Brightlingsea is watching while search activity for missing psychologist Vitória Figueiredo Barreto continues.
The 30-year-old woman’s disappearance is among the first things residents discuss when they meet.
Police helicopters circle overhead, and specialist search teams in fluorescent high visibility clothing can be seen patrolling green spaces and streets.
Groups of officers move like shoals of fish as they troop through boatyards, lifting tarp and checking under hulls.
It has been a week since Vitória was reported missing.
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On Tuesday, Essex Police held a press briefing where they revealed they have identified CCTV which shows a person they believe to be Vitória jumping over a fence into a boatyard near midnight on the day she went missing, close to where her tote bag was found.
The most direct route from Hurst Green, where Vitória was captured on doorbell footage at 2.30pm shortly after disembarking from the number 87 bus, to the green area where her tote bag was found, near Copperas Road, is a narrow track thick with mud.
Around 10 hours passed between those two sightings of Vitória.
The town feels eerily quiet while distant bangs of activity in the shipyards echo faintly like thunder, and rigging on ships clangs against hollow metal poles.
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