Author: Robert Bryndza
Category: Christian
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/robert-bryndza/page,18,604248-shadow_sands.html
“Oh, shit. You mean the boats on the reservoir . . . I thought you meant maintaining boats. Our family has a yacht and another couple of sailing boats we use on the Norfolk Broads.”
“Is Dylan prone to violence? Was he a handful as a bouncer?” asked Kate. She couldn’t work out if Stephen was being clueless or slippery.
“No. You know what trashy townie nightclubs are like. I’m going to be honest. Hedley House was a gold mine, but it wasn’t a great place to work. There was always trouble. We needed a tough old bastard like Dylan to keep order.”
“There were two people who went missing after a night out at the club. A guy called Ulrich Mazur in 2008 and a young woman called Sally-Ann Cobbs in 2009. They were both reported to the police. Did the police come to the club?”
“Wow, no. I don’t remember that. Missing? Jeez.”
“Yes, they left the club on foot at the end of the night to walk home, and they just vanished.”
“That’s terrible,” he said, shaking his head and rubbing at his stubbled chin. “We may have had a request for CCTV, but we only had cameras inside.” He checked his watch. “Look, I’m happy to chat, but what does this all have to do with me? I can’t leave poor Jassy with three kids and the shop to look after,” he said with a nervous laugh.
“One theory is that they left the club drunk and on foot and could have ended up falling into the reservoir,” said Kate, improvising. “Have the police ever made a formal request to search the reservoir?”
“I wouldn’t know about that. As I say, I don’t remember the police coming to talk to us at Hedley House about these missing people. I’m not at all involved with the power plant or the reservoir. My family didn’t approve of me marrying Jassy. My brother, Thomas, the lord of the manor, is the man to talk to about that,” said Stephen. There was another crash from outside and a scream from one of the children. A phone outside the door began to ring.
“Do you have a number for your brother, Thomas?” asked Kate.
“No. I don’t give his number out to strangers. At his request.”
Jassy appeared at the door to the office and smiled at Kate and Tristan.
“Sorry to interrupt. Stevie, can you go and watch the kids? I’m on a call with DHL about those boxes,” she said.
“Yes, if that’s all?” said Stephen. He didn’t wait for Kate or Tristan to answer and indicated they should leave. They came out of the office, and Stephen hurried down to the front of the shop, where the children were still being noisy. Jassy was on the phone at the till, arguing that a delivery of boxes had been sent to the wrong address.
“No, not the telephone exchange; it’s Hubble on Frome Crawford high street.”
She nodded and smiled at them as they passed. Kate and Tristan didn’t see Stephen as they left the shop. He was with the children in another aisle. When they came back out onto the high street, the sky was filled with black clouds.
“What did you think of all that?” asked Tristan.
“I don’t know. He seemed nervous at times, but we’re two people off the street asking questions.”
“Is it weird that he gave us the time of day? It’s not like we were pretending we were going to buy an expensive saucepan.”
Kate smiled. “I don’t know.”
She checked her watch. It was two p.m.
“Let’s get something to eat and then head over to Ted Clough’s house.”
37
Ted Clough arrived home after a long morning of hospital appointments where medication was doled out and he was told his prognosis had deteriorated. Two weeks. He had two weeks left to live. It hadn’t come as a surprise.
Talking to the police had been on his mind in the hospital waiting room. The more he thought about the Baker family, and what they’d done, the angrier he became. He had to talk to the police, put it on record. Tell them everything. He would ask that his name be kept out of things whilst the police investigated. Hopefully, he would be dead and gone by the time the shit hit the fan. He’d spoken to his solicitor and informed him that it wouldn’t be long now, and he’d insisted that his cats were the first priority, as per his will. They had to be taken care of.
Ted went upstairs to have a wash and make himself presentable. He had given up taking baths. His knees couldn’t get him in and out of the bath anymore, and he didn’t want to get stuck. They’d never had a shower put in, so he was using an attachment shower hose, which made for a very weak shower.
This was the only time he took off his oxygen, and he had to keep taking breaks while sitting on a large plastic packing crate in the bath. Even moving his arms caused him shortness of breath and another painful coughing fit. The light was fading outside. From his vantage point on the box in the bath, he could see out the bathroom window and across the back garden to the forest. It was such a remote spot that they’d never bothered to put in frosted glass. Two of his cats were perched on the windowsill—a small white one that lay comfortably and the huge ginger tomcat, who was constantly shifting and shuffling to stay on the slippery tile.
A flock of black crows sat along the power line running across the back of the house. Ted shivered as he waited for the small plastic jug he used in the bath to fill with warm water, and he lifted it with shaky hands and poured it over his head, scrubbing with his free hand to get all the shampoo out. There was the sound of a car door shutting, and the flock of crows flew up off the power line, cawing. A moment later, he heard a noise downstairs.
“Hello?” he called. There was silence, and then he heard the creak of floorboards as someone came to the bottom of the stairs. “Is that you, Arthur?”
The postman sometimes let himself in to check on Ted, but not without knocking first and then yelling through the door to see if it was okay to come in.
He hurriedly dried his hair and stepped out of the bath onto the worn-out carpet. He heard the stairs creaking as someone slowly climbed.
“Who is that?” cried Ted, as he fumbled to fit the loop of the oxygen pipe over his head. He was grappling to fit the small air holes under his nostrils when the bathroom door opened.
“Hello, Ted,” said the voice. He looked up at the man and saw he was wearing, along with his winter coat and boots, thick black gloves.
“What are you doing here?” asked Ted. The man moved swiftly and yanked the oxygen pipe. “What? No!” Ted fell forward, tripping over his feet, and he landed on his stomach, winding himself.
“Come on, get up,” said the man, grabbing Ted by the hair. He screamed in pain as the man dragged him, naked, out of the bathroom by his hair and onto the landing.
Ted tried to cry out again, but he had no air in his lungs. He felt a leather glove on the bare skin of his leg, and he was lifted.
“We’re going to take a little trip,” said the man.
DCI Della Street had phoned Kate at four thirty and agreed to meet them at Ted Clough’s house just before six.
There were two police cars parked by the back door when Kate and Tristan arrived in Kate’s car. It was dark, and the kitchen door was wide open. A group of Ted’s cats were moving in circles in the light shining out from the kitchen, and they were purring agitatedly.
The kitchen looked the same as before, but when they came through to the hallway, Della Street was crouched next to the body of Ted Clough at the bottom of the stairs. He was naked, lying on his front against the wall. Kate could see his neck was broken so his head was facing the wrong way. He still had the oxygen pipe looped around the twisted skin on his neck.
“Oh Jesus,” said Tristan. Kate shooed the large ginger tom away from Ted’s body as it started sniffing him.
“What happened?” asked Kate.
“We got here five minutes ago and found him,” said Della. A young uniformed officer came down the stairs.
“There’s no one here. No sign of a break-in,” he said.
“Look at the bruising on the right leg. That’s a handprint, and the loose skin on the back of his neck looks torn . . .
,” said Kate. “You think someone threw him down?” She glanced at the bloody dent in the plasterwork at the bottom of the stairs. Halfway up the stairs lay a thin, pale bath towel, and a couple of steps down, Ted’s oxygen tank.
Kate started up the stairs as Della’s radio sounded with a message that officers were on their way. The bathroom was a mess—the medicine cabinet had been pulled off the wall, and its contents were strewn over the floor. She quickly checked over the other rooms, but they were empty.
When Kate came back downstairs, Henry Ko was just arriving with three other officers, including DI Merton with his crumpled suit and equally crumpled face.
“What the hell is she doing at the crime scene?” asked Henry when he saw Kate.
“How did you know this was a crime scene?” asked Kate, looking between Henry and Merton. “Della only got here five minutes ago.”
38
Kate and Tristan were taken to a small police support van and told to wait.
It was windowless and cramped inside, with a small seating area and a table.
“Are we being held in here?” asked Tristan. He was sitting on the bench. Kate paced up and down the small space. A police officer was stationed outside the door of the van.
“It feels like it,” said Kate. She opened the door. “We need some fresh air,” she said to the officer standing outside. The forensics van had arrived, and it was parked outside Ted’s house with two more police squad cars.
“We need you to stay in there, just so we can check around the house for any forensic evidence,” said the young woman, adding, “Do you fancy a cuppa?”
“I could have a cuppa,” said Tristan. The police officer came up the steps, closed the door behind her, and started to make them tea in a tiny kitchenette in the corner.
It was an hour later when Henry Ko came into the support van to talk to them. He asked them to take a seat and sat opposite them in the cramped space.
“Della just told me she was contacted by Superintendent Varia Campbell at the Met Police,” he said. “You had arranged for Ted Clough to make an official statement about the two bodies found in the Shadow Sands reservoir in 1989 and 1991 . . . Why didn’t I know about this?”
Kate made a decision to be open with Henry and tell him what they had discovered. She said it was true. Ted Clough had damning information about the deaths at the reservoir and a cover-up orchestrated by the Baker family. He was due to go on the record, but when they arrived, they found him dead.
“He didn’t fall down those stairs. It wasn’t an accident,” said Kate. “The way his head hit the wall, it looks like he was thrown down the stairs . . .”
Kate then went on to share the rest of the information they had so far, about Magdalena’s disappearance, the murder of Simon Kendal, and the other missing young men and women. Henry listened to all this and seemed genuinely troubled, but he became angry and agitated when Kate got to the part about Kirstie Newett being picked up by Arron Ko.
Henry put his head in his hands.
“Oh Jesus,” he said. “Kirstie Newett. She’s going to haunt my family forever.”
Kate looked at Tristan, who was equally surprised at Henry’s reaction.
“You know Kirstie Newett?” asked Kate.
“I don’t know her, I know of her. Myself and my family.”
Henry rubbed at his face and took a deep breath. He went to the door of the support van, where a couple of police officers and the forensics team were now milling about outside, and he closed it.
“I’m going to tell you a few things. They need to remain confidential. I can’t have you two running amok, spreading these crazy theories,” he said. He sat down in front of them.
“These are not crazy theories . . . ,” started Kate.
He put up his hand. “Please, let me talk.”
“Okay, talk,” she said.
“Firstly, I agree. Ted Clough’s death looks very suspicious, and we’re treating it that way. He was a collector of rare gold coins. We’ve been called out twice in the last three months after reports, from him, of intruders on the property. He had almost twenty grand’s worth of gold coins in his office, just in drawers. No lock. We’ve been telling him for ages to put the collection into a bank safety-deposit box . . . We arrived at the scene so quickly because we were in the area and we heard Della on the radio. Since you’ve been waiting here, we’ve discovered that all his gold coins are, indeed, missing. We think he scared an intruder or intruders, who killed him.”
“He had damaging information he was going to give us.”
“And I am certainly going to look into that, Kate,” he said. He seemed so genuine, but she wasn’t ready to buy his bullshit.
“What about Kirstie Newett? She named your father to me without prompting.”
Henry’s face clouded over again. He got up and went over to one of the computers in the van.
“I have access to HOLMES in this support van. I’m showing you this only to explain,” he said.
He called up a police file, then pressed “Print.” There was a silence as he waited for the pages to emerge from the printer. Tristan glanced nervously across at Kate. Henry returned to the table.
“I’m showing you these in strict confidence,” he said, handing over several sheets of a police report with KIRSTIE NEWETT written at the top. Kate read them through, her heart sinking.
“Kirstie didn’t mention that my father took out a restraining order on her in 2010, shortly after she was released from a secure facility in Birmingham?” he said quietly.
“No,” said Kate, reading through the police reports and passing them to Tristan. She read that six times Arron Ko had called in the police when Kirstie had been found in the garden of his house just outside Exeter, and then on two occasions when she had broken into the family home. The most recent being Christmas Day in 2011, when she’d broken a mirror and slashed her wrists in the family’s bathroom. Kate thought back to the scars she’d seen on Kirstie’s wrist.
“For several years she’s been stalking my father. She’s since threatened my mother and my brother . . . Have you ever had a stalker, Kate?” asked Henry.
“Yes.”
“Then you’ll know how terrifying it can be. It was only because of our quick thinking and knowledge of first aid last Christmas that we saved her from bleeding to death in our bathroom. I didn’t want her to die in our house and for us to have to live with that,” said Henry.
“This doesn’t explain how Kirstie’s infatuation with your father began,” said Tristan. Henry nodded.
“My father was the face of the police, often on news reports and on local Crimewatch appeals. He also went into schools for several years. He went into Kirstie’s school when she was sixteen. We think that’s where she first saw him.”
“What about Simon Kendal?” said Kate. “Why did you rush to pronounce his death an accident and then backtrack?”
“I didn’t pronounce his death an accident. I was taking my lead from the coroner.”
“Why was another coroner brought in? Alan Hexham should have done the postmortem,” asked Kate.
“That’s correct; Alan Hexham wasn’t asked to do the postmortem. The government owns fifty percent of the Shadow Sands reservoir and the hydroelectric dam, and the dam provides electricity for millions of people. It’s not unusual for the government to send in someone to look at a suspicious death, someone who perhaps has a higher security clearance.”
Kate shook her head.
“That’s stretching credibility,” she said.
“Is it? What if Simon Kendal had been a terrorist planning to sabotage the power plant?”
“He was a local student.”
“We know that now,” said Henry. “I know it’s a long time since you’ve been a police officer, Kate. But we’d rather have a knee-jerk reaction to something that turns out to be harmless.”
“So, now you know Simon Kendal was just a student, don’t you think his death was suspicious?”
“Yes,” said Henry. “And we have a murder weapon. We found a tent peg in the mud at the side of the reservoir. The tent peg had Geraint Jones’s prints on it, and it was used to stab Simon. We know that there are holes in the fence next to the reservoir. With this information, we have a stronger case against Geraint Jones. This gives both Simon and Geraint a clear way to get to the water without having to climb the fence.”
Kate sat back on the tiny, lumpy seat in the van. Everything she had investigated so far had been demolished. Were they wasting their time? Playing at being detectives? When police officers like Henry could look up the details of witnesses through police files on the HOLMES network? Kate always prided herself on having all the information. She could see now that they had none.
“What about Magdalena Rossi?” said Kate. “You recovered her scooter from that ditch.”
“Yes, and that ditch leads along twenty meters into a storm drain, where we found one of her earrings,” said Henry. “She could have conceivably come off the road in the fog whilst driving the scooter and landed in the ditch. The storm drain carries water off the fields and out to sea. If you remember, there was a huge rainstorm that evening. We’re working on the theory that her body was carried away by the floodwater. We already have the coastguard alerted to the fact that her body could have been washed out to sea, but as you know, the coastline in this area is volatile, with strong currents and tides. Magdalena’s scooter was found lodged in the mouth of the storm drain, which makes us believe that she could have been washed out to sea and we may never recover her body. We’re hopeful that we will . . . You both have to understand that I’m sharing this information with you in confidence, the strictest confidence.”
Kate’s mind was turning it all over, trying to find another question or fact that would disprove what Henry was saying. There were still so many questions about the young men and women who had gone missing—the bodies that Ted had found in the reservoir, tied up, and that he had been forced to lie about.
“I still think that you should search the Shadow Sands reservoir.” Kate could hear the quaver in her voice.