The Handshaker (41 page)

His blood ran cold. Georgina’s maiden name was Humphries. And they had a son called Gerald. And that was where Croft had seen that photograph before. Staring out from Gerald Humphries’ display cabinet.

He hurled himself from the chair and took the stairs two at a time. He threw on a pair of jogging pants and a T-shirt, slipped his feet into trainers and flew back down the stairs, pausing only to grab his fleece, mobile phone and car keys. Call the police? No time. They’d take ages dragging Shannon out of bed and getting to Winridge Estate. He’d call them on the mobile from the car. Right now, he had to get moving, find Trish before the bastard killed her. He could hold Humphries until the law arrived.

Despite having been stood for three days or more, the Mercedes started with a roar, and Croft offered a silent prayer of thanks for his habit of keeping a brand new, well-maintained vehicle. He rammed the transmission in and tore off through the gates.

Snaking along Allington Lane, he barely paused at the junction with Huddersfield Road, and floored the gas pedal, fumbling with his phone in an effort to switch it on. As he glanced from road to phone, seeking the correct numbers in the directory, he dropped the phone and it skittered across the car and into the passenger side foot well.

“Shit.”

Should he stop to retrieve it? No. It would eat up valuable seconds. He could call Shannon from Humphries’ place. He hammered the accelerator again and hared down Huddersfield Road.

It was all so glaringly obvious with hindsight. A man who had actually suggested that Sandra Lumb call Croft for her depression, a man who had more than likely
caused
Sandra Lumb’s depression. A man close enough to get at Sandra, a man who could steal a ballpoint pen from a jacket when he chaperoned her hypnosis sessions, a man who lived alone, an unmarried man who had spent years caring for a terminally ill mother, a man who probably used prostitutes for sexual release, a man living two streets from Joyce Dunn.

Croft jumped the red light at Pearman’s Junction, yanked the wheel hard right, his tyres screeching in protest when he gunned the gas once more up the hill.

How many times had he sat in that living room after finishing his sessions with Sandra? How many times had he drunk from that rose china tea service, chattered aimlessly over life in the 60s, told Humphries of his own life, his contentment with his career, with his partner? For all he knew, one of the madman’s many victims could have been bound and gagged upstairs while they chatted over the influence of Beatles music on 60s youth.

He hurtled into Winridge Estate at better than 70, his foot to the floor, screaming along the Ring Road, braking hard as he turned onto Avon Way, hammering the pedal to the floor as he swept right into Sussex Crescent.

Just yesterday morning he had stood with Shannon, Fletcher and the SOCOs, on Kent Road and Humphries had actually spoken to him.

“All right, Felix?”

The barefaced bastard had actually passed the time of day with him, offered his sympathy for what had happened to Trish, and all the while he had her locked away in some filthy room.

With the dashboard clock reading 7.20, a blaze of blue on the horizon heralded the coming day. The sun would not rise for a further half hour, and it would be a clear, frosty day. He brought the car to a screaming halt outside Humphries’ house. The front door was ajar and the lights were on. Leaving his keys in the ignition, snatching his mobile phone from the passenger well, Croft ran for the house and burst in. He checked the kitchen. Empty. He ran into the living room. No one there. The photograph caught his eye again. The man and woman in glittering stage clothes, the legend beneath.
The Great Zepelli and Georgina, Morecambe 1955.
Christ, if only he’d made the connection earlier.

He dialled up the police station.

“Scarbeck police?”

“This is Felix Croft,” he said breathlessly. “Get onto Superintendent Shannon, tell him Gerald Humphries is the man we’re looking for.”

“Sir,” complained the night duty officer, “the superintendent is out of the station right now, on other duties?”

“Then bell him.”

“Sir –”

“Just do it,” Croft cut in. “If Shannon screams at anyone it’ll be me. Tell him I’m on Winridge now. I’ll meet him here.”

He snapped off the phone, slipped it into his pocket and looked around. Where? Where the hell was she? He looked up at the ceiling. Could it be? He doubted it. Humphries would not be up there with her at this hour.

He hurried to the stairs, nudged the front door closed and climbed the first two, before stopping and slowly turning to stare at the door.

Why was it open? Not just unlocked but ajar. It was almost as if Humphries were extending an invitation.

He stepped back into the living room and looked around again. On the polished table beneath the front window, sat in the middle of the chess set, was a sheet of A4 paper. Idly Croft noticed that the pieces on the chessboard were no longer in their opening positions. Instead, most had been removed leaving the black king hemmed on the back line by the white queen and a supporting rook. Croft picked the note up and read the words written in a neat hand.

Checkmate I think. You’re late. We’ve already left.

Completely stumped, he took out his phone once more, dialled Millie this time, and woke her. “Millie, it’s Felix. I’m at Humphries place. He’s our man but he’s not here, and wherever he is, he has Trish with him.”

“Take it easy,” she soothed. “Have you rung Shannon?”

“Yes. He’s on his way.”

“He won’t come in person,” she grumbled. “He’s in charge of policing Cromford Mill. He’ll probably send young Thurrock.”

“Millie I don’t … oh for God’s sake. That’s it, that’s it.” Relief, excitement and fear all flooded him at once. “It’s Cromford Mill. Remember the last line of the last note. Not with a whimper but a bang. He’s taken Trish to Cromford Mill. Listen, don’t call Shannon. He’ll go in mob handed and if Humphries sees the law, he’ll kill Trish. I’ll go in by the back way over Scarbeck Point. You get down there and tell Shannon to stop the demolition.”

“Felix, no…’

Croft cut the phone before she could complete her protest, and checked the clock. 7:30. He had 30 minutes. Was it enough?

His mobile rang. He checked the menu. Millie. She would be ringing to stop him. He ignored it. It was the only way to make her get down there. Leaving the house, he leapt back into his car and drove off for Scarbeck.

Once again everything was blazingly obvious when he thought about it. Sir Dick; Sir Richard Arkwright. Wren; Jenny Wren, Spinning Jenny. Arkwright had improved on Hargreaves’ original machine and called it a water frame at his mill in the Derbyshire village of Cromford.

Croft wondered what Humphries would have done if the puzzle were not solved? Odds on he would probably have rung Oaklands and told Croft where to find her, knowing that Croft would not call the police or Trish would die, knowing that Croft would have to go there and risk being blown to hell in order to save her.

As he tore along the lower town centre by-pass at better than 70mph, Croft saw his present course of action as a homage to Trish. Self-centred he may be, and he may enjoy flaunting his wealth, letting the real world pass by, paying lip service to it with large donations to charity now and then, but he had never lacked courage, and Trish needed that courage right now. He could not imagine life without her and he was prepared to die if necessary, as long as he took the madman with him.

The mill appeared on the distant horizon. A police officer stood in the middle of Rochdale Road, ready to divert him. Croft did not wait to be turned away. He hung a sharp right into streets of terraced housing, where many of the residents were already up and making their way down to the ceremony. It was a route that would take him up to Scarbeck Point. Humphries, he reasoned, could not have simply walked into the mill off the road. He had to have a back way and it must be somewhere from the Point.

He accelerated up the long draw, reached the White Horse Inn at the top, and anchored up. No audience up here. Cromford Mill couldn’t be seen except from the actual Point, and high security fences, erected by the demolition crew, prevented public access.

Croft checked the padlock on the gate then looked up at the eight-foot fence. How did a man of Humphries’ age get round or over it? He didn’t. He had a key and went through it. It was the only way.

Lacking that key, Croft took several paces back, ran and launched himself at the gates, hauled his muscular frame over the top and dropped to the ground beyond.

He hurried across the fields past the clutch of trees where Susan Edwards had been hanged, and down the hill on the other side of The Point until he reached the inner wire fence surrounding the demolition site from where he could look down on the untidy concrete yard at the rear of the ruined building. Somewhere behind him, the sun breached the distant Pennine Hills, casting long shadows over the land.

There were no police and no security here, but from a mile away came the chatter of a helicopter circling over Scarbeck General Hospital, where the demolition ceremony would take place in – he checked his watch – less than fifteen minutes. The helicopter would be keeping an eye on the whole area and in a few minutes it would circle one final time, ensuring there was no one nearby before giving the all clear for the mayor to push the button, then it would get away before the explosion.

Croft hurried along, following the line of the fence until he found the break in the grill where it had been cleaved open with heavy-duty cutters. Humphries again, he guessed. He peeled it back and stepped through, stumbling, running, half falling down the last of the hill to the concrete yard.

He scurried across to the entrance, a narrow door in the vertiginous, crumbling walls. Now he slowed down. It was dark in there, awash with shadowy corners and recesses where a man could hide.

The noise of the helicopter grew louder. It was coming over from the hospital. This was a confrontation between the Burke and Croft families, and he did not want the law involved. Not yet. Cautiously, he stepped into the mill where the pilot would not see him.

The sun had climbed and now rose over Scarbeck Point. Its rays burst through the shattered upper floors of the mill, casting strange silhouettes on the walls. Croft looked up. The latticework of girders was sharply picked out in stark shadows, but there was something else too. An indistinct shape of something suspended from one of the beams.

Croft shifted his line of vision. Blood drained from his face. On the floor above, plainly visible through a huge gap in the ceiling, not thirty feet away was the hanging body of Rehana Begum, naked and decomposing. Croft remembered Victoria Reid. His stomach churned. He fought down the impulse to vomit. Then the anger built from within. A cold, murderous rage, bubbling, boiling, begging for release.

“Where are you, you bastard?” His voice echoed around the building.

A sharp blow took him at the back of the neck and he crumpled to the filthy ground.

56

He could not have been unconscious more than a few seconds but as he came to, he felt someone fumbling with his hands at his back, rough twine wrapped around the left wrist before Humphries dragged the right wrist to meet the other.

Croft tensed his biceps, forearms and wrist muscles. Anything to give him a bit of slack when Humphries was done. Zepelli had been an escapologist before he turned to hypnosis. Would his son realise what was going on?

Lying quite still, allowing Humphries to bind him, he conducted a mental tour of his body. The back of his neck ached where Humphries had hit him, and his head twinged where it had struck the floor as he fell. Aside from that, he was in fine fettle and wasn’t pain the body’s way of telling him he was still alive.

He was consumed by blood lust. The same violent, barely subdued rage from which Humphries himself must suffer when confronted by a woman, now bade him get his hands to this man’s throat.

Humphries finished tying Croft’s wrists and stood up. Croft stirred deliberately. With a strength belying his slender frame, Humphries dragged him up, and slammed him back to the brick wall.

Croft saw that he was not the only one burning with emotion. Humphries’ face was a picture of triumph and scorn. Croft took a deep breath and controlled himself. With his hands now hidden, he relaxed the wrist muscles and felt the slightest play in the ropes.

“The great Felix Croft,” Humphries gloated. “You don’t know how good this makes me feel.”

“I can guess,” said Croft, shaking his head to clear it. “You finally got the man whose father ruined yours.”

Humphries laughed. “Ah. So you worked it out?”

“Yes.” Croft switched tack. “Where is she, Humphries?”

The other shrugged and chuckled. “She’s close by. Quite safe.” He checked his watch and laughed again. “For about another seven minutes.” Turning away, he picked up a long length of pipe. Croft took advantage of the distraction to work on the ropes at his wrist. For a moment he was tempted to kick out at Humphries, but without his fists free, it would be an unequal battle which Humphries would inevitably win, and it may cause him to check the bindings again. If Croft was to have any chance, he had to free his hands.