot, then the most logical explanation was simple.
She hadn’t walked out.
She was still there. Or she was driven out.
“Anything stand out?” Pollard asked.
“Not to me,” Harrison said honestly. “Yet.”
The chair beside him rolled closer and DS Calder leaned over the desk to tap halfway down the page. “This one might be worth a look, sir.”
Harrison followed the finger to the registration number. “Why’s that?”
Calder glanced at the incident board where the Robyn Whitton file still sat among the documents Harrison had requested that morning. “Because that’s Andy Mitchell.”
The name stirred in Harrison’s memory. Then it hit.
“The Andy Mitchell Jake Whitton assaulted twelve years ago?”
“Aye.” Calder nodded. “The very same.”
Harrison looked back at the sheet. The timestamp placed the vehicle on the road near the woodland path after ten thirty.
“Was he interviewed when Robyn disappeared?” Harrison asked.
“Aye.” Calder leaned back in his chair, clasping his hands over his stomach. “Whitton was convinced it was him.”
“And?”
“Solid alibi. Night shift at the steel works.” He stroked down his moustache. “Whitton weren’t having it though. Broke into Mitchell’s flat, turned the place over looking for… God knows what. Mitchell came home early and caught him. Whitton put him through a wall.”
Harrison said nothing.
“Assault, criminal damage, breaking and entering.” Calder tutted. “Three years inside.”
Harrison drew a breath.
The same Jake Whitton who’d quietly washed his mugs and laid a blanket over him only a few hours earlier.
“And you were the arresting officer?” Harrison asked.
“Aye.” Calder didn’t bother hiding the note of satisfaction in his voice.
Harrison held his gaze for a moment, then set the vehicle list back on the desk. “Well, I’d say that’s a connection.” He shrugged his coat back on. “Let’s pay him a visit. Calder, you’re with me.”
Calder straightened immediately. “Yes, sir.”
Harrison had two reasons for taking him.
First, Calder knew the town. The history. The people involved. If Andy Mitchell had crossed paths with Robyn Whitton before she disappeared, Harrison needed the full story. What happened, why Jake Whitton had been so certain of his guilt, and how that certainty had ended with a prison sentence.
He needed those facts.
And he needed them now.
Second, Harrison didn’t want to spook their potential witness.
Calder had arrested Jake for the attack on Mitchell and knew the original investigation first-hand.
More importantly, Mitchell knew Calder as the officer who’d dealt with him as the victim rather than the suspect Jake had decided he was.
Familiarity would work in their favour. Mitchell might be more inclined to open the door. More inclined to talk.
Harrison was well aware of the blatant animosity Calder carried towards Jake Whitton. But that, too, had its uses. Because the quickest way to find the truth was to listen carefully to the version of events people were most eager to believe.
“Where we heading?” Harrison slipped his coat back on.
“He’ll be at work this time of day, no doubt.” Calder turned off his computer, tucking his chair under the desk. “Probably head there.”
“Alright. Where’s he work?”
“The steelworks.”
“The steelworks?”
“Lancaster Industrial Estate now. Old steelworks.” Calder shrugged into his jacket. “Still runs, but nowt how it used to. Fabrication mostly. Prefab steel, bits going out on lorries instead of furnaces burning day and night. Half the site’s shut up.”
“And he works where in all that?”
“Forklift driver. Yard operative. In and out of storage, loading bays, wherever they need him.” Calder paused, glancing back. “Means he’ll have access to more than most. Old buildings, restricted areas. Plenty of places no one checks unless they have to.”
Harrison filed that. “And Emily’s father also works at the site.” He knew that from the files and from his brief chat with him yesterday. “Coincidence?”
“Not really. It’s a huge employer round here.” Calder gave a short huff. “Used to be the place, didn’t it? Generations in and out those gates. Still enough left that half the town’s got some tie to it. Family, mates, contracts.”
Harrison glanced over to the young DC in the corner who’d given him the list. “Can you cross reference every car on this list with those registered as employees of the steelworks?”
“Yes, sir.” Off he went.
Harrison and Calder left the station. They got in the pool car and as Calder slid into the passenger seat, he reached for his Airwave radio to let control know they were heading out.
Harrison then pulled onto the road, following where Calder pointed him, vehicle list folded neatly on the dashboard between them.
Once they got moving, he glanced across to Calder. “Tell me about Andy Mitchell.”
Calder held onto the handle above his head. “Local lad. Always has been.”
“That tells me very little.”
“Aye, well.” Calder scratched at his jaw. “Bit of a loner growing up. Hung about the edges of things. Didn’t have many mates. Wasn’t the worst sort, mind. Be he were… odd.”
“And his connection to Robyn Whitton?”
Calder glanced out the window as the town slipped past them. “He followed her about a bit.”
“Followed?”
“Aye.”
“How?”
“Walking the same routes home. Showing up places she was. Standing about watching.”
“So…Obsessed?” Harrison asked. “Stalking her?”
“Maybe. Hard to say. Never touched her, far as we knew. Never threatened her either. He…liked her. Maybe a bit too much.”
Harrison absorbed that. “And it was all checked? His alibi? He was where he said he was at the time?”
“Course. There was nowt to it.” Calder shrugged. “He was working nights at the steelworks. Clocked in, clocked out. Plenty of witnesses.”
“So why was Jake Whitton convinced it was him?”
Calder gave a dry laugh. “You’ve met Jake Whitton.”
Harrison said nothing.
He had met him. More than once now. And it didn’t quite sit right in his mind that the man who quietly fixed old women’s roofs in exchange for a cup of tea could also be the man who broke into an innocent man’s house and violently assault him.
But Harrison also knew better than to let a single morning’s impression soften the facts.
“His sister vanishes,” Calder went on, oblivious to Harrison’s thoughts. “Andy’s the odd bloke who used to trail after her. Makes sense in Jake’s head.”
“And in yours?”
Harrison risked a glance at him as he guided the car through the centre of the town.
They rolled past the bakery where he’d grabbed his breakfast earlier, the narrow pavement already filling with late-morning shoppers.
A delivery van blocked half the high street outside the butcher’s, forcing Harrison to ease around it before turning onto the road climbing gently out of town.