Chapter Twenty-One Pending Identification
Pending Identification
Jake, once again, ditched his jobs.
He was going to be skint this month. Properly. Rent-dodging, petrol-counting, living-on-beans, skint. He’d have to go to Deacon, swallow whatever pride he had left, and ask for an advance on the next gig.
But this mattered more.
Sitting half a street down from the King’s Arms. Watching Brodie.
He was on the lunch shift. Moving in and out, trays in hand, chatting to punters.
His usual charming self. And Jake was sitting here, burning through fuel and patience to keep eyes on him.
He scrubbed a hand over his face. This was stupid.
A waste of time. He could go in. Confront him.
Grab him by the collar and shake whatever he knew out of him. But he’d done that before.
Got three years for it.
Lesson learned. Supposedly.
Instead, he’d told Harrison. Put it in his hands. Trusted him with it. And hoped, for once, that someone might actually listen. So now he waited. Because any minute the police would turn up and start asking questions. And he wanted to be there when they did.
His phone rang.
Jake lifted his arse off the seat to tug it from his back pocket and checked the screen. “Fuck.”
Ron and Eileen. Again. He shouldn’t ignore it. He’d told them to call if there were any issues. But right now, the last thing he wanted was to deal with loft insulation and creaky roofs. He wanted to be here. See this through.
The phone kept ringing.
Jake exhaled hard and swiped to answer. “Y’alright, Ron?”
“Eh up, Jake, love, it’s Eileen. Ron’s at golf.”
He softened his tone. “Hey, love. What’s up?”
He kept focused on the pub. Then checked the road behind him. No blue lights.
“That banging. It’s not getting any better.”
Jake frowned. “Banging?”
“In the roof, love. You insulated it the other day, but it’s still there. And I can’t sleep. I’m all over the place, love. Ron says you said it were birds or summat, but…well, he can’t hear nowt without his aid in so…could you come and have another look? Fill a gap, maybe? I’m so flipping tired.”
Jake dragged his thumb over his teeth, thinking. “I can come by later tonight?”
“I’ve got bingo later. Was hoping you could pop in now? Tell me I’m not daft.”
Jake glanced at the pub again. Still nothing. No movement. No cars pulling up. No sign Harrison had acted on anything he’d said.
“You’re not daft, Eileen.”
“But you’ll come check?”
Jake closed his eyes, then sighed. “Put the kettle on, love. Would kill for a brew.”
“Oh, thanks, love. You really are a gem.”
Jake ended the call and tossed the phone onto the dash. He sat there a moment longer. Watching. Waiting. But nothing happened. Maybe Harrison hadn’t taken him seriously. Maybe he was like the rest of them. Another copper who’d made up his mind about Jake Whitton and who he was.
Or maybe—
Jake huffed out a breath. Maybe this was him again. Sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. Seeing things that weren’t there. If he weren’t careful, he could end up back inside. He gripped the wheel. Then, with one last look at the pub, he started the engine.
And drove away.
Leaving Harrison to do his job.
While he stopped this nonsense to go do his.
* * * *
It didn’t take long for the intelligence return on Brodie Simmons. Almost as if it had been waiting there for him.
Harrison read it once. Then again.
Not clean. Not even close.
And, as Jake had suggested, a completely different surname to the one he’d given Harrison on first asking. Different to the one his boss, Pete, Kings Arm’s landlord, had for him.
He didn’t have any direct links to abduction or anything that put him immediately in Emily Fisher’s orbit though, but enough to warrant attention.
Jake hadn’t been wrong. Brodie had form.
Stalking. Fixation. A non-molestation order out of Hull after a relationship spiralled into something obsessive and sustained.
Harrison made the call to Humberside himself, pushed for background, and what came back filled in the gaps.
Runaway as a kid. Survival sex. Controlled by a pimp for a time.
Then attachment. Misplaced, intense, and dangerous.
He’d fixated on a client, pursued him relentlessly until the man had no option but to go legal.
Pattern there. Attachment. Obsession. Escalation.
Then Hartswick. Fresh start on paper. Same man underneath.
Harrison closed the file and looked up at the board.
If Jake were right, Brodie didn’t need to be the abductor to be involved. He needed proximity. Access. Motive that didn’t read clean on paper. Either he’d inserted himself into this to get close to Jake again… or he knew more than he was saying and was playing it carefully.
Either way, he’d moved up the list.
Officially.
Behind him, the low hum of the incident room carried on.
Phones, keyboards, the scrape of chairs.
But the energy had altered. The media appeal had gone out less than an hour ago, reward authorised and circulating.
That should shake something loose. It usually did.
Money changed loyalties. Nudged consciences.
Brought out people who’d been waiting for a reason to talk. Or a reason to sell. Or move.
And as Brodie had asked about a reward, it only heightened that angle.
Let’s see what his real motive is in all this.
But now… he needed to re-question Andy. With only a limited number of custody hours remaining, he had to do it now. And had a few more angles to press.
He pushed away from the desk. “Calder.”
The DS looked up. “Sir?”
“Further interview. Mitchell.”
Calder stood. “I’ll get custody.”
Harrison grabbed his coffee. It had gone cold. He drank it anyway, then followed Calder down to custody, where Calder spoke to the sergeant first, outlining grounds for a further interview. New lines of inquiry. Potential inconsistencies. Enough to justify bringing Mitchell back under caution.
The sergeant gave a curt nod. “Solicitor?”
“Already requested,” Calder said. “On his way.”
Harrison stepped in then. “I want him as soon as legal’s in the building. No delays.”
The custody sergeant held his gaze a beat, then nodded again. “I’ll have him produced.”
Fifteen minutes later, they were in Interview Room Two again. Files laid out. Recording equipment checked. Strategy set. Harrison and Calder sat on one side of the table. Andy Mitchell opposite, solicitor at his shoulder, watchful and poised to intervene.
Harrison let the silence sit for a moment. Let Andy feel the room.
Then he reached forward and pressed record.
He ran through the usual. Time. Date. Persons present. Confirmation of legal representation. The caution delivered again. Grounds for detention restated.
Then Harrison met his gaze. “We’ve executed the search warrant on your flat, Andy.” He waited. Watching him. There was a minuscule squirm. A shoulder shift. Eyes not quite holding. “What do you think we found?”
Andy folded his arms. “Weren’t no girl.”
“No. There wasn’t.” Harrison let that hang, long enough to wrong-foot him. Waiting to see if Andy had expected a girl to be found and was surprised there hadn’t been. “Is there anything you want to tell us at this stage?”
“No.”
“When officers searched your property, they recovered an extensive collection relating to Robyn Whitton.” Harrison slid the photocopies across the table. One by one. Photographs. Printouts. Old articles. “Do you recognise these, Andy?”
Andy didn’t look at them. “No comment.”
Harrison left them there anyway. Hoping to elicit something from him.
Give a little push. A nudge. Because whatever he’d done or not done to Robyn Whitton, these scrapbooks proved he’d had feelings for her.
Unwanted. Bordering on obsession. And completely unhinged.
But feelings, nonetheless. And her staring at him might push forward a guilt he hadn’t realised he had.
“You asked the barman about Emily Fisher and the staff rotation at the King’s Arms—”
“That’s a bullshit lie right there.”
Harrison remained calm as Calder tapped on his laptop, making notes.
“We have you on CCTV talking to the barman for several minutes.”
“Weren’t nowt about that.”
“What was it about?”
Andy shifted again. “He were asking me stuff.”
“About what?”
“My job.” He shrugged. “Steel works. I told him, place is rotten. Dirty bastards running it. Everyone looks at me like I’m the problem, but it’s them.
That place. And that girl’s dad…worst of ‘em. But no one says nowt cause you gotta keep your job around here. You lose the steelworks and you might as well be buried there, too.”
Calder looked at Harrison. But Harrison watched Andy carefully.
That wasn’t rehearsed. That was emotion bleeding through.
Andy shook his head, peering down to the picture of Robyn Whitton.
So Harrison waited a beat. He didn’t jump on it.
This was exactly what Andy had done before.
Throwing other things in the way to get the heat off him.
Like he had with Jake, his father. But there was some new information in there that Harrison had filed and needed to sort through in his own head first.
So Harrison steered it back to where he needed it. “And you said all this to Brodie? Referring to Emily’s father?”
“Aye. He were asking all sorts of things. Thought I best tell him who he’ll have keeping an eye on her.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“That girls’ dad. They’ll all be in here watching her for sure.”
Harrison wrote that down.
Andy seemed content to keep going. “Thought it a bit odd at first. Cause, well, I don’t like fairies and I think he might have been flirting. Like with his car. Asking me to jump-start it. Then chat, chat, fucking chat.”
“Isn’t that the reason he gave you the free pint?”
“Aye.”
“So he approached you first?”
“Aye. At the petrol garage. His car needed a jump.”
“Then he invited you to the King’s Arms that day?”
Andy frowned. “Ain’t no dirty shirt lifter. Didn’t go there for him. I like a drink, is all.”