The Handshaker (22 page)

“My name is Felix Croft,” he introduced himself. “I’m Patricia Sinclair’s partner.”

Evelyn was puzzled. “Whose partner?”

Now Croft became worried. “Patricia Sinclair. Barrister. She was referred by our GP, Christopher Parsons.”

“I’m sorry, Mr Croft, but I’ve never heard of her.”

28

Millie finished an adequate chicken tikka masala, pushed her plate away and they stepped out into the rear beer garden where, beneath the smoke shelter, she lit a cigarette under Croft’s disapproving eye.

Ignoring his grim fixation on her smoke, she asked, “So what happened then?”

He gave a weary shrug. “Evelyn insisted she had never heard of Trish. I had a hell of a job getting her to let me in.”

That was putting it mildly. Croft had stood on the doorstep for the better part of ten minutes haggling with Evelyn, who obdurately refused to let him in. He had been about to give up when in a moment of inspiration, he mentioned his bestseller,
Imagine Your Weight Away
, and Evelyn wilted.

“I have a copy of it,” she said with delight.

After checking the photograph on the front cover and comparing it with the reality before her, she finally relented and let him in. “I only have a short time,” she insisted. “I have two clients this afternoon.”

Settling into a comfortably furnished consulting room, he outlined the position to her, keeping the information to a minimum, telling her only what she needed to know; Trish had gone missing and there were no clues other than the medical trail to Dr. Parsons and to Evelyn.

“I’d like to help, Mr Croft,” she said, “but I really have no idea who we’re talking about.”

“You do know Christopher Parsons?” he asked.

“Of course. Dr Parsons has always referred those patients needing counselling to me, but he’s never referred your partner, or if he did, she never arrived.”

Croft was all at sea. He controlled the feverish meanderings of his mind. “How does the referral system work?”

“Dr Parsons rings me,” Evelyn explained. “I take the name and details and give him an appointment date and time. I make a note of them in my diary. As far as I’m aware, he then gives the patient my name, address and telephone number.”

Croft clutched at the straw. “Could you check your diary, please. Just to satisfy me?”

Evelyn pursed her lips, studied him for a moment, and in the light of his obvious worry, got up, crossed to her desk and took out her diary.

“When would it have been?” she asked thumbing through the pages.

“Let’s see.” Croft engaged his brain. “Her father died in May, so it would have been mid-June, possibly early July... I think.”

Evelyn slowed down as she trawled the pages from mid-June to early July. “You see. Nothing… oh wait. Here she is. Tuesday, July 19th. Yes, Dr Parsons did refer her, but she never kept the appointment. She can’t have done. I would have remembered.”

Croft’s suspicions began to rise. He cast an eye on her desktop computer. “What kind of records do you keep?”

Evelyn followed his eyes. “Computerised, mainly. I maintain a record card for every client, but it has only the bare bones: name, address, contact details, and the particular problem for which they need counselling.”

Croft looked worriedly to the computer, then back at her. He was practically pleading. “Would you check them, please?”

Evelyn’s face screwed up in disapproval.

“Please,” he begged. “Trish may be in danger, and we have no other lead on her.”

With a sigh, Evelyn acquiesced and moved behind the desk to boot up the computer. While waiting for it, she turned to a filing cabinet, and began to sift through the card index in the upper drawer.

“It really is a waste of time, Mr Croft. I remember all my clients and if Ms Sinclair had come to me…” She trailed off once more. Her brow knitted in a deep frown. “Odd.”

“What is it?” Croft’s hopes rose briefly.

Evelyn did not answer. Instead she turned back to the computer, and shuffled the mouse around its mat, clicking the buttons. Presently she sat back in her chair, staring at the screen, still puzzled but deep in thought.

“This is most strange.”

“What?” heart constantly rising in hope before sinking into fresh despair, Croft moved to the rear of the desk and leaned over her shoulder. “What’s strange?”

Evelyn pointed at the screen. “Referred directly to G.B.”

Croft had already read it and taken in Trish’s name and notes on her bereavement problems. “Who is G.B?” he asked.

Evelyn shrugged. “I don’t know. Obviously, Mr Croft, she came to me, and I have her referred straight to this person, but I don’t know who G.B. is. I really don’t understand it. I never refer clients other than back to the GP, and only then when I feel my progress has been inadequate. According to this,” she indicated the record card, “Ms Sinclair visited me just the once and I referred her straight away.” She pondered the problem for a moment. “The only conclusion I can reach is that she asked me to refer her. You have no idea who G.B. might be?”

“None,” he admitted, “and Trish would be unlikely to ask you to refer her. If she wanted to see a specific counsellor, she would have asked Parsons.”

***

Croft eventually came away from Evelyn’s at 4:30 and rang Millie, only to find her deep into the investigation of Victoria Reid’s disappearance. She was unable to get away but agreed to meet him for an early evening meal in The Bath Inn on Union Street, not far from the police station.

It was not one of Croft’s favourite haunts. Too close to the town centre, too full of young revellers on a weekend, too close to the job centre, too full of unemployed young men and women through the week, the place pandered to a modern generation with no interest in the 60s. But the food was acceptable, the bar was as quiet as could be expected for a wet Wednesday evening, and the room large enough for them to disappear into a discreet corner with little danger of being disturbed.

“The cops don’t come in here,” Millie had explained. “They prefer The Star or The Hog’s Head.”

Over the meal, Croft detailed his findings on Trish’s visit to Millie, and now that she had her cigarette, she asked for his conclusion.

“You won’t like it,” he told her.

“I hear lots of things from lots of people every day, and I don’t expect to like everything.” She puffed on her cigarette and tapped ash into the ashtray. “Just tell me.”

“I think Evelyn Kearns has been hypnotised into forgetting everything about Trish.”

He had thought about it for over two hours after leaving Evelyn. It had not been an easy conclusion to reach, but when he considered the problem it was the only explanation that fitted.

Millie did not think so. When he said it, she almost choked on her cigarette. “What? Where the hell do you get that from?”

He played with a glass of lager. “The logic is intricate but when you think about it, inescapable. You have to think about everything that’s happened over the last two days. The Handshaker wrote to me suggesting he was committing a crime similar to Heidelberg, involving the abuse of hypnosis. At the same time he wrote to you warning that he was after my girlfriend, and he took her. I don’t think there can be any doubt about that. He took her using hypnosis, but that, in turn, means he had to have access to her in order to hypnotise her. Who had access, who would she trust sufficiently to let him or her hypnotise her? Her counsellor. How did he become her counsellor? She was referred by a woman who never refers clients. How could he be sure that Evelyn Kearns would refer Trish? Because he arranged it. He had to have hypnotised Evelyn in order to get her compliance. The only other conclusion is that Evelyn Kearns is The Handshaker, but you insist he’s a man.”

“Are you sure this Evelyn isn’t a man?” Millie asked. “It’s an omni-gender name, isn’t it?”

Croft gave a little grunt that could have been a laugh, but he felt no humour. “I didn’t ask her to whip her knickers off and prove it, but yes, she’s a woman. My GP refers patients to her, and he must have known her a long time to do that.”

Millie spoke candidly. “Over the last day and a half I’ve learned more about hypnotism than I was ever interested in, and the more I hear, the more I want to keep away from it.”

Taking a final drag on her cigarette, she crushed it out in the stubber and they ambled back inside

“Ernie is convinced you’re a whacko and you’re probably making all this up to reinvent yourself,” she said, “and our scientific support people are so busy with the rising body count that we haven’t had the analysis back of the typeface, fingerprints and DNA matches we got off the last note, so we’re not yet certain that it is The Handshaker… correction,
I’m
certain, Ernie isn’t. I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt, but now you’re talking about him hypnotising others in order to get where he’s going. That’s a trance too far.”

“But there’s no other explanation,” Croft insisted.

Millie urged him to be calm. “All right, all right. Keep your tights on. Explain to me how he would get at Evelyn? She’s a counsellor, you say most of them are trained hypnotists, she would have realised what he was doing. How did he get to her?”

“It’s easier than you may think,” he admitted. “Do you know one of the first things they do when you’re training to be a hypnotist?” He did not wait for her to answer his rhetorical question. “They hypnotise you. Most hypnotists are easily hypnotised, but because they know what’s happening they can resist it when they wish. Conversely, if this mysterious G.B. came to Evelyn, asking for testimonials because he was freshly qualified or new in town, he may have offered to hypnotise her just to prove how good he is. She could have agreed in all innocence, and if he’s as good as he claims, as good as Franz Walter, the damage would have been done.”

Millie thought this over for a moment. “You’re the expert not me. Did you run this by Evelyn?”

He shook his head. “I wasn’t sure of her reaction. I thought it might be better coming from you.”

She agreed immediately. “You’re probably right. Okay, here’s what we’ll do. First thing tomorrow we’ll go see her, and I’ll put it to her.”

“Tomorrow?” Croft was crestfallen.

Millie checked the time above the bar. “It’s too late right now, and I’ve put in enough unpaid overtime for one day. First thing in the morning. Right? Right. In the meantime, I need to ask one last question. Why Ms Sinclair?”

Croft shrugged. “Why Sandra Lumb? Why Susan Edwards? Why any of the women?”

“No, no, you misunderstand me.” She gave him an apologetic smile. “My fault. You are the first person he’s written to outside the police. What I meant is, why tell you in advance that he would be taking your girlfriend? The husbands, partners, boyfriends of every other victim did not receive notes, so why did you?”

Resting his weight on his forearm, Croft ran his index finger across the condensation on the outside of his glass. “Hypnosis again. I keep telling you I’m an authority on the subject and he’s throwing down the gauntlet, challenging me by stealing my girlfriend and threatening to murder her the way he’s murdered all the others, using hypnosis on her of which I was unaware. He’s taunting me.” He sighed, picked the glass up, and drank it down. “And it’s worked. I’m running round in circles with nowhere to go.”

“Then you have to find a direction,” Millie told him. “Like I said, you’re the expert hypnotist. You’ve done okay so far. It’s a little wacky, but it’s better than nothing, and if you’re even half right you may get us closer to The Handshaker than we’ve ever been. Keep at it. You’ll get there.”

Croft was not cheered. “Let’s hope we get there before he decides he’s had enough of Trish.”

29

“Excuse me, sir, but the forensic reports have come through, and I think you ought to see them.”

Shannon was glad of DC Thurrock’s interruption. He had been taking in the front page of the
Scarbeck Reporter
and it did not make for good reading.

Linking the discovery of Susan Edwards on Scarbeck Point and the disappearance of Victoria Reid from Fenton Road filling station, Carol Russell, a woman with a renowned antipathy for the police, had written both accounts and neither was inconvenienced by the truth. In fact, they were so riddled with opinion that any reader could be forgiven for thinking that they were leaders rather than reports. Tucked away in his office, one eye on the clock, Shannon felt there were times when he wished he was someone like Croft, a university teacher and writer; someone who did not have to read adverse criticism. In the case of a police superintendent, there was no option and Shannon had to force himself to read through the article, including those passages where he came in for personal criticism.

When Thurrock knocked and entered, Shannon was as pleased to turn away from the newspaper as he was irritated by the prospect of digesting forensic reports. “Millie not here?”

“No, sir,” replied Thurrock. “She had to go out.”

He waved Thurrock into the chair opposite. “Reading this forensic guff is down to the second in command, but since she’s not here and since you’ve obviously read them, you can give me the overview.”