18
Kate emerged from the AA meeting an hour later and found a message from Jake to say he’d been invited to the cinema, and could they do another day. It was the second time he’d canceled talking to her.
As she was driving back along the seafront, the weather was horrible, and she wasn’t looking forward to the cold, empty house waiting for her. Kate saw a young man sitting on the seawall, alongside the university building. As she passed, a wave slammed into the wall, and a jet of water shot up twenty feet beside the young man, and she saw it was Tristan.
“What are you doing?” she said, pulling in to park at the curb. She got out of her car and hurried over as another wave broke, shooting up a jet of water, which soaked him. There was a large drop down to the rocky beach below.
“Tristan! What the hell are you doing!” she shouted. He turned his head, and it took a moment for him to realize it was her. “Are you drunk?” She saw another black, inky wave below roll toward the seawall, and they were both soaked as it slammed into the concrete. Kate pulled Tristan backward, over the wall, and managed to hold him up. He seemed to come to his senses. His hands were like ice. They both stood there, soaking wet. “Tristan! What’s going on?” His face crumpled and he started to sob. Huge, heaving sobs. She was shocked and upset to see him like this. “It’s okay,” she said, leaning up to hug him. Another wave hit the wall, and they were doused in spray. “Come on. My car’s over here.”
As they walked to her car, he wouldn’t stop sobbing. She helped him inside and found some old blankets from the back. They sat for a few moments as his sobs slowly subsided.
“It was on the news, about Magdalena,” he said. He went on to tell her about the CCTV images and then started to explain that he’d gone to visit someone. He broke down again.
“Why does it have to be so difficult? Why can’t I just be normal?” he sobbed. “I haven’t told anyone . . . and I can’t cope anymore.” He hung his head, unable to look at her, his bottom lip trembling. Kate took his hand.
“Tristan. I think I know, and it’s fine, it doesn’t matter,” said Kate. She squeezed his hand. He was shaking all over. “Is saying it out loud going to make things any worse?”
There was a long silence.
“I’m gay,” he croaked. He cleared his throat again. “I’m gay.” He started to sob, harder.
“It’s okay. It doesn’t matter. Do you hear me?” said Kate, leaning over to hug him, feeling his chest and shoulders heave with the sobbing. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, hating the way of the world, that Tristan had to feel like this about himself.
He let out a long breath, as if he were breathing out for the first time in months. Kate found him a tissue, and he blew his nose.
“You don’t seem surprised,” he said. His eyes were still bright red, but he was calmer.
“I wondered. I’ve never seen you that interested in girls, and you could have your pick. There’re so many girls in the faculty who would give their left eyeball for a date with you.”
“My sister’s getting married, and she’s acting like it’s going to be a huge crisis if I don’t bring a girl to her wedding.”
“Couldn’t you bring a guy?”
Tristan looked at her.
“She would never forgive me.”
“Tristan. I don’t want to bad-mouth Sarah, but this is your life. This is who you are.”
“Kate. She’s not bad, she’s just different. She thinks differently.”
“So are you, so am I. We’re all different. That’s the world . . . When did you know you liked guys?”
“When I was thirteen, I watched that movie Ghost, and there’s that scene at the beginning when Patrick Swayze and the friend both have their shirts off, and they’re hammering down that wall with Demi Moore . . . I didn’t know gay people in my life, growing up, and being gay isn’t great, according to my family, to my old friends.”
“Tristan. There are millions of gay people in the world. And it’s totally normal. It drives me crazy that you even feel like you have to announce to me that you prefer guys. It’s such bullshit . . . So, you were going to meet a guy and got caught on the CCTV?”
He nodded.
“I met this guy walking his dog on the beach the day before, and we got talking. We swapped numbers, and he invited me over to his place, you know.”
Kate nodded.
“I left the flat around one in the morning, walked up to his door. Bottled it, went around the block, then came back. The second time I knocked on the door, and I stayed until four thirty a.m. And then I came home.”
“Okay. Is he handsome?”
“Very.”
“What’s his name?”
“Alex. He’s an art student. Long dark hair, beautiful brown eyes . . .”
Kate was so pleased that Tristan felt he could talk to her.
“Do you think you’ll see him again?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is he out?”
“Yeah. His housemate was there too . . . Nothing like that,” he added quickly. “He works at night. He’s a painter. We all had a cup of tea before I left.”
“They need to tell the police that’s why you were there.”
“I don’t see why they wouldn’t . . . Oh God. I have to tell Sarah, and Gary.”
“I think that you’ll breathe a huge sigh of relief when you’ve told them.”
“What if Sarah hates me, or doesn’t like it?”
“If she hates you, then that’s her problem, not yours. If she’s willing to shun a brother because he doesn’t conform to her way of thinking, then that’s her loss to take.” Tristan stared out of the window and nodded wearily. “You weren’t going to jump off that wall, were you?”
He shrugged. “In that moment, I quite liked the idea of being swept out to sea. I’ve heard drowning can be quite peaceful.”
“When I started out in the police, I was a WPC, as women police officers were called back then. I was called out to West Norwood, in South London. There had been a huge rainstorm when this kid was mucking about in a stream near the cemetery. There was a sudden surge of floodwater, and he was carried to a storm drain, where his arm got caught in a grate. His arm swelled up, trapping him. I got there as the water was rising. We called for an ambulance, but it didn’t get there quick enough. I tried to get him free, but I had to watch helplessly as the water rose up, over his head. I tried to give him air, but the water was moving so fast . . . I saw his face as he drowned, Tris. It wasn’t peaceful. You do not need to kill yourself because you happen to love men instead of women. Do you hear me?”
Tristan was quiet. He nodded. “What do I do?”
“You need to tell your sister. And tomorrow, we need to talk to the police and get this whole thing with the CCTV cleared up. We don’t want it to distract from them finding out why Magdalena went missing.”
19
Magdalena lay in the dark. She had no idea how much time had passed.
When she’d first woken, she’d thought she was in hospital. The bed she lay on was comfortable, firm, and dry underneath her back, and as she drifted in and out of consciousness, an unease permeated her sleep, a far-off memory of something . . . wrong.
The pitch black was confusing—she hadn’t known it was real, and it had taken longer for her to come fully conscious. When she did, the panic overwhelmed her. There was no difference when she opened her eyes and when she closed them, and she couldn’t smell anything. Her nose was blocked—it was crusted with blood. He’d punched her. And her neck was sore from the camera strap.
“No!” she cried out loud. Hearing her voice gave her a sense of space. “No! No! Help!” she said. Her throat was so dry and parched, but she kept saying words. Help. Help me. Help! The sound bounced around.
She put her arms out into the darkness and felt them move in the empty air. There was a wall on one side with smooth tiles. She listened. Silence. Feeling her body, she was unhurt, apart from a fat lip and bloody n
ose. She still had on all her clothes, but no shoes. Her phone was gone from her pocket. Her necklace and earrings and watch were also missing.
Magdalena sat up slowly, keeping one hand on the smooth, cold tile to her right. Keeping her arm outstretched to feel for anything above. There was cold, empty air all around her. As she put her feet over the side of the mattress, she panicked, and then her feet touched the cool surface of the floor. For a minute she’d thought the bed was somewhere high up and she was about to tumble into a dark abyss.
Magdalena listened for a long time, trying to hear the silence. Listening for any cues, any hints as to where she was. Her heart wouldn’t stop thudding in her chest. Breathing through her mouth was loud.
She liked to think she was a strong, practical woman, but she felt on the edge. A few times she had to swallow down an almighty scream that wanted to rip its way out of her chest. She placed the palm of her hand on her breastbone, and she started to tap rhythmically, along with the sound of her heartbeat. It didn’t calm her, but it stopped the scream from escaping.
Standing up made her dizzy, and she had to try it twice before she felt safe on her feet. Slowly, slowly, she started to feel out her surroundings. A few paces led to a wall.
To her right was more tile. She could feel in places where it was smooth and cold, but in others it was grubby and sticky. She put her face a little closer to smell, but her nose was still blocked. She traced her hands back along the walls and found a sink and a tap in the opposite corner. To her joy, when she turned the tap, water came out. She let it run, enjoying the sound and feeling the cold water on her hands. She winced as she bathed her nose, trying to unblock it. She felt doubly blind not being able to smell. She managed to breathe a little through her nose, and a faint smell of damp came to her.
The water tasted pure, and she drank and drank; so acute was her thirst that she had to drink it, even if she wasn’t completely sure that it was safe. It had strong pressure, and it must come off the mains. She dried her face and carefully felt her way around the other side of the room, back to the bed. The damp smell had intensified, and was now like rotting vegetation, but everything she touched was smooth and dry. The bed was a box bed, made of a frame and material with no space underneath. When she started to feel around on the other side of the bed, she fell out of a doorway.
Magdalena hurt herself, falling on her hip bone onto the cold, hard floor. It felt damp outside, and as she sat, she debated whether to continue searching. She cleared her throat. Magdalena was surprised how fast she was getting used to using sound to determine her surroundings.
Carefully, she felt her way along. There was a wall on each side, with a width of just a few paces. She was in a corridor. The walls were smooth, not tile but plaster, and sticky in places. She crossed the corridor and felt her way along the wall and found a door. It opened outward with a creak. This room was small and smelled of mold. Her knees crashed into something hard and cold, and as she reached down, her hands felt a curved bowl and then water. She pulled her hand back. It was a toilet. Magdalena felt a moment of joy. A toilet. There was no seat, and just cold porcelain, but she sat and relieved herself, feeling more human and less like an animal. She felt around hopefully for a toilet roll or a holder but there was none.
Where was she? And what was this? She felt around for a flush, and a long pipe at the back of the bowl led up to an old-style box cistern on the wall. The chain had been removed, but there was a plastic lever that she could reach if she stood on the edge of the bowl.
She was about to pull it when she stopped. It would make a noise.
She pulled her hand away, stepped down off the bowl, and came back out of the room. Should she close the door or leave it open? The door opened outward, and she decided to leave it open so she could find it again. She felt along farther and found that the corridor ended with a wall that felt different. Cold to the touch, and it took her a moment of feeling around with her hands before she knew it was metal.
It was the outline of cold steel doors, with a crack down the middle. They opened. Magdalena pushed her fingernail in between the two metal doors and tried to lever them open, but they were thick and solid.
There was a whirring sound, and she felt a rumble through the metal. She stepped back.
It was a lift.
The sound was getting louder; the rumbling came through the concrete floor under her feet. It was coming down toward her.
Groping at the wall, she hurried back down the corridor, hearing the lift come closer. She ran straight into the open door of the toilet. It swung inward when she hit it and slammed closed. She felt her fragile nose crack, and the pain was intense. She had a warm taste and the sensation of blood.
Magdalena heard the lift arrive with a faint ding. She started back down the corridor toward the room with the bed and the sink. The doors opened with a whir. Her breathing was ragged from the exertion, and then she coughed, spitting blood. It echoed in the corridor. A draft came from the open lift doors, but it was still pitch black. Then there was a click, and a strange sound. She’d heard it before in a movie, or on a TV show. A sort of mechanical whistle.
Night vision goggles.
With panicked breathing, Magdalena felt her way along the walls. She was disoriented, and she tried to stay calm, but little whimpers came out of her mouth.
When she found the doorway, she groped around inside and felt the edge of the doorframe. If there was a door, she could somehow barricade herself inside against whoever, or whatever, had come down in the lift.
There was no door. She could just feel the cold wall and two empty hinges. Magdalena retreated into the room and fell back on the bed as she heard the soft sound of footsteps coming toward her.
20
Tristan had gone back to the flat, on Kate’s insistence, and told Sarah and Gary that the pictures on the CCTV camera showed him walking to Jenner Street to meet a guy.
“To meet a guy for what? Drugs?” Sarah asked. She was sitting on the sofa with her arms crossed, looking nonplussed. Gary sat beside her, with his hands crossed over his protruding belly.
“No. Not drugs. I was going on a date, well, not quite a date. His name is Alex. He’s an art student. I went to his flat to, er, have sex with him. I’m gay. I’ve been gay for a long time—well, not a long time. All the time.”
Tristan put his shaking hands in his pockets. He was standing up in front of the television. A little like he was doing a recital for them.
Sarah stared at him. Gary’s eyes went wide. He kept looking to her, to see how to react. A moment passed, and she calmly got up, went to the kitchen, and closed the door.
“Are you sure, mate?” said Gary. “You don’t seem gay.” Tristan could see the wheels turning in Gary’s head, running over memories of their interactions, searching for any clues of homosexual behavior. “I thought you had a date with that girl who’s gone missing. She phoned you.”
“Yes. She asked me out. I shouldn’t have said yes.”
“But you’ve got nothing to do with her going missing?”
“No. Nothing.”
“Well, that’s something,” said Gary, anxiously looking to the closed door to the kitchen, where they could hear Sarah crashing around, tidying up the dishes. “You should speak to her.”
Tristan nodded. He took a deep breath, opened the door, and went into the kitchen. He closed it behind him. Sarah was at the sink, furiously scrubbing a dirty saucepan with a Brillo pad.
“Don’t you have anything to say?” asked Tristan.
“I just don’t know why you want to throw your life away,” she said, rinsing the pan and slamming it down on the draining board.
“What do you mean?”
“You have a very good job with a final salary pension scheme. You are about to take over the mortgage on this flat, and you’ve got the police questioning you about a woman who’s gone missing,” said Sarah.
“That’s not what this is about.”
“You already
have a criminal record. And you didn’t stop to think about me. I’ve basically lied to the police for you. God knows what will happen next. I’ve worked my backside off to better myself.”
Tristan stared at his sister’s back as she furiously scrubbed at the dishes.
“I’m sorry. It can be fixed. I will tell the police you didn’t know that I left the house.”
“Do you do that often? Sneak out at night to visit with . . . ,” she said, turning to him and fixing him with a stare.
“A couple of times I have,” said Tristan, wishing for a hole in the floor to open up and swallow him.
“Does it make you happy? Behaving like that?”
“What do you define as being happy?”
“Having a family! Settling down!”
“I don’t want kids.”
“Who will continue the family name?”
“Us Harpers are hardly a glittering dynasty. Dad ran off when we were small, God knows where he is. Mum enjoyed shooting up more than she enjoyed her two children.”
“Don’t you dare talk about Mum like that!” said Sarah, still holding the sponge. She was livid. Tears were in her eyes. “She was mentally ill, and when you mix that with drugs . . .”
“Sarah. We’re not talking about Mum. I’m telling you something about me . . . I’m gay. I just want you to love me and accept me for who I am.”
“I will always love you, Tristan, but don’t expect me to accept it. I have a right not to accept it . . .”
Tristan felt tears in his eyes, and he wiped them away. Sarah glanced back at him, then looked away. “Your timing is classic,” she added with a bleak-sounding laugh. “What are people going to say at my wedding when you show up being all gay?”
“Your wedding is about you and Gary.”
“No. It will be all about you. The whole day will be spent having to explain you to people.”
“Explain me to people? I’m still the same person. And your reaction says more about you than it does about me.”
Shadow Sands Page 9
