The Handshaker

by David Robinson

  Millie resisted the temptation to offer an explanation. Instead, she concurred, “No, it doesn’t, but there is something more important we have to get onto.”

  “Such as?”

  Editing out all reference to Croft, she explained her worries about Evelyn Kearns. “According to my information, she had appointments. She should have been in. I called a few times, remember, and got nothing. If The Handshaker overheard my remark via Rehana’s radio, it could mean she’s already dead.”

  Shannon snatched up the phone and within seconds had dispatched two officers to Evelyn’s address. “And if you don’t get an answer, break the door down,” he concluded. “I hope you’re wrong, Millie.”

  The phone buzzed again. Shannon snatched it up. He listened a moment and his face split into a broad grin. “Got the fucker.”

  Millie frowned. “What? Got who?”

  Shannon led the way out. “What is it, Thurrock?”

  All eyes turned on the DC. “Croft.” Thurrock beamed. “He’s using his mobile. Somewhere in the grounds at UNWE.”

  Shannon smiled again at his subordinate. “Whether or not he’s The Handshaker, he still has charges to answer, Millie. Take Thurrock, get out there and bring him in. I’ll stand by for news of Rehana and Evelyn Kearns.”

  Puzzled and concerned, Millie nodded. “Don’t forget Trish Sinclair,” she reminded him.

  They drove across town in near silence, Millie wondering how Thurrock could have got a trace on Croft when the hypnotist had told her he was using a borrowed phone.

  The question was answered twenty minutes later when they arrived at the grounds. Thurrock rang the tracking centre and they guided them not to the main building but the woods off to the Western side, where Danny the gardener was raking leaves.

  “Danny,” asked Millie while Thurrock spoke on the mobile to the tracking centre, “have you seen anything of Mr Croft?”

  Danny shook his head. “Ain’t seen him for a coupla days. Not since before you buggers arrested him.”

  Thurrock shut off his phone. “I don’t believe this. According to GPS we’re within a few metres of him.”

  But Millie understood at once. “Danny, could I see your mobile phone please?”

  With a shrug of disinterest, Danny reached into his overalls, retrieved the phone and handed it over. Millie removed the back and withdrew the SIM card.

  “I’ll bet you that’s from Croft’s phone,” she declared. “He swapped the cards.”

  Thurrock narrowed angry eyes on Danny. “I thought you said you haven’t seen him?”

  “I haven’t,” yelped Danny. “Not for days.” He rounded his bulky frame on the young detective. “You start hassling me, and I’ll talk to my union. They’ve got lawyers, you know.”

  Thurrock waved the gardener away and addressed Millie. “I don’t see how Croft could have swapped the cards unless this finger helped him.” He gestured at Danny as the ‘finger’ in question.

  “Don’t you?” Millie’s voice was soft and assured. “I do. Come on. We’re wasting our time here.”

  They walked back to the car. As they reached it, her phone rang. It was Shannon.

  “You were right, Millie,” said the superintendent. “We just found Evelyn Kearns.”

  “Dead?”

  “Strangled,” reported Shannon. “We’re having all her equipment and records brought in. I’ll keep a crew here all night if I have to, but I’ll find this bastard.”

  50

  It was just after 9:30 that evening when Millie returned to the university, where she dismissed the constable Shannon had placed on the gates.

  Watching him drive away, she drove into the grounds and a security officer stopped her at the main entrance. “Sorry, miss, the place is shut for the night and we’ll be locking the main gates in half an hour.”

  She flashed her warrant card and he backed off. “I just need a poke around the gardener’s hut. I’ll come for you to let me out when I’m done.”

  While he wandered off, muttering mutinously to himself, she ambled away from the building towards the tree line, and the wooden shed Danny used as a base. Soon, the dim illumination from the main building was lost and the going underfoot became wet and slippery. Reaching the hut, she beamed her flashlight on it. Not locked. She had not expected it to be.

  Turning the doorknob, she pushed it open and stepped in, switching on the light.

  The place was compact and busy. The tools of Danny’s trade hung around the walls; spades, forks, rakes, a strimmer. Wooden shutters covered the only window, and on a nearby bench stood a portable TV, alongside which was a small gas ring. A wisp of steam escaped from a kettle on the burner and when she felt the kettle it was hot to the touch. In the far corner a pile of old blankets were spread over a lumpy piece of equipment, and two uncomfortable looking armchairs were sited by the bench.

  “It’s all right, Felix, you can come out. I’m alone.”

  Nothing happened. Nothing moved and Millie felt a curious sense of satisfaction, as if she would have resented being proved right.

  Then the blankets shifted and he appeared from under them, grinning. “Now, how the hell did you get to me?”

  ***

  Millie found the chair quite comfortable despite its dilapidated condition. She drank a cup of freshly made tea, while Croft set up the computer and accessed the Internet via his mobile phone and Danny’s SIM card.

  “Danny,” Croft explained as he opened up the BBC website, “is hypnotised. He doesn’t even know I’m here. He comes in, has his breaks here, but if anyone asks, he won’t remember seeing me. I’ve ordered him not to. It’s called a negative hallucination.” He smiled at her. “Is that how you rumbled it, Millie?”

  “I recalled you saying that you had been hypnotising him for years and he was easy meat for you,” she replied. “You weren’t at home, you weren’t in your rooms here at the university, and when we got a GPS location on your phone, it led us to Danny. I drew the obvious conclusion.” She sipped her tea. “Felix, I want you to come in so we can officially clear you.”

  He refused with a shake of the head. “If I do that, The Handshaker will kill Trish. Not because he’s lost out, but because he won’t know whether Shannon will release me.”

  “I meant to ask this morning,” she said bringing her thoughts to bear. “The Lumbs’ place, last night. Someone broke a window, trying to get in. Was it you?”

  With a humorous nod, Croft briefly explained what had happened. “I thought I might bring him into the open. I didn’t realise you’d planted a volumetric alarm in there.”

  “Warding off souvenir hunters. The alarms are cheap and tacky, but they serve their purpose on an estate like Winridge.” Millie finished her tea and stood up, gathering her coat about her. “Felix, I have no option but to arrest you and if you don’t come in, I’ll call for back up and we’ll take you. I may not be able to stop you on my own, but the university is crawling with security men. You will be charged with resisting arrest and probably assaulting Dave Thurrock, but in view of the help you’ve given us, and the things we’ve learned today, I’d say both charges are likely to be dropped. Would you like to come down to the station where we’ll take a statement on the events of the last twenty four hours?”

  Croft shook his head and shifted the Internet screen to The Handshaker message board. “I can’t. And here’s why.”

  Millie shifted to the bench and read the messages. Beneath Croft’s challenge a fresh post had appeared, its header identifying it as being posted from the Scarbeck Internet Café.

  She read it.

  With Sir Dick’s wren

  I pail a ricin scart

  The last one to go

  I avenge huge bar mark

  Or peel the large zit

  Not with a whimper but a bang

  “I pail a ricin scart. Again.” Millie looked up at Croft, questioning with her eyes. “He’s letting you know he has her, but you did say he won’t harm her until he has you?
”

  Croft suddenly looked tired. “I said he won’t kill her. That doesn’t mean he won’t abuse her.”

  Millie concentrated on the rest of the verse. “Have you solved any of the rest of it?”

  He nodded sadly. “It’s a threat to Trish’s life, for sure. She’ll be the last one to go, and I interpret that to mean that she will be the last to die.”

  “And the remainder?”

  The strain showed on Croft’s features. “Huge bar mark and peel the large zit are obvious anagrams but I haven’t cracked them yet. Not with a whimper but a bang paraphrases TS Eliot.”

  “The Hollow Men.” Millie smiled grimly at Croft’s surprise. “Not all police officers are numpties, you know. Like you, I have a degree, and I enjoy modern poetry.” Still puzzled, she read the screen yet again, and voiced her thoughts. “Sir Dick’s wren. Have you worked it out? Anyone called Sir Richard connected to ornithology or a naturalist?”

  “Yes and I drew an almost total blank.”

  “Almost total?”

  Again there was the wan, humourless smile. “I got thousands of Sir Richards and millions of ornithologists and naturalists, but I couldn’t find a single instance where the two went together.” Croft came away from the screen. “It means I’m interpreting the reference incorrectly. The Handshaker is a clever man and the key to understanding a cryptic clue is to think the way the compiler does. I’m thinking ornithology, he’s not.”

  Millie shrugged, feeling helpless. “Any other references to wrens?”

  Croft nodded. “Thousands, again. From the bird, to the Women’s Royal Navy, to some organisation for energy conservation.” He sat in the armchair. “He has me beaten, Millie. Unless I can crack this code Trish will die, and very soon.”

  She came to him, perched on the arm of his chair, and rested a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “Felix, come in to the station. Give yourself up. We’ll have you cleared – or bailed – in a matter of hours and then you can work with us.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t. I said all along, Millie, The Handshaker doesn’t want you. He wants me. My arrest was part of the game, but I’m sure he meant to have me released fairly quickly. When I escaped, it screwed up his plans, but I managed to get his attention again through the Internet, and the game is back on. While he has Trish, he knows I have to follow his lead and it will take me to some kind of final confrontation. This verse,” he gestured flaccidly at the computer screen, “tells me where, but I haven’t worked it out yet. He won’t dispose of her until he has me in the same killing bottle, but if you get close to him, he’ll deal with her and go to ground again.”

  “There’s still the Evelyn Kearns material,” she reminded him. “Our people are working their way through it right now.”

  “Tenuous. She said his initials were G.B. but there’s nothing to say his full name will be anywhere in her files. Even if you could identify him, you’d have to find him, and ten to one he’s not living in this area under the same name he practised under. No, Millie. I can see the sense of what you’re saying, but I have to follow this through, even if means losing my own life.” He looked up at her. “And you can help me.”

  “How?”

  “Keep in touch. You know how to contact me. Just keep me posted. Give me until Monday morning,” he pleaded. “If nothing’s happened by then, I’ll come in to the station because,” he sighed, “if we’re no nearer, Trish will be dead.”

  He stared glumly at the dusty, wooden floor.

  Millie felt some sympathy, but argued her case. “You’re asking me to jeopardise my entire career.” She began to pace the shed, her heels clicking on the hard, wooden floor, her face working anxiously. Suddenly she whirled on him. “I’m not just a token nigger, you know. I’ve worked bloody hard, fought against racism, sexism, even inverted ageism, to get to my level, and I mean to go further, but I won’t do that by assisting wanted suspects.”

  “I know,” he said sadly. “But if you take me in, you’ll sign Trish’s death warrant. The Handshaker will not believe that you’re willing to hold and then release me in time to do whatever he’s planning.”

  Millie floundered with uncharacteristic indecision. Croft’s suggestion went against everything she stood for, everything she had worked for and yet the persuasiveness of his arguments was undeniable. Was it just his arguments persuading her?

  She turned to look down on his pitiable, sagging form, and felt a huge wave of compassion for him. He was a man dragged into an insane world whether he wanted it or not, and he stood to lose the one thing he cherished most. Millie had never seen him but well dressed and clean-shaven. Over a day and a half on the run had done him few favours. He looked dirty, unkempt and a heavy growth of beard, married to the scruffy clothes he had bought from the secondhand shop, made him look even more pitiful, like a man who had come down on his uppers. She wanted to crush him to her, take away the pain he suffered, put everything right.

  Slowly Croft looked up, a spark of hope in his eyes. Millie could hold back no longer. She rushed to him, and locked her lips onto his.

  And when it was over, when they were spent, exhausted, she glowed in the memory of a blazing interlude that had both delighted and drained her.

  “Now I am in trouble,” she whispered in his ear.

  “Hmm?”

  “Not only harbouring an escaped suspect, but letting him dock in port.”

  November 19th

  51

  Millie greeted the grey, rainy day confused and depressed, and accurately diagnosed the depression as a result of the confusion.

  Whether or not Croft was innocent, she was culpable. She knew the whereabouts of a suspect, and had kept the information to herself, and agreed to continue keeping his location secret. Worse than that, she had screwed him and worse still, she had enjoyed it, wanted more.

  There could never be more. Croft was pining for Trish Sinclair, and last night was a spur-of-the-moment thing; a singularity in their separate universes which she had instigated. When they found his girlfriend, he would revert to the devoted partner and all that would be between Millie and Croft was a memory.

  She had had one-night stands before. What woman in this day and age hadn’t? But she had never met any man who could have such a potent effect upon her in so short a time. She arrived at the hut and within half an hour they were on the floor, lost in desperate need; she for him, he to suppress his anxiety. Sympathy, she concluded, a compassionate fucking to take his mind off a missing girlfriend and the maniac who had targeted him.

  As if this was not enough to worry about, an early call from Shannon demanded that she show up at the station, and the fact that she’d planned the day off was irrelevant.

  “It’s a general briefing,” he told her when she finally arrived at the station and stood in his office, “and after me you’re the senior officer.”

  “General briefings could have waited until Monday morning,” she protested.

  “Not,” he responded tartly, “when we have to police the demolition of Cromford Mill first thing tomorrow, and not when we still have two nutters on the loose. Now either shape up, Millie, or piss off back to East Manchester.”

  She glowered. “Get The Handshaker walled up and I may just do that.”

  Shannon ignored her remark and pushed an A4 photocopy across the desk to her. “We turned this up late last night. You seem to be the expert on anagrams lately. No doubt you took lessons from Croft.”

  Picking up the sheet, Millie stared angrily at him. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing. Just look it over and see what you make of it.”

  Still fuming with resentment, she took in the lines.

  Sir Dick’s wren stops

  The last one to hang

  I pail a ricin scart

  I avenge huge bar mark

  Or peel the large zit

  Not with a whimper but a bang

  “I’ve already seen it.” The words escaped her lips before she
could stop them, and Shannon looked up, sharply surprised.

  “Have you indeed? Where and when?”

  A flustered Millie thought fast. “I was looking at Carol Russell’s website and I picked up a link from there. It’s a message board dedicated to The Handshaker. Full of wankers. You know the kind of thing.”

  “I do. Go on.”

  “Well that’s it. It was on there.” She did not sound very convincing, even to herself.

  “No, Matthews,” Shannon corrected her. “I want to know why you thought it might be of any use looking there? We’ve checked these sites seven ways from Sunday over the last two years and never found anything but a bunch of sad sacks feeding The Handshaker’s ego.”

  Millie’s mind was in overdrive, frantically cobbling together an explanation that would cover it. “Well, sir I thought … I thought that … well, for Christ’s sake, I keep saying The Handshaker is behind all this even though you won’t have it, and I figured Croft might be tempted to visit the site.”

  “And did he?” Shannon pressed.

  “Did he what?”

  The superintendent drew in his breath. “Did he visit the site? Had he posted to these message boards?”

  “I don’t know. I think so, but I can’t be sure. I saw this message on there yesterday.”

  Shannon battered at her defences. “And have you made anything of the text?”

  “No … yes …” Millie took a hold of herself. “I mean, I know that I pail a ricin scart is an anagram of Patricia Sinclair. Croft pointed that out to us earlier this week. I think it means The Handshaker has definitely taken Croft’s girlfriend, as I suspected, and it obviously indicates that Croft has been innocent all along.”

  “We know.”

  Millie raised surprised eyebrows. “You know?”

  Shannon nodded. “I said this had turned up late last night, but I never said where. We found Sinclair’s car. It was on the railway station car park, the keys still in the ignition. Wheel clampers clocked it. It’s been there since Tuesday, and only had twenty-four hours worth of fees on it, so they moved in with the clamp and then noticed the keys were still in it, so they called the front desk and when Ronnie Simpson got the registration number, he twigged it right away. The two uniformed bods who went out, searched the car and found that,” he indicated the note, “in the glove box.” Shannon scratched his balding head. “Millie, despite our differences, we’ve worked well up until now, but I’ve been at this job long enough to know when someone’s bullshitting me.” He paused to let his words sink in. “Croft. Where is he?”