“He told me enough,” said Croft. “Did you, er, look up?”
The inspector’s face was grim as they climbed the steps into welcoming daylight. “Rehana? Yes, we’ve seen her.” She took out her mobile. “I’ll get an ambulance for Trish.”
November 22nd
59
The interview room felt excessively cramped to Millie; more so than when she had interviewed other suspects for other crimes.
And yet, there were no more people in there. She and Shannon sat on the side of the table closer to the door, Humphries and his lawyer, Simon Wainwright, on the other. Wainwright was the smallest person in the room, and Humphries did not have the stockier build of, say, Felix Croft, and yet the room felt more crowded.
Evidence, she thought to herself; the items encased in seal-easy bags, most of it heaped on the floor, ready to confront Humphries.
Much had happened in the last 48 hours. Millie had been reinstated on the understanding that she would still face disciplinary charges, and SOCOs had gone over Humphries’ place with the proverbial fine toothed comb, coming away with a welter of evidence against the man. Humphries had been questioned once and denied everything.
She looked over his statement. Bullshit, to coin a Shannon-ism. Alongside her, the superintendent cleared his throat, checked again that the cassette recorder was working and addressed the suspect.
“Mr Humphries ... Mr Burke, to give you your correct name, this is the second time I have questioned you on the matter of the so-called Handshaker and the Handshaker murders. Do you maintain your innocence?”
Wainwright answered for his client. “Mr Humphries denies all knowledge of them, Superintendent.”
“Very well,” said Shannon, and looked down at his question sheet. “Let’s see how you account for several anomalies. First, we have many samples of DNA taken from The Handshaker victims, including Patricia Sinclair and Rehana Begum. Preliminary analysis indicates that the chances of those samples coming from someone other than you are less than one in a billion. How do you explain that?”
Humphries looked to Wainwright for guidance. The solicitor nodded.
With a sigh and shrug, he said, “I cannot. I’m not a scientist. I know nothing about DNA, so I don’t know. I am innocent.”
Shannon left the next question to Millie.
Her dark features brimming with obvious distaste, she refrained from looking at Humphries, and instead read from a prepared sheet. “You may or may not be aware that when files are erased from a computer, they’re not fully wiped out. They can be restored. When we checked your computer, we found the hard drive had been wiped on Saturday night, but when we restored it, we found two letters sent to the Scarbeck police, cryptically telling us what had happened to various victims, one of which, concerning the location of Patricia Sinclair’s death, and mentioning your father, Graham Burke, also known as The Great Zepelli, was found on the seat of Ms Sinclair’s car which had been abandoned outside Scarbeck railway station on Tuesday morning. How do you explain that?”
Once more Humphries looked for guidance and received a nod.
“I wrote them.” Before the police could interrupt with howls of triumph, he pressed on. “I know it was a silly thing to do, but I wanted to get at Croft. I wanted to cause him real suffering. But I never intended any physical harm to come to him.”
Matthews pounced on the admission. “Yet by the dates the letters were created, you knew about Rehana Begum before we realised that she had been abducted. The only way you could have known was if you killed her. DNA and fingerprint analysis indicate that Rehana was a Handshaker victim, therefore you are The Handshaker.”
This time, Simon Wainwright shook his head, warning Humphries not to answer.
The suspect ignored his solicitor. “Yes I did know, and I was going to tell you but I was frightened that you’d arrest me. I’m a twitcher – a bird watcher. I used to watch the sparrow hawks nesting on the roof of Cromford Mill. I visited the place late on Friday and saw the young woman hanging there. I didn’t know what to do. I thought if I reported it, you might suspect me.” He begged with convincingly frightened eyes. “I was scared.”
Shannon shook his head. “Quite frankly, Humphries, that’s the thinnest rubbish I’ve heard from you yet.”
“But it’s the truth,” Humphries pleaded.
“Balls,” snapped Millie.
Wainwright frowned. “Inspector Matthews, may I remind you that this interview is being recorded and that kind of language is not –”
“And you can –”
“That’s enough Millie,” Shannon ordered. He faced his suspect. “Mr Humphries, when we further examined your computer, we found references to a woman called Kathleen Murphy. When we visited her, we found she had been killed. Her neck was broken and her skull was caved in by a stout walking stick. We found your fingerprints on that walking stick and we found your semen in her vagina. How do you explain that?”
Humphries shook his head. “I cannot.”
Shannon pressed his attack. “The sobriquet, The Handshaker, was coined by the killer himself, and first brought to our attention on the bottom of a letter typed on a Smith Corona portable typewriter dating from the 1960s. Later notes were produced on a Remington machine which we found in an old car on Kent Road, quite near to your house. Given that you have just admitted to writing the letters produced on computer, and given the cryptic similarity between those letters and the earlier ones, it seems to me that you must have written them all and dumped the Smith Corona, switching to a Remington in order to further incriminate Felix Croft. It also seems to me that for you to sign the notes, The Handshaker, a fact that was never made public, that you must have coined the term, The Handshaker, and you therefore wrote the earlier notes.”
Humphries shook his head. “I wrote the two letters you found on my computer. I first read of The Handshaker in one of Carol Russell’s reports. I have never owned a portable typewriter, but Felix Croft has.”
Millie ignored the insinuation. “Let’s turn away from the letters for a moment, and concentrate on other matters.” She reached down to the floor and lifted up the seal-easy bags. “Inside that Ford Fiesta, we also found all this clothing. PC Begum’s uniform, and other items of female apparel in many sizes, some of which has been positively identified as Patricia Sinclair’s and Victoria Reid’s. There are fibres on the clothing that match a carpet and mattress in your back bedroom. How do you explain that, Humphries?”
“Inspector –” began Wainwright only to be cut off when Humphries tapped him on the arm.
“It was planted there, Inspector,” the suspect declared. “I believe Felix Croft did it when he went to my house looking for his girlfriend on Sunday morning.”
Shannon could hardly believe his ears. “He planted fibres in that car, taken from your house the day before he turned up looking for his girlfriend? I know he’s pretty resourceful, but that’s really clever.”
“But that wasn’t the only time he’s been in my house,” Humphries protested. “When I chaperoned his appointments with Sandra, he would often call round to talk about life in post-war Britain. He’s fanatical about it.”
“Croft insists he has never set foot on the first floor of your house,” Millie pointed out.
“He could be lying.”
“All right,” said Shannon. “How do you explain traces of urine, blood and body hair on the mattress in your back bedroom, all positively confirmed as being from Rehana Begum, Patricia Sinclair, Victoria Reid, and other women known to have been murdered by The Handshaker.”
Humphries shook his head. “I told you, I’m not a scientist. I can’t explain it.” He changed tack and began to plead. “Look, I know I’ve been very silly. I’ve tried to implicate Croft in this whole business because I don’t like the man, nor what he stands for. Money. He’s greedy, grasping and so superior. So I admit that. I shouldn’t have done it, I’m sorry and I will take whatever punishment is coming to me for that, but I am not
a killer.”
Shannon refused to be swayed. “How do you account for the fact that we found fibres on a pair of your shoes that match the carpets in Joyce Dunn’s home? How do you account for the fact that we found your semen in Joyce Dunn’s vagina after she was found hanged in her bedroom?”
Humphries was convincingly embarrassed. “I was a, er, client of Joyce’s. I’d visited her that day.”
Millie came on the attack. “When you and Croft were in Cromford Mill, you told him where he could find Trish Sinclair.”
“Yes.”
“How did you know she was there, unless you put her there?” she demanded.
“It was a guess.” Humphries smiled. “Good lord, woman, I was terrified. He threatened to leave us there while you blew the place up, so I just blurted something out. Anything. I could have said the roof, the third floor, anything. You should have seen him. The man’s a maniac.”
Shannon softened his approach. “Look, Humphries, we’re not totally stupid. We know that you are The Handshaker. It’s only a matter of time before we get the proof. Probably off that anorak, or the women’s clothing. Just admit it. You’ll feel a whole lot better when you get it off your chest.”
Humphries shook his head. “I know nothing about it.”
60
When Croft arrived at the psychiatric wing of Scarbeck General Hospital, just after three o’clock, it was to find a tired Millie Matthews waiting there too.
“Trish?” he asked.
Millie nodded. “If the psychos can get any sense out of her and if they’ll let me see her.”
“They’re not hopeful,” Croft admitted, sitting alongside her and staring gloomily at the floor. “She may recover, she may not.”
Trish had spent a night in intensive care, after which she was declared poorly but stable, suffering from exposure and circulatory complications due to having been bound in such rigid positions for so long.
However, even when, after 24 hours, she regained consciousness, she did not speak. She never registered the presence of anyone but stared vacantly into space.
“Are you okay?” Millie asked.
He nodded. “A few cuts and bruises, a couple of police charges hanging over my head, but nothing I can’t cope with.”
“Well, if you need company…” Millie trailed off and blushed. Sex was the last thing on Croft’s mind at the moment, and he guessed that she had merely been giving voice to her thoughts.
There was a short, awkward silence. Eventually, Croft broke it. “Christ, what a mess.”
Millie was more practical. “We could do with your girlfriend’s testimony.”
Croft understood at once. “He’s still denying everything?”
She nodded. “He admits to hating you because of what your father did to his, and he admits to writing the later notes, but he denies everything else.”
“You’ll get him? You have plenty of DNA.”
Millie was less certain. “We don’t know. You’re like everyone else; you believe DNA is the be all and end all, but it isn’t. Past experience has proved that it can be faked and mistaken. Although the chances are one in a billion that it could be someone other than him, there is still that chance, and if we can’t get anything else to tie him to the killings, we could lose it all.”
Croft allowed despondency to wash over him again. “You have that link between the victims. He is Gerald Burke, the son of Graham Burke, The Great Zepelli. He was the counsellor hidden in the background, who links all these women.”
“Too thin,” Millie said. “Although we do have his notes in which he declares his belief that The Great Zepelli was better than your Franz Walter.”
Croft smiled dully at Millie. “It’s pronounced Valter.”
She returned the smile. “And the counselling proves nothing other than he knew Evelyn Kearns. He’s admitting nothing. He has alternative explanations for everything. Some of them are not very convincing, but they’re there.”
Croft dismissed it. “The man’s insane.”
“Well, we have enough evidence to go ahead,” Millie admitted, “but I won’t pretend it’s going to be easy and it may come down to the judge and jury on the day.”
Croft sat back and let out a heavy sigh. “Tell you what crossed my mind yesterday. How did he live on the estate under the name of Humphries? I mean, isn’t it illegal to give the council a false name?”
Millie shook her head. “He didn’t. His rent account, Council Tax account, even his bank account, everything is in his real name, Gerald Burke. He was known on the estate as Humphries, but that’s not illegal. Anyone can go by any name they choose, as long as it’s not for purposes of fraud or deception, and he insists that he chose that name because he was a trained counsellor. It was his way of stopping his neighbours asking for favours.” Millie smiled thinly. “I told you he has alternate explanations for everything.”
A nurse came through the secure door from the ward and smiled benignly on them.
“You can go in if you wish, but Ms Sinclair is unlikely to respond.”
Croft stood. It was his duty to see her. He followed the nurse through, Millie at his shoulder.
Trish sat in an armchair alongside her bed. When he sat by her, took her hand, she did not even look at him. Instead she stared far off into space.
Croft struggled to contain his emotions. “One day, Trish, one day, you’ll come back and this madman won’t trouble you again.”
Alongside him, Millie took his hand.
***
Trish could not hear. There was too much noise on the beach for her to hear. The sun burned onto her back as she patted sand into her bucket, turned it upside down and gently removed the bucket, revealing a small, round turret of sand. She looked back at Mum and Dad. Mum was asleep, 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 to the sea lapping the shore, where her brothers splashed in the calm, shallow water. Then she stared out at the sea, which stretched for miles and miles and forever.
“Dad, what’s on the other side of the sea?”
“Another land, chicken. A land where the workers don’t get sent away from their little girls just because they have an argument with the boss.”
“Will you take me to that other land?”
“One day, my love. One day.”
Trish stared across the sea again and wondered whether she really would ever go to that other land.
THE END
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