Shadow Sands

by Robert Bryndza

  “I don’t think anyone is going to search those buildings, are they, Tris?” said Kate. “Wherever Magdalena is, she’s dead.”

  Tristan pulled the piece of paper from his pocket that he’d been working on while Kate was away with Jake at Great Barwell.

  “I was going to show you this before, but we got distracted with the phone call with Dennis. It’s the list of all the properties owned by the Baker family on the estate,” he said.

  Kate took the piece of paper and activated the flashlight on her phone. There was a list of addresses and buildings. Most of them were residential houses, like Ted Clough’s. Something stood out on the list that made Kate stop in her tracks. She stared at the entry sixth down: FROME CRAWFORD OLD TELEPHONE EXCHANGE.

  It was tucked in among several houses and a couple of farms owned by the estate. The building was registered as being owned by Stephen Baker.

  Kate thought back to what Stephen Baker had just said to them. “I just own my shop, nothing else. I have nothing to do with the bloody estate.”

  But when they had gone to the shop a few days ago, they were talking to Stephen, and his wife, Jassy, had been talking on the phone in the background . . . What was she saying? She was complaining to the post office about the boxes of stock that were delivered to the wrong place. She said, “No, not the telephone exchange; it’s Hubble on Frome Crawford high street.”

  “Tris, have you got a signal on your phone?” she asked.

  “I’ve got a couple of bars,” he said, holding it up.

  “Can you look up the old telephone exchange in Frome Crawford on Google Maps?” Tristan looked it up; it took a moment to load, but then it appeared on his phone. “Can you zoom in?” she added, wincing at the screen, which was dazzlingly bright in the darkness by the road.

  “It’s on an old industrial estate, outside the village,” he said.

  “Why would Stephen lie about it? When I was talking about searching buildings, he said he owned no other property, apart from the shop,” said Kate. She looked at Tristan. His eyes widened.

  “Jesus. It’s Stephen Baker,” he said. “And he’s keeping Magdalena in that old telephone exchange.”

  Kate looked up and down the road, but there was no traffic coming in the distance.

  “Damn this stupid car,” she cried, kicking the back bumper. It lurched a little in the mud. “Can you call a taxi?”

  “You know Ashdean. They won’t come out this far anymore,” said Tristan.

  Kate was pacing up and down.

  “We need to get there now, Tris!”

  “What about Myra?”

  “She doesn’t drive. What about Sarah?”

  Tristan pulled a face.

  “Tristan. Please, I know you and Sarah have issues, but I need you to phone her now,” said Kate.

  57

  Stephen Baker felt sick on the journey home with his brother, Thomas. The car was hot inside. Thomas always had to have the heating on full blast.

  “Can I open a window? I’m burning up in here,” said Stephen, wiping at the sweat on his brow. Using the main controls at the driver’s side, Thomas opened the passenger window a centimeter. The wind whistled through the tiny crack, but Stephen couldn’t feel it. He put a hand to his mouth, feeling his stomach lurch.

  “Jesus. Open it properly!” he said, pressing the button. The window slid down, and cold, fresh air streamed into the car. He breathed it in, feeling relief.

  Thomas pulled the collar of his shirt up around his neck, his long fingers fussing primly.

  He’s like an old woman, always worrying about drafts, thought Stephen.

  “I think that’s enough,” said Thomas, pressing the button on his console. Stephen’s window closed.

  The fog had dispersed, and the road ahead was clear.

  “Are you going to let the police search the estate buildings?” asked Stephen, glancing over at his brother’s serious face.

  “Yes,” said Thomas, staring grimly at the road. “I’ve already had plenty of tenants on the phone, worried after Ted Clough’s death.”

  The car hit a bump in the road, and Stephen felt the jolt in his stomach. He put his hand to his mouth and bit down on his index finger.

  “Do the police have any idea who it could be?”

  “No. We think it’s probably one of the other tenants. We’ve got plenty of dodgy types,” said Thomas. “That’s the problem with tenancy agreements being passed down through families. And there’s so many of those ‘Cash for Gold’ adverts on TV at the moment. Someone got wind of Ted’s twenty grand’s worth of gold coins and jumped at the chance to rob the old man.”

  “What about the reservoir? Do you think the police will take that woman seriously?” asked Stephen, trying to keep his voice even.

  “I don’t know. Why are you so concerned about it all of a sudden? You made it quite clear when you married Jassy that you don’t want to have anything to do with the estate.”

  “Yes. You have a short memory. I was forced to choose between Jassy and my stake in the estate, remember?” said Stephen. He gave Thomas a hard stare. Thomas stared back.

  “You made a choice,” said Thomas. “Are you all right? You look a bit peaky.”

  “I’m fine,” he said quickly, feeling his stomach turn over again. “If you’re going to be worried about anyone, it’s Arron. He looked bloody awful.”

  “The doctor’s given him six months.”

  “Jesus. Stress, that’s what made him ill. The stress of juggling a wife and a mistress. I’m sure he’d be fit as a fiddle if he’d had some balls years ago and left his wife for Aunt Silvia. She’s always been his true love.”

  “I don’t know about that. Everyone involved has always turned the other cheek. My concern is when he kicks the bucket, I need his one percent of the corporation to stay in the family,” said Thomas.

  To Stephen’s relief, they had reached Frome Crawford high street.

  “Well. Here we are,” said Thomas as he pulled up outside the cookware shop. “Give my best to Jassy and the kids.”

  “Yeah. Thanks,” said Stephen. He got out of the car and went to the front door. He spun out searching for his keys in his pocket and put them in the door as Thomas pulled away.

  When Thomas was out of sight, he withdrew the key. His phone rang and he pulled it out of his pocket. It was Jassy.

  “Shit,” he said under his breath. He ducked under the awning of the shop, out of sight from the window above, and answered the call.

  “Hi, love,” he said.

  “Hey, are you home soon? I wanted to know if I should tuck in the kids or wait,” said Jassy, at the other end of the phone.

  “Sorry, love, this is going to go on a bit longer. I’ll be another hour or more,” he said.

  “Okay . . .”

  Stephen could hear the disappointment in her voice.

  “Love you, see you in a bit,” he said. He ended the call, switched off his phone. Peering out from under the awning, he walked around to the back of the building to the shop loading bay, where his car was parked. He unlocked it and ducked inside, taking off the hand brake. Pushing with his foot on the road, he rolled the car out of the loading bay and onto the road.

  Stephen winced at the effort to push the car and felt a burning pain in his chest. When he got the car to the main road, he closed the door and started the engine. He pulled up his sweater and saw a faint line of blood spots on his T-shirt and lifted it gingerly. The stitches across his chest had burst.

  “Shit!” he shouted, slamming his hand on the dashboard. He dabbed at it with some tissue and stuck it to where the blood was seeping out.

  Stephen couldn’t fathom how she had gained the upper hand on him. He didn’t want to admit it, but it scared him. He’d always been able to keep the others under control, down in the dungeon. They had feared him. Now he felt fear, and she had his gun, and that was unforgivable. After he got himself stitched up at the hospital, he should have just shown Jassy the wounds
and made something up, but he hadn’t.

  “Fuck!” he said, hitting the dashboard again. He thought back to when Kate Marshall had emerged from the lift with her pretty boy assistant. Were they onto him already?

  They’re all lying in wait for me, but they’re not going to get me; I’ll die before they get me! he thought. His eyes stung. Sweat was running down his face. He wiped it with his sleeve, put the car in gear, and drove away.

  58

  Sarah pulled up in a car ten minutes after Tristan called her.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, winding down her window. She peered past Kate and Tristan, to Kate’s car wedged against the tree.

  “We’re fine. Thank God for airbags,” said Tristan. He hurried to the passenger door and got in.

  “What are you going to do with the car?” asked Sarah.

  “I called the AA,” said Kate, getting in the back seat and fastening her seat belt. She saw that Sarah had wet hair and was wearing a dressing gown and bunny slippers.

  “Tristan, are you sure you’re not hurt?” asked Sarah, ignoring Kate.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “Why are you wearing your pajamas?”

  “I was in the bath when you phoned.”

  Kate leaned forward between the seats.

  “Sarah, we need you to take us to the old industrial estate next to Frome Crawford, right now,” she said.

  Sarah looked at Tristan.

  “What do you mean? I thought I was giving you a lift home?”

  “We believe Magdalena is being held captive there,” said Tristan.

  Sarah looked at them both.

  “You can’t be serious?” she said. “It’s late!”

  “Sarah, this is serious. This is lifesaving serious. We need to go now!” said Tristan.

  “Now, Sarah!” said Kate. The penny seemed to drop, and Sarah nodded.

  “Okay, but I’m not breaking the speed limit. This is Gary’s car, and he’s still got three years’ payments left on the finance plan.”

  “Now!” shouted Kate. Her slowness was infuriating.

  Sarah put the car in gear and made an agonizingly slow three-point turn, and then they pulled away back toward Ashdean.

  Magdalena’s hands were sore as she spooled out the length of plaited bedsheets in the corridor. Math wasn’t her strong point, but she’d estimated that the distance between the floor and the hatch was two meters. She would need double that to get a good purchase from above to lift the porcelain toilet bowl off the floor and up into the open hatch. Her problem had been that the mattress was very small, just larger than a double bed. She’d started to tear strips out from the middle and ended up with strips of material that broke and were too thin. A couple of times she’d thought she heard the lift whir into life, and she’d stopped to listen, but her ears were playing tricks on her. Her whole body was jangling with exhaustion and adrenaline, and she was worried that her tank was now empty and shortly she would crash out with exhaustion.

  The rope measured just over two meters. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do. It was plaited tightly with six strips, and she’d tied four sections together. She always plaited her sister’s hair when she was at home, and she tried not to think about this as she made her length of rope. The thought of not seeing her family again was too much.

  Magdalena looped one end of the rope through one of the holes at the back of the toilet and knotted it tight. She then looped the other end over her shoulder. Checking she had the sharp pieces of porcelain in her pocket, she climbed onto the toilet bowl and hoisted herself up and into the hatch.

  The small square platform looked up to the underside of the lift above and down to the bottom of the lift shaft, where the lift would come to a rest before the doors opened. She threw the other end of the rope over the edge, and she carefully lowered herself down into the lift shaft, so she was standing on the other side of the lift doors. Gripping the other end of the knotted sheets, she started to pull. She felt the rope take the weight, and then she leaned back, using her weight to hoist the toilet bowl up toward the hatch. The rope strained. She had expected it to be heavier to lift. She gave a big pull, and she leaned back with all her weight and lost balance as the toilet bowl came up through the hatch, over the lip of the platform. She had to duck out of the way as it crashed down in the lift shaft behind her.

  “Shit,” she said, looking at the three broken pieces of porcelain that lay among the metal braces at the bottom of the lift shaft.

  When Stephen drove up to the building, it sat, bathed in shadows, at the end of a long, deserted street filled with old warehouses and some abandoned terraced houses. The lights from the town glowed over a hill, but the street was shrouded in darkness. He parked to the side of the building and got out of the car.

  The blood spots on the front of his shirt were larger, and he cursed her.

  Stephen went to the boot of the car and opened it. He took out a blanket and some reusable shopping bags so he could lift away a square of carpet. In the round well that usually contained the spare tire were his night vision goggles, a handgun, and a box of spare bullets.

  He opened the gun’s magazine to check that the bullets were loaded. He then spun it round and flicked it shut.

  He let himself into the building at the side door, which was the original entrance, unlocking the padlock.

  Inside was a large, cavernous space, which could comfortably fit six large cars. For a time, he had used it as storage for the cookware shop, but this had become too risky, especially when the kids were older and Jassy had started to take an interest in running the business. The surrounding warehouses were in use during the day, but even then, the traffic was transient. This place had been his playground for the past twenty years, on and off, apart from the few years when he had gone to live in America.

  He hadn’t indulged his pastime when he was in the States. He didn’t have the confidence to abduct and kill on foreign soil, with the death penalty and the strict law enforcement. And when he came back with Jassy and they had children, part of him thought he might change, but the urges came back, and with them came the realization that he had a fiefdom. As a member of the Baker family, he had access to land and money, and protection. He carried on, because he could.

  The building was empty inside. He kept it that way so that if anyone broke in, they wouldn’t have any incentive to hang around. He also had the only two keys for the lift. One was in his pocket, and the other was buried in a drawer at home.

  She has a gun. The words had repeated over and over in his head. He had to be ready to shoot the second he got down there and the doors opened.

  He checked the gun again, put the key in the lock by the lift doors, and turned it to the left. The doors opened slowly. He removed the key, got in, and then put the key in the lock inside and turned it to the right. The doors closed, and the lift started to slowly descend.

  He pulled on the night vision goggles and activated them. Then he got ready with his gun trained on the closed doors. Would she be lying in wait for him right outside the doors, or would she be hiding in one of the rooms?

  The lift juddered and came to a stop with a nasty squeal. He stood for a moment; that hadn’t happened before.

  He hesitated, took a deep breath, and turned the key to open the doors.

  Kate, Tristan, and Sarah pulled up outside the disused telephone exchange.

  “I don’t like the look of this,” said Sarah, peering at the shadowy buildings.

  “Stay in the car. Lock the doors. And call the police,” said Kate. If she were on her own, Kate would have waited to get inside the building before calling the police, but the stakes were higher now that Sarah was involved.

  “Can you pass me the wheel lock from the back, please, Kate?” asked Sarah politely.

  Kate found it in the footwell. “You’re not going to put that on the steering wheel, are you?”

  “I’m not that stupid. If he comes out and tries anything, I’ll use it to hit him on t
he head!” cried Sarah.

  Kate nodded. It was a good idea. She wasn’t sure how far Sarah would get if she had to run for it wearing her bunny slippers.

  “Good. Use a wide grip, and swing at him with the lighter end,” said Kate. “Do you have anything else we can use as a weapon?”

  “There’s a crowbar in the boot,” said Sarah, holding the wheel lock in her thin, pale hands.

  They left the car. Tristan found the crowbar in the boot, took it out, and slammed the boot closed. Sarah activated the central locking, and they could see her pick up her phone and call the police. Kate checked she had the canister of Mace positioned correctly in her hand. She looked at Tristan. He nodded and gave her a nervous smile.

  “Okay. Let’s do this,” he said. They went to the door at the side of the building.

  An open padlock hung in the hooks on the door. Kate pulled at the door, and it opened.

  “Is this too easy?” asked Tristan, sounding afraid.

  “Yes,” said Kate, and they stepped into the darkness.

  Magdalena started to shake almost uncontrollably when she heard the lift activate above her. She had been waiting for a long time, sitting on the small platform above the hatch with the gun cradled in her lap.

  The lift was so loud in the shaft, and she watched as the huge box moved down toward her. She thought at the last minute that it was going to crush her, it came so close, but it moved past the tiny platform where she crouched, boxing her into the space and plunging her into darkness again.

  She had debated leaving the pieces of the broken toilet bowl in the lift shaft, so that the lift couldn’t properly descend, but that could have meant she’d be stuck for longer, blocked in by a broken lift. And if he couldn’t get in, she couldn’t get out. Magdalena didn’t know how long she had been down there with no food, and she was concerned that she would soon starve if left any longer.

  The toilet had broken into three pieces when it fell into the lift shaft, which had made it a little easier to lift them back up onto the platform.