Page 5 of Too Close To Home

And as he stood there, listening to the unfamiliar silence of a place that didn’t yet know him, he wondered if he’d always feel slightly misplaced. As if he’d stepped sideways into someone else’s life and forgotten the map back to his own.

Then—

Drip.

He frowned.

Drip.

Faint, but unmistakable.

Harrison followed the sound to the far corner of the sitting room and looked up. A damp stain spread across the ceiling, the plaster beginning to bow beneath it. As he watched, water gathered along a hairline crack, swelled into a heavy bead, then dropped to the floor.

Drip.

“Wonderful.” He planted his hands on his hips and stared at the ceiling. “Welcome to Yorkshire, I suppose.”

He then climbed onto an unopened box marked Books – Study and pressed his fingers to the stain. It was damp. Fresh. The survey had mentioned the roof in the vague, arse-covering way surveys mentioned everything. Age-related wear. Monitor condition. Maintenance recommended within five years. And Harrison had skimmed it somewhere between grief counselling paperwork and transfer forms, signed what needed signing, and bought the cottage anyway.

He let out a breath bordering on a resigned laugh. There was something almost cruelly symmetrical about it. He’d left London after a life that had collapsed inward under scrutiny and failure, and within hours of arriving, his new house was about to do the same.

He stepped down and raked a hand through his hair.

He could ignore it.

He had bigger things to deal with. A new station. A new team. A town that would assess him before he’d even set foot inside the briefing room.

Drip.

“Why put off until tomorrow what you can do today, Harry, my love.”

“Yes. Thanks, Christian,” he replied to the ghost who’d unfortunately followed him here, too. “This is your area. Not mine.”

Chris had always hated problems that waited.

And he, too, hated leaving things undone. The same way an unsolved case gnawed at him, he could already feel the itch at the base of his skull to get this sorted. Unfortunately, he was better at solving murders than patching slate, though. So he went into the kitchen where the estate agent had left a neat stack of local information on the table. He assumed it would be takeaway menus and bin schedules. But alongside recycling days and parish council notices sat a single, plain business card.

J. Whitton Roofing and Repairs

Call anytime.

Cash preferred.

No logo. No website. No review stars. Just a name and a mobile number.

Harrison turned it over. Blank. He should use TrustATrader. Vet quotes through Trustpilot. But he glanced back towards the sitting room at the persistent drip and realised he didn’t have time for any of that. Not when he was due at HQ in less than an hour.

Drip.

He exhaled sharply and reached for his phone, dialling the number on the card. It answered before the first ring.

“Aye, Jake Whitton.”

The accent hit Harrison before the greeting properly registered. Northern. Broad, but not the lazy caricature. Gravel under honey. There was background noise, too. An engine rumbling, the hiss of tyres on a wet road. The man was clearly driving. Harrison closed his eyes in subtle resignation. He’d signed off on too many collision reports in his career. Seen too many grainy photographs of twisted metal and blood pooled beneath steering columns because someone believed they could split their attention at fifty miles per hour. The instinct to ask if he was hands free surfaced on his tongue.

He swallowed it.

He wasn’t here to reprimand anyone. Wasn’t anyone’s traffic enforcement sermon. He wasn’t that man.