The Handshaker (33 page)

Kidnapping the wog was a good idea. The police hadn’t even missed her yet, or if they had, it was not mentioned on the early evening local news which he had just watched.

But Croft escaping. . . He had not planned on that. The stupid bloody police had let him get away and in doing so, they had screwed up everything. Their efforts would be concentrated on finding him, not seeking Sinclair and if they did not get him back by Saturday . . . well the plan was in tatters. The Handshaker would have to dispose of Sinclair, disappear, and start all over again.

Whilst Croft’s escape was inconvenient to say the least, it did have one saving grace. Because Evelyn Kearns had been strangled and Kathleen Murphy battered to death, the police would assume Croft did it, and that would hold them off The Handshaker trail, giving him the opportunity to disappear, but while it was advantageous from that point of view, it meant that he was unable to keep a track on Croft’s progress. Overall, he would prefer it if the law took Croft in again. But even if they did, would they let him go in time to be there on Sunday?

Years of work, of planning, gone to waste. Looking glumly out at the night, The Handshaker shrugged. He would just have to start again. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Meanwhile, he had other things to think about, like a tasty little black shag hidden in the shed.

45

Millie got home in time to catch the local BBC news full of Croft’s escape, showing pictures from the morning out at Allington Woods and Oaklands, followed by live feeds from outside the house where the reporters gleefully reported Croft’s arrest and dramatic escape.

The news merely put her off her food and fuelled her anger at the way Croft had made fools of them.

It had been a bad day all round. Beginning with her belief in Croft, ending with his escape and a fruitless journey to see Evelyn Kearns. The bloody woman wasn’t in and several calls to her number had met without reply.

She switched her mobile on and presently it tweeted twice for attention, signalling a text message. She checked the menu window and saw the familiar envelope symbol. Checking the source, it was one she did not recognise. She opened the message and read with incredulous eyes.

Dated the previous day, it read:

Croft 90 mins after my arrest saw the beeb news & Begum wasn’t there i didn’t have time to get her, the hk has her gates of unwe at 11 2morrow i’ll be watching if i see any other cops, u won’t see me

Millie’s gorge rose again. The cheeky bastard, texting her like that. An idea occurred to her. He had sent the text yesterday, but if she could get a GPS track on the phone he’d used, they would have him the moment he used it again.

She forgot the idea as quickly as she’d thought of it. Croft was not stupid. He’d know about GPS. Ten to one he’d borrowed a phone to send the message.

What the hell did he mean where was the cop? What about the BBC? She knew nothing about the BBC.

Her jumbled, angry thoughts stopped and she stared at the screen. All the local news teams were on stand-by outside Oaklands, and the cameramen were shooting straight up the drive. She could see Croft’s Mercedes and a constable who looked like John Beamish, pacing slowly in the background, bored out of his skull. Either he or Bob Grindley must have taken over from Rehana at two o’clock.

Thoughts of her Asian colleague, another woman who had endured the inevitable racism of a small town force like Scarbeck, turned her back to the text message:
the cop u put on oaklands wasn’t there
. What the hell was Croft on about? Rehana was on the door when they all left at ten past ten, and she wouldn’t come off duty until two, so unless she had been relieved, she
must
have been stationed outside Oaklands at noon.

It was all so mysterious, but it aroused her suspicions. She rang the station and got Sergeant Simpson. “Ronnie, it’s Millie. Did Rehana check in at all this afternoon?”

“Nope,” replied Simpson. He sounded as if he were in another of his foul moods. “The cheeky sod left Allington early and didn’t even bother to call here. And she hasn’t got home yet. I’ve had her father on whining that we’re making his daughter work too many hours.”

“She didn’t wait for a relief at Oaklands?” Millie asked.

“No. And when she gets in here, she’s gonna know about it. Asian or no Asian, she toes the line or she’s out.”

The ghost of suspicion haunting Millie’s mind took hold and established its roots. “Ronnie, I think Rehana may have been kidnapped.”

“What?” Simpson shouted his response. “Are you. . .”

“No, I’m not kidding,” Millie cut him off. “Get onto Ernie, tell him to meet me at the station. I’m on my way in.”

She hurried from the house, leapt into the car and tore off towards the town. She hurtled into the station yard a quarter of an hour later, and rushed into a crowded briefing room to find Shannon already briefing not only the evening and night shift, but the day shift too, most of whom had gone home before Millie, but returned on hearing that a colleague was missing.

“Team spirit,” Simpson told her as she squeezed into the room.

“Very impressive,” she murmured and began to fight her way to the front.

“I’ll fill you in when I’ve finished briefing them,” Shannon told her. Turning back to the crew, he said aloud, “I want Oaklands watched, we already have the university covered, but I want every patrol on the lookout for Croft. He’s not in his own car, but when he was at the university this afternoon, he was dressed in scruffy jeans, a reefer jacket, wearing a Manchester United shirt and a fisherman’s hat.”

Millie tugged at his jacket sleeve.

“Just a minute, Millie,” he snapped. Speaking to the room again, he raised his voice once more. “Those of you who’ve been detailed to the door to door inquiries, get out to Allington, and you don’t miss anyone. Not a single door. If you don’t get an answer, keep knocking. Knock the buggers up if you have to. Right, you all know what you’re doing, get out there and do it. Inspector Matthews and I will be co-ordinating the work from here. If you get anything, ring in right away.”

The crowd began to break up, heading for the exit. Shannon made for his office, Millie followed.

“Well done, Millie,” Shannon congratulated her. “I don’t know how you tumbled it, but when we rang Croft’s daily, she told us Rehana wasn’t there when she put the bins out at five to twelve.”

Millie closed the door behind her. “What’s this about Croft?”

Shannon frowned. “Do you know of anyone else who could have abducted her?”

“No, but I’m bloody sure it wasn’t him,” she retorted.

Shannon waved her objection down. “You’re getting too close to him. Remember who you are and back off.”

“Ernie –”

“Think about it, Millie. He legged it from Thurrock, claiming he was innocent and was gonna prove it. I believe he doubled back to Oaklands overpowered her and took her. I don’t think she’s dead and I don’t think she’s in any real danger. I reckon he’s taken Rehana as a bargaining chip. We won’t know for sure until he gets in touch.”

Millie shook he head. Her eyes were wide with disbelief. “You’ve lost the plot, you have.”

“Millie. . .” There was a warning edge to Shannon’s tone.

She ignored it. “According to you, he’s already knocked off Sinclair, and now you say he has Rehana but she’s in no danger. What are you gonna do for an encore? Play the fiddle while someone burns the station down?” He opened his mouth to protest, but she did not give him the chance. “Ernie, he didn’t have time to get back to Oaklands. He was on foot after he left Thurrock.”

“He drew money from an ATM on South Dean Road about twenty minutes after he legged it,” Shannon told her. “He had enough cash to hire a car.”

“Then how come no one from the hire companies have rung in?” Millie asked. “They’re not all scammers. Ernie, this is not him.”

“Prove it,” he challenged.

“I will.” Millie turned on her heels and marched to the door.

“And where the hell do you think you’re going?”

She rounded on him. “Home. I want to help find Rehana, but I’m not going to waste my night on a wild goose chase.”

46

“Terminus.”

The bus driver’s call brought Croft out of his thoughts. A woman sat on the seat opposite folded away her copy of the
Scarbeck Reporter
and Croft had the unnerving experience of seeing his own face stare out from the front page as she tucked it in her shopping bag.

Getting to his feet, head bowed, hat pulled low over his forehead he shuffled off the bus into the cold and rainy night.

He had been watching the early evening news via the BBC website before leaving his hiding place, and it had been full of him.

“
Scarbeck police have issued a warning that a murder suspect remains at large tonight. Felix Croft was being taken in for questioning on the deaths of Victoria Reid, who disappeared two days ago and was presumed to be a Handshaker victim, and prostitute Joyce Dunn, found hanged at her Winridge home, this morning. Croft overpowered the police officer driving him to Scarbeck, and made his escape, handcuffing the officer to the door of his car.”

A photograph of Croft, one that he had had taken for his university ID card, appeared on the screen.

“
Croft is described as six feet tall, dark haired and outwardly placid and assured, but police are advising members of the public not to approach him. He is considered extremely dangerous. Anyone seeing this man is urged to ring the police.”

Croft sniggered at that. Dangerous? Only to Superintendent Shannon’s ambitions in clearing up The Handshaker case.

Shannon himself had appeared, speaking about the light at the end of the tunnel and again Croft had laughed. They hadn’t found the switch, let alone the light.

But he had … or at least, he had found the cable that led to the switch. He had narrowed down The Handshaker’s locality.

He doubted that the man would be easy to find. He would have covered his tracks well, but Winridge Estate was a start. He, Croft, had made more progress in a single afternoon than the police had in two years. Could he follow it up on this rundown estate tonight?

With a hiss from the air brakes, the bus moved off up the road, where it turned round ready for the return journey to Scarbeck.

Lower down, on the corner of Avon Way, was a parade of shops. The lights of a laundrette and a mini-market next door blazed into the night. A group of teenagers hung around the darkened doorway of the Winridge Chippy. The place was closed on Thursday evenings, and they used it to shelter from the interminable rain. They ignored him as he walked past and he paid them no mind. He was after bigger fish than a group of bored youths.

He turned along Avon Way and it was as if someone had turned the lights down. The evenly spaced, tangerine lamps of the ring road gave way to dimmer, low sodium lights, spaced further apart in the side streets, and many of them did not work anyway, vandalised into lifeless street furniture. The rain and darkness surrounded him, his bland, secondhand clothing lent him a chameleon-like camouflage, blending him into the night, a figure as shadowy as his unknown enemy.

She was here, somewhere nearby, probably tied to a bed so The Handshaker could abuse her at his whim. Where?

Across the road was a row of ramshackle, brick-built garages, their wooden doors in a state of advanced disrepair. They were scheduled for demolition as and when the cash-strapped council could find the money. They reminded Croft of The Handshaker’s mysterious, silver grey Ford Fiesta, a car that the police were unable to find despite having captured it on CCTV time and time again. False plates, probably sprayed a different colour to its original. Where was it when it was not in use? In a garage, obviously. A garage not unlike those across the road. In that case, why had no one ever seen it coming in and going out?

The answer was the same as the reason the police had never seen it out on the road. Plenty of people
had
seen it but never made the vital connection at the time, and the driver never did anything to attract attention. Croft had a sneaking respect for The Handshaker’s understanding of human psychology. Every action was there for all the world to see, but like his deadly shake of the hand, it was so innocuous that no one picked up on it.

He turned up Sussex Crescent and keeping close to the hedgerows, ambled along towards the Lumbs’.

Was The Handshaker there in Spinners when Sandra threw herself over the balustrade? Damn right he was. He would have seen Sandra leave the house, hurrying away, possibly seen her harangue poor Gerry Humphries, and then followed her, or even better, made his way to Spinners before her, certain that she would arrive because he had told her to, and while Croft and the police tried to prevent her carrying out the pre-programmed death leap, he would have stood in the crowd watching with secret glee as she went over.

Would he be worried that she may have survived the fall? No. Even if she had lived, she would have been in intensive care and even assuming she would recover, it would be a long time before they could unravel the damage to her mind. Long enough for The Handshaker to disappear if he so wished.