The Handshaker (4 page)

He made an effort to mollify her. “I heard the news this morning and I appreciate you have your problems, but… well please read it.”

With a deft, irritated sweep of her nimble fingers she flipped the envelope over and read the address. Her features underwent another rapid transformation, passing through disbelief to outright suspicion as they focussed on him once more.

“It may not mean much to you,” Croft was saying, “but to me…” He trailed off again, feeling uncomfortable under her severe gaze. “Is there something wrong?”

“Where did you get this?” she demanded.

He felt a shock of alarm. It was not what she said, but the way she said it, as though he had been caught in possession of Class A drugs or stolen property. “I told you, it came in the morning post.”

“One moment.” Inspector Matthews turned her back and barked orders at Simpson. “Give me an interview room, and get on the horn to the boss. We need him here, now.”

“Room three, Ma’am,” replied the sergeant as he moved further back into his enclave to the radio.

She turned back to Croft. “Come this way.”

Still worried, Croft nevertheless did as he was told. “I don’t have long. I have an appointment at ten thirty.”

“Your appointment will have to wait.”

She did not leave Croft time to protest again, but turned to the security door, punched in the combination and walked through, holding the door open for him to follow.

On the other side of reception, Croft feeling more worried with every step, they walked a short distance along a narrow, windowless corridor, past a flight of stairs, beyond which the corridor darkened noticeably. Bland doors lined either side, each bearing its own title;
Interview Room 1, Interview Room 2, Cell Block
– Croft assumed it would lead down into the bowels of the building –
Maintenance, Men’s Lockers.
Interview rooms 1 and 2 were ‘engaged’ but 3 was ‘vacant’. Inspector Matthews opened the door, ushered Croft in, and followed him.

It was exactly as Croft would have expected. Small, cramped, all but featureless, four chairs standing around a table on which rested a double cassette recorder.

“Sit down. The superintendent shouldn’t be long. I was on the phone to him while you were waiting and he’s only out at Scarbeck Point.” She waved Croft to the far chairs while she took one of the nearer seats. Croft noted instantly that she had placed herself between him and the door.

Millie fished into a drawer on the underside of the table and came out with two cassette tapes, both still wrapped in cellophane.

“As you can see, these are brand new. I will be recording this interview, and at the end I will give you a copy of the tape. You understand?”

Croft began to resent her autocracy. “I’m not an idiot, inspector, so please don’t treat me as one.”

“I am simply pointing out to you that these are brand new tapes,” she said, “and you will be given a copy.”

“It might be more to the point if you told me what this is all about.”

She threw the query back at him. “I’m hoping you can tell me.”

Croft stared around the barren room, seeking something,
anything
to take his mind from this alarming turn of events, allow him to concentrate his thoughts and gain some purchase on proceedings, but the walls offered no distraction. Across the table Millie took out a pen and laid the cassette labels out for completion. It was almost as if he was not there.

As she began to write the labels, he watched her fingers, fine, delicate slivers of russet, working delicately with the pen.

“I thought you only taped interviews with suspects?” he asked.

She did not take her eyes from the pen making its way across the narrow labels. She answered him in matter-of-fact tones, as if she were teaching a recalcitrant student a lesson. “Any interview which may lead to criminal conviction, or lead to a charge is routinely recorded.”

Criminal conviction? Charge? What the hell was going on here? “Inspector, I’m –”

“I know who you are.” Now she looked up. He could read nothing in her eyes, and nothing from her tone of voice other than assertiveness. “I read your book.”

He grunted. “I shouldn’t have thought you had a problem with your weight,” he muttered, before going on in a stronger voice. “I was about to say, I’m like you; a busy man, and I have more to do that sit around here all day.”

“Mr Croft,” she reminded him, “you came to us with this note. You specifically asked to speak to me or my superior. As it happens, I’m glad you did, because this,” she held up the envelope, “could be important.”

Croft seized on the admission. “Important? In what way?”

Still Millie would not be drawn. “We’ll find out when Superintendent Shannon gets here. In the meantime, I will advise you that you are entitled to have your legal representative here, if you wish.”

There was the slightest of pauses between the word ‘here’ and the phrase, ‘if you wish’. It was not much, but sufficient to let Croft know that she would rather he did not call his lawyer.

The son of a High Court Judge, the partner of a renowned barrister, Croft had a better understanding of the law than Millie Matthews may credit. He elected for conditional compliance. “I don’t think I need call my solicitor yet, but I reserve the right to do so at any time.”

“Fine.”

“Now are you going to tell me what this is about?” he pressed.

Matthews, who had returned to labelling the cassettes, looked up again and this time there was a definite hint of exasperation in her pear shaped face, a frown etched into the clear brow, a narrowing of the pupils to tiny darts, their laser intensity aimed right at him. “I don’t know what this is about, Mr Croft, but I do know that the envelope you brought me may be important. And that’s before I’ve had a look at its contents. Now will you please be patient a little longer? Superintendent Shannon will not be long.”

Croft risked a glance at his watch. 9:25. At this rate, he would be hard pressed to make his appointment with Sandra Lumb.

He frowned inwardly. Millie had already said the appointment would have to wait. There was something about the envelope that had caused all this fuss and, despite the nagging doubts that he was getting into deep waters, he wanted to know what. If only she would give him a hint.

He looked across at her again, her head bent over the labels as she wrote them out.

“My father’s a judge you know. Queen’s Bench Division.”

“I know.” Still she did not look up.

“You seem to know an awful lot about me,” he complained.

“You’re Scarbeck’s only celebrity.”

“Aside from The Handshaker.”

At that she froze and held herself rigid for what seemed like a long time, holding a cassette tape in her right hand, the pen in her left. Slowly she raised her head, bringing her eyes up to meet his. Croft felt a shudder of nervousness run through him. He buried it under a barrage of self-recrimination. He was a master hypnotist, a man accustomed to being in control. What’s more he had done nothing wrong. What did he have to fear from a police officer; a woman at that.

He castigated himself for that final thought. The fact that Inspector Matthews was a woman was completely irrelevant. Trish was a woman too, but more than capable of dealing with any opponent, male or female, and similarly, Ms Matthews would have undergone extensive training in maintaining control with either sex.

“What did you say?”

So much time had passed between Croft’s comment and her response that he had forgotten what he said. Something about The Handshaker, was it?

“What did you say about The Handshaker?” she reiterated.

His words had obviously touched a nerve. “You commented on my celebrity status in reference to Scarbeck. I simply said that these days, The Handshaker is the best known export of this town.”

The intensity had returned to her eyes again. He felt as if they were bows, ready to unleash their arrows and impale him. “What do you know about The Handshaker?” It was almost as if she were accusing him.

“What I read in the press and hear on the radio.” Croft was subliminally aware that he had already slipped into the curt, defensive responses of the accused.

Matthews put down the cassette tape. “Where were you in the early hours of this morning?”

Her question hit him like a hammer and apprehension struck through him again. Surely she didn’t think he was The Handshaker? “At home, in bed, with my partner, who by the way is –”

“Patricia Sinclair,” Matthews interrupted, “the barrister. I already know.”

“Well there you are then.” Croft made an effort to go on the attack. “Inspector, this is becoming tedious. Will you please say what is on your mind?”

Matthews sat back in her chair and tossed the pen on the table alongside the cassette. “All right. Tell me about The Handshaker. Tell me why he’s called The Handshaker.”

His heart began to beat stronger. She really did think he was The Handshaker. Could he prove that he was not? He wasn’t sure.

“I, er, I don’t know,” he rambled. “I thought either you or the media gave these people their nicknames. The Yorkshire Ripper, The Black Panther, The Handshaker.”

She did not answer, but instead threw another question at him. “Do you own a Smith Corona typewriter?”

Spotting the opportunity, Croft went on the attack. “If you know so much about me, you should be aware that I’m a sixties freak, and I do own a manual typewriter, but I don’t believe it’s a Smith Corona. I think it’s a Remington.” Controlling his insecurity, Croft modulated his tones, keeping them calm, controlled, yet challenging, and said, “I love cryptic crosswords, I love computer adventure games where you have to engage your left brain to solve the puzzles, but this particular riddle is becoming tiresome. Would you please explain what is going on?”

At last, she yielded. “We are involved in an investigation into the so-called Handshaker killings,” she explained. “I don’t know how much you know about police procedures –”

Croft interrupted her. “More than you may imagine. I told you, my father is Sir James Croft and my partner is Patricia Sinclair, QC.”

Matthews’ only response to his interruption was a slight sigh before she continued. “When we have a serial killer like The Handshaker, we get a lot of, er, cranks, for want of a better word, confessing. For that reason, we withhold certain information from the press and public. When someone rings in or comes in the way you have, we ask about that information, and if they cannot supply the correct answers, we know we’re dealing with a timewaster. One of the pieces of information we hold back is why he is known as The Handshaker, and another item we hold back is the fact that he writes to us after every killing, and all his notes have been produced on a Smith Corona manual typewriter.” She held up the envelope. “I can’t be sure until forensic tests have confirmed the typeface as a match, but this envelope appears to be from The Handshaker.”

5

Croft’s mouth fell open and his heart pounded in his chest, pumping adrenaline into his bloodstream.

The Handshaker had written to him. Why? And why would The Handshaker make reference to Heidelberg? How did the Heidelberg dates tally with the Scarbeck dates on the note? What did The Handshaker know about Heidelberg?
How
did The Handshaker know about Heidelberg?

The enclosed space of the interview room crushed in on him, its claustrophobic confines suffocating his logical processes. Dates, notes, police officers, Trish, his father, The Handshaker, the lack of air, images, thoughts, whirled around his head, his breathing accelerated. He grabbed the edge of the table with his left hand and gripped the left wrist with his right hand, anchoring himself in reality. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with oxygen, and let it out in a slow hiss, mentally uttering the mantra, “calm, calm, calm,” over and over again in an effort to regain his composure.

Across the table, Millie watched him with interest. Croft ignored her, fighting down the rising tide of panic threatening to engulf him.

There was a knock on the door and it opened. Croft hardly noticed the fifty-something, balding individual framed in the aperture. Millie got to her feet, whispered something to the newcomer and they both disappeared back into the corridor closing the door behind them, and somewhere beneath the feverish fretting of his mind, Croft knew that she was briefing the man.

Get a hold of yourself
, he ordered silently.
You are a Loxley man, and Loxley men do not show their fear.

A ludicrous platitude, which had been rammed down his throat every day at his hated public school. Of course he was could show fear, and he had every right to be concerned. The Handshaker had written to him. No matter what twisted motive this lunatic had in mind, Croft had now been dragged into his web of insanity and that put him in danger of becoming a victim; perhaps not like the other victims, but a victim nonetheless.

The deep, rhythmic breathing began to have its effect, calming him down, letting him slide his logic circuits into gear, bring about rational thought as opposed to random alarming and unconnected mental meanderings.