Elise drove up Betancourt St in the peak hour traffic. It was oddly comforting that the traffic was just as bad in Corviston as it was in her hometown. This seemed like a mundane thing, but in her experience, simply getting the basic routine correct was half the battle. 

She turned left into the parking garage under Police HQ. Her Wythaven ID card worked fine on the carpark boom gate; it was a nationwide system after all. She would probably have to change it soon. 

Finding a park in a dark corner of the underground carpark, she sat in the car for a while, inhaling decade-old interior plastic and petrol fumes, listening to the ambient noises from the cooling engine and the faint rush of cars on Ruth Gray Avenue, the occasional staccato clack of someone walking across the garage. 

She looked at her reflection in the mirror. She thought about her aunt. They had talked for a long time last night, on the little balcony of her flat. It was the first time they had really talked for a very long time, since she was still living in a tiny 25th floor apartment in Beijing. They had strayed onto topics she did not even begin to think of asking. About her parents, about 1990s China, about life in general. 

The sound of her footsteps rang out into the cavernous carpark as she headed for the stairs, echoing on the rough concrete walls. This was all part of the new normal. It felt surreal now, like the old police academy had on her first day, and indeed every other building she had studied or worked at. 

She ascended the staircase with its view of Ruth Gray Avenue, past patrol cops and suits. She had only been here for conferences but it was enough to build a reasonable working knowledge of the building. Her office was on the ninth floor. That meant nothing to her. Most of the conferences had taken place three floors below. 

The place reminded her of her university campus. And also slightly of the old police building in Wythaven. All brutalist concrete buildings looked the same to her, inside and out. They all had the same textured concrete and the same wood panelling inside and the same style of windows and the same carpet that hadn't been replaced for 50 years. She realised that she was tiptoeing. She didn't feel at home here yet. That was OK, she told herself. It would come. 

She could not help but find herself comparing the present to her first day on the beat after graduating from the academy, the last time she had felt weird about a building, but she struggled to find any parallels. She had been a different person back then. Still a little rough around the edges, much more idealistic. If the 20 year old Elise had been walking up this staircase she would have been entranced by everything. Now she just felt oddly jaded, as if she knew that nothing would capture her imagination again like when she was a child. 

The ninth floor was a collection of open-plan offices. She had shared an office with four other officers in Wythaven. 

She spotted Simon first. He was hard to miss, even in a crowded space like this with dozens of people going to and fro. They had had not seen each other since the mermaid case. He looked like he was in better shape. "Apparently I'm supposed to take care of you. As if you need taking care of." 

She realised she had missed his dry sense of humour. Her Wythaven colleagues were generally a shade more dour. 

Simon pointed to the empty cubicle next to his, where the sole furnishing was an office chair. A jumble of cables poked out of a hole in the desk. "You can put your stuff there. The IT guys will be in tomorrow to sort the computer situation out." 

"Whatever it is, it's going to be better than the bricks we use in Wythaven," Elise retorted. 

"Those things are unbelievably bad," Fern interjected. 

"Well, they had to find somewhere to cut a corner, after all they spent on the fancy building. Did you know the sunshades realign themselves with the position of the sun five times an hour? With solar powered motors? That don't work half of the time? Absolutely worth computers which take 10 minutes to boot up and crash twice a week." She eyed his callused hands, which were a lot rougher than when she had seen them last. "Been busy?" 

"Fixing up the old house. It's a work in progress."

Fern was trimming his nails. This was a semi-regular occurence. 

"This is Fern." Simon realised he'd nearly forgotten to introduce his colleague who had been sitting there quietly the whole time. "I gather you've met before."

"At the convention." They shared a look. For the first time, she felt a rush of hope that she would fit in well here. 

"You need a drink? Coffee? Tea?"

"I had one on the way here," she replied. It was a white lie. Her aunt had lent her her blown-glass coffee maker this morning. 

Dumeuil burst in, his usual exuberant self. The other two pretended to be busy. "Morning, Brown. How's the renovating going?" 

"Very good, sir," Simon replied, in the driest, most disinterested tone he could muster. If anyone else had tried that one they would have been suspended on the spot. 

"Hi, I'm Superintendent Yann Dumeuil and I'm your boss from today onwards," he said, extending a hand to Elise. Or at least that was how it sounded inside his mind; in reality it came out as a sort of unintelligible garbled mush. Elise didn't know how to react and managed to crack a half-smile, while Simon and Fern looked on in bemusement. 

"I apologise for the abscences," he said, gesturing at the empty cubicles. Inspector Molan is at a medical appointment. I hope you're settling in well. Brown is taking good care of you, I hope?" He cocked an eyebrow at Simon. Dumeuil was not for small talk but ever since attending a convention six months ago he had made a concerted effort to do so. He had also taken to drinking spring water and exercising. This was rather disconcerting to his colleagues but he would not be swayed. 

"I don't know," he deadpanned. "She just turned up." 

"I've got a task for you, Brown. Missing persons case. Girl didn't come home from work." 

"Are the beat cops busy or something?" Simon wondered. "Isn't it supposed to be 48 hours before we get involved?"

"The 48 hours have already passed. I'm afraid." His face was serious. Simon wiped the bemused look off his face. "Her mother's certain that she didn't run away. She's been calling us on the hour for nearly two days now. She asked for you. Specifically." 

"How does she know me?"

"Word gets around, I guess. I just want you to talk to her," he said. "Calm her down. Maybe she's just imagining it, maybe she's onto something. We'll have to see. Here's the writeup from the cops who knocked on her door." 

Simon had his objections, but he decided to keep his mouth shut. He picked up the papers, flipped through them. He found himself admiring the notes the uniformed cop had taken. They had done quite a methodical job. Kurnalie Askeling. 21 years of age, studying graphic design at CIT. Address, 15/21 Figtree Court in the Old Town. Steady boyfriend. Part-time job at the pharmacy at the bottom of the Third Hill, where she had clocked out at 9:58 and locked up on her own the night she had disappeared. Bank account untouched. Snapshot of a young life. 

Dumeuil had finally snapped out of his paperless phase, when everything was an email attachment and if you wanted a hard copy you had to print it out yourself on the dodgy printer in the hallway. 

Simon flipped once more through the report, looking for information he might have missed. 

"I've got a meeting. Catch you guys later." With that, Dumeuil left in a huff. 

Elise glanced at the portly retreating figure of Dumeuil. "Is he always like that?" 

"What?" 

"That." 

"It's a perfectly fine arrangement. We pretend to work and he pretends to boss us around." Simon sucked the inside of his mouth. "Maybe at the latest convention they told him that it was international best practice to keep your best detectives on their toes by giving them menial tasks. That's him. Goes to one convention, and makes whatever the keynote speaker said his entire personality until the next one."

"Judging by recent events, I think in the last one had a keynote speaker who mumbled his words, was a detox freak, had printed cue cards, and at some point they had a very spirited conversation about the weather," Fern observed wryly. 

"But really, I don't know." Simon shrugged. "Maybe someone has connections. Through a second cousin once removed or something. If you know the right people you can get anything done. Askeling. Does that ring a bell?" 

"I don't know about Corviston royalty." 

"I only dabble in those circles myself. But I don't think they cut in line."

"Do you think that's right?" 

"Who am I to comment on that kind of thing. I just clean up when the shit hits the fan." 

"Is it really true?" Elise ventured. "The keynote speaker thing?"

"Oh boy. Once at a convention in Mexico the main speaker was wearing a leather jacket. Guess what he wore every day for the next six months."

 Elise stifled a giggle. 

"You want to come with me on this?" Simon picked up his coat from the back of his chair. "It's just a twenty minute drive away. We'll talk to her, come back. Get it done within the hour. Probably just a runaway." 

"What about-" 

"He doesn't like fieldwork. There was a stakeout a few years ago that went a bit, er, off the rails." 

"Sounds like a plan." she said. She was getting the hang of it. Or maybe it was too early to say.