Local Gone Missing(10)

“Never mind that—I’ve had the ambulance report, thanks. What were you doing at a pop festival?”

“Ask her! Caro, this is Ronnie, who lives next door. It was her idea. I’d rather have set fire to my feet.”

“That’s what you’re saying now. . . . What did you wear?”

“Shut up.”

“What did she wear, Ronnie?”

“Leopard-skin bodysuit like the rest of us . . .”

Elise sighed and let them enjoy the moment.

She should never have gone to that bloody festival. Obviously. But apparently Elise had agreed. Her neighbor Ronnie might have been forty years too old for dancing in a laser storm but she’d insisted.



* * *



—

“You need to get out, Elise,” she’d said. “How old are you?”

“Er, forty-three, and what’s that got to do with anything?”

“The longer you stay in, the harder it’ll be to get out there again. Look, it’s at the Old Vicarage in Ebbing, not a field off the M25. There’ll be toilets and it’ll be a laugh. I’m married to a man who whittles. Let me have some fun. . . .”

And she’d found herself queuing to have her bag searched by a bored teenager who’d confiscated a bottle of booze from the young couple in front of them. He hadn’t bothered to look in hers or Ronnie’s.

“Thank you, ladies.” He waved them through.

“Just because we’re older doesn’t mean we’re not smuggling in heroin or knives,” Elise snapped at him.

The lad’s eyes practically popped out of his head. “Er, right. Are you?”

“What do you think?” Ronnie said. “She’s joking. . . .”

“This security stinks,” Elise muttered. “Drugs must be flooding in.”

“Hush, Detective Inspector King,” Ronnie muttered back. “You’re not back at work yet.”

Elise took a breath and Ronnie produced drink vouchers she’d bought at the gate.

“I’ll have a Cheeky Vimto,” Ronnie told the barman, and Elise gave her a look.

“We don’t do cocktails.” The barman smirked.

He looked like one of the boys who cycled up and down the seafront, skidding up to girls, swearing self-consciously, and honking with laughter. She didn’t know his name but Elise was certain he wasn’t old enough to serve alcohol.

“Give us a cider each, then.” Ronnie pouted.

The first glass overflowed and liquid washed over the counter onto Elise’s sandals, sticking her toes together.

“I should have worn wellies,” she shouted in Ronnie’s ear.

Ronnie nodded but she couldn’t have heard her friend. No one could hear anything. The sound system started to howl and squeal like a herd of feral cats until finally someone threw a switch and the music emerged with a heart-stopping blast.

The boom! boom! boom! made Elise’s chest vibrate and she put her hand up to protect the nubble of scar tissue under her T-shirt.

Strobe lighting flashed and the crowd pulsed in slo-mo. People too old to throw their hands in the air like they just didn’t care did so, the flickering lights hiding a multitude of dancing sins. Elise automatically scanned for faces—a professional tic as hardwired as breathing.

“You go and dance,” she screamed into Ronnie’s ear. “I’ll hold your handbag and make sure no one spikes your drink. . . .”

Ronnie grinned her thanks and pushed into the crowd to lose herself in the music.

On the podium, Pete Diamond, the man who had triumphed over the locals to hold his festival, was conducting the crowd. His tee had ridden up to expose a hairy belly button embedded in an impressive roll of fat. Elise laughed out loud for the first time in ages.

Ronnie’s right. I do need to get out more. She took a mouthful of warm cider and watched the surreal spectacle of a chubby marketing exec playing acid house and referencing Pete Tong and Fatboy Slim as if he were part of a triumvirate of rave gods.

Ronnie was at the front, jerking up and down like a character in a flicker book. She seemed to be dancing with a man in a baseball cap who was ricocheting off people—a ball bearing in a human pinball machine.

It was only when the pinball dancer took off his hat to wipe his face that she realized it was dear old Charlie Perry.

What the hell is he doing here?

Charlie’s face looked ghoulish and distorted in the green spotlights raking the crowd, his eyes bulging and his mouth wide open. When did he learn the words to “Praise You”?

But the next time the spotlight froze on him, she knew he hadn’t. Charlie was shouting, not singing. Was it anger? Or fear? And then he disappeared.

She scanned those around him, trying to make sense of the scene, but everyone was dancing. Or seemed to be. But as she looked, a space opened up in the middle of the crowd; a wave of people was breaking away from it, and they were screaming silently against the wall of sound.

Something bad is happening.

And she was running toward it, pushing through the crowd.

The strobe carried on and she fought against stop-start figures. Suddenly the music and lights stopped dead and the silence made her ears ring. And she was there. On the scene. Two bodies down. She felt for her phone to call it in, shouting for people to move back. To give them air.