The Handshaker (14 page)

Croft’s frustrated features were transformed into a mask of derision. “Wouldn’t you worry?”

Millie retracted her cliché. “Yes. Yes I would.”

“Platitudes are not the answer,” Croft told her. “Hard work is the only thing that will track him down. You do your bit, I’ll do mine. I’ll start with hypnosis, authors like Hammerschlag and Zepelli.”

Millie obviously recognised the first name from their morning interview but the second name had her stumped. “Hammerschlag and who?”

Croft left his desk and crossed to a bookshelf, from which he took a hardbound volume. “The Great Zepelli,” he declared, leaving Millie none the wiser. “I told you about him this morning. The greatest hypnotist this country, possibly the world, has ever seen.” He handed the book over. “He was also a crook. In the mid-seventies, my father was appointed prosecution counsel when Zepelli was charged with fraud.”

Taking the book from him, Millie studied the title,
The Great Zepelli – A Life On Stage,
and its cover, an open eye staring out at the reader
.
She thumbed absently through the pages, pausing to study photographs of the performer and his act.

“Your father won?”

Croft nodded. “Zepelli had extorted huge sums of money from some of his clients and volunteers – while they were hypnotised, naturally. Good old dad got him ten years. He died in prison about three years into his sentence. Heart attack.” Croft grimaced. “That’s the trouble you see. You never know what’s round the corner.”

“All the more reason to remain optimistic.” Millie offered an encouraging smile and handed the book back.

“I have Zepelli and my dad to thank for all this.” He gestured at the house.

Again she was mystified. “Huh?”

“I think I was about ten or fifteen years old and I was looking through my father’s old cases when I came across it. He kept cuttings from The Times, too, and it sparked my initial interest in hypnosis. My brain is wired up differently, you see. Later, at university, I found the minutiae, the tedium and technicalities of law too tiresome. You need to be concentrated to get through law. When I flunked it, the old man lost his cool, and I moved into English, which is just as demanding but less rigid. In reality, I was looking for something else, something that would really challenge this acrobatic mind of mine, and it was reading Zepelli’s biography that pushed me towards hypnosis. If it hadn’t been for Zepelli, I probably would not be the man I am today.”

Disregarding his brief, potted biography, Millie stood up, ready to leave. “So what do you think old Zepelli can tell you?”

Croft’s frown returned. “I don’t know. This morning, our man sent me a note pointing out The Heidelberg Case. Zepelli was an expert on it. He was also a believer in what he and Franz Walter called The Deep Secret.” Croft described speech marks with his fingers. “No one knew more about the abuse of hypnosis, than Zepelli. I don’t imagine he’s going to point out The Handshaker’s identity, but he may give me clues as to where we can begin looking for potential victims, which, in turn, may lead us to the man himself.” He sighed angrily. “I will tell you this. If we find him, you had better get to him before I do, because if I get there first, I’ll tear him apart.”

Putting the book back on the shelves, Croft escorted her to the door, bid her goodnight and Millie drove away from Oaklands just after 7:30, her opinion of Croft revised.

The assuredness with which he had turned the morning’s interview back on Shannon and herself had been thoroughly stripped away by the turn of events, leaving an exposed, distraught and vulnerable man, with only flashes of confidence showing through.

Her initial feelings had been an ambivalent annoyance at his whining, combined, she admitted to herself, with a lusty appreciation of his good looks and innate charm. Now the irritation was buried and her sympathies came to the fore. Like Croft, like Patricia Sinclair, she knew what it was like to lose someone close. Daddy, her beloved father, had passed away slowly a few years previously, and the thought of him still hurt.

The wipers swished back and forth on high speed, flushing away the pouring rain, and taking with it her wandering imagination. She – and Croft – had more pressing problems than themselves. The note this morning
had
been a warning and now the chase was on to find Trish Sinclair before she became the next Handshaker victim. Given their previous lack of progress on the killings, Millie was not hopeful.

She had no choice but to inform Shannon, and that would lead to an unpleasant interview on her disobedience after he had denied permission for Croft to see the earlier notes.

All she could do was ride out the storm and plead expediency. If she had not shown Croft the notes, he would not have uncovered the acrostics and they would not yet know about Trish Sinclair.

18

The Handshaker rang the bell. The curtains parted, she looked out, and a moment later answered the door.

Sandra Lumb greeted him brightly. “Come in out of the rain.”

He followed her and she closed the door behind him.

“Alf on nights is he, Sandra?” He did not need to ask. He’d seen Alf leave just after 9:30, but it was always better to make sure.

She nodded. “He’s on ten, six this week. Home about half six tomorrow morning.”

The Handshaker nodded. He turned and stared Sandra in the eye. Grabbing her wrist, he ordered, “Combarus,” and took satisfaction from the effect that the 80-year old command had on Sandra: precisely the same as it had had in Heidelberg.

Not that it was any surprise. When he first began to condition Sandra, like any of his subjects, he could have chosen anything as a post-hypnotic prompt but he enjoyed using Walter’s legendary command.

There was little physical change in Sandra. The smile faded and there was a slight glazing of the eyes as the pupils dilated. Aside from that, no one would know that she was under his complete control.

No more orders were necessary. The complex conditioning of
combarus
told Sandra what she must do. She began to strip off her clothing while The Handshaker feasted his greedy eyes on her.

He enjoyed Sandra regularly. She had small but firm tits, and a tight little cunt. It pleased him to think in terms of tits and cunt. Breasts and vagina were too clinical, too medical. Babies entered the world through the vagina and were fed from breasts, radiographers checked breasts for tumours, gynaecologists checked vaginas for their various problems. Men enjoyed tits not breasts; men fucked cunts, not vaginas.

Laid on the settee, she was naked but for her panties. When constructing the post-hypnotic suggestion, The Handshaker had insisted she leave those on. He savoured the thrill of taking them off. They were her last line of defence, the only thing that stood between him and her sweetness, and when he removed them it was no longer a case of her giving herself to him, but him taking her.

The Handshaker, his erection already pounding, quickly stripped his clothing, and leaned over her, his trembling fingers running over her smooth skin, toying with the tiny breasts, tweaking the nipples into hard corks, running over her warm tummy, hooking into the waistband of her panties, slowly teasing them down, exposing the dark pubic patch, his excitement growing with every inch of freshly exposed sex. And when he knelt, she automatically opened up for him, reaching for him, dragging him into her, pulling on his backside, urging him deeper and deeper with every fresh thrust.

When it was over, he cleaned himself up, and dressed, staring down at her open vulva, now stained with his semen. The sight turned him on again, but he controlled the instinct. Time was pressing. He had an early start tomorrow and he needed some sleep.

Instead, he spoke to her.

“The illness is getting worse, Sandra. There is now no hope. Soon you will pass from this life in great pain. Here is what you must do to avoid that pain…”

November 16th

19

Breakfast at Oaklands had always been a quiet affair; not sulky but reflective. Croft preferred the silence so he could concentrate on his crossword, an aid to fine-tuning his brain for the day ahead, and Trish’s ordered, legal mind needed contemplation to plan the coming day, anticipate its pitfalls, pratfalls and high spots, and prepare for them.

Now the kitchen was more silent than ever and he missed the quiet period of deliberation they normally shared.

More cloud had moved in from the North East overnight, keeping the temperature up, but bringing gales and torrential rain across the already battered landscape.

He had barely slept. Every time he tried to calm his mind, all he could see were images of Trish; happy times, sad times, their first holiday together, the death of his mother, the death of her father, Christmas, New Year, birthdays … Trish alone, frightened, raped by The Handshaker, pleading for him to come and save her.

A phone call to Mrs Hitchins had confirmed that Trish left as usual the previous morning. “P’raps a minute or two earlier, but that’s all, Mr Croft, sir.”

Zepelli’s biography had been of little help.

Croft had seriously researched The Heidelberg Case for over a decade and, in fifteen years of hypnotic practice, he had never come across a case of instant somnambulism, as described in the case, other than where a subject had been previously hypnotised and a post-hypnotic suggestion implanted to the effect that when they heard the trigger word they would fall instantly into a light state which would then rapidly deepen. And yet … and yet, Zepelli insisted it was a possibility and in his discussion on The Heidelberg Case, he maintained that Franz Walter was a master of the Deep Secret, that esoteric means of inducing instantaneous, somnambulist hypnosis without uttering a sound.

But Zepelli was a performer, not a doctor, and what he did not know about the workings of the human mind would fill volumes. Croft too, knew very little of the inner workings of the mind, but he lived in a more informed age than Zepelli.

There were, Croft would agree, many ways in which a hypnotic-like state could be achieved instantly. The terror of imminent death, whereby the victim would be immobilised by disbelief, for example. There was also the enchantment of pure joy; a child transfixed by Christmas scenes on TV or in the town centre. None of these produced true hypnosis, meaning, as far as Croft was concerned, that both Walter and The Handshaker must have used tried and tested methods of induction without anyone, particularly the victims, realising.

Had Trish been hypnotised? If so it could only have been during her recent counselling sessions. Croft made a note on the corner of his newspaper to track down the counsellor concerned.

Mrs Hitchins arrived, delivered a mute “Good morning, Mr Croft, sir,” and placed the mail on the kitchen table.

For years Croft had asked her to call him by his given name, but she refused. It would be too familiar. He insisted that she did not call him ‘sir’, but again she would not budge, but she did agree to compromise and address him as ‘Mr Croft, sir’.

“Sit down a moment, Christine,” he invited, and she baulked. Croft insisted with a grim nod at the chair opposite, and Mrs Hitchins acquiesced.

Uncertain where or how to begin, Croft cleared his throat. “Ms Sinclair is … er … missing …”

“Oh dear lord.”

Her reaction was not entirely unexpected. Mrs Hitchins had never made any secret of the fact that she did not like Trish, but accepted that it was not her place to criticise her employer’s living arrangements and Croft knew that her concern would be for himself first and common compassion for Trish next.

He was glad of her interjection. It gave him time to pull his thoughts together.

“At the moment, we know nothing more than that,” he went on, “and it may be that there is an entirely innocent explanation for it, but other factors, which I won’t go into, lead me to conclude that she may be in some danger. Yesterday morning, after I left, was there anything out of the ordinary about her or her routine?”

“No. Like I said on the phone last night, she was a little early, but only by a few minutes.”

Croft nodded automatically, his thought processes working through the possibilities. He was no detective. He had no idea what kind of questions he was supposed to ask.

“All right, Christine. The police may want a word with you later.”

Mrs Hitchins left the table, crossed to the broom cupboard where she hung her coat and umbrella, and switched on the radio.

Croft picked up the morning mail, sifting through the usual collection of bills, statements, official letters, and junk, putting to one side those that were addressed to Trish, until he came across a plain, brown DL envelope bearing his name and address produced on a typewriter.

The second in as many days. He felt as if the anticipated death of a close family member had been suddenly announced: bad news that was both expected and unwelcome at the same time. On the other side of the kitchen, ostensibly setting the volume on the radio, Mrs Hitchins gave it a glance, her elderly features set in a grimace of distaste.

Croft’s hand shook. Inside, he was a tumble of different emotions; fear, anger, bewilderment, and curiosity, a need to know what this evil man had to say for himself now, an overwhelming desire to understand why he, Croft, had been dragged into this twisted world, and the urgent need to prevent another death, to be with Trish, ahead of the game and ensure that not one more person was hurt by this sadistic individual.