Page 16 of Too Close To Home

Harrison turned back to Pollard. “In the meantime, I want the father’s login credentials for the tracking app. With his consent.”

Pollard nodded. “He’ll cooperate.”

“Good. If the phone comes back online for even thirty seconds, I want a live notification. That buys us time without waiting on telecoms paperwork.” He tapped the red circle on the map. “If the device was switched off deliberately at the path, that changes our risk assessment. If it died naturally, that’s different. Either way, that stretch of woodland is our last confirmed point of contact with her.”

The room absorbed that.

A seventeen-year-old girl.

A dead phone.

A dark path.

“Anything on social media?” Harrison asked.

“Nothing obvious yet,” DS Calder piped up. He was an older sergeant. Looked relaxed in his surroundings, too. Probably been here since his first posting and got comfortable. His hair was greying, cropped short, face lined deep from years on the job rather than age alone. With a bushy moustache that looked as if it’d been a permanent fixture on him since the seventies. There was a stillness to him, too. Watchful. Closed-off. A copper who didn’t waste words because he didn’t need to. He’d seen enough to know how these things usually went. “Accounts still active. No goodbye messages.”

“Good.” Harrison nodded. “Let’s keep it that way.” He glanced at the officers in the room. “Initial enquiries?”

“House-to-house started at eight.” DS Calder sat up, not so much eager to please, more to prove he had all this handled himself. Posturing. “We’ve seized CCTV from the shop units. Nothing showing her past the square.”

“Any indication she planned to disappear?”

“None at this stage, sir.”

Harrison took that in. “Previous incidents on this path?”

The pause was immediate and telling. And Harrison swept his gaze around the room to take in the hesitation. Or caution, as it probably was. Pollard had mentioned a “delicate past” but the subtle stiffening of shoulders, the exchanged glances, raised his hackles far more effectively.

Pollard rubbed his jaw. “We’ve had concerns raised before. Nothing recent.”

That was a neat lie of omission. Harrison recognised the shape of those. Had used them himself when a conversation needed steering away from what wasn’t ready to be said aloud.

“And the community?” Harrison asked. “How loud is this already?”

Pollard huffed. “Hartswick loud.”

So…whispers in shop queues, crossed arms outside the butcher’s, rumours travelling faster than fact, fear clinging to a town that remembered things too well and forgot them too slowly.

“But no media yet?”

“Not yet.” Pollard pointed at him. “You’ll front that when we need to.”

Harrison nodded. He didn’t revel in that, but it was the nature of the job. “Right. Search strategy.”

DS Calder sat forward. “Uniforms have secured the LKP. Line search underway. Dog unit deployed. Air support requested, but mist’s too thick.”

Harrison looked back at the map. “The river?”

“Other side of the woods. No direct access from the LKP.”

“No direct access, or difficult access?”

Calder paused. “Difficult. She’d have to leave the path, cross the old boundary and cover nearly a mile through rough ground.”

“Then it stays in the wider search area. I don’t want difficult becoming impossible because it’s convenient.”

“Aye, sir.”