Page 19 of Too Close To Home

“No.” Then, after a beat too long: “Not in a long time.”

Which was as good as admitting something had happened. But not something he was ready to unpack yet.

The mist thickened as the landscape opened up. Trees crowded the verges. Water dripped steadily from the overhead branches. The narrow road curved, then straightened, and finally, blue tape appeared, slicing across the Fell Edge entrance to the woodland like a wound dressing.

Harrison pulled in behind the patrol car and killed the engine. Beside him, Calder shifted forward to peer through the windscreen.

“Balls.”

Harrison followed his gaze to where a man stood beyond the cordon. Arms folded tightly, work boots planted in the mud, shoulders rigid beneath a hoodie. Heavy-duty reinforced trousers suggested he was a tradesman. Not police. That and the filthy boots spattered with the sort of muck that said he’d come straight from a job rather than wandered over for a look.

Harrison somehow couldn’t take his eyes off him.

Dark curls fell to his shoulders, damp from the mist and frizzing around a face that could have been on magazine covers. And there was a restlessness about him. Not nervous. Angry. As if every part of him wanted to get beyond that tape, and he was using sheer force of will to stay where he’d been told.

Definitely not police.

Probably local.

And, from Calder’s reaction, definitely someone Harrison was about to become acquainted with.

“Comes with the territory.” Harrison unclipped his seatbelt. “We’ll have onlookers.”

“That’s not just any onlooker.”

Harrison glanced back at the man on the verge and collided with a pair of eyes staring straight back at him through the mist. Christ. They were intense. Deep blue. Direct. And Harrison felt the impact of that stare somewhere low in his stomach. It was that same stupid, disordered flip he’d felt earlier on the phone. Unwanted then.

Even more inappropriate now.

He shut it down before it could become anything worth examining and reached for the door handle. “Who is he?”

Calder let out a long, weary sigh. “Whitton.”

Harrison rolled the name around in his head. It tasted as if he already knew it. Then he noticed the van sidled half up on the road. White Transit, not a patrol vehicle or forensics. The block lettering along the side gave it away: Whitton Roofing and Repairs.

“Roofer?”

“Aye.” Calder narrowed his eyes out the window at the onlooker. “And Hartswick Police’s resident pain in the arse.”

Harrison didn’t have time to ask anything else because the moment Calder opened his door, Whitton pushed off the verge and strode towards them with purpose.

“Course it’d be you.” Whitton waved a hand as if batting away something old and festering. His accent was broader in person. Rougher. Charged. “Always bloody you.”

“Go home, Jake.” Calder tugged down his sleeves, settling into the posture of a man who’d done this dance before. “Or better still, go to work. Let the grown-ups handle it, aye.”

Jake barked a laugh. “Like you did last time?” He clapped, loud and cutting, the slap reverberating around the woodland. “Well fucking done, sarge. Stellar effort.”

Calder narrowed his eyes. “You’ve no idea what’s happened here.”

“Nor do you.”

“Which is why you need to step aside and let us find out.”

The air was thin. Brittle. And Harrison had seen enough to know he had to step in. So he closed the distance with deliberate calm, having to swallow for composure. The voice on the phone that morning had been enough to catch him off guard. That low, Northern cadence lingered longer in his chest than it should. Seeing who that voice belonged to hit him harder. Sharper. Physical.

Ridiculous.

Completely inappropriate.