The Handshaker

by David Robinson

  She recalled how quickly she had agreed to go out to Oaklands when he rang so distressed at Trish Sinclair’s apparent abduction. She could, she should have taken other officers with her, but she elected not to. Why?

  The answer was obvious and unwelcome. And yet, he had done nothing, said nothing to indicate interest in anyone but his missing girlfriend.

  “You’re getting old and broody, Millie,” she muttered, and picked up the latest note to distract her lurid thoughts.

  ‘Cunny Joe D’ and ‘do vets roger’ took her attention. They were obvious anagrams. Millie had seen the puzzle freak, Croft, at work and she began to play with the letters, the way he did, looking for words that made sense. It was hard work, but once she eliminated D-U-N-N it clicked into place. Joyce Dunn, and that meant that ‘do vets roger’ was an anagram of Dorset Grove.

  She glanced at the clock and was surprised to find that cracking the code had taken her eight minutes. She still did not consider it bad, and was busily congratulating herself when Croft opened her door, bundled her roughly across into the passenger seat, jumped behind the wheel, fired the engine and spun the car away from the gates, heading for the motorway.

  Angrily, Millie reached for her radio, but he snatched it from her.

  “Just behave, Millie, and we’ll get on fine,” he told her. “I don’t want to hurt you and if you’ve done your homework as I hinted, you should know by now that The Handshaker is playing this game, not me.” He put the radio in the door pocket at his side.

  Millie let rip with her temper. “You are a fucking idiot. Do you know every cop in the country is looking for you?”

  “Yes. I also know that while I’m free and still being hunted, The Handshaker’s plans are in tatters.”

  Millie was surprised. “What?”

  He turned west onto the M62 and accelerated quickly into the mid-morning traffic. “You should try going on the run, Millie. It helps clear your thinking processes.” Up ahead the mile marker for Birch Services appeared, Croft eased off and tucked in behind a lorry. “The Handshaker wants me. Killing these women is his way of passing the time, but his ultimate target is me. That’s why he took Trish. She’s the bait. But while I’m on the run, he’s up the creek. He needs me released and free to follow him to wherever he’s trying to lead me. Something Shannon won’t allow. When I saw that footage from Oaklands, everything clicked into place. For some reason, known only to him, The Handshaker wanted me arrested, but not charged. He took Rehana to let you people know that he was behind it all. Now, I’m afraid that poor girl is the next victim, not Trish. He has my partner, but he won’t kill her yet. Instead, he’ll murder Rehana. You should know by now that even if yesterday lunchtime’s footage was live, I hadn’t had time to get back to Oaklands, considering I was on foot, to kidnap her. Besides, my car was still in the drive and I left Thurrock handcuffed to yours. Rehana was there when we left, so logically, if it wasn’t me, then it had to be The Handshaker.”

  “You mean it had to be someone else.” Millie wondered why she was arguing when she agreed with him.”

  “Do you have another candidate in mind?” he wanted to know.

  Millie maintained her defiance. “How did The Handshaker know Rehana was there? It was a spur of the moment decision to put her on the drive. He can’t have planned it.”

  “He didn’t,” Croft said as he drifted off the motorway into the service station. “He was in the village all the time, watching. If you hadn’t put Rehana on the door, maybe he would have murdered Mrs Hitchins. I don’t know, but I’m betting that ultimately, his plan was to have me arrested then cleared. Leaving an officer on the door may have foxed him, but when he realised it was a woman, and an Asian woman to boot, he made an ad hoc move to show you just how resourceful he is. He took her, he’s probably raped and hanged her by now and if Shannon hadn’t been so obsessed with a quick fix, arresting me for something I didn’t do, it wouldn’t have happened.”

  He cruised along the lines of parked cars and reversed into a gap. Killing the engine, he half turned in his seat and faced her. “I need to be out and free to operate or we’ll never get him, but I need an ally, Millie. I need someone to keep me posted on what’s happening.”

  “Turn yourself in.”

  Croft shook his head determinedly. “Shannon will jail me at least for the weekend and The Handshaker will carry on killing. Worse than that, he may panic, murder Trish and clear off, then we’ll never get him. I need to be free. It has to end and sooner rather than later. He will only get to me when he thinks he can and he can’t while I’m inside. I don’t know how long Trish has, but it won’t be too long. He won’t kill her until he can draw me closer in and take me out too, but if you people panic him. . .” he trailed off with a shrug.

  Millie was adamant. “Turn yourself in.”

  “No.”

  For a moment, she looked out at the dark, rainy day. Then she passed over the latest note and her interpretation of it. “This arrived first thing this morning.”

  Croft studied it. “Line two refers to Joyce Dunn and Dorset Grove, line three is a reference to Rehana Begum. Cliff or Tex is me, rawl tarn fez is Franz Walter, of Heidelberg fame, and shark hen death is The Handshaker. He’s saying that Franz Walter didn’t do it, The Handshaker did and I’m an amateur.”

  Millie’s head spun. “Bloody hell. It took me ten minutes to get Joyce Dunn and Dorset Grove. You did all that in a minute.”

  “I use Cliff or Tex myself when I’m compiling crosswords,” he admitted, “but I saw shark hen death on a website, yesterday. A link from Carol Russell’s site.”

  The admission forced a wan smile to Millie’s lips. “You were surfing her site. She hates you and you’re no fan of hers, so why?”

  “Whatever I may think of her personally, it doesn’t alter the fact that she is the authority on The Handshaker,” Croft explained. “Did you know that she knew one of the victims. Sheila Greenhalgh. They had bereavement counselling together.”

  Now Millie’s pretty features creased into a frown. “Bereavement counselling? With Evelyn Kearns?”

  “No. She doesn’t say who. Did you speak to Evelyn?”

  Millie shook her head. “She wasn’t in when I called. I’m supposed to go back there today.” She picked up her bag and began to root through it. Croft’s face paled and Millie looked concerned. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s just occurred to me. Did you speak to anyone about Evelyn?”

  “Yes. I asked Ronnie Simpson to get me her address.”

  “If The Handshaker took Rehana, he may have had her radio. You didn’t ask for it over the air did you?”

  Millie felt uncharacteristically doubtful. “I, er, I can’t remember. I may have done. Why?”

  “If he overheard it, he’ll realise you were onto her. You couldn’t get Evelyn to answer yet I had no problem. She had a list of clients to see, so she wouldn’t have gone far. Millie, if he knew we were on that track, he may. . .” He trailed off not wanting to put his thoughts into words.

  “I’ll get onto it right away.” She grinned sheepishly. “As soon as you give me back my car, I’ll get onto it.” She paused a moment. “Felix, this kind of conditioning. Can it really be made to last so long?”

  He nodded. “It needs constant reinforcement, but Franz Walter abused Mrs E for seven years and even then he was only caught because he got greedy, which made her husband suspicious.”

  Croft’s mention of the German hypnotist reminded Millie. “I did mean to tell you, according to Ernie Shannon, there’s no such thing as The Heidelberg Case. He says you made it all up. He and his men couldn’t find a single reference to it anywhere on the Web.”

  “Which means it’s a figment of my imagination, eh?” Croft laughed cynically. “Go to my rooms at the university. Check the bookshelves, and somewhere there, you’ll find a copy of Hypnotism and Crime by Doctor H. E. Hammerschlag. It’s quite an old book, first published in England in the fifties.” He gave her an amu
sed stare. “Nearly twenty years before I was born. It contains a detailed account and brief analysis of the case. Oh, and while you’re there, you’ll find an old Remington typewriter which you can take away for comparison to the new notes you’ve received. You’ll find they were not produced on that machine.”

  Millie made a note. “All right. Getting back to what you told me about the case, Franz Walter had weekly access to Mrs E. What you’re suggesting is that The Handshaker had access to his women years ago and then left them alone for … well for years.”

  Croft disagreed. “How do we know that? We’re assuming that he abducted these women, kept them for three or four days while he fucked them senseless, and then topped them. But how do we know he didn’t have them weekly or fortnightly, and for years? We don’t and none of the women have survived to tell us anything, have they? Not even Sandra.” He checked the clock. “I’m going, Millie. If you have your boys running a GPS track on this car, they’ll be here before long, but you need to speak to Evelyn … if she’s able to answer. With luck, this time tomorrow, you could be knocking on his door. Millie,” he appealed to her, “I need your help. I need you to keep me posted.”

  “Turn yourself in.”

  “No. Look, you either help me or you don’t. You know I’m innocent. Persuade Shannon of that. Get him to lay off.”

  “You obviously don’t know Shannon,” Millie argued. “He will hunt you forever, and if he finds out I met you and then let you go, he’ll have my arse flame grilled for lunch. Turn yourself in.”

  He scribbled a number on the bottom of the Handshaker note Millie had given him to translate. “It’s a borrowed mobile. I don’t keep it switched on, but if you text that number I’ll check it several times a day and I won’t be on long enough for you to track me on GPS, or if you do, I’ll be long gone before you can get there.” He opened the door, climbed out and walked away.

  Millie watched him disappear, thought about following him for a moment, and then climbed sadly into the driver’s seat, gunned the engine and drove slowly back towards Scarbeck.

  49

  After Croft left her at the service station, Millie drove to the university, where the Principal, recalling his caustic exchange with Shannon, authorised security to let her into Croft’s room.

  Under the officer’s watchful eye, she first took Croft’s Remington typewriter and dropped it into a carrier bag. Leaving that in the armchair nearest the door, she turned her attention to the books on the shelves lining the rear wall.

  There were hundreds of titles and with Croft’s typical lack of organisation, there was no rhyme or reason to their arrangement: a beaten, hardback copy of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol stood adjacent to a paperback on UFOs by Nick Pope, a block of eight James Bond paperbacks were interleaved with a hardback copy of Mysteries of Modern Britain by Janet and Colin Bord, and also two paperbacks from American authors, one on the Nasca Plain in Peru and the other discussing the relevance of the Great Pyramids to the constellation Sirius. There were books on ghosts, telepathy, general paranormal studies, more on UFOs, a dozen texts on hypnosis, one or two on crimes with supposed supernatural links, and to cap it off, he even had a copy of Conan Doyle’s The Hound Of The Baskervilles.

  Without any idea of the book’s cover, Millie had little option but to run along them with her finger on each spine, reading the titles, until after fifteen minutes, she finally found Heinz Hammerschlag’s Hypnotism and Crime slipped in between a text book on O level English and an Andy Capp cartoon annual, which, judging from the state of the cover, dated from the 60s.

  Coming out of the university, she spent an hour in her car reading and digesting the Heidelberg account and, happy that Croft had been telling the truth, she returned to the familiar bustle of activity at the police station.

  Rapping on Shannon’s door, she stepped in to find him, feet on desk, reading The Sun.

  “A word?”

  Bringing his feet down, he waved at his visitor chair. “Park your B-T-M and pick your word.”

  With a glance back into the CID room to ensure her subordinates were paying no particular attention, Millie shut the door and turned on Shannon. “You are fucking this job up.”

  Colouring up, he went immediately on the attack. “Watch it, Matthews. You’re not above charges of insubordination, you know, and you’ve overstepped the mark more than once this week.”

  She registered the use of her surname and ignored it. “You’re the one who needs to watch it, Ernie. Felix Croft is not guilty. The note this morning refers to Rehana Begum and Joyce Dunn.”

  “We’d already worked that out.”

  “Croft cannot have kidnapped Rehana. He didn’t have time.”

  Shannon frowned. “Not that again. Where’s your proof?”

  Anticipating his defeat, Millie explained, “I got a text from Croft last night. It’s what tipped me off that Rehana had been abducted in the first place. Today, I went to the BBC to check on the times they filmed outside Oaklands yesterday. They were there within fifteen or twenty minutes of Croft’s arrest. At the time they were setting up their cameras, and filming their first piece, Croft was still with Dave Thurrock, and Rehana was already gone.”

  Shannon was gobsmacked. For a long moment, he said nothing. Then his face slowly changed, his mouth closed and twisted into a familiar grimace of fury. When he spoke, it was as if he had ignored most of her statement. “You had a text from Croft, and you never said anything about it?”

  “Correct.”

  “That is –”

  “Acceptable procedure,” Millie interrupted, “when a senior officer is convinced that her immediate superior has become blind to the truth. I’m a Detective Inspector, not some jobsworth fresh out of training. I am capable and authorised to follow up leads and lines of inquiry with or without your approval.” Having reminded him of her status, she pressed home the assault. “You have allowed a simple, single, spurious lead, the pen, to pull you off track and away from the main thrust of our investigation. Croft’s explanation of his familiarity with Joyce Dunn was perfectly acceptable, and you’ve seen his room at the university. You saw it when you went there looking for him yesterday. He is vague and untidy. He could have lost that pen anywhere, including Sandra Lumb’s place, where The Handshaker probably found it when he was pissing about with Sandra’s mind. You had no cause to arrest Croft, let alone go on TV to declare him a felon, and you certainly had no business accusing him of taking Rehana without some form of evidence. While every officer in this town is hunting for Croft, our focus is shifted from The Handshaker as a result of which he’s taken and probably murdered that poor girl. I followed up a lead from Croft, and it turned out he was right, you were wrong. He is not a killer, he did not kidnap Rehana and neither did he kill Joyce Dunn, nor Victoria Reid.”

  Stung into retaliation, Shannon snapped, “How the hell do you know?”

  “Because she’s mentioned in the latest note for Christ’s sake,” shouted Millie and threw down the sheets of paper she had worked on at the university gates. “Cunny Joe D, Joyce Dunn, do vets roger, Dorset Grove, rawl tarn fez, Franz Walter, Cliff or Tex, Felix Croft, shark hen death, The Handshaker. All prepared on the same typewriter.”

  “Croft’s typewriter.” Shannon insisted.

  “Wrong again,” she snapped. “I visited Croft’s room at the university, and took his machine. Forensics have just run a preliminary check for me while I waited. Too early to be absolutely sure, but it’s not the same machine.”

  “Yes we know he switched to a Remington but –”

  Millie tore into him again. “I’m talking about the Remington, Ernie. This is not the same machine as produced the notes Croft and we received earlier this week.”

  “He could have more than one.” Shannon was practically pleading as he sought further rationale.

  “Fuck off.”

  Shannon began the fight back. Half standing, he shouted, “Don’t tell me to fuck off. I know what I’m on about. I had
people check up on this Heidelberg twaddle. I told you yesterday, it’s a figment of his twisted imagination. He’s been taking the piss with us all week.”

  With a triumphant gleam in her eye, Millie threw the book on Shannon’s desk. “First translated into English in nineteen fifty-five, eighteen years before Croft was born.”

  If Millie’s announcement on Croft’s innocence concerning the abduction of Rehana Begum and the typewriter had startled Shannon, the appearance of the book stunned him into silence. He looked from it to her and back again, as if both had betrayed him. He picked it up, examined the cover, then opened it. For a long moment he studied the contents page, then flipped through to the chapter detailing The Heidelberg Case. He skimmed pages, taking in a name here, a sentence there, a paragraph on this page, a description on that page. At length, with a grunt, he threw the book back down.

  “You’ve proved nothing,” he snapped. “The Handshaker could have claimed Joyce Dunn’s killing from the news reports.”

  “And how did he find out about Rehana Begum?” Millie let out a frustrated sigh. “I’ve all but proved that Croft is not guilty of abducting Rehana, and forensics will prove whether he was anywhere near Joyce Dunn or Victoria Reid. Both had semen on their bodies, and I’ll bet next month’s salary it’s The Handshaker’s.”

  His breath coming heavily, quickly, Shannon snatched up the phone and punched in four digits. “Shannon. Preliminary reports on Joyce Dunn and Victoria Reid; do we have an analysis of the semen on both bodies?” He listened a moment and across the desk Millie could hear the muffled voice of someone in forensics talking back. “I see. Thanks.” The superintendent put the phone down. “No final analysis as yet, but it appears to be the same semen as found on other Handshaker victims.” Before Millie could gloat, he pressed on. “However, there was no semen on Joyce’s legs, whereas The Handshaker jerked off over every other victim while they hung, so there’s something fishy there. And it still doesn’t explain why Croft did a runner yesterday, nor why he hasn’t come in.”