Chapter Thirteen Off The Record
Off the Record
The next twenty-four hours passed in a blur.
Harrison hadn’t even sat down properly before someone else demanded his attention.
First came Emily Fisher’s mother.
Grace Fisher arrived in Hartswick mid-morning following a flight into Leeds Bradford, frantic and pale from the journey.
Harrison sat in on the initial meeting with PC Murray while she interviewed her.
She handed over the last messages she’d exchanged with Emily and, cross-referencing them, Harrison found nothing unusual or urgent in them.
It was the sort of sporadic contact coming from a strained relationship.
Yes, she’d mentioned difficulties with her dad.
Harsh boundaries. But they weren’t anywhere out of the ordinary for a man who wanted to protect his teenage daughter from potential predators.
The bitter irony of that wasn’t lost on him.
The man had, apparently, done everything right. Yet…
Harrison forced the thought away before it could take root. Speculation helped nobody. Not until he had the facts.
But since the divorce, Emily had remained in Hartswick with her father to finish her college course.
Grace had moved to Spain with a new partner, and the distance between them had grown steadily wider.
Grace insisted her daughter hadn’t mentioned visiting.
No plans. No sudden change of heart. Which meant Emily wasn’t trying to make her way to Spain.
Harrison crossed that theory off the board.
Then came the media.
With Grace now in town, the press circled like vultures.
Harrison arranged a short, televised appeal with both parents standing side by side outside the station.
Tearful, raw, exactly what might shake something loose from the public.
The phones rang constantly afterwards. Tips.
Sightings. The usual flood of speculation.
Most of it went nowhere. They also released an appeal for the owners of three unidentified vehicles seen on CCTV near the woodland road that night.
Two drivers came forward within hours and were quickly eliminated.
The third hadn’t.
Officers were still trying to track the vehicle down. A van. No plates. White.
Search teams combed the woodland again. Dogs. Volunteers. Officers working in slow, methodical grid patterns across every inch of accessible ground.
Nothing.
Not so much as a dropped scarf or a shoe.
The woodland itself stretched for only a few miles before reaching the old estate boundary, the River Hart cutting through its lower edge before bending away towards the industrial estate.
The water had been treated as part of the search area from the beginning.
Uniformed officers had walked both banks as far downstream as access allowed, and a specialist team had checked the deeper sections where the current gathered beneath steep banks. Nothing had been found.
Beyond the river and woodland, the public footpaths ended and private land began.
Acres of mixed woodland, rough pasture and neglected parkland stretched towards Blackridge Hall, broken occasionally by derelict outbuildings, old service tracks and lengths of crumbling stone wall hinting at how much larger the estate had once been.
On paper, it all belonged to Lancaster Group.
In reality, as Harrison had discovered, everyone in Hartswick knew it was Walter Blackridge’s land.
Search teams had reached the boundary on the first day. Beyond it was another matter.
Without the landowner’s consent, officers would need a warrant before they could begin searching private property.
Harrison doubted Emily had forced her way through the wall of nettles and rusted fencing in the dark only to wander onto one of the largest private estates in the county, but investigations had a habit of unravelling the moment detectives began deciding what victims wouldn’t have done.
He’d submitted the application anyway.
If it was authorised, they’d put boots on the ground within forty-eight hours. Until then, the estate remained one more unanswered question sitting at the edge of the map.
Then by Saturday morning, Harrison had authorised the woodland walkway to reopen after complaints from half the town about the closure.
Dog walkers, runners, parents cutting through on the school run.
But he issued uniformed patrols moving through the area for the next couple of days, in case someone revisited the scene.
By Saturday afternoon, the investigation had moved firmly into the long grind. Reviewing tip-offs from the public, rechecking CCTV, chasing loose ends looking promising for five minutes before collapsing under basic scrutiny. The longest part of any case. And the most exhausting.
By the evening, Harrison had consumed more cups of coffee than hours of sleep.
Technically, he was off duty. The night shift had taken over; the investigation board handed across with the usual briefings and unfinished threads.
But Harrison lingered, hovering near the desks, scanning reports no longer requiring his attention.
Eventually, the looks started. The subtle ones turning less so.
Officers paused mid-conversation, glancing over as if wondering why he was still there. Taking up space.
To avoid more looks, Harrison gathered his coat, slipped his notebook into the inside pocket, and stepped out into the cooling evening air.
He’d walked in that morning. Dual reasons.
Learning the rhythms of a place was never wasted time in policing, but partly it had been personal.
Since arriving in Hartswick he’d barely taken a moment to look at the town as anything other than a crime scene.
He hadn’t even worked out where the decent chippy was yet.
Or which takeaway stayed open past ten. He hadn’t found a route for a morning run.
Because one question had consumed every waking hour.
Where was Emily Fisher?
The soft glow of shopfronts and the distant hum of weekend voices drifted through the air as he began walking home and he turned onto the High Street to get a feel of his new hometown on a Saturday night.
Harrison felt that fragile attempt at normality again.
Then there, halfway down the street, he caught sight of the corner pub, and that loose thread he still hadn’t tied off niggled at him.
Andy Mitchell.
The Kings Arms.
Andy claimed he’d stopped in for one pint before heading home.
They’d reviewed the pub’s CCTV for the timeframe surrounding Emily leaving that night, but timelines rarely stayed neat.
People moved through places more than once.
Witnesses remembered things differently when the room was crowded.
When alcohol blurred the edges of the night.
When the music was loud.
So Harrison changed direction and headed towards the warm yellow light spilling across the pavement instead. Music thumped out of the walls in a steady rhythm, vibrating the glass and Harrison’s chest, and when he glanced at the chalk poster board outside, it hit him.
Tonight, in honour of Emily Fisher, Static Youth. 8pm.
The local appeal.
Curiosity tugged at him, and he peered in through the front window. The pub was packed. Bodies pressed shoulder to shoulder around small tables, pints lifted, heads nodding to the music. And there, behind the drum kit on the low stage at the far end, was Jake Whitton.
Harrison drew a breath.
That man on stage, behind the lights and kit, looked completely different from the man Harrison had questioned in his parents’ kitchen a day ago.
Looser.
Alive.
Harrison couldn’t stop staring at him.
The movement, the control, the effortless way his arms rose and fell with the rhythm—it was understandable why a band like Neon Arcade, rising stars of the British indie scene, had wanted him.
Jake owned that drum kit. It was an extension of him.
Even now, on the low stage of a crowded village pub, he played as though the room were ten times the size.
Deacon might have been front and centre, guitar in hand as he belted out Foo Fighters’ Monkey Wrench—much more Harrison’s era than anyone currently on that stage—but Harrison barely registered him.
All of his attention remained fixed on Jake.
Couldn’t even tell me who drummed on Nevermind.
The memory brought the faintest smile to Harrison’s mouth.
He could.
The door beside him suddenly swung open, forcing Harrison to step back as a group of lads spilled onto the pavement, laughing loudly while one of them fished a vape from his pocket.
“Sorry, mate.” One held the door open.
Harrison hesitated.
Crowded pubs hadn’t been part of Harrison’s life for a long time.
Not since Chris. The noise. The crush of bodies.
Beer and sweat and too many conversations fighting to be heard over the music.
Once, all of it had been normal. Their downtime.
Chris had loved live music. It was one of the things Harrison had first been drawn to.
Well, that and his hands.
His arms.
The sheer brute size of him.
But the music had become theirs. Gigs in packed little venues. Festivals where they camped in shitty tents and drank far too much for three days straight. Staying up until sunrise. Fucking under the stars when they were young and reckless enough not to care who might stumble past.
Christ, they’d had fun.
Harrison sometimes forgot that part.
Grief had a way of reducing twenty years to the way they’d ended. The suspension. The arguments. Chris withdrawing further into himself. Then that final fucking day.
But there had been so much before it.
They’d been young. Stupid. Fucking happy.
Now it all felt like someone else’s life.
Music rolled out into the night, and somewhere in the middle of it was Jake Whitton, behind his drums, apparently capable of lighting up an entire room, and doing what Harrison had already discovered he did irritatingly well.
Drawing his attention.
So Harrison stepped inside.