The Handshaker

by David Robinson

  “You couldn’t find nothing on it, could you?” Shannon asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Well, like I was trying to tell you earlier, I did. I got onto Division and they asked the NCIS to chase it up. No one came up with anything. They asked Interpol and trawled the web for it.” Shannon braked once more for a set of lights.

  Millie frowned. “He did say it was obscure.”

  “So obscure that it doesn’t exist,” Shannon assured her. “Croft made it all up. It’s in his head, no one else’s. I was just about to push him on it when you turned up back there.” He jerked his head back the way they had come.

  “Bullshit.” Millie’s remark, intended for herself, was too loud and Shannon heard it.

  “All right then,” he asked, accelerating away from the lights. “What do you think?”

  Up ahead, the town centre approached rapidly and Millie took a moment to ponder everything as they skirted Shambles roundabout, passing the exit for the by-pass and turning onto the lower end of Yorkshire Street.

  “I think you’re wrong.”

  Shannon was about to protest, but Millie pressed on.

  “I think it all needs to be checked out, certainly. I wouldn’t have come to his place if I didn’t need an explanation for that pen. We’ve left no stones unturned up to now and I don’t see why we should make an exception in Croft’s case because, as you point out, he fits part of the bill, but I think we’ll find that he really is what he claims to be. An innocent bystander with the right knowledge, dragged into it without so much as a by your leave nor kiss my arse, nor nothing, for reasons which we don’t know. I’ll tell you something else, too. I think when the SOCOs and doctor have finished with Victoria Reid, we’re gonna find she was fucked bareback and the spunk will be The Handshaker’s, not Croft’s. And when that happens, Ernie, his girlfriend, if we get her alive, will come down on you from a great height.”

  Silence fell. Shannon concentrated on his driving, negotiating the ins and outs of Union Street where buses pulled into stops and illegally parked cars obstructed the carriageway. At the bottom of Peter Street, he turned sharp right and fifty yards further on, hung a left in to Barn Street and the rear entrance to the police station. Shannon led the way into reception.

  “Ronnie,” Millie asked, “where has Thurrock taken Croft?”

  Sergeant Simpson was mystified. “Thurrock? Croft? I haven’t seen them ma’am.”

  37

  Passing through the village of Allington, The Handshaker called at the post office, where he bought stamps. He climbed back into the car, and reversed into Moss Lane so he could retrace his route towards Oaklands. He stopped, tucking the car tight into the hedgerows, and leaving the engine running, he considered the situation.

  Everything had gone exactly to plan… almost.

  Croft had obviously solved the early part of the anagram, gone into the wood and found Victoria. The Handshaker had driven past the Allington Woods visitor parking area three times now, and each time the plain white vans of the police Scene of Crime Team and Scientific Support were parked there, the woods were cordoned off and uniformed officers stood at the entrance to the footpaths. Meanwhile, the senior officer, Shannon, whom The Handshaker had seen arrive, was in Oaklands, presumably talking to Croft. Eventually, two more officers arrived at the house, and The Handshaker guessed that they had found Joyce. The next thing he knew, Croft was led out to one of the patrol cars, and the whole lot of them drove off.

  Everything exactly as he anticipated, but now the bastards had put a cop on the drive and he had not planned on that. With hindsight, it was the logical thing for them to do, to prevent anyone tampering with non-existent evidence in that house but it did not help The Handshaker. With a cop on the front door he could hardly march in and dispatch the housekeeper.

  Deep in thought he tossed the options in his mind.

  Could he kill the cop? Yes he could, but it would throw the timetable out of kilter by confirming that Croft was innocent, and while such confirmation was required, it was not desirable for at least 24 hours. Time enough for Croft to suffer the hell of incarceration and interrogation.

  An idea struck him. Could he take the cop? She was another jigaboo by the look of her, like that inspector. Or maybe a Paki, the same one who’d been in the Spinners when Sandra obligingly chucked herself off the upper level. Typical police procedure. You want a menial job doing, give it to a wog. Not that The Handshaker disapproved of such a policy. It was all they were fit for.

  Could he? Dare he? He’d have to be bloody careful that the daily didn’t come out of the house, but it would be a real coup to nick one of them from right under their noses. And they would not twig she was even missing for a good few hours, maybe a full day, so Croft would still be put through the mill long enough to knock the stuffing out of him.

  It was daunting, it was daring, but if he could pull it off, it would be a masterstroke.

  Near to the woods, half a mile from Oaklands, there were the media, TV and press, waiting for statements from the filth. He noticed that fat bitch, Carol Russell, amongst their number. Working for both the Scarbeck Reporter and Radio Scarbeck, and she hated Croft almost as much as The Handshaker did. If she got wind of the arrest, she’d be up at Oaklands like a shot. He would have to be quick getting the wog cop away from the house before Scarbeck’s most famous reporter turned up.

  Grinning savagely, he slipped the car into gear, knocked the handbrake off and slowly let the clutch in, keeping engine noise to a minimum. He was just another motorist, pulling out into the main road.

  He was not wearing the old anorak he used as The Handshaker, and the car was different, too. It was his own Peugeot and not the Ford the police had been seeking for two years. The policewoman would never make the connection, but there were other questions he needed to ask himself. Questions on how he would proceed further down the line.

  How would he get her into his house? He wouldn’t. He’d leave her in the shed. Suppose she didn’t react? No point even trying hypnosis. He had no idea of her response and if he failed, it would give everything away. He reached across, flipped open the glove box, and clasped a tiny syringe. He was running out. He’d have to order more before long. Or maybe not. He was into the final phase and there was little need of it from now on. Once Croft and Sinclair were history, he could leave Scarbeck, settle somewhere else, and go back to the old way.

  He cruised slowly, steadily along Allington Lane up to the sharp bend where the blackened stone of Oaklands’ entrance stood. He put on a right turn signal, and eased the wheel over, guiding the nose of his tiny car through the entrance. On seeing the police officer, he stopped.

  She came towards him and he got out, turning up the hood of his cagoule against the rain. His hand closed around the syringe.

  “Can I help you, sir?” she asked.

  The blue badge on her bright lemon, hi-visibility coat identified her as PC Begum. So she was Paki. The Handshaker wondered idly if the tales he’d heard of them were true? They were supposed to be the supreme fucks because they understood that their bodies were there for a man’s pleasure.

  “I’m afraid I’m lost,” he said.

  She drew nearer. A pretty thing, maybe 20 years old, dark, almond eyes gazing from under a short, jet black fringe, her skin contrasting sharply with her crisp, white blouse.

  “I was looking for Esterham Road,” he told her.

  “You’re not far,” said WPC Begum.

  As she continued to speak, The Handshaker risked a glance up at the house. No sign of any movement behind any of the windows, but some rooms had net curtains and anyone could be watching from behind the glass. This would have to be fast.

  Begum obligingly flung out an arm, pointing back towards the village.

  “That’s Allington Lane. It becomes Esterham Road on the other side of the village. Was there a particular address you’re looking for?”

  She never learned that there was not. Like lightning, The Hand
shaker grabbed her outstretched arm and swiftly jammed the needle in, ramming the plunger home.

  Begum barely had time to say “ouch” before she was slipping into a confused daze.

  The Handshaker whipped open the rear door of his car and bundled her in. Her hand wove drunkenly towards the radio at her waist. He beat her to it, snatching it from her. He pressed her onto the rear seat, stripped off his cagoule and threw it over her. Leaning in, he looked down at her pretty face and clubbed her once on the jaw. As her eyes closed, he prayed he had not killed her. He wanted her once or twice before he sent her to Allah.

  Climbing behind the wheel, he spun the car round and raced out of the gates, along Allington Lane towards Scarbeck. A quick glance as he came out of the gates saw the TV van making its way up with Carol Russell’s car behind.

  Adrenaline flooded his bloodstream. He’d done it. The job lacked the finesse of his previous abductions, but he had bloody done it, got himself a bit of black in his car, a wog and a cop to boot, and he’d done it in broad daylight. The only downside was that he’d have to wait until tonight before he could enjoy her.

  Or had he really got away with it? He had no way of knowing whether someone had seen him from inside the house. For all he knew, they might already be calling the law. There was no way he could know and if he went home and they called … yes there was. Begum’s radio.

  He picked it up from the passenger seat and checked that it was switched on, before putting it back down, one ear tuned to it as he drove down the hill to Pearman’s.

  “Golf, zulu, echo, from control, RTA, at the junction of Warton Avenue and Hollins Road. Paramedics on their way, over.”

  “Control from golf, zulu, echo, we’re on our way, sarge, over.”

  “Roger golf, zulu, echo. ETA please? Over.”

  “Three, four minutes, over.”

  “Roger. Control out.”

  The Handshaker weighed up the odds. He didn’t know Warton Avenue, but Warton district was on the south side of town, and Hollins Road ran from Ashton Road through to Manchester Road, so for golf, zulu, echo to be three or four minutes away placed them well out of his vicinity.

  Several hundred yards from Pearman’s, before the tail of the traffic jam, he turned right off Huddersfield Road, and threaded his way through narrow streets of terraced and semi-detached housing, before emerging onto Pennine Road, half a mile up the hill from Pearman’s. Making a right, he headed away from town towards Winridge Estate. While he drove, he listened to the various messages coming over the airwaves. There was not a single call for Begum, nor any call to any officer to report her abduction.

  Then, without warning, the radio burst into life again, the signal strong, the voice clear.

  “Alpha Four to control. Ronnie, it’s Millie. Can you look up and address for Evelyn Kearns for me. She’s a counsellor.”

  “Wilco, ma’am.”

  The Handshaker’s heart leapt. Evelyn Kearns? How the hell had they found out about her? There was only one answer. Croft! Bastard! This would need instant attention. The minute he dropped the cop off at the shed, he would have to deal with that old bag.

  Dropping onto Winridge Estate, the exhilaration he had felt at the abduction of a policewoman was gone, replaced by the brooding sense of a plan going awry. Croft had been sharper off the mark than The Handshaker anticipated, and it begged the question: how much did he know? It couldn’t be much. Evelyn Kearns’ hypnotically induced amnesia was deep and tightly controlled, and even if Croft were allowed access to her – which after this morning would be unlikely for at least another few hours – it would take many sessions to undo.

  “One thing at a time, old boy,” he muttered to himself as he turned up Kent Road.

  He brought his attention to bear on dealing with the cop. Evelyn Kearns would have to wait.

  In many ways, this was the riskiest part of the business. If even one person saw him, he was snookered and he would have no choice but to drop all his plans and run for it.

  Further along the road, he stopped alongside a row of ramshackle garages, climbed out, and checked for signs of onlookers. No one. He opened up the middle one of five, and reversed his car in, backing up to within inches of the tarpaulin-covered vehicle at the rear.

  This was a chancy operation. Once more he told himself there was no way of knowing how many people had seen him from the estate, whether any of them were taking particular notice and whether they’d gone to the trouble of noting down his registration number. If they had, things would get difficult. Not impossible, merely complex.

  He drew the doors shut, opened the boot of his car and took out a powerful flashlight. Switching it on, hooking it onto the open boot lid, he whipped the tarpaulin from the silver grey Ford Fiesta at the rear, fished into the glove box and came out with a ball of twine.

  Returning to his car, he dragged the barely conscious Begum from the back, stripped off her hi-vis jacket, and threw it to the rear of the Fiesta.

  Rehana lolled heavily in his arms as he turned her and leaned her onto the car. Yanking her arms behind her back, he bound her wrists, ran his cord down, bound her ankles, then yanked a slip knot tight so that she bent sharply at the knee, striking her forehead on the doorframe as she buckled.

  He slipped his hands through the narrow gap of her armpits and fondled her breasts. Not much, but firm and well rounded. He’d find out for sure later.

  He dragged her back to the Fiesta and threw her onto the rear seat. As she landed, her skirt rode up.

  “Might as well have a quick dekko,” he said to himself and pushed the skirt further up to reveal her white panties under the dark tights. “White on black. Nice.”

  Next, opening the boot of the Fiesta, he took out a carpet knife and a roll of adhesive tape. Returning to her, he pulled down Rehana’s tights, cut off her knickers, twirled them in his hands while he feasted on the sight of her bared sex, and when the panties were formed into a slender band, he jammed them across her mouth and taped them in place. It was unlikely that anyone would hear her if she came round and cried out, but now she couldn’t cry out anyway.

  Locking up the Fiesta, he removed the lamp, closed and locked the Peugeot boot, then drew the tarpaulin back over the Fiesta. With the job done, he peered cautiously out of the garage doors, looking up and down Kent Road. The rain kept most people indoors. There were a number of cars parked outside the shops, a hundred yards away, but no people to be seen. Outside the houses opposite, most cars were conspicuous by their absence. To the left, he could see a woman walking away from him with a bagful of shopping on her arm.

  All clear. He opened the doors, drove the Peugeot out, quickly closed and locked the garage doors again and climbing into the Peugeot, drove off, chuckling quietly to himself. Time to deal with Evelyn.

  38

  In the back seat of the police saloon car leaving Oaklands, Croft had quickly learned that the rear doors could only be opened from the outside, and any hope of escape meant getting past DC Thurrock in the front.

  As they approached the holdup at Pearman’s Junction, while Thurrock concentrated on juggling for a position in the single, available lane, Croft leaned into the gap between the front seats. The young detective was immediately on his guard, prepared to nudge the car into the kerb, already reaching for the hand-held radio from its dashboard holder.

  “Just keep driving, Thurrock,” Croft advised. “If I wanted to be away, I’d have gone by now.”

  Eyes haunted with suspicion, Thurrock left the radio and eased the car forward with the slow moving traffic.

  “Is this logical?”

  Croft’s question took the policeman by surprise. “What?”

  “Is it logical?” the hypnotist repeated. “Arresting me. Taking me in for questioning, and why? Because I knew Joyce Dunn ten years ago. You’ve heard of Ricky LeFleur, the pop singer?”

  Thurrock nodded. “What about him?”

  “I know him too.”

  The young CID man snorted. �
��Not impressed.”

  “I didn’t tell you to impress you,” said Croft. “My point is, Ricky was prosecuted for possession last year. Are you going to question me on it?”

  Thurrock edged his way into the offside lane. “Any reason why we should?”

  Croft admired Thurrock’s control mechanisms. While he gave the impression of a devil-may-care attitude, he, too, had learned the secret of controlling verbal exchanges by asking questions, not answering them.

  Croft nevertheless pressed home his attack. “Because I know him.”

  “That’s crap.”

  The traffic moved forward through the lights and edged nearer to the line of cones blocking the nearside lane. Thurrock’s eyes darted from the road just ahead, where a small van was nosing out, to his offside wing mirror, and Croft guessed he would be judging the distance between them and Shannon’s car.

  “Of course it’s crap,” said Croft, “but that’s precisely why you’re running me in now. A woman has turned up dead, I know her, so I’m being questioned.”

  “No,” Thurrock disagreed. “We’re taking you in because your pen was found there.”

  “You don’t know that it was my pen,” Croft argued. “You’re assuming it is because it looks like one of mine, but you don’t know. Not yet.”

  Thurrock opened his mouth as if he was going to say something, thought better of it and concentrated on inching his way forward, nose to tail with the small van, preventing another vehicle from moving out.

  “And here’s another thing,” Croft went on. “Yesterday morning in Spinners, I tried to stop Sandra Lumb throwing herself over the edge. Rehana Begum knew. Would I have done that if I’d conditioned her into doing it in the first place? And my girlfriend is gone missing. Why would I abduct my own partner? ”

  The driver of the vehicle immediately behind them flashed his lights. Presumably letting someone out. It distracted Thurrock momentarily. He cast his eyes into the mirror and instead of the view behind, caught Croft’s intense stare, urging him to believe. Thurrock ignored it and as the traffic ahead suddenly picked up speed through the roadworks, so he accelerated with it. He braked quickly at the lights outside the Boat & Horses pub where he stopped again and once more checked the wing mirror, seeking his boss.