“I see.” Shannon appeared to ignore most of Croft’s words when he asked, “You’re a historian, are you, specialising in pre-war Germany?”
“No. I’m a hypnotist and paranormal researcher and I head the parapsychology research unit at University of North West England.” Croft pointed to the note, and as he did so, he noticed that his hand was rock steady. Better. More like the real Felix Croft. “The Heidelberg reference indicates a crime with paranormal overtones. One that I happen to specialise in. It’s known simply as The Heidelberg Case, and it occurred to me that the writer of this note, who Inspector Matthews believes may be The Handshaker, is hinting that a similar crime has been taking place here in Scarbeck for the last two years.”
“Does he?” With every response Shannon sounded more and more sceptical.
The superintendent left a silence hanging in the air, clearly placing the ball in Croft’s court, and Croft wondered what he was supposed to say next. The alarm he had felt on learning that the note could have been from The Handshaker returned, but now it was mixed with fresh insecurity. He tried to place himself in Shannon’s position to see how he would react to the situation, but he found it impossible. All that ran through his mind was a spurious triangle between himself, one of his pet research projects and a serial killer. He wished now that he had read the press reports of The Handshaker crimes more closely, learned something of the man’s methodology. At least it might have given him an insight into the motive behind sending this disturbing note.
Facing him, the police waited for more. Shannon rested his forearms on the table, Millie leaned back in her chair. The pressure of their silence began to take its toll upon him. He felt a desperate urge to say something, but he did not know what.
A memory flashed into his mind. After leaving university with a comparatively useless degree in English, he had moved into teacher training and during one session, the tutor had pointed out that the simplest way of retaining control in a classroom situation was to ask questions. Well, if it worked in the classroom, it may be just as effective here.
“So what are you going to do about it?” he demanded.
“What do you want us to do?”
Shannon had obviously learned the same lesson.
“Something,” Croft admitted. “Investigate. Isn’t that what you get paid for?”
“It is and we do,” the superintendent assured him, “and right now, Mr Croft, I’m up to my neck in crimes. I always am, but I’m also saddled with a serial nutter determined, so it seems, to carry on hanging as many women as he can. I don’t have time for has-been celebrities seeking to reinvent themselves on the back of this rubbish.” Shannon gestured angrily at the envelope and its meagre contents.
Croft felt his colour rising. “Reinvent myself? What are you talking about?” Light dawned somewhere in his brain, and the full import of Shannon’s outburst struck him. “Oh, I understand. You think I wrote that note myself. Ms Matthews has told you that I own a manual typewriter and you think I produced it, then turned up here worried and flustered so that I could hype my public persona again.”
“It’s a possibility,” Shannon admitted, “and much more likely than The Handshaker writing to you.”
“Well, why don’t you get that off to your forensic department and have them give it the once over?” Croft invited. “Then you’re welcome to check out my Remington typewriter and satisfy yourself that I did not write it.”
“We will get round to that,” Shannon assured him. “In the meantime, give me one good reason why our man should write to you?”
“I can only guess.” Croft lapsed into a sulky silence. During the exchange his confidence had returned once more, and the nagging doubts were dispelled. Now that Shannon had asked the question Croft had been asking himself, the worry, the underlying fear – yes that was the word, fear – had come back. Why had The Handshaker written to him? The answer was still the same as it had been at breakfast. It was the only one that made sense.
“Well?”
Shannon’s demand brought Croft back to the reality of his predicament. “I think he wrote to me because I was the only one who would understand the reference. I told you; The Heidelberg Case is one of my specialities.”
It did not go down well. It was thin and although it had to be the truth, it made no more sense now than it had done at 7:30.
He took in the impassive faces of his two interrogators and wondered briefly if they felt the same bewilderment as he, if they, too, wondered which way the investigation should be going.
Millie suddenly scraped her chair back and picked up the note and envelope. “I’d better get this to forensic, boss. We need to know for sure, one way or the other, whether it’s from our man.”
Shannon, too, stood. “Do that. In the meantime, Mr Croft. I will need a swab for DNA analysis and your fingerprints. I’ll send an officer in to deal with them, and have some tea sent in for you.”
Croft resigned himself to defeat. “I have an appointment at ten thirty,” he told them, fishing his mobile phone from his jacket. “Would you mind if I call the client and tell her I’m not going to make it?”
Shannon sat down again. “It’s the only call I can allow you, unless you want your solicitor brought in. After that I’ll need your mobile phone.” He gave a hard, thin smile. “You’re not out of the woods yet.”
6
Millie and Shannon returned just before 11 o’clock.
Croft had passed the time trying to concentrate on his crossword but had made little progress. With the answer to 7 down already penned in as Beethoven, the answer to 18 across, 7’s 7th (15) would normally have leapt at him. Beethoven’s 9th was his ultimate, his 8th the penultimate and the 7th was his antepenultimate. Today, with thoughts of The Handshaker, of manual typewriters, of The Heidelberg Case constantly disturbing his concentration, it had taken him many minutes to get there.
And always he came back to that same question, the question Shannon had posed a minute or two before he left. Why had The Handshaker written to him?
Of course, there was always the chance that it was not The Handshaker, but someone posing as him. Croft doubted it. Millie had said that the police told no one of The Handshaker notes, nor that they were produced on a manual typewriter. He was convinced that when the police returned they would confirm that the note was genuine.
And that merely underscored the alarm. Why, why, why? Why write to him? Why mention Heidelberg?
Above all was the feeling of helplessness. The police had been seeking this man for two years and if press reports were to be believed, they had made zero progress. With no knowledge or understanding of The Handshaker’s motives Croft felt as if he were a target and that his opponent had him firmly in the crosshairs of his telescopic sight, biding his time before squeezing the trigger.
The officers sat down. Shannon placed photocopies of both the envelope and note on the table. Croft noted that neither of them made to switch on the cassette recorder.
“Right, Mr Croft,” said the superintendent, “early indications are that the note did come from our man.”
Croft did not know whether to feel relieved or more afraid.
“More tests are needed to positively confirm it,” Shannon was going on, “but there appears to be little doubt. You’ll also be glad to hear that your DNA does not match that of The Handshaker’s. You don’t even have the same blood group.”
Croft was not relieved to hear anything of the kind. “I already knew I’m not The Handshaker,” he said. “You’re the one who should be glad. Having cleared me, you’ve avoided possible legal action.”
Shannon refused to be sidetracked. “Yes, well, it nevertheless leaves us with a problem. We’ve been chasing this man for two years now, and as far as we’re aware he has never written to anyone but us.”
Shannon was about to go on, but Croft cut in. “Excuse me. As far as you’re aware?”
“That’s right,” said Shannon. “For all we know he could have writ
ten something like this to the newspapers. They may have read it, been unable to make head or tail of it, and put it through the shredder. I have officers chasing up the press and TV right now, to see if they can come up with anything.”
For Croft, the announcement was like the moment when the answer to a cryptic clue suddenly hit him. Like 18 across, it was an answer he could not have seen without solving 7 down. The conclusion leapt into his mind but it would never have occurred to him if Shannon had not admitted they had officers chasing up the press. And like 18 across, once he had the answer, it was obvious. Anyone else would have thrown it away, but he, Croft, would understand, and that was exactly what The Handshaker wanted.
“Now I understand,” he said slowly.
The officers exchanged glances. Shannon faced Croft. “Understand what?”
“Why he wrote to me, and what he’s saying.”
“Go on.”
“My idea is speculative and it hinges on Heidelberg,” Croft explained. “I think The Handshaker is hypnotising his victims. I said he wrote to me because he knew I would make the connection to Heidelberg. I think that this note is a way of signing his masterpiece.”
Again Shannon and Millie looked at each other. Millie fidgeted with her pen. “What?”
Croft, much calmer, more in control, concentrated on her. “Have you ever studied The Heidelberg Case?”
“I’ve never even heard of it,” she admitted.
That came as no surprise to Croft. “Most people haven’t,” he said. “It’s very obscure and took place in pre-war Germany. By the time the culprit was caught and jailed, the Nazis were in power. They kept meticulous records on everything as a means of maintaining absolute control, but by 1945 they were burning those records by the ton to cover their war crimes, which probably explains why the trial transcripts have never been found. I first came across the case when I was studying hypnosis, and that was in a book entitled Hypnotism and Crime by Dr Heinze Hammerschlag, a Swiss psychiatrist. I still have a copy of it somewhere.”
“Sorry to butt in, Mr Croft,” Millie apologised, “but where is all this leading.”
Croft suppressed his irritation at her interruption. “In order to understand what I’m getting at,” he told her, “you need to understand something of the background to The Heidelberg Case. Essentially, a man named Franz Walter, a hypnotist and homeopath, met a young woman on a train. She was only ever identified as Mrs E and Walter managed to hypnotise her. That was in 1927. In 1934, her husband complained to the police that this man had been defrauding his wife of thousands of marks. She was sent to Doctor Ludwig Meyer who hypnotised her and got to the truth. Over seven years Walter had not only taken money from her for treatments she never needed, but he raped her, sold her into prostitution, and when her husband got suspicious, he ordered her to murder him. She made six attempts and it was only by good fortune that she failed. Then Walter ordered her to commit suicide and she almost did. If it hadn’t been for the intervention of a housemaid, the woman would have thrown herself in the river and drowned.”
Croft paused a moment so they could take in the welter of detail. Judging by the irritation in Shannon’s eyes, he was not endearing himself.
The superintendent confirmed it. “All very interesting, but what does this have to do with The Handshaker?”
“I’m coming to that,” Croft replied. “Heidelberg blew away the notion that a hypnotised subject cannot be made to do something which goes against his or her moral standards.”
“But everyone connected with hypnosis says that it’s true,” objected Millie.
Alongside her, Croft noted, Shannon looked away briefly and irritably. He was obviously becoming more frustrated with what he saw as an unnecessary diversion.
Croft maintained his focus on Millie. “Of course they do, and every soap powder manufacturer tells you their powder will get your clothes cleaner, but that doesn’t make it true.”
Now Shannon, unable to hold himself back any longer, butted in. “That’s hardly the same thing.”
“No, it isn’t, but it is a valid analogy because it demonstrates that we are all suggestible,” said Croft. “The soap powder adverts work on precisely that principle, and hypnotherapy is nothing more than suggestion using direct access to the subconscious mind granted by hypnosis. It’s generally accepted that about five percent of the population are susceptible to rapid, deep hypnosis. I’m convinced that The Handshaker is using hypnosis, if only to subdue his victims. Counting this morning’s victim, he’s killed eight women, and there are about fifty thousand women in this town. That’s…” Croft paused to do the mental arithmetic. “Slightly over one hundredth of one percent. If he’s seeking his victims at random, it’s a safe average.”
Shannon appeared befuddled. “And the reason he wrote to you?”
“Murdering these women is his, er,” Croft groped for the words. “Pièce de résistance,” he said in an almost perfect French accent. “His magnum opus. He has you running in circles. You’re making no progress, and he probably takes a lot of satisfaction from that. Suddenly he decides it’s not enough to be clever. He needs others to know just how clever he’s been. He needs to sign his masterpiece. How can he do that without coming out into the open? By writing to someone who would understand.”
Across the table, the two police officers looked doubtful. It was apparent to Croft that phrases like, ‘he has you running in circles’ were not endearing him to them.
“Think about it,” he urged. “If he had sent this note to you, what would you have made of it?”
Millie did think about it for a few seconds. “We’d have run a check on Heidelberg in those dates to find comparable crimes.”
“And turned up nothing,” Croft assured her. “Because he wasn’t hinting at comparable crimes in Heidelberg. He was hinting at methodology, and you would have come up with nothing on that because The Heidelberg Case is so obscure. If you run a search on the Internet you’ll only get one or two genuine results, and one of those is mine, but even then you would have to enter The Heidelberg Case in the search engine. If you put in, say ‘hypnosis’ and ‘Heidelberg’ it might just get you there, but your man has been clever. He didn’t mention hypnosis. The reason he wrote to me is because he knew that I could make that vague connection.” He gave them what he imagined was a modest smile. “I’ve done more research on the case than anyone.”
“Because it has paranormal overtones?” Shannon asked.
“Superficially, yes,” Croft said with a nod, “but once I got into it, the whole concept intrigued me. Can you really get a subject to murder a loved one, or at least attempt it? Can you really get a subject to commit suicide? I found it fascinating.”
Silence fell once more. Croft was a happier man now that he understood. The Handshaker was not targeting him, he was not threatening him, he was not even admitting that he had been abusing a single woman in the way that Franz Walter had. He was simply announcing to the world the manner in which he subdued his victims.
“I don’t buy this at all.”
The superintendent’s announcement, cutting into the silence, crushed Croft’s contentment. But as Shannon went on, the hypnotist’s disappointment gave way to more alarm.
“If our man has been selecting his victims at random, as you claim, there would be those women he tried to hypnotise and failed. I don’t know how he’s supposed to be hypnotising them anyway, but if I choose to be generous and assume you’re right, how come we haven’t had a string of complaints from the women he didn’t succeed with?” Shannon sat forward. “You see what I’m driving at, Croft? If you’re right, we would have all these women whinging about it and we would have had a description of him. In fact we’ve had neither. All we have are some grainy images from odd CCTV cameras, and even then we don’t know that the man in those pictures is the man we’re seeking.” The superintendent leaned back again. “I don’t know how he gets to his victims, but it’s not some super-hypnotism.”
Cro
ft was all at sea again. There was no refuting the superintendent’s argument. Choosing women at random, trying a rapid induction on them would have worked with some but by no means all, and the remainder would have come forward. And yet it all fitted; the reference to Heidelberg, even the nickname, The Handshaker, it all fitted with hypnosis.
“Tell me something.” Millie’s request brought him from his turbulent thoughts. “You say it’s possible to get a hypnotised subject to do whatever you want. Most hypnotists say it isn’t. How do you do it?”
Croft chose his words with professional, academic care. “It’s all about altering the perception of reality. Let’s say I want to eliminate you but I don’t want to be implicated? I find someone who is amenable to deep hypnosis. The kind stage performers use. I convince this person that you are in danger because the brakes on your car are loose. The subject needs to tighten them. I tell him how it’s done, but in reality, I’m telling him how to loosen the brakes. He does the job, you go off for a drive and the first time you use your brakes, they fail. You’re in an accident and if you were travelling at a good enough speed, you’re dead. At the very worst, the subject will be picked up for tampering with your brakes, but he’d go to prison, not me.”
“That simple, eh?” Millie commented.
“But it’s not simple,” Croft disagreed. “It takes a long time to get most subjects to such a depth of hypnosis that they could be duped like that, and that means you would need regular access to him so you could… of course. That’s it.”
Both officers were suddenly alert. “What?” demanded Shannon. “What’s it?”
“These women are not picked at random,” Croft told them with absolute certainty. “He knows them. He has had access to them for a long time, possibly years. That’s how he can hypnotise them so quickly. He knows they’re amenable to deep hypnosis, he’s installed enough post-hypnotic suggestions to hypnotise them with a single command and gesture, a gesture like… like a handshake.” Croft’s voice rose in triumph. “I’m right, Shannon. I know I am. That’s why he’s called The Handshaker. You didn’t think of it, he did. He wrote to you and signed himself off as The Handshaker, didn’t he? He hoped you might understand that the handshake induction is quite common amongst hypnotists.” Neither Shannon nor Millie commented, but their owlish stares were evidence enough for Croft. He was right and he knew it. “Ms Matthews told me earlier that The Handshaker writes to you after every crime. Any chance I could see those notes?”
The Handshaker Page 4