The Handshaker (40 page)

It was a journey of less than ten minutes. He stopped briefly, removed the car keys and she heard a set of metal gates opening. He drove the car through, then climbed out again to close them. He drove on a short way, stopped again and this time dragged her out, confronting her with the view from Scarbeck Point. For the first time in a week, the skies had cleared, and the stars shone, but a chill wind bit at her naked skin. It would probably freeze before daybreak.

He forced her down the hill, pushed her ahead of him across the rough grass, down the hill towards the rear of Cromford Mill.

Without footwear, by the time they reached the inner security fence and his access, her feet were sore and bleeding. Crossing the concrete yard, tramping through brick dust, shards of glass and stones, added to the agony and by the time they made the door, she was limping badly on both feet.

“Won’t be long now.” He chuckled as he fumbled into his pockets for a flashlight.

Pushing her into the crumbling building, he moved her up a short flight of concrete steps and stopped. The wooden floor of the disused room felt icy cold to her feet.

He looked into her frightened eyes. “I want you to see this, Sinclair. I want you to see the hopelessness of your situation before I leave you to your fate.”

He turned her round and beamed his flashlight up.

If it were not for the gag in her mouth, Trish would have thrown up. Hanging from a beam on the floor above, a body had begun to decompose and even from this distance, the pitiful whites of her eyes showed. Trish searched what little was left of her memory. WPC Rehana Begum.

“As I said earlier, it’s not for you,” he chattered. “But I’m sure you want to know
why
you’re dying. I can’t be bothered telling you it all, but I can tell you this much. It isn’t you. It’s Croft and his family. They murdered my father. As for the victims, well they all came to me via nurses and counsellors, or by chance, but you all had one thing in common. You were hypnotised by a master. Not an amateur, like your boyfriend, but a true master – me. Just remember, Sinclair, before you die, Croft, is behind The Handshaker killings. All this,” he waved another languid hand in the direction of the dead woman, “is his doing.”

Trish forced her muscles to work. She wriggled from his grasp and hobbled back to the door, hell bent on getting away. He caught her in a second, spun her round and slapped her across the face.

“Bitch. Don’t you get it yet? You’re going to die, and it’s all thanks to your fucking hero, Croft.”

Gripping her below the waist, he bent, heaved her onto his shoulder and lit his way back down the stairs, to the entrance and past it, down another flight into the basement.

Once there, kicking rats away from his feet, he carried her into the darkest corner and planted her on her backside, on the filthy concrete floor. Taking more twine from his pocket, he anchored her to a girder and stood back, shining the light in her frightened face.

“It’s almost three. You’ve about five hours to wait and then it’ll be all over. You may just freeze to death before then, but you’re young and fit,” he bent and fondled her breast for the last time, “and healthy, so I should think you’ll last out to the bitter end. Goodbye, Sinclair. The pleasure was all mine.”

55

Croft awoke suddenly.

He glanced sideways at the green LED display of his alarm clock and read 6:45. What had woken him? With a shock, he knew. The empty bed beside him.

In the dark days, immediately after he and his wife separated, notwithstanding the growing relationship between himself and Trish, he would lie in a double bed alone, wishing he could turn back the clock, resist the temptations that had led him to that position, make a better marriage with Janet. Now he was going through it again, but this time it was worse. This time, he had not been unfaithful.

Not been unfaithful? The words echoed through his tired brain. What about Millie? Rolling out of bed, he quickly rationalised the interlude with the detective inspector as nothing more than an encounter forged in desperation. He wasn’t unfaithful, only unhappy, taking solace from Millie’s demanding urgency.

Saturday had been a nightmare. He and Shannon called first at Mrs Hitchins’ place in the village – she did not work weekends – where she positively identified the clothing as Trish’s.

“It could be anybody’s, Mr Croft, sir,” she said of the skirt, blouse and bra, “but the sizes are correct, and finding all three items together means it has to be hers.”

From there Shannon dropped him at Oaklands and he spent the entire day waiting, waiting and waiting. Waiting for the phone to ring with news, hoping that the car would provide the one piece of evidence that would identify The Handshaker or pinpoint his location. But like every other scene of crime, although the forensic people turned up a welter of evidence, there was nothing conclusive, nothing that pointed at any individual.

As the evening drew in, he finally began work on the last Handshaker message, but made no progress. He struggled with the anagrams, his brain constantly harping back to and pining for Trish, holding back his progress.

He was convinced that she was still alive. The alternative was not only unpalatable, unthinkable, but it would not serve The Handshaker’s purpose. What would be the point of taunting Croft if the woman he used as an instrument of torture was already dead? Trish was alive. If she were not, The Handshaker would have let him know, and although Croft checked the Internet message boards several times during the day and evening, there were no new posts.

Millie rang at midnight. “Just thought I’d see how you are.”

“Agitated,” he confessed. “Unable to concentrate. Pining, worrying, on the verge of a breakdown probably. What’s the word from the police station?”

“Grim. They have absolutely no clue who they’re looking for and Evelyn Kearns’ records have provided no further clues. Tomorrow morning they have to turn out in force for the big bang at Cromford Mill.”

Croft was puzzled. “Sorry?”

“Cromford Mill,” she reminded him. “It’s to be demolished tomorrow morning. Remember?”

Croft did remember. It was one of those trivial events from the real world, one that Millie had mentioned before but which had slipped by in the insanity of the last few days.

“And that suspends the search for Trish and The Handshaker, does it?” he wanted to know.

“Backroom boys will be hard at it,” Millie explained, “but Shannon, as the station commander will have to put in an appearance.” There was a pause. “You need company?”

Croft declined. Sex was not the solution. “I should get to work on these anagrams. If I don’t crack them, it may cost Trish her life.”

Putting the phone down, he returned to the work, but eventually, at one in the morning, on the point of exhaustion, he went to bed.

And now, here he was, up and about again, less than six hours later. Five days without proper rest, and he was still wide-awake.

He stared at his reflection in the wardrobe mirror. Where was it? Where had it gone? That confidence.

The son of a High Court Judge, a member of a legal dynasty that could trace its ancestry back almost 200 years, confidence came as part of the package. All his life, people had criticised him for his overweening reliance upon himself, his sense of self-importance and often supercilious arrogance, but they were the very factors that made him a winner. Even his father, with whom he had had many a bitter argument, insisted that while he disapproved of Croft’s chosen career path, he would nevertheless succeed as a hypnotist because success was a part of the Croft gene.

And now it was gone. Along with the woman he loved, it had been taken from him. In the five days since her abduction, he had suffered the anguish of doubt and grief, spent sleepless hours waiting for an indication of her whereabouts, been arrested, suffered the ignominy of a lost reputation, and been hunted like some border collie charged with worrying sheep, when in truth he had been guarding them.

It was, he knew, all a part of a softening up process; designed to attack his senses, disorient and weaken him before his unseen, unknown adversary moved in for the final kill. Leave him wondering who, where, when, how.

He made his way downstairs and switched on the kettle. While he waited, he checked the weather. The torrential rain of the last few days, which had caused flooding in low-lying areas of the country, had at last swept eastwards to the continent and the sky was clear. It had caused a drop in temperature, and beyond the outer doors, the patio was covered in a glistening layer of frost.

With a beaker of tea, he moved into the lounge and sat in his armchair. The coffee table was a clutter of A4 sheets on which he had tried to crack the anagrams
huge bar mark
and
peel the large zit,
the references to
Sir Dick
and
wren
. Driven to the point of despair, he just
knew
that they held vital information. He also knew that despite his best efforts, if he tried again, the solution would still evade him.

Silently sipping his tea, he ran his mind back over the last week, highlighting the events that had pointed him in this direction or drawn him to that conclusion, the terrible journey after he realised Trish had been taken, the mad dash through Allington Woods to find Victoria Reid, the frantic escape from police custody, two nights spent in a dusty shed in the university grounds catnapping on two armchairs pushed together. Five, no six days during which his life had been turned upside down, inside out, and it all stemmed from a single note with two sets of dates and two separate locations on it.

Heidelberg 1927-1934, Scarbeck 2008-2010
.

Heidelberg. In the confusion of events, he’d completely forgotten about Heidelberg. Perhaps that may hold a clue.

He picked up the anagrams. Even putting them together, he was still a letter ‘d’ short of Heidelberg. That wasn’t the answer, and neither was hypnosis. There was no ‘y’ anywhere in the words.

Still, hypnosis and Heidelberg were at the core of The Handshaker’s evil work … or had been. His thoughts called to mind another question. How had The Handshaker learned of Heidelberg? Croft had worked on the case for the better part of fifteen years, but he had published little on it. And yet, the notes indicated that The Handshaker was better than Franz Walter. How would he know? Because he had read a detailed work on it, obviously. Whose? Hammerschlag? Zepelli?

Croft left the lounge, crossed the hall, entered the study and flicked on the light. The police had his copy of
Hypnotism and Crime
, but scanning the bookshelves, he picked up
The Great Zepelli – A Life On Stage.

Returning to the lounge, he settled into his chair, took another swallow of tea and opened the book.

In a stage career spanning thirty years, I have never...

Croft’s entire body and mind froze. The Great Zepelli – peel the large zit. It couldn’t be. He snatched up his pen and ran through the letters, crossing them out on his sheet of paper as he encountered them in the name. Long before he had ticked them all off, he knew it fitted. It was exact.

His logical processes accelerated. What was Zepelli’s real name? Berne, Burns, Burke … yes, Burke. Oh god. G.B. The police were seeking a man whose initials were G.B. and he was an expert hypnotist. Was Zepelli G.B? He couldn’t be. He was dead. He died in Walton prison back in the late seventies. Croft’s father sent him there. What was Zepelli’s Christian name? George? Geoffrey?

Frantically, he swept the pages back to the publisher’s information.
Copyright 1974, Graham Burke.
Graham, not George and not Geoffrey.

Once more he took up his pen. Graham Burke … huge bar mark. Again a perfect fit. The Great Zepelli was Graham Burke and if so, could it be that the G.B. they were seeking was some relation, possibly his son? There would be confirmation somewhere in the text.

He did not need to look far. On the page opposite the publishing history was the dedication.
To my son Gerald, the best hypnotist the world has never seen.

So that was it. G.B. Gerald Burke. He was Zepelli’s son and Croft’s father had sent Zepelli to prison where he died. The whole thing made sense. His father had prosecuted Zepelli and he died in prison, now Trish had been abducted and imprisoned by Zepelli’s son and she would die without ever being free again. He, Croft, had been the target ever since the first note arrived.

Croft’s excitement rose. He was close. All he had to do was ascertain Gerald Burke’s current identity, and surely Zepelli’s autobiography would hold that information.

He skimmed the book glancing here and there as words leapt off the page. He paused at a photograph of Zepelli and his assistant, Georgina, his wife. A startlingly attractive, young woman, and a tall, lean and good-looking man, with the powerful physique necessary for one who had started out as an escapologist. It was a photograph Croft had seen elsewhere. But where? On the page opposite, a line of print jumped out at him.
I first met Georgina Humphries at the Hippodrome Theatre in Bristol just after the war.