Ness’s mouth twitched in a smile. “Perfectly harmless people don’t get chaperones every time they leave the room.”
Elea decided that the safest thing to do was stare out of the window. She was comfortable with silence—it couldn’t get her into trouble. Ness contented herself with humming a David Gray song out of tune. The police car radio filled the rest of the space, as the controller requested officers for incidents ranging from domestic abuse to shoplifters on the high street. It was never too early or late for crime. Elea admired Ness’s generosity of spirit. She helped with outstanding tasks when they weren’t part of her workload. Picked up CCTV for her colleagues when she was in town, and assisted in interviews when she had work of her own to be getting on with. As Elea’s father would have said, she was a “good egg.” Swann had built up a strong team, and Elea was enjoying immersing herself in their dynamics. It felt good to be needed again.
“You’ll be all right waiting here, won’t you?” Elea asked Ness as she parked the car outside the school. She didn’t want to turn up mob-handed, and how much trouble could she get into, interviewing Chelsea Hobbs’s old football coach? They were meeting for an off-the-record chat, nothing more.
“Sure. As long as you’ve no plans for taking hostages or demanding ransom?”
“Shoot, I forgot my balaclava. You’re safe leaving me today.”
“Take your time.” Ness smiled, slipping her phone from the pocket of her cardigan.
Elea surveyed the school football pitch as the game came to an end. There was no mistaking Chelsea’s football coach, who was cheering the team from the sidelines. Pauline appeared to be aged in her mid-fifties, of short, stocky build with cropped grey hair. Her sweatshirt was slightly too small for her frame, her stomach edging over her baggy jeans, which were grass-stained at the knees. She cheered and clapped her team loudly, obviously passionate about the game. Elea observed at a distance, watching Pauline interact with her team. “Next time, yeah?” she said, patting one of the girls on the back. “You did great. Don’t beat yourself up,” she said to another. The freckle-faced teenager had narrowly missed scoring a goal during the last thirty seconds of the game. Despite her team losing, every comment Pauline made was an encouraging one. Elea waited until every girl and spectator had left before she approached.
“Good game,” Elea said, “although I only caught the tail end.”
Pauline shielded her eyes from the sun as it lowered in the sky. “Yeah, they’ve been doing well this year, but they’ve got to take their failures on the chin. Anyway,” she turned her back on the sunset, “you didn’t come here to talk about football. You’re the lady who called earlier. Sorry, I’m terrible with names.”
“Elea...Elea Baker. I wanted to talk about Chelsea Hobbs.”
“Yeah, sure.” She gestured to a nearby bench for them to sit on. “Oof!” She rubbed the base of her spine. “My bloody sciatica is giving me hell today.” Pauline walked with a limp towards the bench, groaning once more as she sat. She dragged a tissue from her coat and loudly blew her nose. Elea joined her, pushing her shoulder bag aside before crossing her legs.
Pauline shoved her tissue back into her jeans pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “Do you mind?” She looked over her shoulder. “I’m not meant to on school grounds, but it’s been flaming hours since my last.” The football pitch was empty, the tail-end of the sun casting it in ribbons of orange and gold.
“Not at all,” Elea said, politely declining the offer of a Marlboro from the pack.
“I’ve already spoken to the cops. Told them everything I know.”
“You have, and I’ve read Chelsea’s file. I just want to get to know her a little better.”
“Chelsea was...” Pauline paused, shielding her cigarette from the breeze as she lit it. She puffed twice before returning the lighter to her pocket, and the smell of tobacco drifted over them both. She quickly flapped it away. “Chelsea was a good kid,” she continued. “A great footballer, too. Had the potential to go far, if it wasn’t for her shitty home life, but you’ll know all about that.”
Elea nodded.
“Her parents didn’t come to watch one game. I went home with her once, but Jesus, that stepdad of hers.” She shook her head. “What a prick!”
“I second that. I’ve met him.” Elea would have liked to disclose her adventures with Phil Hobbs, but she couldn’t afford for it to get around the school and back to the wrong person at the station.
“Then you’ll know that Chelsea didn’t have it easy.” Pauline exhaled a thin stream of smoke from the corner of her mouth. “She was only on the junior team, but she lived for her time on the field. Wanted to be a Lioness one day.” She was referring to playing for the England team. Did girls like Chelsea stand a chance when it came to such high aspirations? Elea hoped so. “Yeah, she was a good kid.” She sighed. “She was gutted when social services took her siblings away. Proper broke her heart, that did.”
“Why are you talking about her in the past tense?”
Pauline shrugged. “Cos there’s no way she would have left of her own accord. She loved her mum too much. God knows the woman didn’t deserve it.”
“You think Chelsea’s dead?”
“You don’t?” Pauline turned the question back on her. “Remember Jenny Flynn? Long blonde hair, twelve years old—wouldn’t surprise me if it was the same bloke.”
Elea monitored Pauline’s body language, listened to the cadence of her voice. She hadn’t flinched when she was challenged. Sadness emanated from every word. “We haven’t given up on her yet,” Elea said. “Sophie Miller came home alive.”
“No thanks to the cops,” Pauline uttered, taking a deep drag. “Sorry. I’m not having a pop, it’s just...” She exhaled another plume of smoke. “Chelsea, that poor kid has been through enough. Trying to keep her family together, defending her mum when her stepdad waded in. Nobody should have to deal with that. And now...” She flicked a crumb of ash from her cigarette, and it blew away in the wind. “Well, we’ve warned our girls to be careful. You don’t know when it could happen again. Are you any closer to finding them?”
“I won’t stop until we do,” Elea assured her. Their talk had made her more determined than ever to bring Chelsea home. Her mother, Karen, was making slow progress, with the support of social services. The independent domestic violence adviser was making good headway too. A divorce had been requested. Phil had been arrested and bailed, with strict conditions. At least now Karen had the flat to herself. Elea only hoped that mother and daughter would get the chance to start again.
Chapter 32
Sienna Thompson’s call didn’t come until Elea was back at her hotel. She was packing her belongings, ready to move into Swann’s flat. She hadn’t visited it yet, but Swann liked nice things: soft furnishings, deep carpets, a cosy home. It was why he had struggled to give the flat up, despite Alice’s wish to put it on the market. He’d confided in Elea earlier in the evening when he drove her to hire a car. It had been almost like old times—except that Alice was now pulling his strings. Elea’s face soured at the thought of her as she folded a cashmere jumper and placed it gently in the suitcase. It was obvious that her “surprise pregnancy” had been planned all along. Like you wouldn’t realise you were expecting twins. “It was me who asked if she could be pregnant,” Swann had confided, before he dropped Elea back to the hotel. “She’d got so big, and she was sick all the time, so I bought her a test.” He’d shaken his head at the memory, hands lightly on the steering wheel of his car. “She couldn’t believe it when she found out. And twins—we were shocked.”
Elea tutted. How gullible Swann had been. She thought of those beautiful boys, so peaceful in their cots when Alice had taken her upstairs to see them. She was being manipulated, too, but it had worked. As much as she loved Swann, she couldn’t break up their family. He was having cold feet, that’s all, and she couldn’t blame Alice for defending her brood. If only the woman wasn’t so bloody defensive, they might all have got along. It would have been nice to spend time with Swann’s sons. She’d missed so much of Liisa growing up.
