The Handshaker (16 page)

Croft looked down at Begum. “I’m a hypnotherapist,” he told her. “I know this woman. Maybe I can convince her to give herself up.”

“Just wait there a moment, sir.” Begum began talking into her radio.

Sandra edged her bottom up so that she was perching on the rail. Croft refused to wait. He pushed Rehana out of the way and entered the space around the agitated woman. Rehana grabbed at his arm. He shrugged her off.

“Sandra,” he urged, “listen to me. Listen to me, Sandra. It’s me. Mr Croft. I’m not here to hurt you, Sandra. You know me, don’t you?”

Tears streaked her cheeks. “The pain. You don’t know. I can’t take it.”

He raised his voice so he could be heard above the hubbub of the crowd’s excited chatter. But even though his voice came through louder, he forced patience upon it. “Sandra, we’ve been through this. Your doctor ran the tests. There’s nothing wrong with you.”

“It hurts,” she wept. “All the time. I can’t stand it.”

“Sandra, it’s all in your mind.” Now Croft was almost pleading for her to understand. “Listen carefully, Sandra, you don’t have to do this. Give me the knife, come down from there and let’s get you to the hospital.”

Rehana released his arm. Croft became aware that all around him, the chatter had ceased, silence had fallen; everyone was riveted upon his efforts.

He stretched out a hand. “Just give me the knife, Sandra.”

She leaned dangerously back. “Don’t come near me.”

In order to get her into a hypnotic state where he could truly assist her, he needed to touch her, but she would not allow that. Instead, he took half a pace back and hastened to reassure her. “All right, all right. Take it easy.”

“You, you want to stop me, but I can’t take this pain anymore.”

“Sandra, listen to me.” His voice was supportive, easy and soporific. “The only sound of any importance, Sandra, is my voice. You know my voice. You’ve heard it before and when my voice speaks, it is the only sound of any importance. When you hear my voice, you begin to relax, to feel well. Listen to me, Sandra. The pain is diminishing and with every word I speak, it goes further and further away and soon there will be no pain. Let the pain go away, Sandra. Let the pain go and the good feelings come through. Just let the pain go, Sandra. Let it go until there is no pain.”

***

Sandra felt as if her brain was about to burst. All she could recall were Handy’s words, all she could feel was the searing agony in her stomach.

A single image kept flashing into the confusion. A monster chewing at her insides, a small, slimy, evil little bug, glistening, its razor teeth biting, gnawing on her intestines, swallowing pieces of her whole, delivering the terrible pain, instilling its legacy, a long, slow and tortured death.

“The sound of my voice,” “the terrible pain,” “there is no pain,” “there is pain,” “listen to me, Sandra,” “don’t listen to them, Sandra,” “listen to my voice,” “they won’t tell you the truth,” “where the bloody hell are you going,” “end it quickly, cleanly, painlessly.”

The voices assaulted her, faces swam before her eyes: Handy, Alf, Gerry Humphries, Handy, Felix Croft, her mother, Handy and Alf, Alf and Handy, Damon in care, Felix Croft, Handy.

Alf was furious. She’d walked out on him without a word, and she’d get a pasting for that, and they’d leave her doped with drugs to quell the pain and they’d laugh at her when she was an empty, dead shell, they’d say “well, we got rid of her and she never knew,” but she did know, and Handy had told her, and the pain was unbearable, and that was Croft in the crowd and he was one of the doctors was Croft and he was Handy was Croft and he was not important because he lied to her, he told her there was no pain and there was pain, terrible, terrible, pain and all she wanted was an end to the pain…

She turned, looked over the balustrade. An end to the pain.
Now
.

***

“NO.”

Croft’s shout alerted everyone.

Rehana snatched at him as he moved. He shrugged her off, and in an effort to prevent the inevitable, leapt across the space between him and Sandra, throwing out an arm in a desperate attempt to catch her by the ankle as she toppled silently over.

His fingers brushed her heel and he grabbed at thin air. His momentum hurled him heavily into the balustrade, knocking the wind out of him. He was vaguely aware of someone screaming below. He looked down and closed his eyes, shutting out the terrible sight.

Sandra lay flat on the floor, blood pouring from a skull wound. Half under her was an elderly man, his legs squashed, arms flailing in a plea for assistance, and from one leg, hidden by Sandra’s body, blood trickled to the sandy tiles. Croft could only guess that the sharp kitchen knife she carried had pierced either her abdomen or the man’s leg.

Police and security officers arrived below to keep the bystanders back. Croft felt hands upon him, dragging him back from the balustrade. Numbed, he backed off as Begum and her colleagues took control of the situation, pushing back the crowd, turning them away from their macabre spectator sport.

“Come on, stay back please. Just back away, thank you.”

“I’m going to need some details, sir.”

Head spinning, Croft sat down on the cold tiles, by the window of
Next.
He barely registered the sounds around him, and it took several seconds for Begum’s words to get through.

“Huh? What?”

“Details, sir,” Rehana repeated. “You said you were the lady’s therapist.”

“Yes … yes.” He snapped himself together, and recalled his purpose in coming to Scarbeck. “Look, Constable, I’m sorry, but I was on my way to see your superior, Detective Inspector Matthews. My name is Felix Croft, and she is expecting me. If you speak to her, she’ll explain. I rang her an hour ago.”

Suspicion haunted Begum’s eyes, but she nevertheless backed off and spoke once more into her radio. After a few moments, she approached him again. “Inspector Matthews will take a statement from you at the station.”

22

Standing innocuously amongst the crowd of onlookers on the lower level of the mall, The Handshaker watched the unfolding drama of Sandra Lumb’s last moments with bated breath and when she rolled over the balustrade, falling twenty feet to the ground floor, he could barely hold back his excitement.

A
coup de grace
, that’s what it was.
Pièce de résistance
.

Why was it that phrases designed to encapsulate the crowning glory of an artistic masterpiece were all French?

He yanked his mind away from the trivial aside. What did it matter if the description was in English, French or Serbo-Croat. He had done it. He had achieved what the master, Franz Walter, never could. Walter came close when he sent Mrs E to the river, but in the last analysis he failed. Julius Reiniger, Walter’s acolyte – a Gestapo officer if you please – had never been able to do it, The Great Zepelli had never even
tried
to do it, but he, The Handshaker, had done what everyone said could not be done. He had induced a hypnotised subject to commit suicide.

At least, he thought it was suicide. The murmur running through the crowd was that Sandra was receiving medical attention, which probably meant she was still alive. Some old fool had broken her fall. The Handshaker dismissed the scuttlebutt. Chinese whispers. By the time the tale made the street, two hundred yards away, Sandra would be a white suicide bomber.

After she fell, he briefly diverted his gaze upward and saw that smug bastard, Croft, hanging over the rail. For a moment, he hoped the hypnotist would follow Sandra, but then changed his mind. Death, so quick if not clean, the way Sandra had gone, was far too good for Croft. That scumbag, to coin a popular Americanism, needed to understand pain before he expired. He needed to comprehend the agony of life, before he could be permitted the peace of death.

Checking the time, he turned to go back to his car, casting a final glance up at Croft. “And now,” he promised, quietly, “it’s time to turn the screw.”

He took out his mobile phone, recalled the number and dialled.

The phone rang out for an eternity. Perhaps she was with a client. He had turned to make his way from the mall into the chilly cloisters of the car park, and was about to close the connection, end the call, when it was picked up.

“Hello?”

“Joyce? It’s Handy.”

“Oh. Hi. Long time no see.” Her voice sounded genuinely pleased.

“I’ve been unwell.” He put a degree of lasciviousness into his voice. “But I’m much better now. Are you free tonight?”

“Hang on a minute. I’ll just check my diary.”

She put the receiver down and The Handshaker could well imagine her making a cup of tea, or checking the morning mail. She was not checking her diary. A prostitute keeping a diary was as absurd as a prostitute keeping accounts for tax purposes.

He looked up at the gallery again. Croft sat in a corner near
Next
with some wog copper talking to him. Strange to think that it was the research on Croft that had uncovered this whore on the other end of the phone. And she lived so close, too. But that was life: full of little bits and pieces providing links to help embellish the master plan. Like Croft deciding to write his best-selling potboiler. So unexpected but so welcome.

The phone rattled in his ear again.

“Hello, Handy?”

“Hello, Joyce.”

“I’m free tonight. Half eight? Usual fee?”

“Fine,” he agreed. “See you then.”

The Handshaker closed the phone. Usual fee? He laughed to himself. Where she was going, Joyce would have no need of the £30 he normally paid.

23

Croft was still trembling when Sergeant Simpson showed him to Interview Room 2 and left him with a cup of tea. He needed both hands to steady the cup, and even then he spilled tea onto his jacket when he drank.

He took out
The Independent
and made an effort to concentrate on the crossword, but was unable to rid himself of the appalling image of Sandra going over the rail and the sight of her broken, bloodied body 20 feet below.

Beneath the shock, however, the logic circuits were already engaged, carrying out a swift résumé of his work with her, seeking the signs that would point to this morning’s crisis.

An image of Alf Lumb formed in his mind’s eye. As far as Croft was concerned, he did not have to look any further. That man…

The door opened, cutting off his train of thought, and Millie entered, accompanied by PC Begum.

“Morning, Mr Croft,” Millie greeted brightly, and he responded with a taciturn murmur. He noticed that she was still addressing him formally, but he guessed it was because Begum was in the room and, overall, her attitude had shifted several degrees towards friendliness from their curt exchange on the phone.

“You do seem to be the centre of attention just lately,” she rambled.

He recognised her efforts to make him feel more comfortable. Platitudes delivered in overt, chummy tones designed to reassure him after the terrible scenes in Spinners.

The two women sat opposite, and while Begum took up an official form and her pen, Millie looked over another handwritten sheet of paper.

“Right, sir, this is Constable Begum’s initial report on the incident in the Spinners Mall half an hour ago. She says that just before the woman jumped, you claimed to know her, and you were trying to talk her down.”

“I did, but before we get into that, you do remember my reason for coming here?” dipping into his pocket, he handed over the plain envelope.

“I hadn’t forgotten, Mr Croft, but things are happening thick and fast this morning. Let’s concentrate on Sandra. She was not dead when the paramedics took her away, but she fractured her skull when she hit the lower gallery floor, and they’re not hopeful.”

“What about the old man under her?” Croft wanted to know. It was a trivial aside, designed to take away the enduring and frightening images still haunting him.

“He’s fine,” Millie reported. “She must have dropped her knife as she fell, and it nicked his calf. He’s on his way to Scarbeck General, too. Two officers have gone out to see Sandra’s husband, and we’re interested in what you can tell us. You say you worked with her?”

Croft nodded. “She was brought to me about two years ago by her neighbour, Gerry Humphries. Depression. He’d read about my researches into hypnosis, and he wondered if I could help.”

“And did you?”

“Difficult to say.” Even to himself, Croft sounded vague. He forced his mind into a higher gear. “I contacted her GP, with her permission, of course. He’d prescribed Doselupin. It’s a palliative, helps the patient relax, so she was easily hypnotised, but whether we made progress is open to debate.”

Begum wrote furiously as he spoke. Millie allowed her a moment to catch up, then asked, “Did you get to the bottom of her depression?”

This time, he was deliberately vague. “There were so many possible causes that it’s impossible to say. Her GP was convinced that it was due to her only son, Damon, being taken into care. When I got in touch with them, again with Sandra’s permission, they gave me a run down on Alf’s abuse of both Sandra and the boy. My feeling was that a combination of the two problems caused the depression, but then I’m not a doctor, nor even a psychologist, so I’m not allowed to diagnose. However, there were other factors.”