The Handshaker (19 page)

But if he was making acceptable progress on the puzzle, the lack of information on Trish, on the police’s work towards finding her, provided a constant source of stress that threatened to tear him apart.

His failure to persuade any of the officers to get Millie back down to the interview room prompted him to ring her on his mobile, only to find her line engaged on the first two attempts. He got through at the third try, but she was as obdurate as everyone else.

“Just be patient, Mr Croft,” she suggested. “We’ll be with you soon.”

“Patient?” Croft snapped. “If your boyfriend was missing, would you be patient?”

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” she told him, “but I’d like to think if I were in your position, I’d let the experts deal with it.”

“The way you did with Susan Edwards and all the others? Thanks, but I’d rather see Trish alive.”

The barb did nothing to endear him to the police, serving only to annoy them as much as they were annoying him, and he returned grumpily to studying the verse.

He was working on possible interpretations of the words ‘fag’ and ‘bint’ when at last Millie and Shannon walked in, both looking grim-faced.

The superintendent was in a businesslike mood. “Good morning, Mr Croft.” He sat directly opposite. “I think it’s time you told us a little more about what’s going on out at Sussex Crescent.”

Taken aback with the superintendent’s accusing tone, Croft became aware that with two more people sharing the space, both standing, the room was crowding in on him again.

Abandoning his work on the puzzling verse, pushing thoughts of Trish to the back of his mind, he asked, “Sussex Crescent? What about Sussex Crescent?”

“Number forty six to be precise.” There was no mistaking the challenge in Shannon’s words.

Croft’s memory clicked into place. “Oh, the Lumbs’ place. What about it?”

“You positively identified Sandra Lumb in the Spinners Mall this morning and claim you knew her,” Shannon reminded him. “We’ve just been out to her house and found her husband … dead.”

Croft blanched. His pulse began to race. “Jesus. Dead?”

The superintendent nodded. “We spoke to the neighbour, Gerald Humphries. He tells us you were quite chummy with Sandra.”

Not for the first time, Croft fought down a sense of panic rising from his gut, which made him want to run for it. He subdued the impulse with iron self-control. He would never get past them anyway. But he did not want to be here, answering these questions. He wanted to be outside, in the fresh, if wet, air where he could clear his thought processes.

He took a moment to settle himself, before answering Shannon’s leading question. “Not chummy. I had a professional relationship with her. I don’t take on many clients these days, and the few that I do have to agree to help with my researches. Sandra was one, and as it happens, Humphries was the one who sent her to me.”

“Yes, he told us,” Shannon admitted. “He also told us you’d had your share of arguments with Alf Lumb.”

As he spoke, Shannon leaned forward, crowding Croft even more, and not for the first time, it occurred to the hypnotist that the two police officers were stationed between him and the door.

Time, he decided, to go on the attack, secure control of proceedings before they turned the screws even further. Calling forth his natural arrogance, he challenged, “Am I accused of something, Shannon?”

The superintendent sat back suddenly, surprised at Croft’s assault. When he spoke, it was in a more conciliatory, less adversarial manner. “No. I’m simply trying to establish how it is that you worked with Sandra, argued with her husband, and happened to be right there when she threw herself off the top level in Spinners. It hardly seems likely to be a coincidence.”

“Well it is. I walked through Spinners for no other reason than I had to come here to see you regarding this note.” Croft spread his hands across the table to indicate the sheets of A4 on which he had been working. “If I hadn’t received this, I wouldn’t be here, if Trish hadn’t been abducted yesterday, I wouldn’t be here, and if I wasn’t here, I would not have been in Spinners when Sandra threw herself over the rail. As for arguing with Alf, well, you people know him, and you must be aware that it was not difficult to get into an argument with him.”

The superintendent was reluctant to say anything and Millie took up the interrogative reins. She was more cautious than Shannon, and Croft’s interest peaked. But when she delivered her question, it was strictly business.

“Regarding Alf, was there anything specific you argued about?”

“His wife,” Croft confessed. “He was convinced I was screwing up her brain, probably that I was screwing her, whereas I was convinced he was the cause of her problems, and I told him so.”

“What? And he didn’t batter you?” Millie was incredulous.

Croft turned an intense stare on her. “Inspector, I was educated at a public school. I know it’s fun to take the mickey out of privately educated schoolboys: softies, mummies’ boys, pansies who always had matron to kiss things better, but that doesn’t reflect the reality. We were beaten regularly, often for no better reason than the housemaster felt like it. They were totally without mercy, and they brought us up tough. A lot tougher than bullies like Lumb. No, he did not batter me, as you put it. Confronted with someone prepared to meet him head on, he did what all bullies do and backed off.”

Blank, bland stares told him his outburst had got the message across.

“Now that we’ve dispensed with the nonsense,” he demanded, throwing the challenge back at them, “would you please tell me what this is about and what progress you’ve made on finding Ms Sinclair?”

Shannon leaned forward once more. “All I know is, I met you for the first time just over twenty-four hours ago, and now your name is cropping up in the unlikeliest of places. Until yesterday, we were the only people The Handshaker ever wrote to, and suddenly he’s writing to you on a daily basis, notes which you claim say he’s kidnapped your girlfriend. And now, one of your clients loses it, kills her husband and then disposes of herself. You tell me what it’s all about.”

Croft could only shrug. “I don’t know. I wish I did.” He looked Shannon in the eye. “You’re sure Sandra killed Alf?”

Shannon spread his hands. “Work it out for yourself. Alf is dead on the kitchen floor. He’d been stabbed twice with a sharp knife and there’s a knife missing from the set in their kitchen. The neighbour, Humphries, saw Sandra heading away from the house in a distressed state, and you saw her yourself in Spinners and she was holding my people back with a kitchen knife. It all seems fairly obvious.”

“True,” agreed Croft, “but I didn’t see any sign of blood on the blade.”

“She could have wiped it clean on the way to Scarbeck.” Shannon pressed his advantage. “I don’t like coincidences. I know they happen all the time, but when I get a number of them strung together in the course of investigating a serious crime, I prefer to think that they’re not coincidence at all. They’re guilt.”

Losing his cool, Croft countered Shannon’s aggression with some of his own. Half standing, supporting himself with his fists pressed to the table, he snarled, “Well you’re wrong. I’m guilty of nothing more than trying to find my girlfriend, who, so this … this bumph …” he grasped a handful of A4 sheets and held them up, “assures me, is in the hands of a serial killer.”

Silence fell over the room. The exchange had clouded Croft’s thinking to the point where all he could sense was the claustrophobia of the enclosed space, and the urgent need to get out, escape the confusion, accusation and counter accusation created by some unseen maniac.

Slowly he sat down again, and across the table Shannon fumed in silence while Millie, who had remained impassively cool and detached during the exchange, played with her pen.

As happened the previous day, it was she who broke the silence. “What we need to know, Mr Croft, is what prompted Sandra to go for the knife.”

“The only people who can tell you that are Sandra and Alf,” Croft told them, “but from what I saw in Spinners it’s unlikely that you’ll ever get any answers from her, and he’s out of the equation.”

Shannon obviously had something on his mind and he was struggling to put it into words. He agonised for a few moments, looking up at the ceiling, staring around at the bare walls. Eventually, he focussed again. “Look here, Croft, yesterday, you came to us babbling about some bloody hypnotist in Germany back in the twenties who abused some tart. You’ve been hypnotising Sandra; could your work have unhinged her?”

“No. If anything it should have avoided this kind of situation.” Croft was relieved to have something on which he could hook, something he could talk about professionally. “You’re clutching at straws, superintendent. Even if we admit that it’s possible, you’d have to prove it, and if Sandra is at death’s door, you’ll never do it. Occam’s Razor. You should work on the assumption that Sandra simply snapped. Don’t link it to anything else without some kind of evidence to support the conclusion.”

Shannon grunted, but Millie was more determined. “We’re paid to dispense with Occam’s Razor and look for deeper, more complex causes.”

Croft shrugged. “We can run this argument round in circles forever. I’m simply saying you shouldn’t make assumptions without some basis in fact or observation.”

The superintendent picked up on the idea. “All right. You saw Sandra, how did she seem to you?”

“Distressed, frightened, agitated and confused. I tried to calm her down, but the circumstances were against it. She was surrounded by people, by police, and we don’t know what was going through her mind other than confusion.”

Shannon’s hangdog expression spoke of a man reluctantly backed into a corner. He stood up. “I’ll organise some tea and you can tell us if you got anywhere with the latest note.”

Croft and Millie watched him leave. The Inspector appeared relieved that the pressure was off, and Croft too felt a little more freedom in the additional space created by Shannon’s departure. He bestowed Millie with a smile.

“He’s a good bloke, you know,” she said. “Shannon.”

“I suppose so,” Croft conceded. “And I imagine The Handshaker will have had an effect on his promotion prospects.”

Millie delivered a grinning nod. “Possibly, but unlikely. Seriously though, he’s dedicated, and he doesn’t like to be beaten.” She sighed. “I’ve a long way to go before I can compete with the likes of Ernie Shannon. What about you? You don’t strike me as the kind of man who gives up easily.”

He smiled. “I’m very lucky, Millie. I was born into privilege. When your father is Sir James Croft, you take a lot of things for granted. Getting my own way, for example. When I don’t get my own way, I tend to spit the dummy out… or I used to. These days, I’m more persuasive.”

“Something you learned from your father or Ms Sinclair?”

His features darkened and he shuffled his sheets of paper into a tidier stack. Her reference to Trish reminded him that his partner was missing and even if no one else believed it, he knew The Handshaker had her.

Shannon reappeared, his face as grim as ever. “Tea’s on its way,” he declared, taking his seat alongside Millie. “We’ve just had word from Scarbeck General. Sandra Lumb was dead on arrival. She died in the ambulance.”

Croft felt a sting of sadness. Had this world gone completely crazy?

By contrast, Shannon appeared as if he could not have cared less. “All right, Croft, I’m aware that Inspector Matthews disobeyed a direct order and allowed you to see the earlier notes, which you’ve had time to study, and which gave you hints our people never twigged. You get a round of applause for that, but it comes with a warning to keep your mouth shut. We don’t want any of that information getting out to the press. Now tell me what you got from this morning’s note, if anything.”

The hypnotist frowned. “Not much, despite all the ink and paper,” he waved again at the scattering of A4 sheets. Picking up his photocopy of the original, he went on, “There are a number of anagrams in the note, including Patricia Sinclair – I pail a ricin scart – and Felix Croft – Cliff or Tex. This note, like the others, is designed to make you think that you’re dealing with an inadequately educated, streetwise kid, but in fact, he’s a well educated man probably in his fifties.”

Both police officers were surprised.

“We guessed he was no kid, but where do you get your estimate of his age?” asked Millie.

“From the wording,” Croft said. “In places he uses text shorthand, ‘g-r-8-t’ instead of the word ‘great’ in the second line. Trouble is, he’s put an extra ‘t’ on the end of it and no kid into text or chat rooms would make such an elementary error. He didn’t repeat the mistake with ‘l-8-r’ in the next line. This is no youngster, just someone trying to persuade you that he’s one. Next, look at the apostrophes. There are two contractions in this note; don’t and won’t. In both instances he has used the apostrophe. Take it from me, most of my students don’t even know the apostrophe exists, never mind how to use it. This indicates a man who was properly educated. Taken with other factors, it may be that he’s a man who had apostrophes beaten into him, and that puts him in school back in the fifties and sixties.”

Despite his obvious surprise, Shannon managed to ask, “What other factors?”

“First, I’m thinking of the word ‘fag’, used in the second line. It has several connotations. To the British, a fag is a cigarette, to Americans, a fag is a homosexual, but to other, privately educated people, like me, a fag is a first year pupil there to do the bidding of six formers, and it seems to me that his second line hints at this interpretation. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he was educated at boarding school.”