The Handshaker (39 page)

They tore out of the station, and with every yard passing under the tyres, Croft became more and more jittery. There was the familiar tightness in his gut, the shaking hands, the drip of adrenaline into his system, preparing him for the worst.

Like the nightmare journey from the university four evenings back, all his concentration ordered him to think Trish alive, as if he could bring about the reality by merely believing it. His common sense told him that this was the end; that The Handshaker had given up hope of Croft coming back into the game, or had learned that Croft had been rearrested, and Trish was already dead, hanging in a ramshackle shed on a down and out council estate, an ignominious and degrading end to a distinguished life.

As memories of their decade together flooded his worried mind, he felt himself on the verge of tears, grieving for her even though she was not yet confirmed dead.

With his blue light flashing, Shannon jumped the traffic lights at Pearman’s Junction, and accelerated up the long, straight hill of Pennine Road and Croft willed them to hurry on, mentally insisting to himself that he be there before they cut her down, a form of self-flagellation by seeing her hanging, a punishment for his continued existence when hers had been taken from her.

He was already flushing guilt, a standard reaction to bereavement, but one that was not ameliorated for all that he recognised it.

And beneath the guilt was the anger. What had she done to deserve such a brutal end? Moved in with him? And what had he done? Dressed down some latent lunatic in an English class? Argued over the rights of an individual to hold extreme views on the role of women in modern society? He did not know what it was all about, but he fretted that Trish was now to pay a dreadful price for his unknown sin.

The car turned off Pennine Road, onto the Winridge Ring Road, past the Winridge Inn, along Avon Way, past the end of Sussex Crescent where Alf Lumb had met his terrible death, and the awful awareness struck him like a hammer blow. Trish was here, and Rehana, and all the other women. Christ, hundreds, maybe thousands of people must have walked right past all the victims over the last two years. He knew it the other night, when he too was within yards of her, but it was only now that the real horror struck home. While this estate went about its day-to-day business, women had been taken, imprisoned and murdered in one of these houses.

When Shannon turned right onto Kent Road, Croft could see the tiny clutch of cars, two plain saloons, and a gaudy, red, green and white striped patrol car, but it was the presence of the plain white, Scientific Support van that worried him most. What had the forensic team found? Across the road, a small crowd of people, some of them children, had gathered to watch events and Thurrock, who must have got there only minutes earlier, was trying to persuade them to move on.

Shannon brought the car to a skidding halt, he and Fletcher leapt out leaving Croft in the rear. He tried the doors, but couldn’t open them. He recalled with some irritation that the rear doors had secure locks and could only be opened from the outside. Shannon and Fletcher had already disappeared into the garage. Croft leapt over the seats and let himself out of the driver’s door, and rushed to the garage. Fletcher tried to stop him, but he shrugged the CID man off and peered in.

Relief flooded him. No body. Only a car, a silver-grey Ford Fiesta with a 1989 registration plate, a dirty tarpaulin thrown off to one side.

He was about to step in when Fletcher grabbed his arm again. “You can’t go in there. Forensic.”

“Trish. The car –”

“She’s not in the car,” Fletcher interrupted pressing Croft back, away from the garage. “There’s nothing in the car but a pile of clothing, some of it Rehana’s, a typewriter and two mobile phones. We’re certain one of them is Ms Sinclair’s and the other is Rehana’s. Come away, Mr Croft, and leave it to us.”

Croft did as he was asked and suffered the frustration welling in him. Where the hell was she? Intuition, something he could never professionally acknowledge, told him she was still alive. He had already forgotten the anticipatory grief that had engulfed him on the anxious drive here. He looked around at the dishevelled houses. She was here. Close by. He knew it. It was almost as if she were calling to him, telepathically, pleading for him to find and rescue her. Where?
Where?

“Hello Felix.”

As if waking from a daze, Croft found the tall, slender figure of Gerald Humphries stood alongside him, a brown leather shopping bag in his hands.

“Oh hello, Gerry.” There was no enthusiasm in his voice.

“What’s going on here?” Humphries wanted to know. “Is it to do with that business with the Lumbs?”

“What?” Croft was confused. “Oh. No. Well, possibly, but not directly.”

“Oh.” Humphries put on a sympathetic face. “Listen, I’m terribly sorry to hear about Ms Sinclair. I do hope they find her soon.”

Croft smiled grimly. “No problem, Gerry.”

Humphries returned the smile. “Well, I’m, er, sorry anyway. I hope she’s all right.”

Croft’s lip curled contemptuously as he watched Humphries wander off. The biggest source of gossip on Winridge. Like an old woman.

Shannon came to him. “Sorry, Croft, but she’s not here. It, er, it doesn’t look too promising, I’m afraid. We’ve found what we believe to be Rehana Begum’s uniform in the car as well as clothing matching that worn by Victoria Reid, Susan Edwards and other Handshaker victims, and there’s some we haven’t identified. I don’t suppose you’d know what Ms Sinclair was wearing the morning she disappeared?”

Croft shrugged worriedly. “Plain blouse, dark skirt. She’s a barrister, remember.”

Shannon held up a transparent, polythene bag in which the garments had already been packed.

Croft studied them. “They look like hers. I can’t be sure but I’ll tell you who will know. Christine Hitchins, my daily. She sees to our laundry and she’ll tell you in an instant.”

Shannon nodded. “Forensic need to go over it all, but I can take you home now, and take it with us.” He looked pityingly on Croft. “You need to get yourself home and try to get some sleep.”

“How?” Croft yelped. “How am I supposed to sleep while she’s out there, out here? I won’t rest, Shannon, until I find her.”

November 20th

54

The sun burned onto Trish’s back as she patted sand into her bucket, turned it upside down and gently removed it, revealing a small, round turret. She looked back at Mum and Dad. Mum was asleep and Dad was reading the
Daily Mirror
. He beamed a generous smile on her.

“Castles on the ground, lass? Better than castles in the air.”

Trish didn’t understand. She looked to the sea lapping the shore, where her brothers splashed in the calm, shallow water. Then she stared out at the sea, which stretched for miles and miles.

“Dad, what’s on the other side of the sea?”

“Another land, chicken. A land where the workers don’t get sent away from their little girls just because they have an argument with the boss.”

“Will you take me to that other land?”

“One day, my love. One day.”

***

She lay in a darkness broken only by a crack of light from under the door.

What little remained of her sanity bordered on extinction. Three times during the day and evening he had taken her and each time, aside from the mental anguish, the all-consuming rage at this violation of her body, was the physical pain of her bindings. She could not recall how long she had been strapped to this bed, force fed soup, her only release those few times when he took her to the toilet. After the last time, earlier today, he could not be bothered to tie her arms to the bedrails, so he bound them at her back and lay her down on them. They were skewed so far back that there had been no sensation in them for hours. Her legs were stretched apart and bound so tightly that the circulation was all but gone, and across her waist, he had secured her with rope which chafed the soft skin of her abdomen. She was slowly dying and the only thoughts distracting her from this agonising knowledge were of the other women he had tortured in this manner before taking them away and murdering them.

She had no notion of the hour. The only thing that marked the passage of time was the coming of diffused daylight through the thick curtains, followed by night. She suffered painful pangs of hunger and thirst, and this monster had only permitted her use of the lavatory when he believed she needed it. She had wet the bed more than once and now her bowels were threatening to move.

Even so there was still that tiny spark of hope. The longer he kept her here, the greater the chance of Croft making the final connection and finding her.

The end, she knew, could not be far away. In the early hours of the morning, he had come into the room and taken away a typewriter and a pile of clothing. It could only mean one thing. The Handshaker was about to leave Scarbeck, disposing of all traces. Trish could only hope that he would kill her before he left. The thought of being allowed to starve to death in this dingy room frightened her more than the prospect of extinction.

The door suddenly opened, flooding the room with light from the landing, silhouetting him as he entered.

He looked down upon her nudity and smiled greedily. “You’re very tasty, Sinclair, and you’re the first barrister I’ve had … as far as I can remember.”

Trish closed her mind to his words. They served only to enrage her further and that rage was impotent, mind-consuming, removing her capacity for logical thought and the possibility of escape.

“It’s almost two in the morning,” he told her, “and it’s your time. I’ll take my pleasure one last time, and then we’re on the move. Most of the town will be in bed or out clubbing, and we can make our way down there without arousing suspicion.”

He stripped off his shirt, ran a hand along her leg and she cringed.

“It’s been fun, you know, but it’s time The Handshaker made his way from Scarbeck to new pastures. Naturally, you won’t be going with me, but in one sense you’re luckier than the others. I hung them. Wanked off while I watched them die, but I won’t be killing you and I won’t be stopping to toss myself off while you die. Not that it’ll make much difference to you. You’ll die anyway … and your boyfriend will be going with you.” He laughed. “They haven’t announced it on the news, but I know they got him and they’ve let him go. I saw him.”

He let his trousers down and displayed a proud erection. “You’re cold,” he said as he lowered himself onto and into her. He laughed and thrust hard. “Don’t worry. You’ll be a bloody sight colder before the night’s over.”

She switched her mind off to the terrible reality. Instead she drifted way to that hot summer, building sandcastles on the beach at Bridlington while her mother and father took their ease in deck chairs and her brothers played in the sea.

During the two months that her father had been in prison, she had pined for him. When he came out, she made him promise that he would never go away again. Every day, she would sit by the windows and watch for him coming home from work, and when they went to the seaside, she stayed near him, frightened that if she went to play in the sea, like her brothers, he would disappear and never come back.

A few months ago, he did go away forever, the victim of a brain tumour. The older Trish was no better able to deal with it than the child, but in his passing, he had allowed her to fall into this terrible man’s clutches. Now she needed her father, or another hero.

The news that Felix had been released sparked her hope once more. She knew that he would be out there looking for her, trying his damndest to put together the pieces of this puzzle and locate her. She sent out mental messages, psychic nonsense telling him exactly where she was.

***

It was over. The Handshaker had spent himself yet again. He climbed off and began to dress. There was no pity in his eyes, no compassion, only evil.

Once attired he gazed fondly down upon her. “It’s time.”

He took the knife and cut her feet free. Trish ordered her leg muscles to kick, but nothing happened. They had been rigid for so long that they had all but seized. He tied her feet together, leaving a length of rope about two feet long between them.

“We’re going for a little ride. Try anything silly and I’ll cut your throat. Be good and you have a few hours left yet.” He smiled false encouragement. “You never know, your boyfriend might actually save you.” Now he chuckled with childish glee. “I don’t think so, but you never know.”

He unfastened the strap across her waist and jerked her to a standing position. Her insensate legs folded and she collapsed in a heap on the floor. He yanked her upright, his hands pushed through her armpits, cupping her breasts.

“Nice tits,” he slavered.

For several minutes he forced her to walk around the tiny room to bring the circulation back to her legs and then, when she was ready, he guided her down the stairs, out through the back door to his Peugeot, and thrust her into the back seat, throwing his old anorak over her.

Movement was not an option. With her hands tied so tightly, even though her legs had some freedom, Trish doubted that she would get twenty yards under her own steam and even if she could move, what would she do? Kick the door open and throw herself out onto the road while they drove along?