Detective Elise King investigates a man’s disappearance in a seaside town where the locals and weekenders are at odds with each other in this rich and captivating new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Widow.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Fiona Barton’s Local Gone Missing, which is out June 14th 2022!
Elise King is a successful and ambitious detective–or she was before a medical leave left her unsure if she’d ever return to work. She now spends most days watching the growing tensions in her small seaside town of Ebbing–the weekenders renovating old bungalows into luxury homes, and the locals resentful of the changes.
Elise can only guess what really happens behind closed doors. But Dee Eastwood, her house cleaner, often knows. She’s an invisible presence in many of the houses in town, but she sees and hears everything.
The conflicts boil over when a newcomer wants to put the town on the map with a giant music festival, and two teenagers overdose on drugs. When a man disappears the first night of the festival, Elise is drawn back into her detective work and starts digging for answers. Ebbing is a small town, but it’s full of secrets and hidden connections that run deeper and darker than Elise could have ever imagined.
Saturday, August 24, 2019
Elise
By the time she reached the cottage, the sun was scalding the pavements. She stood in a cold shower for five minutes, sluicing off the heat and disappointment, and put her pajamas back on to do her exercises.
She started, bringing her arms up over my head and down like in the YouTube video but she felt as though she was signaling for help. Oh, God—not waving but drowning . . .
Caro and the team would be plowing through witness statements and the hundreds of selfies and videos on festivalgoers’ phones, trying to find drugs transactions. She, on the other hand, had nothing to do but squeeze a virtual orange between her shoulder blades. She caught her movement in the mirror and she saw her face, slack and vacant. It scared her, how blank it was.
She looked out of the window at the sea to be soothed. But the tide was on its way in and the waves were thumping against the stony beach like a giant fist knocking at her back door.
Caro had pulled a face when Elise had told her she was buying in Ebbing. “The seaside? All those chip papers and seagulls. And the traffic . . . It’s an hour’s commute to headquarters and you won’t be able to get in or out in the summer.”
“I’m not always sitting in HQ, anyway—the joy of the Major Crime Team is that I can be working on a case anywhere in Sussex. And Ebbing is central. Back off!”
She’d ignored DS Doom and bought 5 Mariner’s Cottages in June 2018. The estate agent had bigged up the view. “It’s breathtaking,” she’d said, ignoring the fact that it was a wonky two-up two-down with a small kitchen extension, a patch of garden overlooking the sea, and a front door onto the pavement.
“Cute,” Caro had said on her first visit. “If you like that kind of thing. But promise me you won’t put anchors and lighthouses everywhere. And where are the cupboards? Where will you store your Christmas decorations?”
“Sod off, Brennan. I don’t do Christmas, as you well know.” She and Hugh had liked to go somewhere hot and all-inclusive. Before.
Caro had been round a few times since Elise had gone on sick leave. But she’d told her to stop—“You’ve got a kid—you can’t spend your precious days off with me. I’ll ring you. And I’ll be back at work before you know it.”
She wasn’t short of company, anyway. A bit overblessed, if she was honest, what with Ronnie popping in and out.
The first time Ronnie had appeared at the door, on the day Elise had moved in, she had been knee-deep in packing cases and bad memories but Ronnie hadn’t let that stop her. She was small, sixtyish with a beaky nose and a lot of mascara, and she was wearing a T-shirt that read Old Age Is for Sissies. Ronnie had brought a welcome cake—a shop one (“I don’t bake”)—and stayed for an hour, probing like a pro. Elise had managed to keep Hugh to a footnote, where he belonged.
She pushed back against her neighbor’s interrogation on that first visit and took the lead in the questioning, quickly learning that Ronnie had a daughter in Australia who didn’t phone often enough, and used to work in the local library three days a week, manning the desk and taking a keen interest in other people’s business.
“People have time to talk in a library,” Ronnie said as she rifled uninvited through Elise’s books. “It starts with ‘Have you got the latest Lee Child?’ and ends with them telling me about their fibroids. It was where I heard it all. . . . I love other people’s stories, don’t you?”
And Elise nodded. She did.
Ronnie had been beyond thrilled to discover Elise’s job on the Major Crime Team. “That’s the murder squad, isn’t it? I’m working my way through every detective novel on the shelves,” she said as if that made her a sister-in-arms. “It’s fascinating, isn’t it? Killing people . . .”
There was a pause before Ronnie added: “I might take it up myself.”
It turned out her recently retired husband, Ted, was about to be murdered.
“He’s turned into an old man. . . . He’s building a model railway for God’s sake!” Ronnie ranted. “And now he wants to join a bowls club. He’s bought a white trilby. . . . I said to him, ‘You’re sixty-five, not eighty-five.’ I’ll put weed killer in his porridge if this carries on. I suppose I shouldn’t be saying that to a detective inspector, . . . Oh, I’m so glad you’ve moved in. Shall I pop in tomorrow? I can give you a hand putting things away.”
“That’s very kind but I’m fine, Ronnie,” Elise said. She didn’t want to be anyone’s project. I should have had it made into a sign for the front door, she thought. “Elise Is Fine.”
“Well, you know where I am. Just shout—it’s only single brick in the extension and I can hear you through it.”
While she’d still been working, Elise had chatted to Ronnie as they’d wheeled the bins round, but they’d been neighbors, not friends, until February and the cancer diagnosis. Ronnie had somehow become part of Elise’s recovery. “In charge of morale,” she’d said.
Elise had let her mind wander—fatal—and was back at Friday night. But not thinking about the kids she’d run to help. It was Charlie Perry. His pale, sweaty face. She’d dealt with hundreds of drunks in distress and forgotten them immediately—why couldn’t she let Charlie go? Was it because he’d made her tear up that day in her sitting room? They’d shared a moment.
She suddenly wondered if he’d said anything to Ronnie while they flailed about.
Elise knocked three times on the kitchen wall and Ronnie knocked back. The signal had been her friend’s idea—something to do with a hit song when she’d been young.
Five minutes later she was sitting on the other kitchen chair.
“Nice jimjams,” Ronnie said. “But you were dressed when I last saw you. . . .”
“I’m doing my stretches. Look, Charlie Perry—”
“Missing. I know,” Ronnie said.
Elise tried not to look disappointed. She’d been expecting to be breaking the news, but of course Ronnie already knew. She was always swapping intel with her network—from the moment she woke up most days.
“I thought he looked upset last night,” Elise went on. “Did you notice that? And I found his wallet as I left, so he may have been robbed. Did he say anything to you?”
“No! Poor Charlie. He did look terrible—one of the walking dead—but doesn’t everyone under those lights? However, I do know that he has money troubles,” she said. “Postie Val, who delivers up there, says there’ve been letters from a debt agency and the bank, and I hear Pauline’s been doing her dying-swan act in town. I shouldn’t be unkind but she does love a spotlight. She’s telling people the police aren’t interested in finding him.”
Pauline was probably right—Caro had been pretty dismissive when she’d told her—but Elise was immediately defensive. This was her tribe that was being bad-mouthed. “He’s only been gone overnight—and they’ve got their hands full finding out who gave Tracy Cook and Dave Harman’s kid the dodgy ecstasy and keeping the townspeople from marching on the Old Vicarage with pitchforks.”
They sat in silence for a moment.
“Why don’t we go and have a chat with Pauline?” Ronnie perked up. “Maybe we could help her find him?”
“But I’m on sick leave.”
“We’re concerned neighbors. . . .”
Elise rolled her eyes—she suspected it wasn’t the first time Ronnie had adopted this role. But she felt a little flutter in her stomach.
“Come on,” Ronnie urged, “what else were you going to do today?”
