The Handshaker (15 page)

The 7:30 news burst in on his thoughts.

“Concern is growing for a Scarbeck woman who went missing from Fenton road petrol station late yesterday afternoon. Eyewitnesses said that Victoria Reid had paid for her petrol and was then accosted by a tall man dressed in a shabby, army style anorak. She climbed into a car with him and was driven off, leaving her car on the pumps. The man fits the description of a man the police want to interview in connection with The Handshaker murders, and speculation is increasing that Victoria may be the next victim.”

Croft knew different. The Handshaker had already chosen his next victim and it was not this missing woman.

Picking up a table knife, he slit the envelope along its seal, popped it, and poured out the single sheet. Once again, the lines were produced on a typewriter.

Mal’s drab un gows over the top

don’t matter a fag over dice or trivia bint

I pail a ricin scart won’t be suspended

going to glory in gr8t big bang not a whimper

l8r with Cliff or Tex wile rawl tarn fez

looses number wun spot to shade then hark

The first thing he noticed was that there was no acrostic, but while it made no sense, it was littered with anagrams. Most of them would need other clues and a lot of work, but Croft recognised two of them right away.
Cliff or Tex
and
I pail a ricin scart
were anagrams of Felix Croft and Patricia Sinclair.

Hands still shaking, he picked up his mobile phone, flipped it open, called up the address book, selected the police station number, and punched the call button. A moment later he was speaking with Sergeant Simpson. “It’s Felix Croft. I saw Superintendent Shannon yesterday if you remember.”

“I remember,” replied the sergeant, sounding just as surly on the phone as he had in person. “And what can we do for you today, Mr Croft?”

“Is Shannon there?”

“No, sir,” replied Simpson. “He won’t be in until about nine.”

“Inspector Matthews, then?” Croft asked. “I’ll speak to her if she’s available.”

There was a delay, during which Mrs Hitchins watched him from across the room. Croft smiled encouragingly back to her. Eventually, Millie came on the line and announced herself.

“Good morning, Millie,” he greeted her. “I’ve received another envelope. I think it confirms our worst fears.”

Millie clucked impatiently. “You mean you’ve opened it?”

“Of course.”

“That was a bloody stupid thing to do,” she berated him. “You may have spoiled whatever forensic it contained.”

Croft was in no mood to apologise. “It was addressed to me, I believed it may have news about Trish and I was right.”

“Mr Croft,” Millie said with great formality, “I appreciate your concern, but
if
Ms Sinclair has been abducted by this man, our best hope of finding her lies with our scientific support service and the evidence they can pick up from his notes.”

Croft noticed her use of his surname and his irritation rose to match hers. “You mean the way it helped you find Susan Edwards? Well thank you, Ms Matthews, but I prefer my girlfriend alive, not swinging from a tree on Scarbeck Point. Now what do you want me to do with the note? Throw it in the dustbin or bring it along to you?”

“I’ll be here most of the morning if you’d like to come along.”

Croft was about to say more, but Millie cut the connection at her end and the line went dead.

20

The telephone rang.

In the bedroom, Alf Lumb opened bleary eyes and grunted. He nudged his wife. “Answer that phone.”

Sandra stirred and curled up beneath the duvet again. “What’s up with you? Are your legs broke?”

Downstairs the phone bleated for attention. Alf dug her in the back. “Will you shift your lazy arse and answer it?”

“It’s not my phone, you know,” Sandra grumbled. “It’s ours, and anyway, it’ll be for you.”

“I’ve only just come to bed,” he snapped. “Now get downstairs and shut the shagging thing up. And if it’s work, tell ’em to piss off. I won’t be in until tonight.”

Muttering to herself, Sandra rose slowly from the mattress and slipped her feet into furry mules. “Fat idle git.” She hurried from the room before Alf could rise to her insult.

“And while you’re at it,” Alf shouted after her, “make me a cuppa.”

Shivering on the landing, Sandra continued to mutter. “Does bugger all in this house. It’s me what does it all.”

She pulled on a thin housecoat. At the bottom of the stairs, near the door, the phone trilled continuously. Sandra clumped down, complaining with every step. “All right, all right. I’m coming.” Reaching the telephone stand by the front door, she picked up the receiver and put it to her ear. “Hello?”

“Sandra?”

“Yes.” She reached the door and drew back the blind a few inches to look out at another rainy morning.

“Loxitov, Sandra, loxitov.”

There was no physical change in her. A barely detectable glazing of the eyes, some dilation of the pupils, but nothing any observer could have put a finger on. But at that moment, the pain returned. A burning, stabbing bite in her lower abdomen, and then came the change. Letting the blind fall back into place, dropping the receiver into its cradle, she clutched at her tummy and gave a small, pained whine, like a whipped dog cowering from a cruel master. It was time.

She reached up for her coat. No point dressing. Where she was going, dress would be the last concern. Buttoning the coat, picking up her purse from the living room, she decided she would need something to keep others at bay, and moved through to the kitchen to collect a large meat knife from a rack beneath the cupboards. It was part of a set that she got free from her catalogue. That would do the trick. Secreting the knife under her coat, she returned to the front door, and glared up the stairs.

“I’m going,” she shouted and muffled anger came by return.

Pain bit into her again. She tried to ignore it and stepped out into the cold as Alf came running down the stairs.

He stood at the door dressed only in his boxer shorts, with a shabby vest hiding his huge belly.

“Where the bloody hell are you going?” he roared.

Still clutching her abdomen, Sandra ignored him and turned left out of the gate, walking towards Avon Way and the bus stop. Behind her, she knew that Alf would think about coming after her, but he had next to nothing on, and he would soon go back to bed confident that she would be home by the time he got up in the early afternoon, and he could beat her up then. A quick glance over her shoulder confirmed it. He had gone back in.

Turning her neck like that hurt and the pain once more doubled her up.

“Are you all right, Sandra?”

She looked up into the concerned face of her neighbour, Gerald Humphries.

“Mind your own fucking business.”

***

Back in the house, Alf grumbled his way into the kitchen.

Bitch. Walking out like that, after he’d told her to make him some tea. She’d know about it when she got back. Nobody turned their backs on Alf Lumb without payback. Even his boss couldn’t ignore him, so no way would some bitch woman.

That was her all over, though. It was his wages that kept the house, paid the bills, took them out to the Winridge Inn once a week, kept the car on the road, took them on holiday every year. Yes and it was his wage that made sure the kid got birthday and Christmas presents. And what did she do? Sit around the house all day drinking tea with that poofter, Humphries, or entertained that wanker, Croft.

With the kettle boiled, he dropped a teabag into his favourite Manchester City mug, and poured boiling water in, his temper bubbling up.

“All women are the same,” he had once told Nev Baylis, manager at the pub. “They’re only fit for one thing and even then they get one week off in four.”

And come to think, he hadn’t had much of that out of her just lately. She couldn’t be bothered of a morning and with him on nights…

He poured milk into his tea, put the carton back in the fridge, and slammed the door. Cow. Wait until she came back.

He picked up his tea, turned to leave the kitchen and there was a knock on the back door.

So she was back. Forgotten her keys.

Putting down the mug, he turned and marched to the door, his temper rising to boiling point. He snatched at the door. Locked. Furiously, he yanked the lock back and dragged the door open.

It wasn’t her. He glowered at the familiar face. “What the fuck do you want?”

There was a flash, reflecting the dull morning light, followed quickly by the sickening slice of steel into flesh. Searing pain shot through him. Disbelief flooded him as quickly as his blood spread across his dirty vest. He stared down, clutched the gaping wound in his abdomen. His head was already swimming. Automatically, he clenched his fist to deliver a blow, but the rapid blood loss took his strength. He glared again into a smiling face. His knees turned to jelly and he sank onto them.

Unconsciousness swept rapidly up on him. The laser-sharpened blade flashed again, this time at the side of his neck. More pain, more blood. He did not cry out. The only sound he could make was a gurgling plea.

Still on his knees, Alf shook in his death throes. The last thing he saw was a boot coming to his face to kick him over onto his back, and the sight of his own blood pooling on the kitchen floor.

21

For the second day in succession, Croft made the journey from Oaklands to Scarbeck and found it an even bigger nightmare than it was the previous day. The stop-start progress left him with too much time to worry about Trish’s safety, and by the time he parked on level 5 of the Spinners Shopping Mall, his nerves were frayed almost to breaking point.

Stepping out of the multi-storey car park and into the mall, he was glad of the short walk to the police station. Although still desperate to find his partner, the stroll would help lower his blood pressure. By the time he sat with Millie, he should be calm enough to apply logic, not emotion.

The double door entrance to the mall acted almost as a baffle between the November cold and damp of the car park and the constant, controlled warmth of the interior. Coming out alongside Waterstone’s bookshop, he paused a moment, looking down over the gallery rail to where Santa’s Grotto stood silent in the central plaza, not yet ready for the thousands of children who would visit before the day was out. Opposite the grotto,
Scarbeck Chinese Herbal Remedies
was receiving its morning mop down, and an attendant at
Carphone Warehouse
yawned his way out of the shop to set up a board detailing today’s special offer. With the time at 8:55, the High Street names were coming to life for another day’s battle with the shoppers and their credit cards.

Along the upper landing,
Dorothy Perkins
advertised its ‘New Year Sale’ several weeks early, and the employees of
Next
were gathered outside the shop door, probably waiting for the manager to arrive, while the staff of
River Island
looked on from…

Croft noticed for the first time that the staff of
Next
and
River Island
were not simply waiting around. They had formed a large crowd, held back by several security guards and two police officers.

Intrigued, his errand to the police station temporarily forgotten, he ambled along the opposite gallery to get a better look, and his face paled.

On the other side, a frail young woman held the police and crowds at bay with a large knife. She was dressed in a shabby anorak, and what looked like a nightdress and housecoat. When she half turned to ward off a police officer with her blade, he recognised her with a shock. Sandra Lumb.

Heart beating rapidly, he ran to the end of the gallery, the leather of his handmade shoes slipping and slurring on the polished tiles. He dashed across a broad footbridge, and scurried along, pushing his way into the crowd, fighting his way to the front, ignoring the complaints of ghoulish onlookers all straining for a better view. He burst through to the front where an Asian policewoman stopped him.

“Just stay back, sir,” she urged.

He held the policewoman’s gaze. “I know her.”

Rehana Begum looked up at him, her dark eyes wide with interest. Croft’s attention was elsewhere. He was studying Sandra.

She was leaning back against the three and a half foot balustrade that ran the length of the gallery and served as a safety rail. Beyond it was a 20-foot drop to the tiles below. Her eyes darted from side to side, watching everyone, wary of every approach. Her words were hurried, frantic, garbled, but she made her intentions plain.

“Don’t come near me, stay back, I’ll jump. You, you wanna stop me, but you won’t, because I won’t let you, I’ll throw myself over, stay back.”