Page 35 of Too Close To Home

So what had kept her there?

Harrison let the inconsistency go rather than challenge it immediately. Details mattered. Not because they were dramatic, but because they were usually the first place truth bent. Claire could be lying. Not maliciously. Maybe… protectively. Teenagers often mistook silence for loyalty. She might think she was helping. Sparing her friend from trouble by suggesting extra wages instead of admitting Emily had stayed for someone. A boy, perhaps? Someone Emily’s father would disapprove of.

Or could she be protecting herself?

Guilt had a way of rewriting timelines. And she might have wanted to reassure herself that she wasn’t at fault for leaving her friend behind. Harrison had seen it before. People editing their memories in real time, trying to land somewhere less responsible.

He made a neat notation in the margin.

Claire. Friend. Re-interview. Alone.

Because somewhere in that final hour, something had changed. And he needed to know exactly what.

Harrison lifted his gaze from the page. “Did she say why she wanted to stay?”

Pete frowned, as if only now realising that perhaps he should’ve asked.

“No. I can’t keep tabs on every member of staff. Who brings them in. Who takes them home. That’s not…” Pete rubbed a hand along his forehead. “It’s not possible.”

Harrison held his gaze a beat longer, then let it go and took in the room properly.

The King’s Arms was on a corner plot. Deep rather than wide. Two separate bar runs. One facing the main floor, one tucked nearer the rear doors for band nights. A low stage at the far end with rigged lighting and stacked speakers. This wasn’t an occasional open-mic venue but somewhere that traded on live sets. Tables had been pushed back towards the walls, leaving a standing floor in front of the stage. Even now, mid-morning, the layout spoke of volume.

“How many can fit in here?” Harrison asked.

“Hundred and twenty comfortably. On a Static Youth night? One-fifty, maybe pushing one-sixty if no one cares about elbow room.”

Harrison noted that down. Add a heavy male crowd, alcohol, noise, movement between the smoking area outside and bar supervision, that deviated from tidy management to crowd control. Pete would’ve been watching tills. Stock. Glass collection. Intoxication levels. Not tracking the comings and goings of one seventeen-year-old member of staff once she stepped outside. Harrison saw the guilt creeping onto Pete’s face. The mental replay of closing time. The small decisions being dragged back under harsher light. The what-ifs taking root.

He didn’t press it.

Guilt was common. Responsibility wasn’t always the same thing.

“I appreciate it’s not your responsibility to monitor your staff’s transport arrangements.” Harrison tried to level him out before he rethought his choices. “I’m simply establishing sequence, not assigning blame.”

Pete nodded, but the tightness in his jaw didn’t ease.

Harrison recognised it immediately. The backward spiral of memory. Mental replay. The search for the exact second where he might have been able to step in and changed the outcome. But hindsight was a dangerous place to sit.

He knew because he lived there. Every. Single. Day.

He lowered his gaze to the notebook again. “When you last saw her, where exactly was she standing?”

“Outside. Near the back gate. Thought she were waiting for a lift.”

“And was anyone else in that area at the time?”

Pete furrowed his brow and stared past Harrison’s shoulder as if the answer might be written on his walls.

“Take a moment.” Harrison used the pause to sip his coffee. “Something that felt irrelevant at the time may not be now.”

“It was busy. People smoking. Coming and going. I can’t be certain who she spoke to out there. But by eleven, we’d got rid of most of the punters. Band was on pack down…”

Harrison tapped the end of his pen on the page, mind-mapping the layout. Bar, back door, car park, gate leading towards the shortcut. “And you’ve sent over the CCTV?”

“Aye. Front bar only. The camera out back’s been temperamental.”

“Was it functioning last night?”