Chapter Five Persons Unknown #2
Harrison noted that down. Add a heavy male crowd, alcohol, noise, movement between the smoking area outside and bar supervision, that deviated from tidy management to crowd control.
Pete would’ve been watching tills. Stock.
Glass collection. Intoxication levels. Not tracking the comings and goings of one seventeen-year-old member of staff once she stepped outside.
Harrison saw the guilt creeping onto Pete’s face.
The mental replay of closing time. The small decisions being dragged back under harsher light. The what-ifs taking root.
He didn’t press it.
Guilt was common. Responsibility wasn’t always the same thing.
“I appreciate it’s not your responsibility to monitor your staff’s transport arrangements.” Harrison tried to level him out before he rethought his choices. “I’m simply establishing sequence, not assigning blame.”
Pete nodded, but the tightness in his jaw didn’t ease.
Harrison recognised it immediately. The backward spiral of memory. Mental replay. The search for the exact second where he might have been able to step in and changed the outcome. But hindsight was a dangerous place to sit.
He knew because he lived there. Every. Single. Day.
He lowered his gaze to the notebook again. “When you last saw her, where exactly was she standing?”
“Outside. Near the back gate. Thought she were waiting for a lift.”
“And was anyone else in that area at the time?”
Pete furrowed his brow and stared past Harrison’s shoulder as if the answer might be written on his walls.
“Take a moment.” Harrison used the pause to sip his coffee. “Something that felt irrelevant at the time may not be now.”
“It was busy. People smoking. Coming and going. I can’t be certain who she spoke to out there. But by eleven, we’d got rid of most of the punters. Band was on pack down…”
Harrison tapped the end of his pen on the page, mind-mapping the layout. Bar, back door, car park, gate leading towards the shortcut. “And you’ve sent over the CCTV?”
“Aye. Front bar only. The camera out back’s been temperamental.”
“Was it functioning last night?”
Pete winced. “Not sure.”
Harrison closed the notebook. “I’ll need the internal footage, regardless.
And a list of all staff on shift, with contact details.
Plus, all the names of the customers who were in here last night, those who’re your regulars.
We’ll cross-reference who Miss Fisher interacted with during that final hour. ”
“Sure. Absolutely.”
Harrison rose from the stool, smoothing down the front of his jacket.
Habit rather than vanity, the quiet reset before stepping back into his role.
Then the lad from earlier pushed through the rear door again.
The one who’d bristled at Jake. Who’d thrown that crude comment across the room before Harrison had crossed the threshold.
He paused inside, clocking Harrison immediately.
A quick once-over.
Assessing.
Harrison held his gaze and looked him over in kind.
Mid-twenties, he guessed. Lean. Blond hair that had clearly taken some effort.
Good-looking and fully aware of it, judging by the confidence remaining even after the earlier embarrassment had knocked some of the swagger out of him.
Put him in a gay bar in Soho and he’d have no shortage of attention.
Once, Harrison might have looked more like him than anyone meeting DI Black now ever would’ve guessed.
Not the blond hair or the easy charm. Harrison had never been particularly sunny.
But the rest of it. Slim jeans. T-shirts tight enough to show off a body he’d worked hard for.
Ripped denim, battered trainers, festival wristbands he’d leave on until they practically fell off.
Nights out that became mornings. Music too loud.
Drinking too much. And a sex life that, despite being with only the one man, had been far more adventurous than anyone looking at him now would probably give him credit for.
That version of Harrison wasn’t gone, exactly.
He just hadn’t had much use for him in a long time.
The Met had changed some of it. Getting older had changed more.
Then Chris had died, and everything unnecessary had dropped away.
These days Harrison wore good suits, kept his hair neat, spoke carefully and rarely let anyone see more than he intended them to.
At forty-three, he knew exactly what he looked like to other people: controlled, professional, perhaps a little too serious.
A detective inspector who had his shit together.
It was mostly convincing.
What nobody looking at him now would know was that Harrison didn’t always need to be in control. In the right hands, he quite liked letting someone else take the lead, provided they took the time to learn exactly what he wanted.
The lad moved back behind the bar. “Delivery’s done.”
Pete nodded. “Cheers. How’s Jake?”
“Coiled.”
Harrison kept his attention on his notebook, but he listened because something had changed in the lad the second Jake’s name came up.
Nothing obvious. A slight shift in his stance.
Shoulders a little tighter. Attention suddenly fixed.
Harrison knew the signs. He’d spent enough years watching people lie about who mattered to them to recognise when someone mattered rather more than they were letting on.
This wasn’t casual concern.
And it wasn’t quite jealousy, either.
There was a protectiveness about it. Almost possessive. As though Jake Whitton was someone this lad kept an eye on. Someone he worried about. Someone he considered, in some small way, his.
The thought caused an odd little tightening in Harrison’s chest.
He disliked it immediately.
Why on earth should he care who fancied Jake Whitton?
His phone vibrated before he could give the question any more thought. So Harrison turned away from the bar and answered, slipping easily back into the professional register that required considerably less examination. “Black.”
“Sir.” DS Calder’s clipped annoyance filtered down the phone. Harrison had left him to immediate containment. Door-to-door along Moor Road, securing domestic CCTV, coordinating early scene intelligence while Harrison handled the last confirmed location. “We’ve had a development.”
Harrison went still. “Go on.”
“SPOC came back with cell site data. Miss Fisher’s handset last pinged at 23:41. It places her near the woodland entrance. South side.”
Harrison glanced instinctively towards the pub’s rear doors, in the direction of the shortcut. “And after that?”
“It powers down.”
“How accurate is the cell site?”
“Within approximately a hundred metres. We’re pulling CCTV from the petrol station on Moor Road now. If any vehicles slowed or stopped around that time, we should catch them.”
“Preserve everything. I want full handset download as soon as digital forensics get hold of it.” He spun. “Do we know how it was powered off?”
“Manual shutdown.”
Harrison rubbed his forehead, a headache setting in behind his eyes. Manual meant someone had pressed the power button. Not a drained battery. Or a smashed screen dying naturally. A deliberate act. Had Emily done it?
Or someone else who might not want her location known.
“Keep pushing on CCTV,” he said. “And prioritise vehicles heading southbound around 23:35 to 23:50. I want registration plates logged before lunchtime.”
“Yes, sir.”
He ended the call and slid the phone back into his pocket. The room felt suddenly smaller. Woodland entrance. 23:41. Phone dead. This had escalated from uncertainty to urgency.
He turned back to Pete. “I’ll need to know who remained here between eleven and midnight. Specifically, who exited via the rear.”
Pete swallowed. “Aye.”
“And anyone who left within five minutes of Miss Fisher.”
He didn’t look at the blond lad directly, but he was aware of him like a prickle at the edge of his peripheral vision.
“I…er, told Jake.” Brodie shifted his gaze between Harrison and Pete. “No idea if it’s of any use…?”
Harrison buttoned his coat. “Any or all information can be significant.”