Shadow Sands

by Robert Bryndza

  When they came off the phone with Dennis, Kate started to pace up and down on the sand.

  “It matches what Kirstie Newett told me,” she said. “Kirstie described an old man with gray hair who abducted her, in a pale-colored, old car. She said his eyes were a weird blue color, almost purple, as if he was wearing contact lenses.”

  “It could be a disguise,” said Tristan. “Just changing the color of your eyes isn’t going to make much of a difference. It could be that he’s wearing a wig, or he grows a beard, then shaves it off again.”

  Kate was now shaking with excitement as well as shock. To think that she’d nearly been swayed by Henry Ko. She’d allowed him to debunk their whole theory.

  “This means that Kirstie Newett was telling the truth—she was abducted. And Magdalena was abducted. She didn’t get washed away in the ditch during a rainstorm,” said Kate.

  “What should we do now?” asked Tristan.

  Kate stopped pacing.

  “It’s been eight days since Magdalena went missing, and the police don’t even have that on their radar. No one is looking for her.” She checked her watch. It was just after seven p.m. “I’ve been thinking about Hedley House. Ulrich Mazur and Sally-Ann Cobbs left Hedley House and were abducted on their way back to Ashdean. If the Baker family is somehow involved in all this, then it’s logical that they could have been held somewhere in Hedley House, and that’s where Magdalena is being held. I don’t know if it has a basement, but I think we should check it out.”

  “When?” asked Tristan.

  “Tonight. Now,” said Kate.

  50

  After what felt like hours and hours of rubbing and grinding at the floor, Magdalena felt the concrete at the base of the toilet bowl crack, and the toilet started to come loose from the floor.

  She got up and rubbed her hands to get some feeling back into them. She allowed herself only a few minutes’ rest and a drink of water, and then she started to shift the toilet bowl from side to side. It came loose pretty quickly, and with a sudden crack it came away from where it was stuck to the floor. The pipe connecting the cistern up on the wall came away easily. Her heart gave a little zing of excitement, and she didn’t notice that the water had spilled out over her jeans. She was dripping with sweat from the exertion.

  Magdalena dragged the toilet bowl out of the small room, across the corridor, and there was a soft clanging sound when the porcelain touched the metal doors of the lift.

  She climbed up onto it and was overjoyed that she could touch the ceiling and feel the rough plasterwork. She was a little off to the left and found she had to lean over to reach the hatch. She repositioned the bowl and climbed back up. As she ran her hands over the hatch in the ceiling, she could feel it sat flush with the outer bracket and the ceiling. There was a small slot, where a key or a coin could be inserted and turned so that the hatch opened.

  “Shit,” she whispered. Her shoulders sagged. Would this ever end? Would anything ever be easy? She climbed back off the toilet bowl down onto the floor, feeling dizzy at the effort.

  Broken tiles. They broke when I fired the second bullet, she thought.

  She hurried back to the room with the bed, feeling her way along the walls with her hands, touching the walls and doorframes and trying not to think about the blood spatters she’d seen in those brief moments of gunfire. She found the bed, and underfoot were the pieces of broken tile.

  Squatting down, she moved her hands carefully, sifting through the shards. There was a long, thick piece of tile with a flat corner ending in a sharp, thin spike that would make a good weapon to add to her arsenal. She tucked it into the waistband of her jeans with the gun. Then she found a flat sliver of tile that had the thickness and width of a coin. She hurried back out to the hallway, found the toilet bowl, and climbed up. She slotted the piece of tile into the opening mechanism of the hatch. It fitted perfectly. She was able to turn it to the right, and she had to duck out of the way as the heavy hatch fell open.

  She immediately felt a draft, but her eyes were dazzled by the light. She felt the sting as her pupils retracted, and she had to keep her eyes half-closed for a few minutes. She stood enjoying the draft as her eyes got used to seeing again. The hallway was filled with a dim, gray light—barely bright at all, but after days of darkness it was just enough.

  She could see that, next to the lift doors, there was a small keyhole in the wall. Her hands must have missed it in the dark. She stepped down and went to it. It was a small, gold keyhole. That must be how he opens the lift doors from down here.

  All sorts of crazy thoughts went through her head: Why hadn’t she thought of this? Why hadn’t she searched more for the keyhole? Could she have let him come closer to her in the dark and tried to search him for the key? No, that was ridiculous. She ran her fingers over the hole, wishing she had a bobby pin. She didn’t know how to pick a lock, but she could at least try.

  She looked back down the corridor; now that she had light, maybe there was something, anything that had been forgotten about . . . She peered up into the hatchway.

  A dim light shone out from high above, and she could see that the hatch led into the lift shaft. There was another lift door around ten meters above. Her arms were still weak and shaky, and it took all her energy to pull herself up off the toilet bowl and climb through the hatch.

  There was a small platform to the side of the lift shaft, and she lay for a moment panting, trying to get her breath back. Far above her hung the lift, loose cables looping down underneath.

  She stood up and tried to find a foothold in the walls of the lift shaft, to climb upward, but the walls were smooth. There was nothing she could use to climb.

  “No, no, no,” she said, hammering her fist on the side of the wall. She sat back on her haunches, feeling exhaustion wash over her again.

  He was going to come back, and he was going to make sure to kill her.

  She had to lie in wait for him. Use the hatch to surprise him, and kill him before he killed her.

  51

  Kate asked Myra to stay with Jake, and she and Tristan set off in her car for Hedley House.

  They had to double back toward Ashdean to get onto the A1328. A thin mist started to roll off the coast as they drove toward the Shadow Sands reservoir, and it made Kate uneasy. The visibility was poor enough on this lonely road with no streetlights. She switched on the high beams. There were no other cars, and as the road curved away from the cliff, a thicket of trees sprang up on either side, and the fog grew thicker.

  “I don’t like this,” said Tristan, gripping the dashboard as wispy pockets of fog hit the windscreen, obscuring their view for a few seconds. Kate slowed a little, but she was desperate for them to get to Hedley House. What if Magdalena had been there the whole time? They had driven past it on several occasions, and it was so close. Was Kate losing her touch? Had it been staring them in the face?

  “Kate, slow down,” said Tristan as they came to a bend in the road and the fog pockets grew thicker. The car skidded as she took the bend in fourth gear, and they hit the shoulder, making the car jolt and shudder.

  “Sorry,” she said, braking and slowing the car for the next bend. They emerged into a clear section, and visibility was better, but up ahead, the fog was pushing its way through the trees. When they reached it, the car was completely enveloped in white, and Kate could see only a few feet in front. The headlights bounced off the fog, making it seem like a white wall was in front of them. They burst out of the fog patch into a clear part of the road, but standing in front of them was a deer. Kate had no time to react, and instinctively she swerved to avoid the beautiful creature. The car came off the road and mounted the shoulder, and they bumped down a steep bank, through thick trees for a few meters, and then collided with a tree.

  Kate didn’t know how long they’d sat there when she opened her eyes and saw the deflated airbags. Tristan was sitting beside her, also dazed.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, checking herse
lf over. Her face and neck were sore, but she wasn’t badly hurt.

  “Yeah,” he said, checking himself over. He put his hand to his face. “I thought airbags were meant to be a good thing. I feel like I’ve been slapped in the face.”

  “Me too,” said Kate. She tried to open the door and saw that it was right up against a tree trunk. “I can’t get out of my side.” Tristan managed to get his door open and climbed out. Kate clambered over the gear stick and followed.

  The car didn’t look badly damaged. They’d come off the road and driven down a ten-meter-long slope, ending in a huge oak tree with knots bulging out of the trunk. The front bumper had saved the car. It was pinned to a bulge in the tree and hanging off with the two front wheels suspended in midair. The driver’s door was crushed, but the rest of the car looked okay.

  “Do you think we can reverse the car back up?” asked Tristan. Kate followed his gaze back up the slope, then looked back at the front wheels suspended off the ground.

  “Let’s see if we can push it off the tree,” she said. They both moved to the front of the car and leaned against the bumper.

  “Is the hand brake off?” asked Tristan.

  “Yes,” said Kate as they pushed. “It’s no good, it’s stuck.”

  “Where’s my phone?” she added, patting at her jacket pocket and jeans. She reached back into the passenger side and picked up her phone from the footwell on the driver’s side. There was no signal.

  “I haven’t got a signal either,” said Tristan, holding up his phone. They clambered up the soft earth of the slope, grabbing trees and bushes to help them up. When they reached the road, it was quiet with no cars.

  The deer was gone from the spot where they’d swerved off the road, and the pockets of fog were starting to disperse. They both stepped out into the road to get away from the trees and try to find a phone signal. Nothing.

  Kate turned the other way and walked a little farther along the road with her phone in the air. It curved sharply to the right, and stretching away was the long, straight expanse of road running past the reservoir, and at the end, against the clear night’s sky, was Hedley House, perched on top of a hill.

  There was a light glowing in one of the windows.

  52

  It was eerily quiet as Kate and Tristan walked toward Hedley House. When they’d seen the light glowing in the window, they’d set off toward it, with no questions or hesitation.

  The River Fowey appeared through the trees on the left, and for twenty meters or so, it rushed past noisily. It was a happy sound among the darkness and fog and the trepidation Kate felt.

  As the reservoir came into view, the river was suddenly silent. It met the sluice gate and was swallowed up into the still, black expanse of water.

  Kate thought back to her dive with Jake, when they’d found Simon Kendal, floating deep down by the church spire that was covered in freshwater crustaceans.

  Kate stopped and looked back at the sluice gate where the river met the reservoir.

  “What?” asked Tristan, stopping.

  “Dylan Robertson told Ted and the other maintenance workers to lie about the bodies they found in the water, to say they were found on the other side of the sluice gate . . . Kirstie Newett was left for dead and was about to be dumped, too, until she woke up . . . Ted Clough was about to give us a statement and put it on record, and he’s found dead. And it all comes back to the Baker family. Please, God, don’t let Magdalena already be down there, under the water . . .”

  Kate could hear her voice crack with emotion. She was exhausted, but adrenaline was coursing through her veins.

  “Come on,” said Tristan, pulling her forward. Kate nodded, and they picked up the pace even more toward Hedley House.

  The car park was large and overgrown, dotted with weeds at waist and shoulder height. They came off the road and walked through the weeds, which rustled as they brushed against Kate’s shoulders.

  She put her hand on the Mace in her bag, keeping an eye on the building, which seemed to grow huge when they came close. It was deceptively far from the road when you drove past it, and now, as they stood in front of it, the building towered above them.

  A car approached on the road. They ducked back into the weeds so they were hidden from the road. The car slowed, its headlights projecting long, misshapen shadows from the weeds onto the building, and it turned into the car park.

  Kate felt like they were out in the open, masked by only a few thin, tall weeds. She put her hand out for Tristan to stay put. It could just be someone using the car park as a lay-by for a pee.

  Two people got out of the car. A tall and a short man. When they both moved to the boot of the car, Kate saw their faces. It was Thomas Baker, his long, tall frame and bony, long face looking haggard in the dim light, and with him was Dylan Robertson, Silvia Baker’s driver. He was hunched down wearing a thick winter coat with the collar pulled up. They opened the boot and took out two large spades and a pile of sheets. Thomas carried them over to the front entrance of Hedley House, and Dylan took a shotgun from the back of the car, opened it to check it was loaded, and clicked it shut. He slammed the boot of the car and followed Thomas to the main entrance.

  Thomas was working on a padlock, and he got what looked like a temporary steel door open. They disappeared inside.

  “What’s inside the club?” asked Kate.

  “What do you mean? It’s a nightclub,” said Tristan.

  “No. What’s the layout inside, can you remember?”

  “It’s mainly a huge old ballroom, which takes up most of the space. There was a bar at one end, with toilets. There was also a manager’s office. I remember a girl at school saying that she got taken to the office by one of the bouncers for a shag. I think there was a kitchen at the other end, but I can’t be sure,” said Tristan.

  “When we follow them inside, we’ll come out into a huge ballroom and they’ll be able to see us?” said Kate.

  “No, there was a cloakroom through the doors with toilets, and another set of doors to go through to the main ballroom and bar . . . What do you mean, when we follow them inside?” said Tristan.

  “Come on,” said Kate. She made sure the small can of Mace was the right way around in her hand, and then she started toward the main entrance, through the shoulder-high weeds. The scuff of their feet on the gravel and the rustle as they parted the reeds seemed so loud in the darkness.

  Kate slowed when they came close to the front door; it had been pulled closed, but the padlock was unlocked. They stopped and listened. Kate couldn’t hear anything. Then she saw there was another vehicle, parked against the side of the building in the shadows.

  They moved to get a closer look. It was a mud-splattered Land Rover. Kate turned back to Tristan.

  “What should we do?” she asked. She could see he was scared.

  “We’ve come this far. Magdalena could be in there. I don’t know why all these cars are here. There could be something nasty going on with her . . . We can’t just leave. We should take a look inside, and then we should call the police,” he whispered. Kate nodded.

  They moved back to the front door. Kate put out her hand. The door opened easily, and they went inside.

  53

  The light from the lift shaft gave Magdalena new energy. She could now see, instead of having to stumble through the darkness.

  She sat and thought about her next move. It came down to two things. The lift wouldn’t operate without the key. She either needed to find something she could fashion as a key, or she had to get the key when the man returned.

  She quickly scoured the corridor, toilet, and room with the bed and sink, hoping that she might find a piece of metal or even a bobby pin that she could use to MacGyver a key. In the dim light, as she searched, she tried to block out the bloodstains and blood spatter that covered the walls and the patches that had saturated the concrete floors. There was nothing. It would have been a dream if she could have made her own key and just let herself ou
t of this prison.

  Magdalena would be quite happy just to escape and slink away in the night, find her way home, pack her bags, and go back to Italy. She remembered the ordeal Gabriela had gone through after the rape, the endless questions she was subjected to by the police, and then the court case. At one low point, Gabriela confided in Magdalena that she wished she hadn’t said anything to anyone.

  At the time, Magdalena had thought that was crazy—the man had to pay for what he did. But now she understood. Magdalena wanted to live, and if she did, she never wanted to talk about this experience to anyone.

  She came back to the lift, stood beside the toilet bowl in front of the doors, and looked up at the hatch. If she could lie in wait for him above, he wouldn’t be expecting that. She didn’t have much strength left, but from that vantage point, she could shoot him the moment he stepped out of the lift. She would aim for the top of his head and blow his brains out. Then she would get the key for the lift and escape.

  The only problem was the toilet bowl. She looked down at it. It was large and heavy, and if it was there when he stepped out of the lift, sitting below the hatch, he would be alerted to her presence. He would know she was up in the hatch.

  Magdalena perched on the edge of the toilet bowl. It was made of porcelain and weighed a lot. It had taken all her effort to drag it out of the bathroom and into the hallway. She saw something and sat up in excitement. The seat had been removed, but there were two holes that had been made in the porcelain where the seat had been attached.

  She got up and hurried through to the room with the bed. She didn’t want to call it the bedroom—that made it sound like a place she was staying—but she needed to look at the bed. In the dim light from the hallway, she could see the mattress lay on top of the concrete base. It was thin and completely filthy, with a fitted sheet sewn onto the foam.