The spell was broken by a knock at the door. It opened and a uniformed officer brought tea in.
Shannon waited until the young constable had left again, stirred his tea, and asked, “You got all that from those few notes?”
“It stares you in the face when you know what to look for. Your own profilers should have picked it up, but again, if they’re younger men, or were educated in the state sector, they may not have spotted the clues. And remember, I read English at university when I flunked law.” Croft picked up a cup of tea and sipped with a grimace. “Christ, that’s awful.”
“Forget the tea,” Shannon ordered. “He makes reference to dice or trivia. Is he playing a game of chance with us?”
Croft frowned again, his brain working energetically at the problem. “I don’t think so. Again, it’s an anagram, but up to now, I haven’t been able to make sense of it.”
Millie grunted. “So it doesn’t give us any clue to where Trish Sinclair or Victoria Reid might be, or your girlfriend?”
“Well, as I say, I haven’t… Who? Who was the other one?”
“Victoria Reid,” repeated Millie. “She was abducted last night from a petrol station on Fenton Road and we think The Handshaker took her.”
Croft did not reply. He stared at the note, his mind working feverishly on the letters. He took out his pen, scribbled, ‘Victoria Reid’ on a sheet of paper and then began to run through the words, ‘dice or trivia’ scoring through each letter as he went along. Before he was halfway through, he was satisfied that the solution was correct.
“Yes. It’s there.” He looked them in the eye. “Dice or trivia is an anagram of Victoria Reid. He has her.”
There was no mistaking the cynicism in Shannon’s voice. “He’s a busy bloke, isn’t he? Not only has he got your girlfriend, but Victoria Reid too. Taking them in pairs now.”
“Shannon,” Croft insisted, “I’m not mistaken about this. I pail a ricin scart is an anagram of Patricia Sinclair, dice or trivia is an anagram of Victoria Reid. You say the note comes from The Handshaker, not me. He has them both.”
“And what next?” demanded the superintendent. “He told Sandra Lumb to commit suicide?”
Croft’s features paled. His heart pounded. Was it possible? He snatched up the verse and read it again, and as he did so everything made sense. The previous day’s note, today’s note, the deaths of Alf and Sandra Lumb. It all slotted together. He found himself a curious mixture of excitement, revulsion and fear.
“That is exactly what it’s all about.”
Shannon and Millie looked at each other.
“What?” Millie asked.
“The Heidelberg Case and The Handshaker’s murders,” said Croft. “He had Sandra Lumb kill her husband and then commit suicide.”
Croft was certain that Shannon almost laughed out loud. Instead, the superintendent smirked. “I was taking the mickey,” he said.
“Yes, I know you were,” Croft replied, “but what’s the old saying about many a true word spoken in jest?” Croft laid the verse on the table and half turned it so Shannon could read it too. Using his pen as a pointer, he explained his findings. “Mal’s drab un, is an anagram of Sandra Lumb. She went over the top. Literally. Further down, The Handshaker refers to rawl tarn fez, which is an anagram of Franz Walter, who is accepted as a master hypnotist, and he persuaded Mrs E to murder her husband. She tried but failed no less than six times, so Walter persuaded her to commit suicide, and again she tried, but failed. In this note, he tells us that rawl tarn fez, Franz Walter will lose his number one spot to shade then hark, The Handshaker. In other words, The Handshaker has succeeded where Walter failed. He has managed to get Sandra Lumb to murder her husband and then commit suicide.”
His theory was greeted with a long silence. Shannon looked doubtful, Millie looked as if she were waiting to decide which bridge she would burn.
Eventually, she said, “It sounds reasonable to me.”
“Well it doesn’t to me,” said Shannon. “With both of them dead, without a confession from The Handshaker, we’d never prove it.”
Croft leaned back in his seat, tossed his pen on the table, reflecting Millie’s actions earlier in the morning. “Trust me. I’m right. The biggest problem we face is finding him before he can murder Trish and the other woman.”
26
The sun burned onto Trish’s back as she patted sand into her bucket, turned it upside down and gently removed it, revealing a small, round turret of sand. She looked back at her parents. Mum was asleep and Dad was reading the Daily Mirror. He beamed a generous smile on her.
“Castles on the ground, lass? Better than castles in the air.”
Trish didn’t understand. She looked around the broad expanse of beach where thousands of people were enjoying the hot summer. Music from fairground rides filled the air, a Punch and Judy man entertained children near the sea wall, and down at the shoreline, her brothers were amongst hundreds of people splashing in the calm, shallow water. Trish had no mind for any of them. Instead, she stared out at the sea, which stretched for miles and miles.
***
Croft had once told Trish that her detailed memory of a childhood holiday in Bridlington, was a safety device; a haven to which she could retire when the stress of reality became too much for her.
Trish would agree. Her father, a builder by trade, had spent three months in prison for taking industrial action in the face of Edward Heath’s fledgling Industrial Relations Act, and while he was away, the five-year-old Trish had pined for him. That holiday, the first after his release, was a time of great security, but one of anxiety, too. She would never go to the sea to play like her brothers. She was too afraid that her father might go away again, and unlike her brothers, both older than her, she needed her father.
She had needed him all her life, to be there with calm reassurance when the pressure told on her, with his fatherly advice when the inevitable quandaries of life confronted her, as a shoulder to cry on when she needed it. She was still in the throes of devastation after his recent death, and right now she needed his strength, his very presence to help her deal with this nightmare.
Whatever hazy psychological reason lay behind her favourite childhood memory, she needed her father now, or more correctly, she needed her partner.
She had difficulty accepting what had happened. Her last memory was the drive to the railway station, fraught with the usual rush hour difficulties, but after that she could remember nothing until she came round hours – days – later in this small, cramped and dingy room and some man was fucking her.
Overcoming her initial shock and outrage, she made to throw him off and discovered that she could not move. She was pinned to a damp and uncomfortable mattress by his weight, and her wrists and ankles were bound to old fashioned, iron bed rails. He had jammed something into her mouth, making it difficult to swallow, and he had applied broad masking tape over her lips to prevent her spitting it out. All she could do was lay there while he took her.
He shuddered through a climax and for a short time lay there, regaining control over his breathing. Trish raged silently and impotently. The bastard had not used a condom and that meant he had no worries about leaving trivia like DNA samples behind. Why wasn’t he worried? Because he had no intention of allowing her to be found. Fear and fury made her heart beat strongly. If she could free just one foot she would teach this animal a lesson he would never forget.
And when he stood up, faced her, she recognised him instantly. The pain of betrayal was almost as great as his frightening abuse of her body. How could she have trusted him? How could he be so heartless as to take advantage of her vulnerability?
That was yesterday. Today she ached. Aside from a few minutes when her abductor had taken her to use the toilet, she had been bound in this position for over twenty-four hours. Every bone and muscle in her body was strained to the point where her whole nervous system seemed to be screaming agony at her.
“Anyone can contr
ol pain,” Croft had told her many times, “and hypnotically induced analgesia is one of the simplest effects to facilitate. It only requires concentration and the conviction that the body will not respond to pain.”
Now she wished she had listened more closely to him and learned the trick. She had tried concentrating, without success, and the only time she felt any relief was when she retreated to the beach at Bridlington, but even that memory was beginning to dim with the increasing discomfort of her rigid position.
With the curtains closed, there was little to mark the passage of time, but earlier, she had heard voices from below. She could not distinguish any words, but there was definitely more than one voice. She thought that by raising her buttocks from the bed and letting them fall again, she may be able to attract some attention, but when she tried, she learned that she was stretched so completely that even with her atrophied muscles fully flexed, she could raise her bottom no more than an inch from the mattress; insufficient to make any impression, woefully short of making any noise.
Soon after, the voices ceased and then he came to her again, stripping before her terrified eyes, massaging his member to a rampant erection and grinning down at her.
“You’re enjoying this, Sinclair. I know you are. You’ve never been fucked as expertly as this in your life.”
And he had taken her again. Unable to penetrate her bone-dry vagina, he had used Vaseline to grant him easy access and romped his way to a violent climax. Then, while Trish tried to reconcile the outrageous assault, he sat on the corner of the bed, toying with his flagging penis, and he talked to her.
“I’ve had a lot of women, but you are one of the best. And do you know why? Not because you’re in better shape than them. Some were younger than you, had tighter holes, bigger tits. Some were better hypnotised than you, and they responded with an enthusiasm that could have been real. No, Sinclair, it’s because you’re Croft’s woman. That’s what makes you better.” He ran a finger along her semen-stained vagina. “By now your boyfriend should be out there looking for you, and he’ll assume that you’re just another victim.”
He stood, turned to face her, moved up the bed and rubbed the glistening, flaccid bell against her nipple, his eyes half closing as he obviously revelled in the thrilling sensations.
“Is he in for a rude awakening? And while he’s puzzling it all out, I get to have his girl as many times as I want.”
27
With the time coming up to 11:30, even though the rain showed no signs of abating, Croft was glad to be out of the police station, but his relief was tinged with irritation and anxiety. He was annoyed that they would not take him seriously and shift the search for Trish into a higher gear, and anxiety for her safety.
Millie, on her way out on routine matters, accompanied him to the exit, and was sympathetic. “Most of what you said back there came out of left field, but made sense in a whacko sort of way, but what can I do? Ernie is in charge of this investigation and I have to follow orders.”
Croft was in no mood for olive branches. “You didn’t follow orders yesterday when you showed me those notes. Besides, aren’t inspectors allowed to chase up their own ideas?”
She agreed with a nod. “Yes, but the seriousness of these crimes warranted a larger team and a superior, more experienced officer. Ernie. He calls the shots.”
They paused in the police station exit, sheltering from the rain inside the doors.
“Where’s your car?” she asked.
Croft inclined his head out and towards the shopping mall. “Spinners.”
“Mine’s at the back of the station.” She took his hand as a gesture of reassurance. “Listen, Felix, there’s no point asking you to mind your own business and leave it to us –”
“None at all,” he interrupted.
“In that case,” Millie insisted, accepting his blunt confirmation, “will you do me a favour and keep me informed of anything you find?”
He hesitated a moment. In just over 24 hours he had learned a lesson Trish had been trying to teach him for years: never trust the police. On the other hand, he desperately wanted to find Trish, and he may need allies.
At length, he nodded. “Yes, of course.”
“You have my mobile number,” Millie reminded him. “Don’t ring the station. If you do, Ernie might get to the message first.”
Once more he gave his agreement and they stepped out into the rain.
“What’s your next move?” Millie asked.
He pulled his topcoat close about him to keep out the rain and cold. “The Handshaker hypnotises his victims. He must have hypnotised Trish at some time, and she must have been aware of it even if she didn’t know the extent he was taking it to. I need to know how he got to her, and I know exactly where to begin asking. I’ll catch you later.” He hurried off towards Spinners Shopping Mall, leaving Millie in the doorway staring after him.
The drive home was faster, less harassing than the morning’s journey to Scarbeck. Inside fifteen minutes, he was pulling in through the gates at Oaklands, where Mrs Hitchins waited for news.
“I can’t tell you anything, Christine,” he confessed, “because I don’t know anything.” It was not reassuring, but the daily left him with a cup of tea, her best wishes and a polite request that he keep her up to date on any developments.
Croft assured her that he would and when she left, he moved to the lounge, seeking Trish’s appointments diary, her pocketbook, mobile telephone, anything that might point him to her counsellor – the only person, other than himself, who might have hypnotised her. All he could remember was the person’s forename: Evelyn; one of those genderless names like Leslie, Pat or even his own shortened Christian name, Felix. But what was the counsellor’s surname?
He searched drawers and cupboards without success, then made his way to the bedroom, where he checked her bedside cabinet, drawing a blank once more. It was unlikely that it would be in his study, because Trish hated that room, but he checked it anyway, and again came away empty handed.
Turning from his desk, he made for the study door and paused. On one of the bookshelves was a photograph. He and Trish, taken at a Christmas party a couple of years back. It reminded him instantly of the night they met, just before Christmas, 2004.
Croft’s fame ensured that during the party season he received many invitations. He declined most of them, but in the dying throes of a sterile marriage, with his wife using any excuse to sneak off and meet with her lover, left to his own devices, and given the recent success of his weight control book, attendance at the university’s staff party was practically compulsory, and at the time he was a mere deputy department head.
He had been in the room less than an hour and was already becoming bored with the ‘shop talk’ when he found himself buttonholed by the bursar whining about cuts in government funding, and he noticed Trish standing at the makeshift bar. He excused himself, made his way to the bar, and ordered a whiskey sour.
“And lose the cherry,” he concluded.
Stood next to him, Trish smiled. “In the USA that kind of remark would raise quite few eyebrows.”
He grinned by return. “Whilst at the University of North West England it would cause no more than a frown of disapproval, and that would be from the Senior Tutor of Catering.” He offered his hand. “Felix Croft. Parapsychology.”
“Trish Sinclair. Soon to be Trish Sinclair, QC. I know your father.” She paused, her eyes raised to her left. “Come to think, everyone in the profession knows your father.”
Croft accepted his drink. “It’s sad when one’s renown is no more than a reflection of one’s father.”
Her humour, which would become one of the mainstays of his attraction to her, came to the surface. “Well, we can’t all expect to be famous in our own right, can we?”
The pleasant jibe at his recent elevation to the ranks of celebrity, pleased him. Sipping at his drink, savouring the bite of neat scotch offset with raw lemon juice and sugar, he gestured at the ro
om and its various cliques gathered in clutches, each with its own reserved space, senior faculty members wandering from one group to another, seeking fresh horizons or another set of ears upon which they could reiterate their favourite tales.
“Here we are,” he observed, “in the midst of the sharpest brains in Greater Manchester, and they don’t have an ounce of conversational creativity between them. Talking shop is the closest they can come.”
“Legal parties are the same,” she agreed. “I came here instead of going to chambers because I thought it might be different. Having chambers in the middle of Manchester helped, mind you. I didn’t fancy fighting my way into the city.”
“It will be worse on New Year’s Eve,” Croft observed, his interest already aroused. “So how come you got in here? Did you come with someone?”
She shook her head. “No. Like you, I teach here. I’m an occasional lecturer in criminal law.”
Croft’s interest level rose quickly. “Really? Does that mean I may get to see more of you?”
The ice well and truly broken, they spent the remainder of the evening monopolising each others’ company to the exclusion of everyone else, and when they left the university at just after midnight, they had made arrangements for dinner on Christmas Eve.
Over that meal, in a moorland restaurant that would become one of their favourites, they took time to get to know one another, and before the evening was over, Croft felt emboldened enough to ask what she was doing for New Year’s Eve.
“I’ve been invited to a concert at the Bridgewater hall with a colleague. The Northern Symphony Orchestra and a programme for the new decade.” She described speech quotes in the air as she delivered the final words. “Bach, Mozart, Sibelius, and would you believe Mussorgsky?” She chuckled as he made a face. “What? You don’t approve? You don’t think Mussorgsky suits the New Year.”
“I think the final movement of Pictures At An Exhibition would augment the chimes of midnight quite admirably,” he conceded, “but it’s all so glum, isn’t it? Classical music is fine in its place, but this is New Year’s Eve, and we should be celebrating.”
The Handshaker Page 15