Local Gone Missing(5)

And they were always perfectly pleasant in that detached, passing-through way they had when they met Elise on the pavement.

“Hello there! Beautiful day!” they said when they saw her, never using her name.

She didn’t know if they even knew it—or that she was a senior officer on the Major Crime Team—but she knew theirs. Kevin and Janine Scott-Pennington. She’d looked them up on the computer—on a need-to-know basis.

The only thing they really had in common was a cleaner. “The S-Ps are good clients.” Dee had smiled when Elise had complained about the Friday night arrivals. “They always pay on time. Don’t tell anyone, but I don’t mind weekenders.”

Elise had wondered for a moment if Dee ever discussed her with them. It had made her want to hide all her things. Her mum had laughed when she’d told her but Elise wasn’t used to having anyone in the house. She’d never had a cleaner before. Hadn’t wanted one. Didn’t want a stranger rootling through her underwear drawer or reading her bank statements. But cancer had changed so many things and her surgery had meant no heavy lifting or stretching while she healed. And got back to work. Work. That was what she needed. To be back running a murder investigation, running on adrenaline and cold coffee. Not herbal bloody tea.

But the fighting talk had been silenced when she caught sight of herself in the mirror—sunken eyes and tufts of hair prickling her scalp. She barely recognized herself.

“How am I ever going to be me again?” she’d asked the woman in the reflection.

“Oh, shut up, Elise!” she’d answered. “Just get on with it.”

She was trying. With Dee’s help. Anyway, her cleaner was in the minority on weekenders. Dave Harman, landlord of the pub opposite, told anyone who’d listen that they were driving the real townspeople out, turning the town into Kensington-sur-Mer. Pronounced Murr.

Elise knew that Ebbing wasn’t like its neighbors, Bosham or West Wittering. It didn’t feature in the Bayeux Tapestry or have thousands of visitors surging in like a spring tide on a nice day. An old fish factory with a corrugated roof squatted in the armpit of the curved seawall guarding the harbor, and the ten thousand inhabitants lived mostly in prefabs, housing estate boxes, and salt-stained bungalows rather than thatched cottages, but Elise didn’t mind. It felt a bit more real—and it was all she could afford on her own if she wanted to be by the sea. She’d never really considered it until recently—she was a city girl, through and through—but she’d worked up this fantasy that the sea would be company.

While she waited for the tea’s magic properties to kick in, she sat at the window that looked out on the High Street like an unblinking eye. She’d hung some net curtains as soon as she’d moved in. The previous owners hadn’t bothered but she hadn’t wanted to be on display to strangers. It meant she could sit unobserved unless she moved suddenly—or someone put their nose to the glass.

When she’d first come home from hospital in May, Elise had sat in the other window, the one overlooking the sea. Watching the tides. It was what she’d pictured herself doing when she’d bought the place a year ago. But somehow she’d never found time, what with work and—well, work, really.

But she’d got all the time in the world now.

The shock of that first empty Monday had been like a bereavement. She hadn’t got out of bed all day. The thing was, her job was the center of everything. Take that away, what was left?

And she’d felt so battered after the mastectomy, she could hardly move, but she’d staggered about, arranging cushions and preparing to be lulled. She’d lasted less than twenty minutes. The sea was supposed to be soothing but the constant movement, the endless ebb and flow, had put her on edge. It was like the free-form jazz her ex, Hugh, liked. Swirling around with no discernible purpose—like Hugh, really . . .

Elise liked an achievable aim, a time frame and an end point. And Alanis Morissette.

It’d been a mistake to hook up with Hugh—well, she knew that now. He’d been her first—only—work romance. She’d taken her time to establish herself when she’d joined the Sussex Police, refusing to go full ladette, knocking back pints and cracking dirty jokes like some of the girls. She’d socialized but never dated anyone on the force—it was number one on her list: “Don’t allow anyone to discuss your tits at work.”

She hadn’t been a nun but she’d been careful. She’d gone out with friends of friends or had holiday flings. Until she met Hugh. She’d been thirty-three and on a joint operation with his force. He’d been a couple of years older and a bit of a heartthrob at Surrey Police HQ but she’d liked that he didn’t play up to it. And he’d been as driven as her.

It’d been a slow burn. They’d e-mailed and texted for weeks, the flirting so subtle, it’d been barely visible to the naked eye. And then he’d suggested meeting up.

On the train to Woking, Elise had rung her friend Caro in a panic from the filthy toilet.

“I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing.”

“Oh, shut up. You’d think you were going undercover in a crack den. It’s a sandwich in a pub with a bloke you fancy.”

She could still see him on the platform waiting. Watching for her. But that was all in the past. Pre-Ebbing.