The Handshaker (3 page)

The one emotion he could remember was anger. Time may have dimmed the memory, but not the fury: a gnawing sense of injustice that his father, a great man, a man of international repute, could be taken so early in his magnificent life. Three decades was a long time to bottle up that fury, but the wait would be worth it. Just a few more days…

Another stream of traffic accelerating along the bypass broke into his memories and brought him forward in time to a lay-by on a Midlands trunk road, where he had waited for a breakdown truck to arrive. While he waited, he had scanned a tabloid newspaper and learned that the
Guru of Weight Control
had decided to retire from the public spotlight to take a post at the newly opened University of North West England.

It was the kind of news item he would normally have ignored, but with nothing better to do until his car was repaired, he read it, spotted Croft’s name and his blood boiled.

He still had the cutting at home, pasted into a scrapbook, and whenever his resolve flagged he would read it again, even though he could recite it practically verbatim.

Master hypnotist and weight control expert, Felix Croft, whose book “Imagine Your Weight Away” has sold over ten million copies worldwide, is retiring from public life to take the post of Head of Department for the School of Parapsychology at the recently founded University of North West England. Interviewed yesterday at Oaklands, his recently restored moorland mansion, Croft said, “I’ve had enough of being public property. It’s reached the stage where I can’t go into a bar anymore without someone challenging me to hypnotise them. I’m retiring to pick up my investigations of psychic phenomena with the backing of the UNWE.”

Guru? Master hypnotist? Expert? The Handshaker had raged inwardly. Croft, like his snooty father, was nothing more than a snivelling conman, a privately educated, upper middle-class word merchant possessed of a glib tongue and a lot of neck.

If anything had brought about The Handshaker’s move to Scarbeck, it was that article.

The double blast of a train horn brought him from his grumbling reverie. He checked the dashboard clock again. 8:42. The train from Manchester, on its way to Rochdale, was arriving five minutes late. She was pushing her luck. With barely ten minutes to spare, if the Rochdale-Manchester train arrived early, she would miss it.

A police patrol car pulled into the car park and stopped a few yards from him. The Handshaker watched the two officers light cigarettes. Skiving, he guessed. Sneaking an unauthorised break, and probably breaking the rules on smoking in police vehicles. They felt secure. The town centre huddled on a steep hill the other side of the bypass, a higgledy-piggledy collection of old and new buildings, but the four-storey police station could not be seen from here so logically, the two officers could not be seen from there.

The Handshaker was not worried about them. Every move he made was so innocuous that even when he took her, the police would not suspect anything amiss... if she ever turned up.

He frowned. She was really pushing it today. If she arrived really late, she would inevitably rush from the car to the station and his chance would be gone.

He knew where she was. All roads from the east converged at a notorious bottleneck known as Pearman’s Junction, about two miles out of town. Construction work on a bus lane was under way at the junction, restricting the traffic to a single lane, and to compound the problem, there were also six sets of traffic lights between Pearman’s and Shambles roundabout. It all made for a monumental traffic jam adding anything up to half an hour to journeys into Scarbeck. It was odds on that she was sat somewhere in that sea of vehicles.

Perhaps she would not be going to work at all today. Perhaps she was ill. Unlikely. She had gone yesterday. He had sat here and watched her board the train, and if she were fit enough yesterday, she would be all right this morning. Besides, she was one of those dedicated
career
women who would still turn out for work if her legs were hanging off.

Thoughts of the traffic problems turned his mind to Croft. He worked at the university and did not normally come this way, but this morning, The Handshaker knew Croft would have to go to the police station, and that would bring him into town, right past Shambles and the station.

He smiled at the thought of what that note would have done to Croft. The Heidelberg reference was obvious, but the idiot would not yet have linked it to The Handshaker killings. The police would do that. And even when he did get the connection, he would not realise its full implication. Not until this evening.

He checked the clock again. 8:45. She was really cutting it fine. Fortunately there was just enough leeway in his overall plan to let him miss her today, but he had to have her no later than tomorrow.

He glanced into the rear view mirror and amongst the throng of cars coming off the roundabout and accelerating along the by-pass, he saw her black Audi. While the rest of the traffic hurried straight on, she swung into the station car park and reversed into a space a few cars along from him.

Perfect. A quick check to ensure the police were paying no particular attention, and as she crossed to the ticket machine, inserted her coins, he got out and made his way to her.

“Nasty morning,” he said, shrinking into his coat from the weather.

Taking her ticket, she turned to face him and smiled in recognition. “Oh, hello. Small world. Going to Manchester or Rochdale?”

“Neither.” He gripped her wrist; she stared, her features running quickly through alarm to anger. “Combarus.”

The command, first used over 80 years ago in pre-war Germany, had the necessary effect. There was no physical change in her – perhaps a slight and momentary glazing of the eyes – but she was completely under his control.

He handed her a sheet of A4 paper. “Go to your car, put the parking ticket on the windscreen, leave your keys in the ignition and put the sheet of paper in the glove compartment, then join me in my car.”

She obeyed. So intense was her programming that she could do no other.

Two minutes later, while she sat acquiescently in the passenger seat, and right under the noses of the two police officers, still chatting and smoking in their car, he drove away.

4

In the wood and glass reception area of Scarbeck police station, Croft’s head was bent over
The Independent’s
back page crossword.

7 across,
disestablished annual account accrual in a northern town (4)
nagged him. It was only four letters, and with nothing to give him a clue other than a letter ‘B’ at the start of the word, his mind had seized up.

Irritation didn’t help and the journey into Scarbeck, exasperating for the calmest of motorists, had provided plenty of that. For Croft, who usually avoided the town by cutting across the moors to the motorway, it had been even more frustrating, but he had no choice. Trish, he realised, had been right, and he wanted to know what the police would make of the note.

After taking almost 45 minutes to make a journey that should have taken no more than 15, he had now waited a further half hour, perched on an uncomfortable wooden bench watching men and women, police officers and members of the public, coming and going. Some passed through the security door to the other side of the counter, others approached the desk sergeant, a surly, middle-aged individual by the name of Simpson.

Croft had found the sergeant unhelpful, but he blamed himself. He had followed Trish’s advice and asked to speak to someone in charge.

Simpson seemed to take the request as an affront to his own authority. “Superintendent Shannon is out, sir. His 2IC, Detective Inspector Matthews, is in. I can get her if you wish.”

Croft recalled Trish mentioning something about senior officers. Was an inspector senior enough? “She has the authority to investigate, er, possible offences?”

Simpson looked down his nose at Croft. “In Superintendent Shannon’s absence, sir, there is no higher authority than Inspector Matthews.”

He nodded. “Fine. I’ll speak to her then.”

“And what is it about?”

Croft hedged. “I’ll tell her when I see her.”

As far as Sergeant Simpson was concerned that appeared to cross the thin red line. Grumpily, he indicated that Croft should wait on the benches. “I’ll get her for you, but you may have to wait. It’s been a busy morning.”

And Croft had waited, but he was beginning to resent it. He concentrated on the crossword again in an effort to subdue his annoyance.

Beyond the public entrance, the foul weather continued its assault, the heavy rain taking its toll on Tuesday morning shoppers. The bus station across the road was practically deserted, and the few people wandering the streets were wrapped in heavy clothing.

Thoughts, as turbulent as the weather, whirled around his head again, the same unanswered questions that had plagued him at home. Why had this mystery correspondent written to him? Was it a cryptic confession, a threat, or the work of a crank? In a town of over 100,000 people, how would Croft know if a crime like Heidelberg had been committed? There were hundreds, probably thousands of women out there who were subject to abuse of one kind or another, but how would anyone isolate the one woman who was not the object of routine domestic physical and verbal cruelty but of specialist…

The door opened letting in a blast of cold air and a spray of rain. Two uniformed constables entered, removing their caps and shaking the water from them. They were laughing over some private joke.

“Nipples like strawberries, and just as sweet.”

Croft frowned at the innate sexism. They laughed again. A light bulb lit in Croft’s mind. Strawberry, berry, bury. Of course, it was so obvious.

Disestablished annual accrual
. An annual accrual on a bank account was
interest
. Deduct the letters
E-S-T
from
interest
, in other words,
disestablish
it, and he was left with the word
inter
, which was another word for
bury
, and
Bury
was a northern town. He reached into his breast pocket, took out an engraved, gold plated ballpoint, and inked the word in.

With the clue solved, reality intruded once more.

Scarbeck nestled under the Pennines on the extreme northeast outskirts of Manchester. A former mill town, officially classified as a deprived area under EC rules, it was a community living in fear of one elusive and dangerous man. The Handshaker. The sobriquet was a mystery to everyone, and hardly accurate in Croft’s opinion. Each victim had been hanged, so why had they not dubbed him The Hangman?

According to the media, the police did not even have a suspect, and Croft could well imagine that tempers ran high in this station. They were unlikely to be enthusiastic about chasing up the speculative words of a… a what? He supposed they would consider the writer a crackpot. Croft thought differently. The coded reference in the note spoke to him, and he knew that the writer, whoever he was, was not merely an oddball. If the note told the truth, he was just as dangerous as The Handshaker.

Irritably, he checked his watch then got to his feet and crossed to the counter again. “Excuse me.”

Simpson, busily completing some kind of documentation, looked up. “Yes?”

“Could you tell me how much longer this Inspector Matthews is likely to be? I have an appointment at ten thirty.” Croft pointed to his wristwatch.

The sergeant drew in a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. “I did say you might have to wait.”

“So you did, but I didn’t think it would be this long. Could you possibly…” he trailed off as the pass door opened and he found himself confronted with a smartly dressed woman.

“Mr Croft?” she asked. “I’m Detective Inspector Matthews. Millie Matthews. You asked to speak to me?”

Croft gave her a thin smile, his eyes skimming her dark skin and the stark contrast of her long, dyed, blonde hair. Warm, dark brown eyes, shining bronze marbles in saucers of milk, suggested an allure that was completely at odds with her tone and her mode of dress. She wore a two-piece business suit in a sober grey, offset with a pale green blouse and unflattering, plain black shoes.

For months, even years now, the popular press had claimed that the police service was rife with institutional racism. Her elevation to inspector, and second in command at that, pleased Croft. Racism was anathema to him, and the way to beat it was to promote, on merit, the Millie Matthews of this world – a woman for a start off and of Afro-Caribbean descent to boot – to positions of genuine authority, where her skills would command automatic respect, not politically correct lip service.

He considered registering a complaint about the length of time he had been kept waiting, but decided against it. He fished into his pocket, withdrew the envelope and handed it to her. “This arrived in the morning post.”

Her features went through a rapid shift from mildly co-operative, through reproving, to downright anger. The warm eyes suddenly turned cold. “Mr Croft, we are extremely busy, and you don’t need someone of my rank to deal with unsolicited mail. The sergeant could have registered your complaint.”