Page 130 of In Too Deep

Maybe if Jake asked carefully…

Maybe if he made it sound casual.

He did cash jobs himself. Everyone did around here. Roof patching for landlords who want things done off the record. Gutter repairs paid in folded twenties. Favours. Quiet jobs. Hartswick practically ran on them. So maybe Davo would talk to him because Jake looked more part of the system than Harrison ever could.

Whatever the fuck the system even was.

And maybe this was all nothing.

Jake exhaled hard and tightened his grip on the steering wheel before glancing sideways at Teddy. The kid had pastry flakes on his hoodie, completely absorbed in whatever game flashed across his screen. And the sight hit Jake suddenly and brutally.

What the fuck was he doing?

He wasn’t even Teddy’s dad, yet somehow he’d dragged a thirteen-year-old to sit outside a potentially dodgy scrapyard in the dark because he couldn’t let go of a murder investigation that wasn’t his responsibility.

He’d spent years telling himself he’d done better than his own parents.

Yet here he was, chasing ghosts and killers with Robyn’s son sat beside him, eating petrol station pastry.

Jesus Christ.

Shame rolled low and heavy through his chest.

Without another thought, Jake shoved the van into gear. The engine rumbled louder beneath them as he pulled away from the kerb and drove back out of the industrial estate, leaving the scrapyard gates behind in the dark.

Chapter seventeen

Contaminated Evidence

Friday arrived thick with heat.

Not the bright, easy sort dragging people into beer gardens and parks. This was oppressive heat. Heavy heat. A random high temperature speaking of global bloody warming. It was spring not summer. Yet it seeped into Harrison’s skin before eight in the morning, trapping yesterday’s sweat beneath his collar and waistband. For the first time in weeks, he almost missed the rain.

Almost.

He turned the car into Lancaster Industrial Estate, the whole place resembling a concrete oven even at this hour, and tried not to look up at the contractors working on the roof of the old warehouse unit. He genuinely tried. But he couldn’t have stopped himself if the investigation depended on it.

Figures moved along the whitewashed sky in blurred silhouettes, stripped to T-shirts and work trousers, heat haze shimmering around them. It was impossible to tell if Jake was up there among them. But he was supposed to be. So Harrison looked away before his brain could start doing that profoundly unhelpful thing it had been doing over the nights without him.

Which was thinking about him.

Aching for him.

Ahead, the estate rippled beneath the brutal glare of the morning sun. Corrugated roofs radiated heat back into the air. Forklifts whined somewhere deeper in the maze of units while diesel fumes hung low between buildings alongside the metallic tang of hot steel, engine oil, and scorched rubber.

It had been five days since Lauren Pike’s body had been pulled from the River Hart, and the case had started to rot in ways Harrison recognised instinctively. He’d spent most of those five days buried in reports, statements, CCTV timelines, pathology findings and forensic updates, not to mention following the tattoo link, trying to track anyone down who knew something about it and would talk. He slept in fractured hours on the office sofa between cold coffees, conference calls and endless briefings.

The post-mortem had answered some questions, at least. Lauren had sustained repeated blunt-force trauma to the head, although the pathologist had identified one blow as ultimately fatal. The pattern suggested frenzy rather than precision. Overkill, not planning. There was bruising around both wrists and high along the insides of her thighs, with skin damage consistent with restraint, though probably not prolonged. Defensive material had been recovered from beneath her fingernails, proving she’d fought him. Through the assault. The rape. Right until the end.

Quick. Violent. Opportunistic.

Not the work of someone careful or experienced enough to separate sex from rage. There was no ritual to it. No sophistication. It was all panic, entitlement, and the certainty that whatever happened afterwards could be cleaned up.

That part sat badly with Harrison.

Because men who acted that recklessly usually fell into one of two categories: stupid enough to lose control entirely, or powerful enough to believe consequences simply didn’t apply to them.

Her phone still hadn’t surfaced. Which meant Lauren had most likely been carrying it when she died. The handset recovered from the flat by Humberside police appeared to be her everyday phone. The missing one was different. A pay-as-you-go number used for arranging private bookings through intermediaries rather than dealing with clients directly.