Page 172 of Too Close To Home

Dangerous thought.

Jake looked away.

“No crime.” Harrison wiped a few lingering drops of rain from the sleeve of his coat. “But sometimes it’s worth stepping away from something for a while. For your own sanity.”

Jake snorted. “Bit late for mine, Detective.”

Silence edged in for a second. Awkward and full.

So Jake scrubbed his hands together again. “So…”

“So,” Harrison echoed, holding Jake’s gaze before slipping back to the reason he was there. “I expect you’ve had the official line. What we’ve released.”

Jake nodded. “Her dad set it up.”

“That’s the headline. But it’s a bit more layered than that.” He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. “Mick Underwood. The neighbour you met. He works at the industrial estate. Same place as Emily’s father. Underwood’s in a fair bit of gambling debt. Needed money quickly. The father used that.”

“Used that how?”

“To ask him to stage it. A controlled abduction. Or what he believed would be.”

“Why?”

“To scare her.” Harrison sighed, as if the very thought were absurd. It sounded it. “That’s how he’s framed it, anyway.”

Jake shook his head. “Jesus…”

“Glen Fisher already lost his wife. Didn’t believe Emily wouldn’t follow. She’d been pushing boundaries. Talking to people online, planning to leave, university applications. From his perspective, he was losing control. Especially when she took the job at the pub.”

“So he decided to prove a point.”

“That was the thinking. Ironically and somewhat insanely, it was to show her what he believed would happen if she carried on. Reinforce the risk. Keep her safe.”

Jake shook his head. “That’s fucking bonkers.”

“Agreed. But frantic people don’t tend to think beyond the first step. And he chose Underwood because he was desperate for the money to clear his debts. Thing was, he was known to Emily, a familiar face, she would have had no immediate alarm. She got into the vehicle without a struggle.”

Jake stilled.

“From there, she was drugged. Taken to the property. Kept in the loft. Mostly sedated. I think the idea was to make her believe she’d been abducted, keep her groggy.”

“Fucking hell…”

“It wasn’t meant to be long-term. The plan had been to let the search escalate. Media, police activity. Create pressure. Possibly draw the mother back. Then move her once things eased off, or once they thought they could control how she was ‘found’. My guess, Mick would find her, take the reward money, and she would go home to recover from her ordeal, and perhaps her mother would stay, and her father would have everything he wanted back where he wanted it.”

Jake let out a sharp breath. “Controlling bastard.”

“That’s what it comes down to, yeah. But there’s more…”

Jake frowned. “More?”

“Mick knew he couldn’t just let her go. The plan had been to take her like a stranger would. Balaclava, grab her quickly, make sure she never saw his face. But Mick worried a struggle would draw attention, so he changed it. Approached her instead. Got close enough that Emily saw him properly. Heard his voice. By the time he had her, she knew exactly who’d taken her. And that changed everything. Keeping her alive was never part of the plan, but letting her go wasn’t an option either. She could identify him.” He took a breath. “So Mick had already decided he was going to kill her.”

Jake’s mouth fell open.

“Up in that loft we found supplies. Chemicals. Tools. Plastic sheeting. He’d been preparing ways to dispose of her body slowly over time. There was even evidence he’d discussed using a building on the industrial estate to get rid of the body. Incinerators. Industrial waste.”

“Jesus fucking Christ.”