Ross stands up. His hands are shaking. ‘You’re here to tell us you’re giving up. All of you: the Coastguard, the lifeboats, you. Right?’
Kate Rafiq stands up too, puts a hand around his wrist, and surprisingly he lets her, even though he’s still vibrating with rage, grief, maybe fear, I don’t know. I only know it’s misplaced. A waste of his energy.
‘Ross,’ she says. ‘I promise you we’ll not stop looking for her, okay?’
‘But?’
‘The MRCC will almost certainly start scaling back their search; if not today, then tomorrow.’ I see her slim fingers tighten on Ross’s wrist when he immediately starts to protest. ‘But that doesn’t mean we’ve given up, all right? What it does mean is that we have to carry out our own review. We may have to start thinking of El’s case as a long-term missing investigation. We have to consider whether or not she is still high-risk.’
‘Of course she is!’ Ross shouts, wrenching his arm free, staggering back from the table, rattling crockery. His bloodshot eyes find mine. ‘I told you, didn’t I? They’re fucking giving up!’ Before he frowns and looks away, presumably remembering that I’m about as unhelpful an ally as he could find.
‘We’re not giving up,’ Logan says, and I realise that everyone’s standing now. Everyone except me.
‘Ross, what I said to you that first night is still true,’ Rafiq says. ‘Missing folk are always one of four things. They’re lost; they’ve suffered an accident, injury, or sudden illness; they’re voluntarily missing; or they’re under the influence of a third party, as in an abduction.’ Here, she finally struggles to hold Ross’s furious gaze. ‘And right now, we haven’t the evidence to determine which applies to your wife, okay? So we have to cover every base until we do. That’s all this is.
‘Now,’ she says, sitting back down, nodding at Ross and Logan to do the same. I have the absurd urge to laugh when they obey straightaway. ‘We have some more questions to ask, Ross. Personal questions. Would you prefer it if Catriona left the room?’
‘No,’ Ross says, sullen now. The wind’s gone out of his sails. I immediately want to laugh again, and I take a too-hot swallow of coffee instead. ‘Ask what you like.’
‘You told Logan that El had been depressed and distant before she went missing, that right?’
I sit up straighter, shooting Ross a glance that he doesn’t see because his eyes are closed.
‘That you were having trouble as a couple—’
‘I didn’t say that,’ Ross snaps. ‘We were just … I was working away a lot.’ He shakes his head. ‘I was working a lot. El and I, we hardly saw each other. When she wasn’t painting, she was out on that damn boat.’
‘And you never accompanied her?’
Ross glares at Rafiq. ‘I’ve never sailed. I can’t swim, don’t like the water. I’ve said this already.’
‘El’s state of mind,’ Rafiq persists. ‘Would you say that her depression had worsened in the days or weeks leading up to her disappearance?’
‘No. Look, I treat people with serious depression. That’s my job. El was mildly depressed. That’s all. For Christ’s sake, I know what you’re trying to suggest now, and you’re—’
‘What are you trying to suggest?’ I say. Though I know, of course.
Rafiq looks at me. ‘I understand that El tried to kill herself once before?’
‘Oh, fuck off,’ I say, turning on Ross. ‘Did you tell her that?’
Before I can stop it, I suffer a flashback of El lying in a hospital bed. Dark-ringed eyes in a talc-white face – everything with El has always been black or white. The swing of an IV. A drip stand, a heavy saline bag. Layers of tight bandage stained with blood pulling at the cannula in the back of her hand. Her smile. Tired and trembling but filled with so much joy. So much hate.
‘She didn’t try to kill herself then, and she hasn’t now,’ I say through gritted teeth.
‘You’re saying that her overdose at the age of …’ Rafiq looks down at her phone, ‘nineteen, was what? A cry for help?’
I can’t help the snort that escapes. ‘Something like that.’
Rafiq shares a none too subtle look with Logan. ‘El hasn’t accessed either of her bank accounts since she disappeared. She hasn’t contacted anyone. She hasn’t turned on her phone. Nobody matching her description has been admitted to any hospitals in the area. There have been no reported sightings of either her or her boat since eight-fifty a.m. on April the third. Ross found her passport exactly where it always is. Why are you so sure your sister’s all right?’
‘I told you,’ I say. ‘Because this is what she does.’ Because it’s what I would never do. Because we are not the same. Have never been the same. Because she is my exact opposite. My reflection. My Mirror Twin.
‘Pretending you’ve drowned is a pretty extreme thing to do, would you not agree?’
The phrase she always goes overboard flashes through my mind, and I straightaway squash it just as fast and hard as the inappropriate giggle that tries to follow it. ‘Yeah, well. Like you said – you don’t know her.’
I watch Rafiq and Logan exchange another look, and I know what they’re thinking, because part of me has started thinking the same thing. I sound like someone trying very hard to convince herself that what she thinks, what she’s been thinking ever since she got on a plane at LAX, is still the only possible truth. That queasiness has returned to squeeze at my stomach. The smell of coffee makes it worse.
Rafiq leans forwards. ‘Something bad has happened to your sister. Whether you believe that or not is irrelevant to this investigation, but I must admit, I find it awful curious that the twin sister of a high-risk missing person doesn’t seem even a wee bit bothered about her.’ She cocks her head, reminding me of the tiny-boned birds on all of Mum’s mounted china plates. ‘I’ve worked in this job long enough to know when something’s off, or when someone’s not telling me the whole truth.’
We’re going down a bad path here, and I can only think of one way to turn us back. ‘This was delivered yesterday,’ I say, putting the sympathy card on the table.
Ross snatches it up. He looks at my name on the envelope, takes out the card and opens it without a word. His shoulders sag, and he grips the card so tightly between thumb and forefinger it starts to crumple.
‘Hey, no, it’s all right,’ I say, reaching out to touch him before thinking better of it. ‘This is a good thing. It’s El. It has to be.’ I frown when he still says nothing. ‘It’s hand-delivered, Ross! That means she has to be nearby. It means she—’
‘El got these,’ he says, in that raw stripped voice. ‘She got dozens of these.’
‘Oh.’ Something like a chill runs up my back.
‘Right up until she disappeared.’
Rafiq carefully takes the card from Ross, reads it, and then puts it back inside the envelope to give to Logan. I watch him put it inside a clear plastic bag, imagine a scenario where El didn’t send it, and feel alternately hot and cold. It suddenly occurs to me that it surely can’t be routine for CID to be involved in missing-person cases. I look at Rafiq. ‘Is that why you’re investigating? Because of the cards? Do you know who—’
‘We’d already opened an investigation into similar threats against your sister, aye. Was it you who found it?’
‘Yes. Someone rang the doorbell.’ There’s a monster in this house. I rub my arms. ‘The card was lying on the mat.’
‘Maybe now you’ll start taking them fucking seriously,’ Ross growls.