Kate saw an older woman emerge from the doorway at the back of the bar. She had on jeans and a smart pullover and looked as if she’d just woken up; her short, curly hair was disheveled, and she was straightening it in a small mirror. She greeted the old men and took another order for pints of bitter.
“What made you link Ulrich to these disappearances in the fog?” asked Kate, turning her attention back to Rachel.
“Nothing at the time. A year later, I got to know a girl called Sally-Ann Cobbs. Very young. She’d just been kicked out of the local children’s home.”
“Why was she kicked out?” asked Tristan.
“She turned sixteen,” said Rachel. “They pretty much turf them out. She got a cleaning job at Harlequins and had a bedsit somewhere. I forget where.”
“Harlequins is the shopping center in Exeter?” asked Kate.
“Yeah. The shittiest,” said Rachel.
“It is a bit of a shithole,” agreed Tristan.
“What happened to Sally-Ann?” asked Kate, drinking the last of her coffee.
“Sally-Ann was another one I used to see up at Hedley House. One Friday she was drunk and had hooked up with this guy who wanted to take her home. She was off her face by the end of the night, and I remember them arguing outside the club, in front of the whole taxi line.”
“Was he violent?”
“No. Sally-Ann was. She slapped him round the face and stormed off into the night. You’ve seen it round the club. It’s all fields and moorland around that lonely road. That was the last time anyone saw her.”
The hairs started to prickle on the back of Kate’s neck.
“Did anyone report her missing?” she asked.
“I did. Again, I didn’t twig for a while that she was gone. I knew one of the girls Sally-Ann worked with at the Harlequin. She said Sally-Ann hadn’t turned up for work for five days. I knew Sally-Ann’s rent was due cos she’d told me she was worried about money. I went around to her bedsit, and the landlord was there and about to chuck all her stuff.”
“After how long?” asked Kate.
“A week.”
“That’s not legal.”
“It was a dodgy bedsit. Those landlords can do what they want. All her stuff was still there. Photos, clothes, food going off. She’d just topped up her meter for leccy and gas. Her silver Saint Christopher necklace was by her bed. Her mum had given it to her when she was little, before she died . . .” Rachel fumbled at her neck and pulled out a silver necklace with a Saint Christopher. “This is it. That bastard landlord was there with black sacks, ready to put all her stuff on the tip. No doubt he was going to take what little she had of value and sell it. I took what I could, thinking that when she showed up, I could give it back to her, but she didn’t . . .”
“Did you talk to the police?” asked Tristan.
“Yeah. They came and talked to me, said that they’d put Sally-Ann on the missing persons list . . . but what good is that when you’ve got no one to miss you?”
“Can you remember the date when Sally-Ann went missing?”
“Yeah, it was November time, in 2009.”
Rachel stopped and pulled a grubby tissue from her pocket and scrubbed at her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” said Kate. “What makes you think it’s linked to the fog?”
“That night Sally-Ann stormed off outside the club, it was thick fog. And then I remember the last time I saw Ulrich, me and my mates were all squashed in a taxi going back from the club to Ashdean. There was thick fog, and we passed Ulrich walking. We even stopped, but the cab driver said he was full, and we drove away and left him to walk. He was a nice bloke.”
She took another sip of her Bacardi. Kate could see the guilt on Rachel’s face.
“Last year, this girl called Kirstie Newett started working here. She was a bit . . .” Rachel shrugged.
“A bit what?” asked Kate; she remembered the Post-it they’d found on Magdalena’s fridge, but she didn’t mention it and let Rachel continue.
“She was a bit of a liar. Silly, pointless lies. Saying one thing to someone, another thing to someone else to contradict. She told us she had a new car, when she didn’t. She told us she’d bought a house, when she lived in a bedsit. I didn’t mind her. Then one shift we were on together, thirty quid goes missing from the till. Doris had just put in a security camera above the till, and it was Kirstie. Doris sacked her . . . This was at lunchtime. That evening, I set off home in my car, and I saw Kirstie at the bus stop with a bottle of cider. I took pity on her, offered her a lift, and I asked her straight why she did it. She said that she was broke and it was a stupid mistake. When I dropped her off at home, she invited me in for a drink. We got talking, and it turned out she used to go clubbing up at Hedley House. And then she starts telling me that one night, she spent all her money and couldn’t afford a taxi home, so she started to walk. In the fog. She said halfway back to Ashdean, there was this car stopped in a lay-by, and this old man rolled down the window and asks if she wants a lift. She’s three sheets to the wind, dressed in a skimpy little number, and it’s freezing cold, so she accepts. As soon as she gets in the car, he offers her some kind of drug to sniff and punches her. She wakes up later sometime, and she’s all alone in the dark. He keeps her captive for days in some basement; then he attacks her, chokes her, and she passes out. Then, she says she wakes up in the back of a car by the Shadow Sands reservoir, as this bloke is about to dump her in the water! She said she fought him off and managed to swim away.”
“Did you believe her?” asked Kate.
“No.”
“Did Kirstie tell the police?” asked Kate.
“Yeah, she told me she flagged down a car on the other side of the reservoir, and the man who stopped was a policeman. He took her to hospital, and then she said she was slung in a mental hospital.”
“Did she say which part of the reservoir the man took her to? It’s big,” asked Tristan.
Rachel thought for a moment.
“Yeah, she said it was the campsite, cos there was a big sign close to the place he’d parked and where she woke up. That’s how she knew . . . Again, she was known for telling lies, and I had a drink with her, and then I left, and that was it. I saw her around a couple of times to say hi, but I never saw her again socially.”
“What made you think, later, that she was telling the truth?” asked Kate.
“Well, it wasn’t until a few weeks ago, when Magdalena was here with Barry. She was such a nice woman. Educated. She said she was doing a study on urban legends, local weird stuff, so I mentioned Ulrich, Sally-Ann, and Kirstie and the fog, and it all started to fit together in my mind. I know that Kirstie could have heard about Ulrich and Sally-Ann going missing, but I don’t remember seeing her at Hedley around that time. Magdalena asked me for Kirstie’s phone number. I still had a number for her in my phone, which I gave her. Magdalena asked all about the stretch of road near Hedley House, the surrounding area. Then it’s on the news, that she’s gone missing, right on the day when there’s thick fog,” said Rachel. “It’s all more than a coincidence, don’t you think?”
24
When they left the pub, Kate and Tristan sat in silence in her car for a few minutes, listening to the sound of the rain tapping on the windows.
“Jesus,” said Tristan.
“It’s the campsite link. Kirstie woke up at the campsite,” said Kate. “Simon Kendal is attacked at the campsite and ends up in the water. Could whoever’s doing this be abducting people and dumping their bodies in the reservoir? Ulrich and Sally-Ann.”
“It would make sense, then, for Simon Kendal to be in the water. If he went for a walk at night, he could have ended up on the other side of the reservoir and been attacked; maybe he fought back, or he was thrown in the water. That’s been a big problem for me, how he ended up on the other side of the fence.”
“What if Magdalena ended up in the reservoir?”
“If you’re going to dump bodies, it would make sense t
o weight them down, especially with how deep the reservoir is. If she wasn’t weighted down, her body would float at some point,” said Kate. “And then there’s this club, Hedley House.”
She was trying to piece it all together, but it made her head hurt.
It was coming up to three in the afternoon, and already the light was fading. “I want to have a look at the reservoir and the campsite.”
When they drove back to Shadow Sands reservoir, the road took them on a big loop, past the point where the River Fowey fed the reservoir, and the area where Kate and Jake had gone diving. Kate slowed as they passed the visitors’ center, which was next to the power plant. It was large, built in the shape of a ship, and surrounded by neat landscaped land overlooking the water.
“That’s where Geraint went for a coffee and to charge his phone the day Simon went missing,” said Tristan. There were lights on in the huge porthole windows lining the building, but on this gray day, the car park was empty as they drove past.
The power plant was next to the visitors’ center, and it was a box shape with a huge dome on either side. A road bridge crossed the point where the water flowed through the turbines, and stopped at a small lay-by on the edge of the road. The roar of the turbines was very loud and grew deafening when they got out of the car.
They walked out onto the end of the bridge, where it ran across the top of the concrete dam.
“Imagine falling off here!” shouted Tristan as they looked down at the huge drop on the other side of the dam. The wall of the dam had a sharp slope to it, and far below, a torrent of murky water was gushing out of two giant sluice gates into a wide concrete channel. The channel carried the water along for a couple hundred meters and then became a fast-moving river that flowed away into the surrounding woodland.
They got back in the car and drove over the rest of the bridge, which tracked alongside the huge wall of the dam for a quarter of a mile. The campsite was farther along a quiet country road, with only a small sign indicating a gap in the trees. A tree-lined dirt track wound its way back down toward the reservoir.
The campsite was rough grass and scrub roughly a hundred meters square, and banked down to the reservoir. At the top was a small toilet block that was boarded up, and it met trees and moorland.
“Did Geraint say if they lit a fire?” asked Tristan, looking around at several scorch marks in the grass.
“I don’t think so. He said they had a small gas stove, but they didn’t light it, because they had cold beans and chocolate to eat,” said Kate.
“What would make Simon get up in the night?”
“He needed the loo. He wanted to phone someone.”
“I wonder if the police know where his phone is,” said Tristan.
They walked down to the ten-foot-high metal fence lining the water’s edge. It was thick and sturdy, with a roll of razor wire on top. There was a bank of mud and rubbish, about ten meters wide, leading down to the water, which was flowing past them toward the power plant. It was gray and cold. The light was already starting to fade, and there was a drizzle in the air.
“The fence is solid as a rock,” said Kate, gripping it.
She checked her watch. It was now sunset. She shivered.
“It’s bloody creepy here. Imagine if you need the loo and you wake up in the night and have to go over to that toilet block.”
They both looked over at the toilet block, which was next to the dirt track and a row of pine trees.
They walked up to it. Tristan got out his phone and activated the light. Kate pushed at the door, and after a shove, it opened with a squeal. There were three cubicles, one with the door missing, and a row of sinks that were coated with grime and full of leaves. A small safety glass window, high on the back wall, was boarded up, and the wind whistled through a gap in the wood, and leaves skittered on the tiled floor.
“Smells just how I’d expected,” said Tristan, pulling up the neck of his sweater so it covered his mouth and nose. Kate did the same. They walked past the first two cubicles. Tristan shined his light inside. The first toilet bowl was smashed, and it looked like a fire had been lit inside. The second cubicle had its doors hanging half off the hinges, and bird feces splattered the floor and the cistern. The last door was closed.
A noise made them both freeze. It sounded like a snort. They took a step back from the door, which was closed completely with no gaps underneath.
Kate reached out her hand and put it on the door handle and turned it, but the door wouldn’t open. She jiggled it.
“Get away,” said a male voice, thick with sleep. It made them both jump.
Shit, mouthed Tristan, stepping back from the door. Kate wondered who the hell would be using this toilet in the middle of nowhere on a dark October evening.
“GET THE FUCK OUT OF IT!” shouted the voice, and the door juddered, as if it had been kicked.
Tristan was already by the exit.
“Kate! Come on!” he said.
“Come back, and bring your flashlight . . .”
“What?” hissed Tristan. Kate was wary, but logically, she thought it could be a drifter, and he might have seen something. She took a small bottle of Mace from her pocket and showed Tristan. Mace wasn’t strictly legal, but she always carried it with her. He relaxed a little when he saw it. She held it out in front of her.
“Hello. I’m Kate, and I’m here with, er, Tristan. We’re here from the local homeless shelter,” she said. There was a long pause.
“I have every right to be here. I’m trying to sleep,” said the voice. Kate relaxed a little. She felt such pity for this man, having to shelter in a disgusting toilet block.
“Okay. That’s fine. We’re just here to check on you,” she said. Juggling the little bottle of Mace, Kate rummaged in her handbag and found a bottle of water and a chocolate bar she’d bought from the petrol station when they stopped to fill up the car on the way. She also took out a twenty-pound note. Tristan was now beside her.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“None of your business!”
“I’ve got some food and twenty pounds here . . . Can you open the door so I can give it to you?”
“Leave it outside!” said the voice. The man had a Cornish burr to his accent.
“I don’t want to leave a twenty-pound note outside, in case someone else takes it,” said Kate. There was a long pause, and then a rustling sound, a crashing of a stick on the concrete floor. The door shook, and then there was a bang, and it swung open. Kate quickly stowed the Mace in the palm of her hand. A man of undetermined age lay on the floor between the toilet bowl and the wall. He was filthy, his face orange-tinged from the dirt. He had a long, matted beard and shoulder-length hair, which was either tied back or in a clump of knots—Kate couldn’t tell. He wore many layers on top, all filthy and stained, and a ripped overcoat. He pushed himself up onto one elbow and blinked up at them. He had a broken bottle in his hand, and he was holding it up at them in half-hearted defense.
“We’re not here to hurt you,” said Kate.
She could see only one of his feet, with a brown scuffed shoe where long, dirty toenails were poking through the leather. Then she saw the other trouser leg was tied up at the knee and knotted with string. The rest of his leg was missing. The toilet lid was closed and covered with a small square of cloth. On it were a crumpled pack of cigarettes, a box of matches, three onions, and a small red penknife, covered with a layer of dried mud.
“Sorry to bother you,” said Kate. It sounded stupid as soon as it came out of her mouth. “I’m Kate, and this is Tristan.”
“You told me that already!” the old man cried, and he winced at the flashlight in his face. Tristan lowered it.
“Sorry, mate, didn’t mean to blind you,” said Tristan.
“Here,” said Kate, holding out the bottle of water and the chocolate bar. He snatched them, turning them each over in his hands before placing them neatly on the toilet lid.
Kate was right, she thou
ght. He was a drifter, and this could be a regular place for him. He might have seen something when Simon and Geraint were camping.
She crouched down and held up the twenty-pound note. He went to take it, but she kept it out of reach.
“Do you sleep here a lot?”
“Sometimes.”
“Is it busy, the campsite?”
“Never. Though there’s often comings and goings in the night . . .”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s always kids boozing, foxes, and there’s a van. It goes down to the water,” he said.
“What kind of van? When? Can you describe it?”
“A white van . . . I don’t know. I just try and sleep,” said the old man.
“Does the van arrive in the day or at night?” asked Kate, holding the twenty-pound note closer.
“I’m only here at night. I mind me own business.”
“That’s a nice penknife,” said Tristan. It glinted in the beam of the flashlight, and Kate saw there was an inscription on it. She reached out to take it.
“It’s mine. I found it,” said the old man, about to grab it off the toilet bowl.
“I’ll only give you this twenty-pound note if you let me see it,” said Kate. The drifter eyed the money and let Kate pick up the penknife. Tristan moved closer to look at it.
As she turned it over in her hands, Kate remembered her brother having a similar one, which he took to Cub Scout meetings, with a tiny blade, which was only good for cutting a piece of twine or peeling an apple. Kate fumbled with the penknife and managed to open it out. Like her brother’s penknife, the blade was small with a dull, blunt edge. The handle was caked in mud, and she rubbed it away to reveal an engraving in tiny letters on the handle.
For Simon, on your twelfth birthday.
Tristan and Kate exchanged a look. He lifted his phone and took a photo.
“Where did you find this?” Kate asked the drifter.
“In the mud by the water. Most things in the water are lost or chucked away, so it’s not stealing! It’s mine. MINE!”
“You’re lying. There’s a huge fence blocking off the water,” said Kate. The drifter still had his eyes on the twenty-pound note between her fingers.
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