Page 109
“Jake Whitton, guv.” She glanced down at her notes. “Though it is strange he’d know about the tattoo. The Whittons might hear half of what happens in Hartswick before we do, but that’s quite specific.”
Harrison twirled his pen between his fingers. “We don’t make assumptions about unidentified visitors.”
“No, guv. Course we don’t.” She smiled, then disappeared back into the noise of the station.
Harrison stared at the board before finally throwing his pen onto the desk with a frustrated clatter. He knew exactly why Jake had gone to Hull. Not to undermine the investigation. Not to embarrass him. Jake had gone because thirteen years of grief and unanswered questions had carved this restless and self-destructive streak into him. Because once hope lodged itself beneath Jake Whitton’s skin, he chased it even when it bled him for it. And Harrison understood that instinct far more intimately than he wanted to admit.
Understood it enough to have pushed Jake away because he knew what it was like to lose a man to that.
“Sir?”
Harrison looked up.
One of the media officers stood near the incident room doors. “Press have set up outside.”
He closed the file in front of him, reached for his suit jacket and straightened his tie. Then he prepared to stand in front of cameras while, somewhere beneath the surface of the investigation, his personal and professional lives were collapsing into one another.
Again.
chapter fourteen
Strip It Back
The rest of the day turned to absolute shite.
Jake buried himself in the work because it was the only thing he knew how to do when his head got too loud. Up on the warehouse roof, the heat sat heavy against the black membrane while the whole industrial estate shimmered beneath the late afternoon sun. Scotty kept shouting measurements across the scaffold. Roman seemed to spend more time talking to people than actually roofing, wandering off every half hour to answer a call, find his dad, or chase some site problem. Boss’s son perks. Meaning the work was double brutal.
By half five, the light softened over the estate. They’d finished sealing the worst section near the drainage run and laid enough fresh membrane to keep the predicted rain out overnight. Jake stripped off his harness beside the scaffold tower with sweat drying tight across his skin and grime ground deep into the creases of his hands.
He still couldn’t stop replaying the look on Harrison’s face.
The hurt.
The fear.
He felt sick every time he thought about it. Because he’d fucked it. Properly this time. Maybe Harrison hadn’t outright ended whatever this was between them, but the feeling sitting in Jake’s chest felt close enough to being dumped that the distinction hardly mattered.
After work, he picked Teddy up from his mate’s house and took him to the rugby club on the edge of town. Floodlights had already clicked on by the time training started, casting a harsh white glare across grass churned to mud beneath teenage boots. Jake stood beside the touchline with his arms folded while boys slammed into each other through tackling drills hard enough to echo across the pitch. Coaches shouted instructions through whistles. Someone’s parent handed around mugs of tea from a battered thermos.
Normally rugby calmed Teddy. Burned the anger out of him. But tonight, even he seemed off balance. More aggressive in tackles. Mouthing off after a shove. Carrying too much force into contact. He had the Whitton blood. Jake recognised it because he’d spent most of his own life doing exactly the same thing.
After training, Teddy climbed into the van sweaty and mud streaked, tossing his kit bag into the footwell.
“You ate today?” Jake asked him.
“There’s nowt in the cupboards.” Teddy yanked his seatbelt over him. “Lucky I get free school meals or I’d starve.”
“So you ate at school?”
Teddy gave him a look. “You tasted the slop they serve?”
“So it’s a no, then. You’ve not eaten.”
“No.”
“Right.” Jake drove them to their favourite chippy on the high street.
There, he bought tea for the whole family, trying not to look at his phone that had ironically started working while he had to wait for his dad’s haddock to fry, in the hope Harrison might’ve called. Might’ve texted. Given him some sign that it wasn’t over and he hadn’t completely fucked it.
