The Handshaker (7 page)

“I’ll make some tea.”

Croft noticed she spoke in a whisper. “Your husband on nights, is he, Sandra?”

“Yes.” She smiled and glanced upwards indicating the bedroom where her husband would be sleeping. “You know him. Won’t take time off.”

He accepted the lie just as he had accepted her excuse for the black eye. In truth, Alf Lumb took a lot of time off and the notion that he did not was, like the wet kitchen floor, a myth designed to convince others that he was a solid, dependable worker who would never lay a finger on a woman.

“He’s on ten, six this week,” Sandra whispered as they progressed from the living room to the back kitchen where next-door neighbour, Gerald Humphries sat reading
The Telegraph.

“Good morning, Gerry,” Croft greeted.

Humphries replied in sibilant tones. “Good morning, Felix. Very late today.”

Croft briefly considered using Humphries as a sounding board on the morning’s happenings, but quickly forgot about it. Gerry was the biggest gossip on Winridge Estate and news of The Handshaker’s note would spread quickly enough as it was. Instead, Croft returned a non-committal smile. “Business. Held up in town.”

He joined the neighbour at the table and while Sandra made tea, he reflected that as friends and acquaintances went, she and Humphries were strange bedfellows.

Humphries stood about six feet tall, with a distinguished head of greying hair. He was in his mid-fifties, a former local government administrator who had taken early retirement some years previously to nurse a terminally ill mother. A mild man, he entertained conservative values on many issues but lacked the assertiveness to express them. He was one of those who hung in the background at cocktail parties, listening politely to conversations around him, but never contributing. Croft could imagine that during his tenure at the town hall, he would have risen only slowly through the ranks, which explained why he ended up a senior administrator rather than department head.

His reticence made him ideal for the role of chaperone during Sandra’s hypnosis appointments. In an era where allegations of sexual abuse were not only commonplace but often fabricated, Croft insisted on a third party being present at sessions with female clients, and the mark of a good chaperone was one who kept himself in the background, saying and doing nothing. That was Humphries all over.

He had, as far as Croft was concerned, one other saving grace. He had been born in the fifties and grew through his teens in the late sixties and early seventies, and many times, when Croft had finished working with Sandra, they would retreat to Humphries’ house next door, where, over tea and biscuits – served in rose patterned, bone china cups and saucers, naturally – Croft would pump him for information on music, cinema, work, life in his favourite decade.

It was Humphries who had brought Sandra to Croft’s attention, two years previously. Her only child had recently been taken into care, exacerbating her problems with an abusive husband, and her GP had diagnosed depression, prescribing Doselupin, a common palliative, for the problem. The medicines were not working their magic, however, so Humphries recommended hypnosis with Croft. He agreed on condition that Sandra attended the university once every three months for trials on any latent psi abilities: telepathy, telekinesis, mediumship, and so on. Croft arranged for Sandra to keep a diary at home and she brought it with her regularly, but when her husband began to kick up, he agreed to see Sandra monthly in her home provided Humphries acted as chaperone.

It was a mutually satisfactory arrangement. Sandra received her hypnosis, Croft monitored her psi potential, which had remained a consistent zero, and as a plus, he got out of the academic atmosphere for a few hours to interrogate Humphries on the sixties.

Thanks to Shannon and Millie, there was no time for such luxuries today. Croft had to be back at the university before two, and he would need a bite of lunch before his hypnosis demonstration. Accepting a quick cup of tea from Sandra, he ushered her into the front room where she reclined on the settee, closed her eyes and began deep breathing to relax.

Croft prepared his pocket recorder and settled onto a chair near her head.

“Just relax, Sandra. Let relaxation sweep over you. Feel every bone, every muscle, every nerve relax.” He reached out and touched her shoulder. “And sleep.”

8

Clutching a handful of documents, Millie Matthews pushed her way into the busy environment of the third floor CID room.

The place was its usual hive of activity, with a team of plainclothes officers engaged on one task or another. A large whiteboard dominated the rear wall, reminding her that most of the work in this room was Handshaker related. On the board were pinned photographs of the victims, and as Millie crossed the floor, Detective Constable Thurrock, the young officer who had been with Shannon out at Scarbeck Point, pinned up another photograph: the latest victim. Written alongside each photograph were notes in marker pen: date of event, name, age, location, last seen alive. As she watched, Thurrock began to add notes alongside the latest photograph. 15/11, Susan Edwards, 34, Scarbeck Point, 12/10 Pearman’s Supermarket, Scarbeck.

The phrase, ‘date of event’, niggled at Millie. She often wondered which politically correct idiot had dreamt it up. These were not events; they were callous and brutal rapes and murders.

She made her way to the corner office, its door marked ‘Superintendent Ernest Shannon’, knocked and entered.

Her immediate boss believed in tidiness. His desk appeared as if it had never been used; the top polished, the blotter free of doodles or scribbled notes, buff files stacked neatly in the in and out trays, a telephone extension set squarely at the left hand corner, his desk diary at the right hand. There was no computer. Shannon was not particularly a technophobe, but as he edged closer to his pension, he saw no good reason to entertain information technology when he had a staff of junior officers outside to do it for him.

He was on the phone to the canteen. Millie sat opposite and stared through the window. The view was not one to inspire. Heavy rain ran down the glass in an almost continuous stream, adding to the general impression of a town in decay. It was almost as if Scarbeck was destined to be wet. Beyond the police station’s rear yard, the town centre was a complex huddle of Victorian and Edwardian buildings. Through the corner over Shannon’s shoulder, she could see the dome of the recently built Spinners Shopping Mall. With barely six weeks to Christmas, its 130 or so stores, most of them household names, would bring in more than their fair share of shoplifters to supplement the drunks and druggies and muggers that were the routine fodder of a small town force. They had enough to do without homicidal lunatics like The Handshaker, or oddballs like Felix Croft.

At the age of 35, Millie was bang on target for those ambitions she had set out to achieve when she joined the police 14 years previously after graduating from UMIST. The number of black officers was on the increase, and although it was deemed to be a politically correct manoeuvre, they were rising through the ranks. Millie’s target was the rank of superintendent by the time she was 40. When a vacancy for an inspector arose in Scarbeck, two years back, she jumped at it, and if there were some early difficulties with the bullish Shannon, she remained convinced that she had made the right move. She had five years and two promotions to her ambition, and with Shannon looking at moving up to chief superintendent in the near future, her own rise to chief inspector would not be far behind.

Shannon replaced the receiver, leaned back in his chair and raised eyebrows at her. “Well?”

His query brought her back to reality. “It checks out,” she reported. “It’s still too early to be a hundred percent, but our boys are ninety-nine percent certain that the typewriter is the same one used to produce every other letter we’ve received. The stamp was self-adhesive, but they’re analysing the envelope seal. If the sender licked it, we should get sufficient DNA to compare. They’ve found several sets of prints, too. On the envelope there are Croft’s and some unidentified. Probably Post Office employees. On the letter, they’ve uncovered just two sets. Croft’s and a second set that appear to match The Handshaker. We’ll get confirmation later this morning but it looks like it’s kosher. It’s from our man.”

Shannon nodded. “Anything else?”

Millie racked her brain and wished she had made more notes. “Postmark indicates it was processed at the Scarbeck sorting office on Monday evening and delivered to Croft this morning. It must have been collected from the post box by no later than seven last night, which means The Handshaker probably mailed it off before he murdered Susan Edwards.” Millie laid candid eyes on him. “Croft is definitely in the clear.”

Shannon gave a dismissive snort. “Pah. Croft is a pain in the arse. An arrogant sod, and I’ll tell you something else, whether or not this note came from The Handshaker, I know what Croft’s game is. Like I said in the interview room, he’s trying to spark some interest in his efforts so he can hog the limelight again. Bloody celebrities.”

Millie waited for the irritation to expire. “You think so, do you?”

There was a knock on the door, stifling Shannon’s next words. A uniformed constable entered and left two mugs of tea on Shannon’s desk. When he had backed out, the superintendent took a large swallow of tea and scowled. “What the hell do they use in this stuff? Bromide?”

“Never mind the tea,” Millie rebuked him. “Do you want to know what I found out about Croft?”

“No, but I imagine you’re gonna tell me anyway.”

Millie took up her sheets of paper, sipped at her own tea and, privately agreeing with Shannon’s analysis on the canteen’s lack of culinary expertise, suppressed a grimace.

Skimming through the papers, she marshalled her thoughts for a moment and left the uppermost documents resting on her lap where she could refer to them.

“He’s exactly who he said he is,” she began. “Thirty-seven years old, the youngest son of Sir James Croft, of the Queen’s Bench Division. He was schooled at Loxley, barely scraped into Leeds, flunked law and chose English instead, and that caused some kind of rift between him and his father, and we all know what a hard-nosed old bastard his honour can be, don’t we. He has an older brother, David, who’s a barrister, and as we know, he lives with Patricia Sinclair; another legal bitch. After graduating, he went into teaching, and got drawn into hypnosis somewhere along the line. Did some basic training in hypnotherapy, then hooked up with industry, specialising in motivation, and he made millions from a string of self-help books. The weight control one was the best seller and the one that made him so famous. He maintains several non-executive directorships in large companies, and he’s been a senior research fellow at the UNWE for the last six or seven years, recently promoted to Head of Department, researching parapsychology. He owns a huge house called Oaklands, near Allington Village, which he bought from Scarbeck Borough Council for exactly one pound.”

She paused a moment to see how Shannon would react to that piece of news. He did not react at all, and she went on, “He had to spend a million or two on the place to bring it up to habitable standards. When it comes to hypnosis and the abuse of hypnosis, there is no better authority. His researches are into the possibilities of enhancing psychic potential through the use of hypnosis. That’s telepathy and seeing ghosts and UFOs and stuff. When he’s not working, he does crosswords and sudokus for the joy of it, he compiles cryptic crosswords and they’re supposed to be absolute bastards to crack, and he’s a prominent member of an online Scrabble club. He had a reputation with the ladies once, but Sinclair probably kicked that out of him.” Millie grinned. “She’s that kind of woman. He ducked out of the public eye when he took up his post at the University of North West England, and said he never wanted to be back in it. All in all, Ernie, the last thing he’s looking for is publicity. He doesn’t need to be tagged onto a police investigation.”

Shannon allowed the information to sink in. “All right, so why has The Handshaker written to him?”

Millie shrugged. “The only conclusion I can reach is like Croft said. The Handshaker is using hypnosis to subdue these women, and he’s adding a signature to the crimes. If that’s so, then writing to Croft, a world authority on hypnotism, is the logical thing to do.”

Shannon toyed with his mug of tea, and looked up at the ceiling for a moment. When he drew his gaze back to meet hers, he asked, “Did you find out about this Heidelberg business he was talking about?”

Millie fished into her bag for cigarettes. She held the pack up and raised a permission-seeking eyebrow. It was strictly against the rules and these days against the law, but while grimacing, Shannon signalled his consent with a nod, and she lit up.

Resting back, blowing a thin stream of smoke at an extractor built into the window, she focussed on Shannon, her eyes narrowed, brow furrowed.

“That’s a funny thing,” she said. “I could find plenty of references to Heidelberg in 1927, but nothing to do with any hypnotist or any crime committed by one. But he did tell us that it was obscure, and his was the only site I could find that mentioned it.”

“Because it never happened,” Shannon declared. “Croft probably dreamed it all up himself. You did say he writes books.”

“Self-help books, yes, but not –”

“Millie, these self-help books are all the same,” the superintendent interrupted. He slid his beaker to one side and leaned heavily on the desk. “They provide supposed real-life examples, but who’s to say they’re really real? Ten to one Croft made up the Heidelberg stuff for one of his books, and now he’s feeding us the same line.”