Chapter Fifteen Lines of Enquiry
Lines of Enquiry
Sunday morning arrived grey and damp. A typical Yorkshire morning where the sky was undecided between rain and fog.
Harrison had been at the station since half-past six.
He’d told himself it was because of the case.
Which wasn’t entirely untrue. A high-risk missing person didn’t wait politely for office hours, and neither did the knot sitting in the middle of his chest. So he’d driven in before the town had properly woken, the roads still empty except for the odd delivery van and a milk float rattling through the square.
The CID office hummed with the low background noise of an investigation in motion.
Phones. Keyboards. The soft scrape of chairs.
The incident board dominated the far wall, Emily’s photo pinned in the centre.
Seventeen. Blonde hair. A smile that hadn’t yet learned caution.
And Harrison stood at his desk, staring at the CCTV stills spread across the surface.
Except he wasn’t really seeing them.
Because every time his mind tried to fix on the investigation, it slipped sideways and landed somewhere else entirely.
Yes, back to the woodland path. To the mist drifting between the trees.
To the dark, uneven ground thousands of people had walked across and from which Emily Fisher had disappeared.
But it wasn’t the crime scene his mind circled back to.
It was the moment his mouth had found Jake Whitton’s.
Harrison sighed, scrubbing a hand down his face.
Christ.
He could tell himself it’d been impulse.
A lapse. Wrong place, wrong time. But the truth sat heavier than that.
He’d chosen it. He might not have planned it.
Certainly, hadn’t considered it. But he’d chosen it all the same.
Because Jake had been standing too close.
Talking too openly. Apologising for something as small as a blanket as if it mattered.
As if Harrison mattered. And there’d been something in it, unguarded and earnest, slipping past the careful walls Harrison had spent years building.
It’d caught him off balance. And instead of stepping back, he’d stepped forward. Into it. Into him.
He could still feel it. The exact moment the line gave way.
As if something inside him, long quiet and tightly held, had shifted enough to let it happen.
And when Jake’s hand came to rest at the back of his neck, and he heard the sound Jake had made as Harrison kissed him, low, almost surprised, Harrison pulled him closer and deepened it without thinking.
That had been the point of no return. Not the kiss itself.
But the way it hadn’t stopped there. The way, for a few seconds, Harrison had let himself want it.
It had been a long time since he’d had a kiss like that.
Long enough that he’d almost forgotten what it felt like.
And that was the problem. Because liking it was one thing. But wanting it again…
That was dangerous territory.
Harrison stared at the evidence board, forcing his thoughts back into the room.
He was the senior investigating officer on a live missing person case.
Jake Whitton was a witness. And Harrison Black was still very much a man whose husband had died.
Grief didn’t vanish because someone else’s mouth had fit his unexpectedly well.
“Good kisser, was he, Harry?”
Harrison straightened the stack of CCTV prints in front of him.
Focus.
Work.
Procedure.
If he kept moving, the rest of it could stay where it belonged. Compartmentalised. Contained.
A knock on the glass partition broke his train of thought, and DS Calder stepped into the office carrying his laptop and a mug of something smelling aggressively like instant coffee. “Morning, sir.”
Harrison nodded without looking up. “Morning.”
Calder set his laptop on the desk and opened it. “We’ve got something.”
That pulled Harrison’s attention. “What kind of something?”
“CCTV from the King’s Arms. Roughly the window you suggested.”
“That was quick.”
“Landlord’s cooperative.” Calder turned the laptop towards him and leaned in to press play.
The grainy footage filled the screen. Timestamp: 18:23:11 – Wednesday. Andy Mitchell walked into the pub.
Harrison leaned forward to watch.
Andy paused inside the doorway, scanning the room without quite committing to stepping fully inside.
Harrison swallowed as he recognised the hesitation for what it likely was: Jake Whitton.
With only one pub in the high street, Peter had never barred either of them outright.
But the unspoken rule around town had been clear enough—Andy and Jake didn’t share the same space.
On gig nights, when Jake’s band played, Andy made himself scarce.
Yet there he was.
Why? Had he needed a pint that badly? Or was there some other reason?
Harrison watched Andy on the screen make his way to the bar and take a stool near the end.
A moment later Brodie appeared behind the taps.
Even through the poor resolution, Harrison recognised him easily enough.
Lean build. Blond hair. Glitter ball smile permanently ready for customers.
Harrison didn’t know why his chest pulled, the edges of jealousy cutting in, but it did.
He ignored it.
Andy then said something. Brodie nodded, turned, and pulled a pint.
They spoke while the drink settled beneath the pump.
Longer than the few seconds it took to pour.
Long enough to register. To remember. Then Brodie slid the pint across the bar.
Andy took it and continued talking. Harrison watched the clock in the corner tick forward.
Twenty seconds.
Thirty.
Closer to a minute.
“That’s a fairly long conversation with someone he claims he barely remembers.” Harrison scribbled that down on his notepad.
Calder nodded. “Thought the same.”
Brodie eventually moved away to serve someone further down the bar.
Andy stayed where he was. Harrison let the footage run.
People drifted through the frame in the slow, familiar rhythm of an early evening in a village pub.
Locals coming in off shift. Jackets shrugged off and folded over the backs of stools.
Pints lifted. Laughter rising and fading beneath the low amber light.
Andy Mitchell sat at the bar throughout it all.
He spoke to no one. No one approached him either.
Though at several points the camera’s view of him was blocked by customers edging towards the bar for their drinks.
Brodie moved in and out of frame behind the counter, stacking empty glasses on the bar after clearing tables, occasionally pausing beside Andy long enough that Harrison couldn’t tell whether words had passed between them.
Andy kept his back to the room.
Watching the bar mirror.
Drinking.
At 18:48 the pint glass in front of him was empty.
Harrison leaned forward as Andy lifted a hand, tapping two fingers on the bar in a silent request for another.
Brodie returned a moment later. There was a brief exchange.
Then Brodie pulled the pump handle and poured another pint.
Andy Mitchell sat back on his stool as if he had nowhere else in the world to be.
“Right.” Harrison rubbed his chin. “So the one-pint story’s already gone.”
“Aye.” Calder tapped the screen. “But watch this.”
A second drink was placed in front of him.
Andy took it, then immediately began patting his pockets.
Keys? Phone? Wallet? His brow creased. He glanced down, then bent, checking the floor beneath the bar.
After a moment he pushed the stool back with his foot and leaned over to look underneath it, as if searching for something he might have dropped.
He lifted a hand, flagging Brodie back over.
Brodie returned, leaning across the counter while Andy spoke quickly.
Harrison couldn’t hear the words, but the exchange was brief. Brodie shook his head.
Andy sat back, scanning the room again.
Then a girl stepped into frame, passing behind him on her way towards the bar. Andy looked up. She smiled at him in that polite, automatic way people did in small villages when they recognised a face.
The girl was Emily Fisher.
Andy said something to her as she moved past. Emily paused long enough to answer, giving a small shrug suggesting she didn’t know whatever he’d asked.
Then she waved at someone else across the room and carried on towards the bar, already turning her attention elsewhere.
Andy watched her for a moment before looking across the room at whoever she’d waved at.
Whoever it was sat in a blind spot. The footage then shifted as the back door opened and several figures entered together.
Instrument cases. Guitars. the band arriving to set up.
Harrison’s stomach twisted as he recognised the silhouette at the centre. The unmistakable mass of long dark curls.
Jake Whitton.
Even in blurry CCTV, he was impossible not to notice.
Harrison forgot what he was supposed to be looking at.
Forgot the case. Where he was. Because his mind jumped straight back to mist drifting through trees.
To Jake’s mouth on his. To the quiet heat of that moment, and the way he’d simply walked away afterwards, leaving the whole thing suspended somewhere unresolved between them.
Harrison forced his attention back to the screen.
Andy was moving. But not towards the exit. He headed down the narrow corridor towards the toilets at the rear of the pub.
Calder paused the video. “That’s the last clear shot of him.”
Harrison frowned. “No camera covering the hallway?”
“No. Landlord says they’ve only got bar and front entrance.”
“So we don’t actually see him leave.”
“No.”
Harrison studied the frozen frame.
Andy halfway down the corridor.
Jake and the band arriving in the background.
Harrison forced himself to focus. “Alright.” He tapped the notebook with his pen. “So we’ve seen him speak to Emily. Do we see her back on camera after that?”