Chapter Six Static in the Walls #2
Deacon had never liked Brodie. He’d made no secret of it.
Said he had a look about him. Too watchful.
Interested in things that weren’t his. Jake had brushed it off.
Thought Deacon was worried he’d take him from the band.
Cause Brodie kept mentioning touring the festival circuit with a band who wanted more than pubs.
But nothing, and certainly not anyone, would take Jake from Static Youth.
He’d tied himself to Deacon and Raff when everything else went to shit.
More the reason for Jake to have kept things between him and Brodie surface-level.
Easy. Brodie had been there when Jake needed an outlet. He was a good fuck. Nothing more.
Still…
He didn’t like the way his best mate said it. Not the words as such, but the implication behind them. The reminder of choices Jake would rather not have held up to the light.
“For fuck’s sake, Deac.” Jake scrubbed a hand over his face. “Can you focus for one minute? A girl is missing.”
Deacon pushed to his feet and wandered over to the instant hot drinks machine on the side unit. “Sit down. You want a coffee?”
“No. I want you to answer the fucking question.”
“Alright, mate. Don’t have a coronary.” Deacon slotted one of those overpriced coffee tablets into the machine and jabbed the button.
It coughed into life, whirring, sputtering, before dribbling out a liquid that just about qualified as coffee into the mug below.
The Static Youth logo bled across the ceramic as the heat hit it, one of Deacon’s many questionable merch buys.
That and the boxes of bulk crap he couldn’t shift, still clogging up the band’s storage container on the edge of town.
He then added sugar. Milk. And stirred it with the same pen he’d been using to sign contracts with five minutes earlier.
He then glanced over his shoulder. “Blonde?”
Jake swallowed. “Dunno. Never saw her.”
“You never saw her?”
“It were a busy set and at the end I were…somewhere else.”
Deacon tapped the wet pen against the rim of the mug. “So you don’t know what she looks like?”
“No.”
“You’re telling me…” disbelief scaled Deacon’s voice with every word, “that you’ve sacked off the jobs you were whining about last night, jobs you said you desperately needed the cash for, to interrogate me about some girl I supposedly flirted with, who’s now missing and you’re running around town trying to find…
and you don’t even know what she looks like? ”
When he said it like that, it sounded unhinged.
Jake worked his jaw, biting down on the inside of his cheek until the metallic tang bloomed across his tongue. “Aye.”
“So how exactly are you planning on knowing when you’ve found her?” Deacon lifted the mug, eyebrows raised. “If she was stood in here right now, using a fake name, buying my two bed on Greenacre Lane… you’d have no clue.”
Jake dropped into the chair opposite Deacon’s desk and braced his elbows on his knees.
He often felt like an idiot. Occupational hazard.
Drummer. Roofer. Ex-con. Even before all that, he’d never been the brains of anything.
Robyn had been the clever one. The one who’d filled out forms properly.
Who’d talked about going back to college when Teddy started pre-school.
But they’d grown up on a council estate in a Yorkshire market town—Dad roofing until his knuckles split and his wrists gave out, Mum stretching pennies into dinners and pretending that counted as ambition.
Brains hadn’t exactly been the family currency.
Right now, though, “idiot” felt generous.
Deacon filled another mug of coffee from the shit machine, then came back over and lowered himself into the big leather chair. He passed a mug across. “I didn’t take anyone home last night. Went alone for once.”
Jake took the coffee, sipped it, and winced. “Jesus.”
“Artisan.” Deacon ahhh’d then wrinkled his nose. “You get used to it.”
“She was last seen heading onto the Fell Edge path.”
“Right.” Deacon gestured vaguely at Jake. “Explains this, then.”
“Aye.”
“Look, I’m no detective, but even in estate agency we like to have a photo of the thing we’re trying to sell. So if you’re going to throw yourself into this, maybe start with knowing what she looks like.”
Jake widened his eyes. “Did you speak to her?”
Deacon blew on his coffee. “I speak to everyone. Comes with the job.” He took another sip. “Still went home alone.”
Jake frowned. “How come?”
Deacon shrugged.
“You always pull on gig night.” Jake held his gaze and watched the half-swallowed grin. The guilt. Got it immediately. “Ivy.”
There it was. The not-quite-proud, not-quite-ashamed shrug.
Ivy. The eternal encore.
On-again, off-again. Repeat.
Deacon loved her. Jake didn’t doubt that.
But he also loved the noise. The girls reaching for him on stage as if they could pull him down into them.
Loved the charge of being wanted by someone new every night.
Being watched. Chosen. Applauded. Saying no to them, consistently, took a kind of restraint Deacon had never quite mastered.
And Ivy had started out as one of those fans herself.
So she knew the girls who came to their gigs.
From nineteen, she’d trailed Static Youth from one sweat-slicked pub to the next, convinced fate had scribbled her name on a laminate and hung it round her neck.
She’d hovered long enough, smiled wide enough, stayed late enough.
Eventually, she landed him. Declared it destiny. And for a while, Deacon believed her.
But he’d get restless. Or bored. Or drunk enough to mistake ego for clarity.
Then end it in a blaze of certainty. Swear it was for the best. And a week later he’d spiral.
Hate himself. Miss her. Ring her at two in the morning, wasted and high, because silence felt heavier than pride. Same set list. Different venue.
It’d been like that for years.
Probably why Jake had never bothered with anything serious.
Watching that cycle was enough to put anyone off.
It looked exhausting. Living in perpetual soundcheck, forever tuning up, never committing to the final note.
Like being stuck on the high hat. But when Ivy was back in rotation, Deacon would start talking about quitting. Growing up. Settling down.
Jake hated that part most of all.
Because the band wasn’t a phase for him.
It was the only thing he hadn’t yet lost.
Deacon slapped his cup down on the desk hard enough to rattle it. “We’re thirty-one, mate.”
“And?”
“It’s about time I stopped pissing about. Settled down, y’know? Had kids or summat.”
“Those your ideas or hers?”
“I don’t see the Brits calling us up, mate.”
“They would if we did more than covers.”
“That’s what the pub crowds want, Jake. You wanna get paid for banging your drums, you gotta play the things they know.” He cocked his head, drawing his eyebrows in. “You writing again?”
Jake shook his head. Not in denial, but in avoidance. He still wrote. Always had. But not with Deacon anymore. That had stopped a long time ago, when Deacon leaned into covers and steady gigs. So Jake kept it to himself. Private.
He was a drummer anyway. Not a singer. Not a frontman.
“You know what?” Deacon pointed at him. “You should join the police.”
Jake snorted. “What?”
“You sit there picking people apart like they’re two seconds off confessing. What’s one of those people who point the finger?”
“Profiler.”
“That’s it. One of them.”
Jake gave a half-smile and looked down into the sludge pretending to be coffee. “Don’t always get it right, though, do I?”
“I dunno, Jake. You’ve always had a good read on people.
” Deacon leaned back in his chair. “Maybe not the blokes you bend over your drum kit in the back of your van, seeing as you apparently can’t tell an actual music fan from some knobhead who bought a band tee in TK Maxx.
But people? You’re usually pretty good at knowing who’s straight with you and who isn’t. ”
Jake narrowed his eyes.
“Probably cause you’ve got such a fucking thing about people lying to you.”
Jake opened his mouth, ready with a suitably offensive comeback, but apparently the universe decided to save Deacon by opening the estate-agent door. Jake glanced across. Then met with a pair of warm brown eyes.
Harrison.
Jake’s body reacted before his brain told it not to, and he straightened. Squared his shoulders. Dragged a hand through his hair as his pulse gave one hard kick.
Fuck’s sake.
He’d seen the man twice. That was it. Yet apparently his body had already decided Harrison Black walking into a room was worth him paying attention to. Worse, Jake knew Deacon had just watched the whole fucking thing happen.
He didn’t look at him. Couldn’t.
Because if there was one man alive who knew every one of Jake’s tells, it was Deacon Froggatt.
And Jake had just given him the full fucking set.
DI Harrison Black stepped inside, scanning the room before closing the door and lifting his warrant card. “Are you Deacon Froggatt?”
“Aye, that I am.” Deacon gestured him in. “Come in.”
Jake stood. He hadn’t decided to; his body had just done it.
Deacon clocked that too.
So Jake rubbed at the faint stain on his hoodie as if it suddenly mattered. As if Harrison hadn’t seen him twenty minutes ago with ketchup on his chin. As if the man’s gaze hadn’t lingered a fraction too long at it.
Harrison gave a small nod of recognition. “Mr Whitton.”
Jake had to consciously pull air into his lungs. “Detective.”
“Is that your van outside?” There was that slight movement at the corner of Harrison’s mouth again. Not quite a smile. Not quite neutral. Something restrained.
“Uh… aye.”
“You’ve been given a ticket.”
Jake huffed. “Bastards.”
“Hm.” Harrison’s tone was mild. Dry. But not unkind. “It might be an idea to move it.”
“Aye, will do. I was just…asking Deac about…the girl.”
Harrison tucked a hand into his pocket to retrieve a notebook. “Looks like you’re still two steps ahead of me.”