“Sandra, it’s all in your mind.” Now Croft was almost pleading for her to understand. “Listen carefully, Sandra, you don’t have to do this. Give me the knife, come down from there and let’s get you to the hospital.”
Rehana released his arm. Croft became aware that all around him, the chatter had ceased, silence had fallen; everyone was riveted upon his efforts.
He stretched out a hand. “Just give me the knife, Sandra.”
She leaned dangerously back. “Don’t come near me.”
In order to get her into a hypnotic state where he could truly assist her, he needed to touch her, but she would not allow that. Instead, he took half a pace back and hastened to reassure her. “All right, all right. Take it easy.”
“You, you want to stop me, but I can’t take this pain anymore.”
“Sandra, listen to me.” His voice was supportive, easy and soporific. “The only sound of any importance, Sandra, is my voice. You know my voice. You’ve heard it before and when my voice speaks, it is the only sound of any importance. When you hear my voice, you begin to relax, to feel well. Listen to me, Sandra. The pain is diminishing and with every word I speak, it goes further and further away and soon there will be no pain. Let the pain go away, Sandra. Let the pain go and the good feelings come through. Just let the pain go, Sandra. Let it go until there is no pain.”
***
Sandra felt as if her brain was about to burst. All she could recall were Handy’s words, all she could feel was the searing agony in her stomach.
A single image kept flashing into the confusion. A monster chewing at her insides, a small, slimy, evil little bug, glistening, its razor teeth biting, gnawing on her intestines, swallowing pieces of her whole, delivering the terrible pain, instilling its legacy, a long, slow and tortured death.
“The sound of my voice,” “the terrible pain,” “there is no pain,” “there is pain,” “listen to me, Sandra,” “don’t listen to them, Sandra,” “listen to my voice,” “they won’t tell you the truth,” “where the bloody hell are you going,” “end it quickly, cleanly, painlessly.”
The voices assaulted her, faces swam before her eyes: Handy, Alf, Gerry Humphries, Handy, Felix Croft, her mother, Handy and Alf, Alf and Handy, Damon in care, Felix Croft, Handy.
Alf was furious. She’d walked out on him without a word, and she’d get a pasting for that, and they’d leave her doped with drugs to quell the pain and they’d laugh at her when she was an empty, dead shell, they’d say “well, we got rid of her and she never knew,” but she did know, and Handy had told her, and the pain was unbearable, and that was Croft in the crowd and he was one of the doctors was Croft and he was Handy was Croft and he was not important because he lied to her, he told her there was no pain and there was pain, terrible, terrible, pain and all she wanted was an end to the pain…
She turned, looked over the balustrade. An end to the pain. Now.
***
“NO.”
Croft’s shout alerted everyone.
Rehana snatched at him as he moved. He shrugged her off, and in an effort to prevent the inevitable, leapt across the space between him and Sandra, throwing out an arm in a desperate attempt to catch her by the ankle as she toppled silently over.
His fingers brushed her heel and he grabbed at thin air. His momentum hurled him heavily into the balustrade, knocking the wind out of him. He was vaguely aware of someone screaming below. He looked down and closed his eyes, shutting out the terrible sight.
Sandra lay flat on the floor, blood pouring from a skull wound. Half under her was an elderly man, his legs squashed, arms flailing in a plea for assistance, and from one leg, hidden by Sandra’s body, blood trickled to the sandy tiles. Croft could only guess that the sharp kitchen knife she carried had pierced either her abdomen or the man’s leg.
Police and security officers arrived below to keep the bystanders back. Croft felt hands upon him, dragging him back from the balustrade. Numbed, he backed off as Begum and her colleagues took control of the situation, pushing back the crowd, turning them away from their macabre spectator sport.
“Come on, stay back please. Just back away, thank you.”
“I’m going to need some details, sir.”
Head spinning, Croft sat down on the cold tiles, by the window of Next. He barely registered the sounds around him, and it took several seconds for Begum’s words to get through.
“Huh? What?”
“Details, sir,” Rehana repeated. “You said you were the lady’s therapist.”
“Yes … yes.” He snapped himself together, and recalled his purpose in coming to Scarbeck. “Look, Constable, I’m sorry, but I was on my way to see your superior, Detective Inspector Matthews. My name is Felix Croft, and she is expecting me. If you speak to her, she’ll explain. I rang her an hour ago.”
Suspicion haunted Begum’s eyes, but she nevertheless backed off and spoke once more into her radio. After a few moments, she approached him again. “Inspector Matthews will take a statement from you at the station.”
22
Standing innocuously amongst the crowd of onlookers on the lower level of the mall, The Handshaker watched the unfolding drama of Sandra Lumb’s last moments with bated breath and when she rolled over the balustrade, falling twenty feet to the ground floor, he could barely hold back his excitement.
A coup de grace, that’s what it was. Pièce de résistance.
Why was it that phrases designed to encapsulate the crowning glory of an artistic masterpiece were all French?
He yanked his mind away from the trivial aside. What did it matter if the description was in English, French or Serbo-Croat. He had done it. He had achieved what the master, Franz Walter, never could. Walter came close when he sent Mrs E to the river, but in the last analysis he failed. Julius Reiniger, Walter’s acolyte – a Gestapo officer if you please – had never been able to do it, The Great Zepelli had never even tried to do it, but he, The Handshaker, had done what everyone said could not be done. He had induced a hypnotised subject to commit suicide.
At least, he thought it was suicide. The murmur running through the crowd was that Sandra was receiving medical attention, which probably meant she was still alive. Some old fool had broken her fall. The Handshaker dismissed the scuttlebutt. Chinese whispers. By the time the tale made the street, two hundred yards away, Sandra would be a white suicide bomber.
After she fell, he briefly diverted his gaze upward and saw that smug bastard, Croft, hanging over the rail. For a moment, he hoped the hypnotist would follow Sandra, but then changed his mind. Death, so quick if not clean, the way Sandra had gone, was far too good for Croft. That scumbag, to coin a popular Americanism, needed to understand pain before he expired. He needed to comprehend the agony of life, before he could be permitted the peace of death.
Checking the time, he turned to go back to his car, casting a final glance up at Croft. “And now,” he promised, quietly, “it’s time to turn the screw.”
He took out his mobile phone, recalled the number and dialled.
The phone rang out for an eternity. Perhaps she was with a client. He had turned to make his way from the mall into the chilly cloisters of the car park, and was about to close the connection, end the call, when it was picked up.
“Hello?”
“Joyce? It’s Handy.”
“Oh. Hi. Long time no see.” Her voice sounded genuinely pleased.
“I’ve been unwell.” He put a degree of lasciviousness into his voice. “But I’m much better now. Are you free tonight?”
“Hang on a minute. I’ll just check my diary.”
She put the receiver down and The Handshaker could well imagine her making a cup of tea, or checking the morning mail. She was not checking her diary. A prostitute keeping a diary was as absurd as a prostitute keeping accounts for tax purposes.
He looked up at the gallery again. Croft sat in a corner near Next with some wog copper talking to him. Strange to think that it was the res
earch on Croft that had uncovered this whore on the other end of the phone. And she lived so close, too. But that was life: full of little bits and pieces providing links to help embellish the master plan. Like Croft deciding to write his best-selling potboiler. So unexpected but so welcome.
The phone rattled in his ear again.
“Hello, Handy?”
“Hello, Joyce.”
“I’m free tonight. Half eight? Usual fee?”
“Fine,” he agreed. “See you then.”
The Handshaker closed the phone. Usual fee? He laughed to himself. Where she was going, Joyce would have no need of the £30 he normally paid.
23
Croft was still trembling when Sergeant Simpson showed him to Interview Room 2 and left him with a cup of tea. He needed both hands to steady the cup, and even then he spilled tea onto his jacket when he drank.
He took out The Independent and made an effort to concentrate on the crossword, but was unable to rid himself of the appalling image of Sandra going over the rail and the sight of her broken, bloodied body 20 feet below.
Beneath the shock, however, the logic circuits were already engaged, carrying out a swift résumé of his work with her, seeking the signs that would point to this morning’s crisis.
An image of Alf Lumb formed in his mind’s eye. As far as Croft was concerned, he did not have to look any further. That man…
The door opened, cutting off his train of thought, and Millie entered, accompanied by PC Begum.
“Morning, Mr Croft,” Millie greeted brightly, and he responded with a taciturn murmur. He noticed that she was still addressing him formally, but he guessed it was because Begum was in the room and, overall, her attitude had shifted several degrees towards friendliness from their curt exchange on the phone.
“You do seem to be the centre of attention just lately,” she rambled.
He recognised her efforts to make him feel more comfortable. Platitudes delivered in overt, chummy tones designed to reassure him after the terrible scenes in Spinners.
The two women sat opposite, and while Begum took up an official form and her pen, Millie looked over another handwritten sheet of paper.
“Right, sir, this is Constable Begum’s initial report on the incident in the Spinners Mall half an hour ago. She says that just before the woman jumped, you claimed to know her, and you were trying to talk her down.”
“I did, but before we get into that, you do remember my reason for coming here?” dipping into his pocket, he handed over the plain envelope.
“I hadn’t forgotten, Mr Croft, but things are happening thick and fast this morning. Let’s concentrate on Sandra. She was not dead when the paramedics took her away, but she fractured her skull when she hit the lower gallery floor, and they’re not hopeful.”
“What about the old man under her?” Croft wanted to know. It was a trivial aside, designed to take away the enduring and frightening images still haunting him.
“He’s fine,” Millie reported. “She must have dropped her knife as she fell, and it nicked his calf. He’s on his way to Scarbeck General, too. Two officers have gone out to see Sandra’s husband, and we’re interested in what you can tell us. You say you worked with her?”
Croft nodded. “She was brought to me about two years ago by her neighbour, Gerry Humphries. Depression. He’d read about my researches into hypnosis, and he wondered if I could help.”
“And did you?”
“Difficult to say.” Even to himself, Croft sounded vague. He forced his mind into a higher gear. “I contacted her GP, with her permission, of course. He’d prescribed Doselupin. It’s a palliative, helps the patient relax, so she was easily hypnotised, but whether we made progress is open to debate.”
Begum wrote furiously as he spoke. Millie allowed her a moment to catch up, then asked, “Did you get to the bottom of her depression?”
This time, he was deliberately vague. “There were so many possible causes that it’s impossible to say. Her GP was convinced that it was due to her only son, Damon, being taken into care. When I got in touch with them, again with Sandra’s permission, they gave me a run down on Alf’s abuse of both Sandra and the boy. My feeling was that a combination of the two problems caused the depression, but then I’m not a doctor, nor even a psychologist, so I’m not allowed to diagnose. However, there were other factors.”
Millie raised her eyebrows. “Such as?”
Croft hesitated. He had not come here to talk about Sandra Lumb and he had enough worries on Trish’s safety without getting into issues of client confidentiality.
“I’m not sure I should be telling you any of this, Millie,” he hedged.
“Mr Croft – Felix – Sandra is all but dead. It’s an apparent suicide –”
“Apparent suicide?” Croft was appalled at Millie’s lack of concern. “There was nothing apparent about the way she threw herself over the rail.”
“All right, all right,” Millie acquiesced. “It’s suicide. I have to put together a report on the matter and if you don’t answer my questions now, you’ll have to answer them when we come to the coroner’s hearing.”
Croft fought back, bringing his own concerns to the fore. “I came here because I’ve had another note and this time it refers directly to Trish. I’m not here to speculate on what may have caused one of my clients to commit suicide.”
“I’m aware of that,” argued Millie, “but events have overtaken you.”
“Trish is in danger.”
Millie let out a sigh. “Does the note tell you where she is?”
“No.”
“Right,” Millie insisted, “so the few minutes we take to deal with Sandra Lumb’s suicide won’t make much difference, will they?”
Croft felt his brain was about to burst. What the hell did he have to do to get these people to prioritise? “Every minute is vital and you haven’t even looked at the thing yet.”
Her frustration getting the better of her as much as Croft’s was beating him, Millie handed the envelope to Begum. “Get this down to forensics. I want the full monty on it, and I want it ten minutes ago.”
“Right, guv.” Begum left with the envelope and Millie turned back to Croft.
“Happy now?”
“Thank you.”
“Right. Let’s get back to Sandra.” Millie spent a moment scanning Begum’s notes and allowing her temper to cool. When she again addressed him, she was calmer, but still severe and businesslike. “We were talking about her depression; her GP said it was down to Alf’s bullying and Damon taken into care. You also said there were other factors. Can you elucidate on that?”
Still he hesitated, seeking an excuse not to say anything. But he could not find one. He cleared his throat. “I, er, look, I shouldn’t be saying any of this without the permission of a next of kin or someone like that, but Sandra was convinced she had a terminal cancer.”
Millie suppressed her surprise, but not before Croft had noticed it flicker across her face. “And had she?”
“No,” Croft declared. “When she first mentioned it, I contacted her GP again and he told me that Sandra’s mother had died of bowel cancer some years previously and that Sandra had stomach pains, but he put it down to irritable bowel syndrome, brought on by the stress under which she lived.”
“Alf and the kid again?” Millie asked.
He nodded. “Correct. The GP ran all the standard tests, I arranged for them to be done again with my own doctor, Christopher Parsons, and he also ran an MRI scan. Everything came back negative, but Sandra wouldn’t have it. She had persuaded herself that she had cancer and was going to die a long, slow death like her mum.”
Millie toyed with the idea for a moment. “Could that have pushed her into committing suicide?”
“Impossible to say,” Croft admitted. “Really, you should be asking a psychologist or psychiatrist, but even they may be vague on it. We can’t read what’s going on in other people’s minds, you see. We can only make educated guesses. My
private opinion is no, but then, in theory, she should have been able to accept the conclusions of the tests, and she did not. If we take that psychosomatic illness and add it to the stresses and strains of living with a man like Alf, her only child in foster care, then it might just have been enough.” He frowned, his memory running back over the sessions he had had with Sandra. “But my work should have countered any problems like that.”
Millie leaned back in her chair, dropping her pen on the statement form. “What was your approach?”
He gave a throwaway shrug. “Build on her self-esteem, what else? Alf’s bullying, Damon’s, er, absence, for want of a better word, the imagined illness, all conspired to convince her that she was a wretch, who deserved nothing but pain and punishment. Under hypnosis, I tried to persuade her that this was not the case. That she was a valuable human being with much to contribute to marriage, life, society in general. It’s a standard approach when dealing with low self-esteem.”
The door burst open, startling them both. Begum rushed in. For a moment, Croft detected a hint of furious anger in Millie’s features, but Begum did not give the inspector the chance to voice it. “Excuse me, Mr Croft. Boss. We need a word. In private.”
Croft looked on worriedly while they left the room. The door was closed behind them leaving him totally alone to imagine the worst.
Trish had been found hanging in some hellhole. Like the other victims, she was stripped naked, the life throttled from her.
A tumult of emotions flooded through him from fear to rage. He bordered on the panic of bereavement through murder, and fought to keep down the rising tide of grief and anger threatening to send him on a rampage of violence to avenge her death.
He took deep breaths, urged silent calm upon himself. She was not dead yet, she was not dead yet. He fought back tears, brought forth all the reserves of courage, the British stiff upper lip that had been bred and beaten into him since he was a boy.
Loxley men do not cry. Crying is a sign of weakness, and Loxley men never display weakness. One of the mantras upon which his life had been planned. Loxley men were the bedrock, the pillars upon which the legal system, the backbone of Great Britain, rested.
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