Shadow Sands

by Robert Bryndza

  The lift squealed as it crushed the smaller pieces of porcelain, and it came to a stop. She sat up on her haunches and held the gun out, aiming through the hatch. Her hands were still shaking from the physical exertion and lack of food. She thought for a moment that the doors wouldn’t be able to open, and then they did.

  She was poised with the gun when he stepped out of the lift. She saw the top of his head wearing the night vision goggles and the gun in his hand pointed in front of him. She aimed for the top of his head and pulled the trigger.

  The sound of the gunfire was deafening. She didn’t know if her hands were shaking or if it was the gun’s kickback, but she missed, and the bullet hit the floor beside him. In the split second before she fired again, he looked up at her through the hatch. This was the first time she had seen him. In her mind he was an old man. He was younger, but she recognized his nose and the full lips and teeth from the man who had abducted her on the side of the road what seemed like a lifetime ago.

  Something snapped inside Magdalena. The feelings of fear and hunger vanished, and she felt a huge wave of anger and hatred toward this man who had taken so much from her. With the last of her energy, she gave a warlike yell, and she launched herself through the hatch and jumped down onto him. Her foot caught on the edge of the hatch, pulling the lid closed with a slam. When they both hit the floor, the corridor was plunged into darkness. She wanted to kill him. She felt his body under hers, and she started to hit him with the gun and claw at his face. She could feel his hot breath and the way his muscles contracted as he yelled and threw her off him. She landed hard on the concrete floor, but she kept hold of the gun. There was a flash and two deafening bangs as they both fired.

  Kate and Tristan looked around the empty space inside the telephone exchange. The room was bathed in shadows, and there was only one small window high up at the front of the building. They activated the flashlights on their phones. It smelled of mold and damp, but it was neatly swept. The concrete floor clean. They moved closer to the lift doors at the end. There was a muffled bang, and then another.

  “What was that?” said Tristan.

  “Gunshot,” said Kate. “Shit. We’re too late.” She looked to see if there was a set of stairs, but there were just the lift doors. Kate hurried to them and pressed the button to call the lift, not thinking about who might have the gun. “You should stay here,” she said as they heard the lift slowly crawl its way up.

  “No way. I’m coming with you,” said Tristan. The lift finally arrived and they got inside. It was dim, and there was a nasty smell, like rancid meat. There was a key in the left-hand side. Tristan turned it to the left and then the right. The doors closed, and the lift dropped with a rumbling lurch.

  As they got closer, they heard a shrieking, screaming sound and another gunshot, which made the hairs stand up on the back of Kate’s neck.

  Tristan held up the crowbar, and Kate did the same with the Mace. When the doors opened, the flashlights on their phones lit up the corridor and two figures on the floor.

  For a second, the two figures looked up at the bright light. It was Stephen Baker, with blood coming from his nose, and he was on top of a filthy, emaciated woman with long, dark, greasy hair. He had her pinned down, and he was strangling her.

  “Magdalena?” said Kate. She didn’t have time to process the fact that Magdalena was alive and she was down here with Stephen Baker.

  A pair of night vision goggles lay beside Stephen’s leg, and a few feet away from them was a handgun on the concrete floor.

  The next part seemed to happen in slow motion. Kate ran for the gun, diving to the floor. Her hand closed over it, and Stephen’s hands closed over hers. He yanked their hands up and under Kate’s chin, hitting her hard in the jaw. She held on, but his powerful hands were prizing at her fingers.

  Kate could smell his sweat, and he gripped her hand and started to bend her fingers back. Just as she lost grip of the gun, Stephen let go and went limp, crashing to the floor. Kate looked up and saw that Tristan had hit him over the head with the crowbar.

  There was a moment of silence, and then came a scream from Magdalena. She picked up a second handgun, which was lying on the other side of the corridor, and she started to fire at Stephen’s unconscious body on the floor. A bullet exploded into the wall with a spray of plaster, and then another hit him in the left shoulder. She staggered to her feet and limped toward Stephen, holding out the gun.

  “Magdalena! Stop!” cried Kate. “We’re here for you. You’re safe. Please, stop!”

  Magdalena screamed and moved closer to Stephen, placed the gun against the back of his head, and pulled the trigger. It clicked. The gun was empty.

  “It’s okay, you’re safe,” said Kate, managing to get the gun from her hands. She passed it to Tristan, along with the second gun. Kate didn’t take her eyes off Stephen Baker, who was still lying facedown on the floor. Magdalena continued to scream hysterically. It was bloodcurdling and chilled Kate to her bones as she tried to control the situation.

  “Empty the second gun, Tristan,” said Kate. He fumbled with it, managed to get the chamber open, and tipped out the remaining bullets onto the floor.

  Kate now had Magdalena in her arms, trying to calm her down.

  “You’re safe. We’re here to take you home,” Kate said.

  “He took me! He kept me here,” cried Magdalena. “He kept me here . . . in the dark and the cold.” She started to talk rapidly in Italian.

  Tristan knelt down next to Stephen. He was moaning, and blood was pouring from the wound in his shoulder.

  “You need to put pressure on his shoulder. I don’t want him bleeding out and dying on us,” said Kate.

  In the chaos, they hadn’t heard the lift climb back up to the top floor. The doors opened.

  Henry Ko emerged from the lift with Della Street, two other officers, and two paramedics. They stopped for a moment and stared at the three of them next to Stephen Baker.

  “You finally got here,” said Kate. “This is Magdalena Rossi. She was abducted and kept prisoner here by Stephen Baker,” she said triumphantly. “Magdalena shot him in self-defense. He’s bleeding badly.”

  Henry Ko was very pale. His mouth dropped open. The officers and paramedics with him hurried forward. One called for backup, Della went to help Magdalena, and the paramedics took over from Tristan and started to work on Stephen Baker’s gunshot wound.

  Kate stood up and approached Henry Ko.

  “Now do you believe me?” she said.

  EPILOGUE

  TWO WEEKS LATER

  It was a sunny morning at the beginning of November when Kate and Tristan arrived at the Exeter morgue. Kate parked the car and switched off the engine. She looked across at Tristan.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked.

  He hesitated and then nodded.

  “I feel like I need to see them. I owe it to them . . . I haven’t had any breakfast, just to be sure,” he said. Kate could see his face was already pale. She nodded and took a deep breath.

  They went to the main entrance, and they were buzzed in. Alan Hexham met them in the small reception area as they signed in.

  “Morning,” he said, his usually jovial face solemn. “You’ll need to suit up, overalls and face masks, please.”

  When Kate and Tristan were ready, they came through to the morgue. A row of three bodies lay on the stainless steel postmortem tables. They appeared almost mummified. They had no hair, and in places the leathery, dark skin was missing. A nasty tang of decay and standing water permeated the room.

  “These three poor souls, all female, were recovered in the reservoir from a depth of forty meters,” said Alan. “They’d been weighted down and wrapped in material. The cold and lack of oxygen at that depth slowed decay, as did the sheets they were wrapped in . . .”

  Kate stepped closer and looked at the first body. She felt sadness and revulsion that the reservoir had hidden these bodies for so long. She glanced at Trist
an. He had his back pressed to the wall, and he looked pale.

  “I don’t know if you’ve heard the latest body count?” asked Alan.

  “It was seven the last I heard,” said Kate.

  “Ah. The dive team have now recovered twelve bodies from the reservoir, and I know that another team are due to go down later today. I’ve already conducted nine postmortems. These three, all female, arrived late last night.”

  Kate knew from her time in the police that diving to a depth greater than twenty-five meters was complex. In some parts of the reservoir, the water reached a depth of forty or fifty meters. At these depths, police divers had to use special mixes of oxygen, and they were limited in the time they could spend underwater.

  Alan went on, “From the six different types of DNA the police found in the basement of the telephone exchange in Frome Crawford, it’s matched six of the bodies found so far, including Sally-Ann Cobbs and Ulrich Mazur.”

  Kate looked back at Tristan. His face was like chalk.

  “What about the other six bodies?” he asked with a quavering voice.

  “I spoke to Della,” said Kate. “They also found residues of several types of bleach and caustic soda down there, which means Stephen Baker could have washed it down many times, destroying DNA . . . But they’ll keep looking. And, of course, the police have now tested DNA found on Ted Clough’s body. It matched Stephen Baker.”

  Stephen Baker had confessed an extraordinary story while in custody. He’d told the police he’d abducted and killed sixteen people, but, he said, that was when he’d stopped counting. He also admitted to killing Ted Clough. He’d said this to try and cut a deal with the police for a reduced sentence, but as Della had told Kate, if you admit to killing seventeen people, you aren’t in much of a position to cut a deal.

  “I think we’ve seen enough,” said Kate, taking a last look at the bodies lying on the postmortem tables.

  “Yes. How about a cup of tea?” asked Alan.

  When they were settled in his office with steaming cups of sweet tea, they carried on the conversation.

  “I can’t understand why Stephen Baker felt so secure dumping these bodies in the reservoir,” said Alan, sitting back in his chair. “Over the years, two of them floated—Fiona Harvey and Becky Chard—and their cause of death was covered up by Dylan Robertson.”

  Kate blew on her tea and sipped it.

  “Stephen Baker told the police that Arron Ko and his aunt, Silvia Baker, have been romantically involved for many years,” said Kate. “They would throw wild parties when Arron’s wife was away on business. One night, when Stephen was very young, and after a long drinking session, Arron was driving Silvia home, when he knocked over and killed a young man. He was about to make superintendent, and if this ever came out, it would have ended his career. So Silvia asked Dylan to deal with the body. He weighted it down and dumped it in the reservoir. Stephen overheard Silvia and Arron talking about this late one night, when he was still a teenager . . . Years later, when Stephen started to develop his own obsession with abducting young women, he knew that as long as his aunt Silvia and Arron Ko were alive, no one would ever get permission to search the reservoir. They had given him the perfect place to dump the bodies.”

  “So they had no idea about Stephen and all those bodies in the water?” said Alan.

  “Dylan was arrested two days ago, but the police are still trying to determine if he knew anything about Stephen dumping bodies. They didn’t believe he did. He was only ever protecting himself, Silvia, and Arron when he’d prevented the reservoir being searched,” said Kate.

  “Henry Ko’s been suspended, pending an inquiry,” said Tristan, cradling his tea. A little color had come back into his face.

  “He’s saying he knew nothing of the watery graves in Shadow Sands. He’s told them that his father had always insisted that the reservoir never be searched because of the cost involved to the company,” said Kate.

  “You think he’s dumb enough to believe that?” asked Alan.

  “It seems he was dumb enough to take his father’s word for it,” said Kate. “His father was the reason he kept getting promoted. Did Arron Ko pull the strings and ask for a different coroner to conduct Simon Kendal’s postmortem?”

  Alan sighed.

  “Yes, it was him. I wasn’t at liberty to tell you before, but in light of all this, yes . . . Do you think Stephen’s wife suspected anything?” he asked.

  “She’s already filed for divorce and taken the three children back to America to be with her family,” said Kate. “The police didn’t stop her, so she’s not a suspect.”

  “Why do you think Stephen did it—abduct them and keep his victims for so long before killing them?”

  “I’ve spent so many years trying to understand what drives serial killers. It often comes down to a lack of empathy and the desire for power and control. From what Magdalena has told the police, Stephen derived great pleasure from keeping her in the dark and torturing her. If he survives prison, then I’m sure there will be psychologists lining up to study him.”

  “And as for Simon Kendal?” asked Alan.

  “He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Della told me they think Simon came across Stephen about to dump a body—they think it was a young woman called Jennie Newlove, who went missing in late July. Little was known about the circumstances of her disappearance, until now.”

  Alan nodded solemnly.

  “Jennie Newlove was one of the bodies we identified during the postmortems,” he said.

  “They think that Simon got up in the night, went for a walk, disturbed Stephen dumping her body, and they got into a fight,” said Kate.

  “What about the tent peg?” asked Alan. “I flagged that he was stabbed by a tent peg when I looked at the case file.”

  “His friend Geraint was released from custody and cleared a few days ago,” said Kate. “Geraint says that one of the tent pegs is missing from the tent that the police seized from his flat. The police think that Simon was carrying a tent peg for self-defense. The campsite was in the middle of nowhere, and the toilets are often used by drifters. Stephen could have stabbed Simon with the tent peg. Simon was then cornered, jumped into the water, and started to swim. Stephen pursued him in his boat, far up the reservoir. Simon lost a huge amount of blood and drowned, and then I found his body floating by the church tower.”

  Kate was glad the sun was out when she and Tristan left the morgue. The cold inside had seeped into her bones, and seeing those dead bodies had chilled her even more.

  They stopped at her car for a moment, standing in the warmth.

  “You okay?” she asked. Tristan was leaning back with his eyes closed, enjoying the sun on his face. He opened his eyes.

  “Yes. I think so,” he said.

  “I got an invitation to Sarah and Gary’s wedding,” said Kate, changing the subject.

  “She said she was going to invite you,” he said.

  “What changed her mind?”

  “I think she secretly admires you, the fact you went for it to find Magdalena.”

  “We went for it,” corrected Kate.

  “And of course, Sarah can now tell the story, because she drove the getaway car,” said Tristan with a knowing smile. “And in Sarah’s version, just to warn you so you know, she drove us at high speed, and it’s thanks to her that we got there in time and saved Magdalena’s life. Oh, and she wasn’t wearing her dressing gown and bunny slippers.”

  Kate laughed. “She’s given me a plus-one on the invitation, and I was thinking of bringing Jake. He’s going to be staying with me that weekend.”

  “That’ll be cool. Is he okay after everything, meeting Peter?”

  Kate shrugged.

  “I don’t know. He’s asked to write to Peter, which I’m not thrilled about, but he seems under no illusions about who his father is,” she said. “Time will tell . . . How about you and Sarah?”

  “She’s coming around to the fact that I like guys.”


  “And what about you? Are you okay with it?”

  “I’m happy that I’ve been honest with myself. I’m a bit nervous about dating,” he said with a smile.

  “Oh my God, you are going to have no problem finding dates,” laughed Kate.

  They got into the car. Kate went to switch on the engine, then hesitated and turned to Tristan. She knew there was one more thing she had to tell him.

  “Listen, I’ve been thinking a lot about the future, and I’m going to hand in my notice at the university,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “My dream job was being a police officer. We know how that turned out, and since then, I’ve enjoyed lecturing, and it’s been a good thing over the past eight years, but I want to be a private detective. Full time. Do it properly. I don’t quite know how I’m going to do it yet . . . And don’t worry, I’m going to stay for the rest of the academic year, and I know of several other lecturers who would take you on as their research assistant . . .”

  Kate exhaled, relieved that she’d said it but concerned for Tristan.

  “What if I came in with you and we went into business together? I know I would need to take some courses, and I might have to carry on part time at Ashdean for a bit until we get up and running.”

  “That’s great to hear,” she said. “But how would it work?”

  “Let’s go for coffee and make a plan,” he said. “Mine’s a caramel macchiato.”

  Kate nodded and smiled, and they drove off through the sunny streets in search of a coffee shop to plan their future as private detectives.

  Author’s Letter

  Dear Readers,

  Thank you to everyone who got in touch to say they enjoyed Nine Elms. Your lovely messages and feedback mean the world to me; they’ve kept me going and given me such a boost on the days when the writing process has been tough, and it’s been great to hear your feedback about Kate, Tristan, and all the characters. In the first draft of Shadow Sands, Peter Conway was absent, but I received so many messages saying how much you loved to hate Peter, and so many people wanted to know what happened to him next, so I decided to include him in Shadow Sands, and I think the book is better for it. Thank you. Keep the messages coming; I love to hear from you all.