“That’s great,” he said, giving her a hug, feeling relieved. “Thanks, sis.”
“What did Kate want?”
“We could have a new case, missing person. We’re going to meet the client tomorrow.”
Sarah nodded and smiled. “That’s good. You know, Tris, I don’t like being hard on you. I just want you to be okay. I always promised Mum that I would take care of you. And when I bought that flat, it was the first time anyone in our family had owned property. You need to make sure you can keep paying the mortgage.”
“I know, and I will,” he said.
“One day, when you’ve paid it off, you’ll own it properly and you’ll be looked after.”
“Or I might meet some gorgeous millionaire and he’ll sweep me off my feet,” said Tristan.
Sarah peered up and down the high street at the smattering of miserable-looking locals. “Do you see any millionaires in Ashdean?”
“Exeter is close by . . .”
Sarah rolled her eyes and laughed. “Where are you meeting this new client?”
“Salcombe. She lives in a big house overlooking the bay.”
“Well. Make sure you don’t solve the case too quickly if she’s paying you by the hour.”
3
Kate didn’t sleep well that night. The meeting loomed large in her mind. Had Bev Ellis contacted other private detectives? Exactly how much information had she discovered about Kate online? It was all in the public domain. One click of a mouse, and the Google search results spoke for themselves.
She tossed and turned in bed, running through her past failures. Kate had been a young Met Police officer in London when she discovered that her colleague Peter Conway, a senior police officer, was responsible for the rape and murder of four young women in Greater London. To add to the mess, she’d been romantically involved with Peter and was pregnant with his child when she cracked the case. The tabloid stories had been lurid and intrusive, and the scandal put an end to her career in the force. She subsequently struggled with alcohol addiction, which resulted in her mother and father being granted custody of Kate and Peter’s son, Jake, when he was six years old.
She’d moved to the south coast to rebuild her life, and for the past eleven years, she’d worked as a lecturer in criminology at Ashdean University.
During this time, Myra had been her rock. A good friend and her sponsor in Alcoholics Anonymous, and Kate felt a responsibility to herself, and to Myra, to make her detective agency a success.
At five a.m., Kate got up and went for her regular early-morning swim in the sea. It calmed her to swim out through the still water, with just the sound of a far-off group of seagulls cawing, and as the dawn broke, the sky blazed with blue, pink, and gold.
Kate was waiting outside the house when Tristan pulled up in his blue MINI Cooper.
“Morning. I got you a coffee,” he said, holding up a Starbucks cup when she opened the passenger door and got in.
“Lovely. Double shot?” she asked, feeling the warmth emanating from the cup on her cold hands.
“Triple. I didn’t sleep too well.”
He was wearing a dark-blue suit with a white shirt open at the neck, and Kate thought how handsome he looked. She had taken care with what she wore, choosing dark jeans with a white blouse and a smart royal-blue jacket in light wool. Kate took a sip of the coffee, enjoying the hit of caffeine.
“That’s good; I didn’t sleep that well either.”
“I’m nervous about this one,” said Tristan as they drove past the caravan site. “I still feel like a rookie.”
“Don’t be nervous. Bev Ellis is desperate to find out what happened to her daughter, and we’re the people who can find her. Yes?”
Tristan nodded. “Yes.”
“Think about it like that and you won’t be nervous,” said Kate. She’d been telling herself this as she’d swum and got ready for the meeting and was close to believing it.
“Did you look Joanna Duncan up online?” asked Tristan. “No one has any clue what happened to her. She disappeared from that multistory car park on Exeter High Street on a busy Saturday evening. There’s something creepy about it. That she vanished into thin air.”
“Once I got past all the stories about her disappearance, there was some interesting stuff about her career as an investigative journalist,” said Kate. “She published an exposé on the local member of Parliament at the time, Noah Huntley. He was taking cash bribes to award council contracts. The national tabloids picked up the story, and it triggered a by-election, and he ended up losing his seat.”