Page 107 of Too Close To Home

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?”

Calder nodded and scrubbed forward along the timeline. “About twenty minutes later. She comes out collecting empties.”

He paused the footage. On screen, Emily moved along the bar, gathering abandoned glasses. When she reached Andy’s spot, she picked up the pint he’d ordered second. Still full. Harrison watched her lift it and carry it out of frame.

“Where does she take it?” he asked.

Calder shrugged. “Camera doesn’t cover that side of the bar. Odds are she took it behind the taps and poured it away.”

“Or she could have taken it to wherever Andy has gone to? A table out of view?” He gestured towards the screen as the pub filled.

“There wouldn’t be a table left,” Calder said as more people crowded the frame. Locals drifting in, bodies moving between tables. “You’ve seen how packed it gets when Static Youth play now, right?”

Harrison glanced up. “Hm?”

Calder gave him a curious look. “You were in there last night, weren’t you?”

Harrison’s heart jolted hard.

Calder furrowed his brow. “To collect the footage? Us Hartswick Police often go in on band night. You must not have seen us.”

Right. Great. He’d been seen. Had they seen him gazing up at Jake Whitton in awe of him on stage? Had they seen him talk to him? Least he had a professional explanation for being there.

“Oh. Right. Yes.” Harrison turned back to the laptop. “I went to speak to the barman about Andy.”

He’d logged the conversation with Brodie into the case file when he’d finally given up on sleep sometime after two in the morning.

Not that closing his eyes had helped much.

Every time he tried, his mind drifted straight back to Jake Whitton.

And the increasingly uncomfortable realisation that he had absolutely no idea what to do about him.

He leaned back in his chair to get himself back into investigation mode. “So Andy Mitchell buys a second drink he never touches… disappears from camera… and is somewhere in that building while Emily Fisher is still there, and we never see him leave. Then his van turns up on the woodland path several hours later, when Emily is leaving.”

Calder nodded. “That’s how it looks.”

Harrison closed the laptop. “Do we have anything back from comms on his phone yet?”

Calder shook his head. “Request went in late last night. Telecoms haven’t replied.”

Harrison reached for the desk phone. “Let’s push it.” He dialled the digital intelligence desk and waited while the line clicked through.

“Digital intelligence.”

“DI Black, CID.”

“Morning, sir.”

“Morning. I’ve got a high-risk missing person—Emily Fisher. I need an urgent communications data return on a handset belonging to Andy Mitchell.”

“Alright, go ahead.”

Harrison glanced at Calder, who slid the suspect’s details across the desk, and Harrison reeled off the number. “I want cell-site location from Wednesday evening onwards. Priority grading.”

Keys tapped rapidly on the other end.