Chapter Twenty-One Pending Identification #2
“But he invited you to the pub after you fixed his car, on that day and time to give you a free drink as a thank you?”
“Aye. Said that’s when he’d be working, I should come by.”
“Otherwise, you wouldn’t have been in there at that time?”
“The band were playing.”
“Did that strike you as odd?”
Andy shrugged.
Harrison let the silence settle. Long enough to make it uncomfortable. Then he glanced down at his notes, as if the answer didn’t matter.
“What did you mean about Emily Fisher’s father?”
Andy clenched his jaw. “He’s been covering for them for years. Everyone knows it.”
“Who’s ‘them’?”
“The bosses. Owners. Own the whole of bloody Hartswick they do.”
“So you mean the owners of the steel works?”
“Aye.”
Harrison flipped a page. “Lancaster Group?”
“Not them. That’s the name on the signs.”
Harrison glanced at Calder, who raised an eyebrow. So Harrison ran through the mental stores of knowledge he’d accumulated that week. “You mean the family? Blackridge?”
“Aye. Them.”
“And Mr Fisher works for them?”
Andy gave a humourless huff. “As do we all. But he’s their man. Knows where everything is, what goes on, what gets buried.”
“Buried?”
Andy glanced down at the pictures of Robyn again.
“You want somewhere to get rid of a body or keep someone where no one’s looking…
he’d know. Places no one checks. Not properly.
Also knows how the money gets changed.” He laughed.
“Funny, really. His girl goes missing… and suddenly everyone’s asking me questions. ”
“We’re asking you questions, Andy,” Harrison leaned forward, “because you placed yourself at the King’s Arms the night Emily went missing.
CCTV puts you there, talking to her. Your van is seen on Moor Road near her last known location.
Your phone has traces there. And on searching your property, we’ve recovered extensive material relating to another missing girl. ”
Andy shook his head. “Didn’t do nowt. Not to her.”
Harrison held his gaze. He hadn’t said anything about Robyn.
“Andy, you’ve spent your interviews pointing at everyone else. Jake Whitton. Robyn’s father. Now Emily’s. How do you think that looks to us?”
“That you’re, once again, talking to the wrong bloke.”
Harrison kept his eyes on Andy. Because this part mattered. And he produced another piece of paper from the folder. A printout. Grainy. Almost completely faded, but enough to know it had once been a map.
“What’s this Andy?” He slid it across the table.
Andy peeked down. “I dunno.”
“It was found in your scrapbook.”
Andy said nothing.
“This section’s been marked.” Harrison tapped his finger on the faint circle. “Hand-drawn. After the fact.” Harrison didn’t move his hand. “Where did you get it?”
Andy shrugged. “No comment.”
Harrison held his gaze. “You circled this yourself?”
“No comment.”
“Why here?” Harrison pressed, tapping the circled area once. “What’s there?”
Andy leaned back in his chair, looking away. “No comment.”
“Is this somewhere you’ve been? Somewhere you know?”
Andy’s jaw worked. His eyes dropped again to Robyn’s photograph. “No comment.”
Calder glanced sideways at Harrison. Obviously unsure of what all this was. He hadn’t had time to go through it all with Calder yet. And sometimes it was good to keep his sergeants on their toes, too.
“And you expect us to believe you kept this for no reason?” Harrison said. “No idea what it is. No idea what it means.”
Andy didn’t answer.
Harrison sat back, studying him. Then he was about to go in and ask more, demand more. Go for the jugular, completely go off manual for interviewing when the solicitor decided it was then he should pipe up and remind everyone why he got paid.
“Inspector, unless you intend to charge my client, I’d suggest there are no longer sufficient grounds to justify his continued detention in relation to Emily Fisher.”
Of course, he was right. Harrison had nothing on Andy. Not to do with Emily Fisher. There was no charge. It wouldn’t stand.
Though he wasn’t innocent either.
“Don’t mistake this for the end of our interest in you.” Harrison nodded at the photographs. “We will be returning to those.”
The solicitor packed away his things. “Then we’re done here.”
Harrison finally looked at him. Gave a small nod. “For now.”
Then he reached forward and stopped the recording.
A uniformed officer took Andy back down to custody while out in the corridor, Calder fell into step beside Harrison, waiting for instructions.
Harrison handed the map to him. “Get this scanned properly. I want someone from intel to take a look. See if it matches anything local. Old sites, industrial land, anything fallen off the radar.”
Calder nodded. “I’ll get it over to them now.”
“And pull everything we’ve got on that steel works. Ownership, site plans, any disused units, outbuildings. I want to know what’s there. And what isn’t.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And put a car on Mitchell when he’s out. Low key. I want to know where he goes.”
“Surveillance?”
“For now, just eyes on,” Harrison got to his desk, or what he’d decided was his desk. “If he knows something, he’ll lead us to it.”
Calder nodded. “Got it.” He then eyed Harrison slipping into his coat. “Where you off to?”
“I’m going to speak to the father again. There’s a lot of noise coming out of Andy, but, like I said last night, rumours don’t appear out of nowhere.”
“And the barman, sir? Are we following that up? What Whitton said?”
Harrison exhaled slowly, swiping a hand over the back of his neck as he considered it.
He’d had no choice but to log Jake’s information properly to get traction on it, which meant it was now in the system—picked over, discussed, judged.
Jake Whitton, already a complication, was now neatly filed as something else in the eyes of the team. A distraction. A liability.
Worse.
Harrison knew how it went. He’d seen it in other stations, other teams. Men like Brodie, men who survived the way they had to, were rarely afforded the benefit of doubt. Their pasts became shorthand. Their choices, justifications. And Jake, tied to that, would be measured by the same yardstick.
He didn’t like it.
Didn’t like that he’d been the one to put it there.
“Put an officer on him,” he said at last. “Low level. I want eyes, not pressure. He’s got previous. If we push too hard, he’ll shut down.”
Calder nodded.
But Harrison’s thoughts moved on. To the file.
To what had come back on Brodie Simmons.
Fragmented, messy, and far more complicated than the version the team would reduce him to.
A life built on survival, on bad decisions and worse circumstances, ending in patterns that were easy to judge and harder to understand.
Yes, he was someone to keep eyes on. And Jake should know.
If he didn’t already. Procedure said assign it.
Pass it off. Let uniform handle it, keep the lines clean, keep the distance.
Harrison knew he wouldn’t.
He’d go himself.
Not with a notebook. Not as DI Black, standing over him with questions and a statement to take.
But as him. One man to another. Someone who understood that things weren’t always as simple as the file made them look.
And if that meant dealing with Jake Whitton—Hartswick’s resident pain in the arse—on his own terms, then so be it.
Strictly professional.