The Handshaker

by David Robinson

  Shannon shook his head. “I’m sorry, but the answer is no.”

  Millie expanded on the superintendent’s declaration. “The texts are completely incomprehensible anyway.”

  “You mean like a cryptic puzzle?” Croft shrugged. “I do cryptic crosswords for fun. Maybe I could help.”

  “I said no, I meant no.” Shannon stood up. “Right, you can go. If you get any further correspondence from this man, you bring it straight to us. Don’t open it, don’t do anything with it, just bring it here.”

  “Just a moment,” Croft insisted as the superintendent prepared to leave. “Is that it?”

  Shannon paused at the door. “Yes. It is. I’ve heard enough drivel for one morning, and unlike you university people, I have real work to do, like catching a madman. Goodbye, Mr Croft.”

  As Shannon left, Croft transferred his gaze to Millie, who was busy getting together her belongings.

  “The fingerprints and DNA sample will be destroyed, Mr Croft. Thank you for coming in and I’m sorry if we inconvenienced you.” She dug into her bag and came out with a business card. “If anything else should happen, my direct number here at the station is on the card and so is my mobile number. It’s usually easier to get me on the mobile.”

  Croft took the card with the thought that at least the woman had had more training in public relations than her superior.

  “So what happens now?” he asked.

  She smiled sweetly. “Nothing. I don’t think you’re in any danger, Mr Croft. You go back to your academic life and leave it to us now, unless anything else should happen.”

  She, too, walked out of the room leaving the door open for Croft to go. Bemused, he got to his feet, tucked his newspaper in his jacket pocket, and followed her.

  7

  Twenty minutes later, with the time approaching noon, Croft climbed out of his car and gazed in dismay at the contrast between two conjoined houses.

  The garden and surrounding fence of number 48 Sussex Crescent were pristine, well tended, kept in tip-top condition, the wood door was freshly painted and even in the dull November daylight, it shone. By contrast, there was little left of the fence around number 46, and the garden was no better than a scrub of dirt, soaked in engine oil, littered with old car parts, while the door was flaked and cracked, the paint peeling off in places, its letter flap hanging off.

  With a sad shake of the head he walked up the path of number 46 and rang the bell. The vertical blinds parted, Sandra Lumb looked out and let the blinds close again.

  Croft was still shaken by the morning’s events, and irritated by the speed and apparent disinterest with which the police had terminated the interview. It left everything hanging in the air.

  Beneath that anger was still the sense of nagging worry. He had given The Handshaker murders no more than scant attention and that amounted to advising Trish to be wary of strangers when she was out alone. Her response had been typical.

  “I work in Manchester, Felix, and he operates exclusively in Scarbeck.”

  The only attention she paid the killings was legal. How she would go about prosecuting or defending the man when he was eventually caught and brought to trial.

  Beyond that, beyond the sense of abhorrence at the senselessness of the murders, neither of them had taken much interest.

  After leaving the police station, in an effort to clear some of his more disturbed thoughts and confusion, he tried to telephone Trish to pass on the morning’s events, but her mobile was switched off. There was nothing unusual or worrying about it. A busy barrister, there were many times when she was simply unavailable, and he recalled her saying that she would be in a chambers’ meeting and that she would be unavailable for a couple of hours.

  So the problem nagged at him throughout the journey from Scarbeck to Sussex Crescent, and even as he rang the doorbell, it would not go away. It was there, at the back of his mind as Sandra opened the door.

  Sandra greeted him with a bright smile. “Hiya. Come in.”

  “Sorry I’m late, Sandra. As I explained on the phone, I was held up in Scarbeck.”

  Sandra was not a particularly bright woman, and had a simplistic view of the world, but she was attractive in her own way. Slim, fair-haired and pretty, she regularly sported her husband’s trademark around her eyes. Sandra was one of those curious women who, no matter how much she was bullied and battered by her husband, stayed fiercely loyal, always shouldering the blame herself.

  She noticed him eyeing her bruises and she smiled diffidently. “Slipped in the kitchen. Serves me right. I should know better than to go in there when I’ve just mopped the floor.”

  Croft made no comment and followed her in. She closed the door behind her and led him through the house to the rear kitchen.

  The place was furnished according to Sandra’s own ideas, which came from mail order catalogues. Wall units, a three-piece suite focussed on a widescreen TV set and its attached video recorders. The settee and armchairs were of dark, Italian leather, and her display cabinet, along with the TV and video units, were self-assembly affairs. The coffee table was covered in cigarette burns, and hung around the walls were mementoes of foreign holidays; Spain, Tunisia, Greece, Turkey, Israel. Sitting incongruously amongst them was a Manchester City scarf pinned up above the wall-mounted fire. Alf Lumb was a fanatic.

  “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?”