Chapter Five Persons Unknown
Persons Unknown
“He’s not always like that.”
Harrison hadn’t realised how long he’d been watching the back doors swing shut behind Jake Whitton’s exit until Pete’s voice broke through his thoughts.
He blinked, as if surfacing. The car park beyond the window sat empty now, gravel still faintly disturbed where Jake’s van had careened out.
Harrison had spent enough years in the field to recognise the type.
Men whose lives had been carved open by one investigation and felt the edges of another cutting too close.
Protective. Combative. Half a step away from inserting themselves, whether invited or not.
Chris had been like that.
Too quick to step forward. Too certain he could shoulder what wasn’t his to carry. Heat first, reflection later. Harrison had always steadied him. Redirected the energy. Softened the edges before they cut too deep.
Until he hadn’t been able to anymore.
The thought landed heavily. Hard. And he had to let it sit for a moment before pushing it back where it belonged.
But Jake’s reactions didn’t feel like interference.
They felt… personal.
Not towards Harrison. Nor even the investigation. But at the ground itself. The woodland. The history pressed into it. So Harrison drifted his gaze once more to the empty doorway. Professional assessment. Pattern recognition.
Nothing more than that.
And he didn’t want to look too closely at why the man unsettled him in a way that had nothing to do with operational threat.
“No?” Harrison asked mildly.
Pete shook his head. “He’s wound tight, aye. But that’s not his usual setting.”
Harrison hadn’t meant to stare. Hadn’t meant to follow the line of Jake’s shoulders as he’d walked out, anger radiating off him in contained waves. But something about the man lingered. It wasn’t the temper.
It was the restraint.
The way Jake swallowed whatever sharp instinct he had instead of saying or doing it.
The way his jaw had locked, as if holding himself together required force.
Harrison knew that posture. Knew the discipline of not breaking in public.
The temper that flared at the wrong moments.
He knew all about it. Because he lived with his own.
Functioning was hard enough after such tremendous loss, let alone when the grief never truly ended.
He knew how much damage that did in private.
Harrison put his coffee down, pressing his thumbnail into the raised perforations on the cardboard cup. “I imagine he’s on edge.”
“Aye.” Pete scratched his beard. “More than most.”
“Hm.” Harrison lowered his gaze, then picked up the business card Jake had left behind.
J. Whitton Roofing and Repairs.
His wedding band caught the light as he turned it over, and he absently twisted the ring with his thumb.
The gold had worn smooth along the edges, where years of habit had polished it down.
And suddenly, it felt heavier in Yorkshire than it ever had in London.
As if he were conscious of it constantly.
As if the ring were a question rather than a fact.
An exit he hadn’t been ready for.
He twisted it again, a reflex born of sleepless nights and unspoken apologies.
Usually, when he did this, his thoughts stayed where they belonged.
With grief. Guilt. The man he’d failed to save.
But this time they went somewhere else. To broad shoulders disappearing through the pub’s back doors.
A contained anger Harrison knew all too well.
Grief worn differently, but no less deeply.
He stilled his thumb over the gold.
As if the ring itself objected to such thoughts.
“I don’t object, Harry. I left you so you could live. Not die with me.”
God. This was absurd.
He’d come to Hartswick to rid himself of the ghost. The past. Not because he was ready to step into anything new.
Professional or otherwise. He’d come because there was nowhere left in London that didn’t echo.
Didn’t carry the imprint of what he couldn’t fix.
And didn’t remind him that sometimes love wasn’t enough. That he wasn’t enough.
He knew that now.
He didn’t need reminding.
“Don’t let the card fool ya.” Pete pointed to the card. “Jake’s a damn good roofer. If he were on them trade sites, he’d have five-star reviews coming out of his lugholes. He’s almost as good a tradesman as he is drummer. Though I know what he’d prefer. But if you need a roof fixing…”
Harrison slipped the card into his pocket. “I have more pressing concerns at present. But thank you.”
Because he was here. He was SIO.
And a seventeen-year-old girl was missing.
Whatever hesitations he carried about his own readiness were irrelevant.
He straightened on the stool, the subtle adjustment enough to pull himself fully back into the room. “Right. Let’s begin.”
Pete rubbed his forehead. “I take it she’s not bunking off at one of her mates’ houses?”
“Not as far as we can establish.”
“Shit.”
Harrison had read the door-to-door reports coming through.
The list of friends Emily’s father had provided, a list the man had already exhausted in calling himself before calling the police.
Desperate, methodical, hopeful. Of course, Emily was seventeen.
She could have friends her father didn’t know of.
People he hadn’t met. Someone new in her life, perhaps.
Someone who might have been here last night.
He flipped open his notebook. “I need a clear account of Miss Fisher’s movements from half past ten onwards. Who she spoke to. Who approached her. Whether she appeared to be waiting for someone specific. And whether anything, however minor, felt out of place.”
Pete leaned his forearms on the bar, expression tightening as he replayed the night. “She was meant to finish at ten thirty. Stayed on.”
“Voluntarily?”
“Aye.”
“Did anyone ask her to?”
“No.”
Harrison made a small notation. “Did she receive any calls? Text messages?”
Pete frowned. “She checked her phone a couple of times. But that’s normal, isn’t it? They’re glued to the things. I can’t ban it, and I don’t track when they look at them.”
“Of course.” Harrison made a note. “When you noticed her checking it, did her demeanour change?”
Pete glanced up the ceiling. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “Maybe… distracted. But she was new. First proper job. I put it down to nerves. And it being a heavy male crowd in. Static Youth draw that sort.”
“Static Youth?”
“Local indie band.” Pete jerked his thumb at the back of the pub. “Jake’s their drummer. They pull numbers. Mostly blokes. Loud blokes. Who drink hard.”
Harrison made another note. “Had Miss Fisher worked a band night before?”
“No. She’s only been here a week. Asked for a job after I took her mate on. I try to keep it local where I can.” Pete shrugged. “She couldn’t serve alcohol till eighteen, but on band nights, the crowd don’t exactly return their empties. So I had her clearing tables.”
“And how would she normally have got home?”
“With her mate. Claire. Claire’s eighteen. Behind the bar. Her mum picked them up the last couple of shifts.”
“But she didn’t leave with Claire’s mother last night.”
“No.” Pete shook his head. “She stayed on.”
Harrison paused.
Officers had already spoken to Claire. Emily’s father had, too, before he’d even called it in.
Claire said Emily had wanted to stay the last hour.
Pick up a bit of extra money. Her choice.
But Pete had been clear—no one had asked her.
No extra shift. No pressure. She’d chosen to stay.
It was a small distinction. Barely anything on paper.
In practice, though?
It counted.
Why stay if she wasn’t being paid? If no one needed her? If her lift had been there, as it always was, and she let it go anyway, leaving her to walk home alone? People didn’t do that without a reason.
So what had kept her there?
Harrison let the inconsistency go rather than challenge it immediately.
Details mattered. Not because they were dramatic, but because they were usually the first place truth bent.
Claire could be lying. Not maliciously. Maybe…
protectively. Teenagers often mistook silence for loyalty.
She might think she was helping. Sparing her friend from trouble by suggesting extra wages instead of admitting Emily had stayed for someone.
A boy, perhaps? Someone Emily’s father would disapprove of.
Or could she be protecting herself?
Guilt had a way of rewriting timelines. And she might have wanted to reassure herself that she wasn’t at fault for leaving her friend behind. Harrison had seen it before. People editing their memories in real time, trying to land somewhere less responsible.
He made a neat notation in the margin.
Claire. Friend. Re-interview. Alone.
Because somewhere in that final hour, something had changed. And he needed to know exactly what.
Harrison lifted his gaze from the page. “Did she say why she wanted to stay?”
Pete frowned, as if only now realising that perhaps he should’ve asked.
“No. I can’t keep tabs on every member of staff. Who brings them in. Who takes them home. That’s not…” Pete rubbed a hand along his forehead. “It’s not possible.”
Harrison held his gaze a beat longer, then let it go and took in the room properly.
The King’s Arms was on a corner plot. Deep rather than wide.
Two separate bar runs. One facing the main floor, one tucked nearer the rear doors for band nights.
A low stage at the far end with rigged lighting and stacked speakers.
This wasn’t an occasional open-mic venue but somewhere that traded on live sets.
Tables had been pushed back towards the walls, leaving a standing floor in front of the stage.
Even now, mid-morning, the layout spoke of volume.
“How many can fit in here?” Harrison asked.
“Hundred and twenty comfortably. On a Static Youth night? One-fifty, maybe pushing one-sixty if no one cares about elbow room.”