Shadow Sands

by Robert Bryndza

  “Oh, now I’m homophobic?” Sarah shouted.

  “I don’t know. Sounds like it.”

  “You’re choosing a life that will never make you happy.”

  “I’d rather live my life than yours,” he shot back, and instantly regretted saying it.

  Sarah dumped a couple of plates in the sink with such force that they broke. She started to wash the intact plates, in between pulling out shards of china.

  “That poor girl, she could be lying in a ditch somewhere or fallen foul of some rapist . . . ,” Sarah said, almost muttering to herself. “I wonder how Magdalena would feel if she knew that you were off doing God knows what with some other man. You’re going to go to the police first thing tomorrow and explain what you were doing and that you lied to me.”

  “I didn’t lie to you.”

  “You led me to believe.”

  “No, I didn’t. I went out at night. I just didn’t tell you. You assumed.”

  “It seems I assumed a lot of good things about you.”

  Tristan sighed. This was going nowhere. He had hoped that he would be able to explain things to Sarah and that she would understand. It broke his heart that they were now so far apart.

  “I’m going to stay at Kate’s for a few days,” he said.

  “Oh, of course. I thought she would be involved,” said Sarah.

  “I love you, Sarah, you hear me?” he said. She kept her back to him and carried on crashing around with the dishes.

  Tristan came out of the kitchen and closed the door. Gary was lying on the sofa with one eye on the TV.

  “Listen, Tris. Sarah’s not homophobic. She loves them colored cups they do for Pride at Costa Coffee. She washed one out and kept it at work for her tea. She washed it so many times it ended up falling to bits.”

  He looked at Gary and didn’t know how to react to that.

  “I think Sarah needs you,” he said. “I’ll straighten it out with the police, about her statement.”

  Gary nodded. Then Tristan went and packed a bag. He didn’t see either of them as he left the house. Kate was waiting for him outside in her car.

  “You okay?” she asked when he got in.

  He nodded, feeling like a huge weight had lifted from his chest. He could breathe easier.

  “How about Sarah?”

  “I don’t know. I need to give her some space,” he said.

  21

  The man stepped out of the lift wearing night vision goggles. The corridor and the two doorways glowed green through the lenses. He was surprised to see Magdalena in the corridor. She had ventured out quicker than many of his victims. This was only the second full day.

  He watched her as she ran for it, crashing into the open door and then getting up again, dazed. He adored that blank look in their eyes, blind from the darkness. Their eyes were black through the night vision goggles, and their pupils showed up as bright spots of white.

  She couldn’t see, but she left a spot of blood on the corner of the toilet door. It was another addition. The bloodstains of his other victims decorated the walls and doors. Blood spatter like graffiti. He loved how it showed up green through the goggles.

  He held back and watched her flail and feel her way back down the corridor. Why was it that the guys he’d captured always tried to get past him into the lift, yet almost all the girls ran toward the dead-end room—like those stupid horror-movie heroines who scream and run past the open front door and upstairs when the monster chases them?

  He followed Magdalena into the room at the end of the corridor and watched her as she backed into the corner of the room and stayed, like a hunted animal staring out into the blackness.

  He was always addicted to the fear in their eyes. So many women masked their emotions. He never knew what they were thinking. He hated that about them. The bitches were always trying to outsmart him. But here, in his dungeon, he was the monster, and he could see they were terrified.

  He carried a broom in his hand. An ordinary broom, but he’d switched the head for that of a toy broom. A toy broom was softer, and the bristles were longer. It thrilled him that something so silly could screw with their senses in the dark. He moved closer to Magdalena.

  “Who are you?” she said into the darkness. Her face was beautiful, but she had a strong nose, which was now bent out of shape and bleeding over her teeth and chin. She spat blood onto the floor. “Please? Why are you doing this?”

  God, they asked such stupid questions. As if he were going to list his plans and tell them his name. He suppressed a laugh and extended the broom handle, letting the bristles lightly touch her face.

  She cried out and swatted it away, slapping herself in the face in the process. He quickly pulled it back, out of her reach, as she swiped and clawed with her hands in large arcs.

  “Leave me alone!” she shouted. “Please!”

  He stood still and quiet. He waited and watched as she opened her eyes and tilted her head, trying to see. She reached out with her arms, waving at the air in front of her. It was like watching a wildlife show, observing his victims. Everything was stripped away from them. All pretense and affectation. They didn’t worry about the way they were being seen, blubbering, crying, and often shitting themselves. They wanted to survive.

  After a minute more he held the broom up, and again, he let the bristles swipe over her face.

  Magdalena suddenly screamed and ran at him. It took him by surprise, but he was prepared. He lifted the broom up high and pivoted to the right, sticking his foot out. With the speed and force of how she was running at him, she tripped and went down hard, hitting the concrete floor with a horrible thud and sliding into the concrete bed base, cracking the top of her head. She was still.

  No, please don’t be dead, not this soon, he said under his breath. He moved closer, skirting around her still form on the floor. He gingerly reached out with the broom handle and nudged her in the hip. She didn’t move. He pushed the broom into the soft flesh between her buttocks and jabbed it in hard. She groaned but didn’t move.

  She’d fallen with her hair across her face. He lifted the curtain of hair up away from her face with the broom handle and draped it over her shoulder. Her eyes were closed. There was a cut on her forehead where she’d caught the edge of the bed, and the blood running down her forehead was dark green, matching the blood clotting and bubbling in her nostrils as she breathed.

  Good. She was breathing.

  Very carefully, he knelt down and placed two fingers on her neck. Her skin was soft and, through the night vision goggles, so pure and white. Like ivory. He could feel a pulse, good and strong. He stroked her long neck for a moment and then pulled his fingers back, relieved she was still alive.

  This was only the second day he’d been keeping her. There was plenty more fun to be had.

  22

  The next morning, Kate drove Tristan to the Exeter police station and waited for him in the car park. The road out front was busy in the morning traffic. She’d been waiting for only half an hour when she saw Tristan emerge from the main entrance. His face was difficult to read as he crossed the road.

  “Everything okay?” she asked when he opened the door.

  “Yeah. I spoke to a plainclothes officer, DC Finch. She seemed clued up and took a short statement. Then she phoned Alex and Steve, who confirmed I was at their house in the early hours of Monday morning, and I gave them the number for Sarah’s wedding caterer, and the times I went for pizza with Sarah and Gary. She also said it wasn’t a problem about Sarah saying I was at home when I wasn’t, if she didn’t know I’d left the house. She was very nice.”

  “Did you see Henry Ko?”

  “No. And I did get the impression that the uniform officers thought he was a bit of an idiot.”

  “Why?”

  “I said that Henry came to your office and was kind of aggressive. DC Finch made a joke about Henry watching too many episodes of The A-Team . . .” Kate smiled. Tristan went on. “She also said the police hav
e spoken to Liam, Magdalena’s housemate, and he said he heard Magdalena wheeling her scooter through the hall on Sunday, midmorning time, and she didn’t come back. Which means they now believe she went missing Sunday morning.”

  “That’s good,” said Kate.

  “Yes. It is. It just makes the row I had with Sarah even more ridiculous.”

  They set off back to Ashdean. Kate didn’t want to press Tristan to talk about the night before. He had slept in her spare room, and she was going to see what he wanted to do next. She felt lucky they could share a comfortable silence without the need to make small talk.

  On the quiet stretch of country road a few miles outside Ashdean, a cluster of cars was parked up ahead on the grass shoulder. As they drew closer, Kate slowed the car.

  Two police cars were parked next to a scrap-recovery lorry. Henry Ko was standing on the shoulder with two other uniform officers, watching as a mud-spattered yellow Vespa scooter was winched out of the ditch on a crane. Farther along the road, the ditch was being cordoned off by another police officer.

  “That’s Magdalena’s scooter,” said Tristan. Kate drew level with Henry and came to a stop, winding down her window. He waved at them to keep moving, then noticed who they were and came to the window.

  “My desk sergeant said you’ve been at the station,” he said. He looked like he hadn’t slept. All his cockiness had evaporated.

  “Yeah. And that’s Magdalena Rossi’s scooter,” said Tristan. It was now being winched up onto the back of the lorry.

  “Yes. We just ran the number plate,” said Henry as the crane whirred and the scooter came to rest on the lorry and two police officers started to cover it in plastic sheeting. It looked pitiful to Kate, covered in mud, with grass caught on the handlebars.

  “What about Magdalena? Have you found her body?” asked Kate, watching the police officers peer into the ditch and the police cordon being strung up.

  “No,” said Henry. “A farmer was dredging the ditch. He found the scooter . . . Now please, I need you to move along. We need to close the road for forensics.”

  Kate and Tristan pulled away and carried on back to Ashdean. She watched the lorry with the bike and the cluster of police recede through the back window.

  “Shit. That means she really went missing,” said Tristan. Kate nodded. A part of her had hoped that Magdalena was one of those people who, one day, decided to up and leave their old life behind.

  A moment later, they reached the crest of a hill, and they could see the Shadow Sands reservoir and the power plant below. On the right-hand side of the road, they passed a long, low redbrick building with arched windows and a pillared entrance. It looked like a once-majestic building. The roof had tiles missing at one end, the rows of arched windows were boarded up, and the car park out front was overgrown with brown weeds.

  “Wasn’t that a nightclub?” asked Kate.

  “Yeah. Hedley House. Trashy as hell, and the police were often called out to deal with fights.”

  “Did you ever go there?”

  “A couple of times,” said Tristan. “It closed down about eighteen months ago.”

  “It looks like an old house,” said Kate, watching it in the rearview mirror. A flock of birds flew up from a large hole in the roof and took to the sky.

  “Yeah, I think it was a manor house at some point,” said Tristan.

  The road ran right past the reservoir. The sun broke through the clouds, and a shaft of light hit the center of the water and lit up the surrounding moor with a steel-gray light. They passed a road sign that read: ASHDEAN 2½ MILES. The road was long and straight. Kate could still see the boarded-up nightclub in the rearview mirror. Abandoned buildings always made her shudder, especially one on such a lonely stretch of road.

  “How did teenagers get to Hedley House? Is there a bus?”

  “There was a bus to get there, but the buses don’t run after ten p.m. It used to be parents and friends who ferried people home. The taxis used to make a fortune on a weekend . . . Some people used to walk home.”

  “It’s probably around three miles from the club to Ashdean,” said Kate, her mind starting to whir. “And you never heard stories of teenagers going missing after walking home from the club?”

  “No. There was a girl who was raped. I remember the case in the local paper, but they caught him. And he went to prison.”

  “When was this?”

  “I dunno. Five, six years ago.”

  “Can you remember his name?”

  “No. I do remember that he got sentenced to ten years in prison. It was a pretty brutal attack. After that there were fewer girls willing to walk back to Ashdean after a night out.”

  They reached the end of the reservoir where the River Fowey fed into it with a couple of other streams. And the outskirts of Ashdean appeared over the hill.

  Kate turned her mind back to Hedley House nightclub, so close to the reservoir. She was brave in many ways, but she wouldn’t want to walk this lonely stretch of road late at night.

  “Do you have much work to do after the lecture?” asked Kate.

  “No. I could use a distraction, to be honest,” said Tristan.

  “I want to visit that pub, the Wild Oak. I want to see if those barmaids are working. The ones Magdalena talked to. I want to hear what they told her and what they know about the woman whose number Magdalena had on the Post-it.”

  23

  “Yeah, Magdalena came in here for a drink with Barry Lewis from Fairview Farm,” said Rachel, the barmaid at the Wild Oak Pub. Despite the cold weather, Rachel wore a grubby cropped white T-shirt, a short skirt, and flip-flops. Her short, slicked-back hair was dyed red. “She got talking about her project, and I told her about the two people I knew who went missing in the fog.”

  Rachel placed a small Coke and a cup of coffee on the bar in front of Kate and Tristan. The Wild Oak Pub was six miles outside Ashdean, on the edge of a tiny village called Pasterton. The pub faced the open moor, and through the windows you could see for miles, but the interior was gloomy and run down. It was quiet midafternoon. A few elderly men propped up the bar, and a television in the corner was showing horse racing.

  “How did you end up talking to Magdalena?” asked Kate.

  “Barry found this big paw print on his land one morning, and he put a photo of it on Facebook. It got loads of likes; the paper reprinted it. Magdalena got in contact with him cos she was doing her project about Devon and Cornwall legends,” said Rachel.

  “Is Barry local?” asked Tristan.

  “Yeah. Nice guy. A regular. Er. That’s four twenty,” she said, indicating their drinks on the bar. Kate could see her eyeing Tristan up as he took his wallet from his pocket.

  “I meant to say, one for yourself,” added Tristan.

  “Thanks. That’s six twenty.”

  Rachel took the money, gave Tristan his change, and then pushed a highball glass up under a Bacardi optic where a handwritten sign, £1 A SHOT OR DOUBLE-BUBBLE, was stuck on with peeling sticky tape.

  “We’re trying to work out what happened to Magdalena,” said Kate. “Can we sit down and talk?”

  Rachel eyed them for a second and nodded. She went to a door at the back of the pub.

  “Doris! I’m taking my break!” she shouted. Kate and Tristan followed her to a low table with a smoked glass top at the opposite end of the bar from the TV. There was a screen built into the middle, under the glass, where an ancient flickering game of PAC-MAN was running. Rachel went to a plug, yanked it out, and they sat down.

  “Why did Barry ask you about local missing people?” asked Kate.

  “He didn’t. When Magdalena came to the bar, she asked me if I’d ever seen anything weird, like big beasts or ghosts. I told her about two people I knew who’d gone missing when it was foggy,” said Rachel.

  “Can you tell us?”

  Rachel nodded. “You know Hedley House, the old club on the main road?”

  “Yes,” said Kate.

  “
I went there a couple of times, when I was younger,” said Tristan.

  “I used to go there, a few years ago, before I had my little girl . . . There was this guy who was always there on a Friday, had a weird name, Ulrich. He was older than me at the time, nineteen or twenty, I think. He was German, a painter and odd-job man. He’d been here a few years, and he was a bit of an oddball, but he would come to Hedley and have a few drinks. He was always on his own, liked a chat. Never sleazy, regardless of how much he drank. And then one week, he wasn’t there. The only reason I questioned it was cos of my mate Darren. Ulrich was putting a new toilet in Darren’s flat. He’d taken it out on the Friday and was due to put it in on the Saturday, but he didn’t show up. Darren got pissed off, as you would, no loo, and he’d paid Ulrich five hundred quid cash up front. He went round to Ulrich’s place, but he wasn’t there . . . Darren’s a bit confrontational, and he got it into his head that Ulrich had pulled a fast one, so him and a few mates go back to Ulrich’s bedsit and they kick the door in. All his stuff’s there: clothes, shoes, food in the fridge. The TV was on. There was even a glass of water by the bed and a couple of painkillers, you know. If I ever go out on the lash, I have water and painkillers ready for when I get back.”

  Tristan nodded.

  “I’ve done that before,” he said.

  “Did you report Ulrich missing?” asked Kate.

  “Darren did. Phoned the police, they took a statement and wrote it down, but they weren’t that interested.”

  “When was this?”

  Rachel had to think.

  “It was 2008—October 2008, close to Halloween.”

  “Can you remember his surname?” asked Tristan.

  “Yeah, Ulrich Mazur . . .” She spelled the surname for them.

  “What happened after you called the police?” asked Kate.

  “We never heard anything about him after that, and we still thought he might have done a runner. Plumbing is a cash job, and we heard later that there were a few people he was doing work for that gave him cash.”