Page 36 of Too Close To Home

Pete winced. “Not sure.”

Harrison closed the notebook. “I’ll need the internal footage, regardless. And a list of all staff on shift, with contact details. Plus, all the names of the customers who were in here last night, those who’re your regulars. We’ll cross-reference who Miss Fisher interacted with during that final hour.”

“Sure. Absolutely.”

Harrison rose from the stool, smoothing down the front of his jacket. Habit rather than vanity, the quiet reset before stepping back into his role. Then the lad from earlier pushed through the rear door again. The one who’d bristled at Jake. Who’d thrown that crude comment across the room before Harrison had crossed the threshold. He paused inside, clocking Harrison immediately.

A quick once-over.

Assessing.

Harrison held his gaze and looked him over in kind. Mid-twenties, he guessed. Lean. Blond hair that had clearly taken some effort. Good-looking and fully aware of it, judging by the confidence remaining even after the earlier embarrassment had knocked some of the swagger out of him. Put him in a gay bar in Soho and he’d have no shortage of attention.

Once, Harrison might have looked more like him than anyone meeting DI Black now ever would’ve guessed.

Not the blond hair or the easy charm. Harrison had never been particularly sunny. But the rest of it. Slim jeans. T-shirts tight enough to show off a body he’d worked hard for. Ripped denim, battered trainers, festival wristbands he’d leave on until they practically fell off. Nights out that became mornings. Music too loud. Drinking too much. And a sex life that, despite being with only the one man, had been far more adventurous than anyone looking at him now would probably give him credit for.

That version of Harrison wasn’t gone, exactly.

He just hadn’t had much use for him in a long time.

The Met had changed some of it. Getting older had changed more. Then Chris had died, and everything unnecessary had dropped away. These days Harrison wore good suits, kept his hair neat, spoke carefully and rarely let anyone see more than he intended them to. At forty-three, he knew exactly what he looked like to other people: controlled, professional, perhaps a little too serious. A detective inspector who had his shit together.

It was mostly convincing.

What nobody looking at him now would know was that Harrison didn’t always need to be in control. In the right hands, he quite liked letting someone else take the lead, provided they took the time to learn exactly what he wanted.

The lad moved back behind the bar. “Delivery’s done.”

Pete nodded. “Cheers. How’s Jake?”

“Coiled.”

Harrison kept his attention on his notebook, but he listened because something had changed in the lad the second Jake’s name came up. Nothing obvious. A slight shift in his stance. Shoulders a little tighter. Attention suddenly fixed. Harrison knew the signs. He’d spent enough years watching people lie about who mattered to them to recognise when someone mattered rather more than they were letting on.

This wasn’t casual concern.

And it wasn’t quite jealousy, either.

There was a protectiveness about it. Almost possessive. As though Jake Whitton was someone this lad kept an eye on. Someone he worried about. Someone he considered, in some small way, his.

The thought caused an odd little tightening in Harrison’s chest.

He disliked it immediately.

Why on earth should he care who fancied Jake Whitton?

His phone vibrated before he could give the question any more thought. So Harrison turned away from the bar and answered, slipping easily back into the professional register that required considerably less examination. “Black.”

“Sir.” DS Calder’s clipped annoyance filtered down the phone. Harrison had left him to immediate containment. Door-to-door along Moor Road, securing domestic CCTV, coordinating early scene intelligence while Harrison handled the last confirmed location. “We’ve had a development.”

Harrison went still. “Go on.”

“SPOC came back with cell site data. Miss Fisher’s handset last pinged at 23:41. It places her near the woodland entrance. South side.”

Harrison glanced instinctively towards the pub’s rear doors, in the direction of the shortcut. “And after that?”

“It powers down.”