The Handshaker (21 page)

She agreed with a nod. “Yes, but the seriousness of these crimes warranted a larger team and a superior, more experienced officer. Ernie. He calls the shots.”

They paused in the police station exit, sheltering from the rain inside the doors.

“Where’s your car?” she asked.

Croft inclined his head out and towards the shopping mall. “Spinners.”

“Mine’s at the back of the station.” She took his hand as a gesture of reassurance. “Listen, Felix, there’s no point asking you to mind your own business and leave it to us –”

“None at all,” he interrupted.

“In that case,” Millie insisted, accepting his blunt confirmation, “will you do me a favour and keep me informed of anything you find?”

He hesitated a moment. In just over 24 hours he had learned a lesson Trish had been trying to teach him for years: never trust the police. On the other hand, he desperately wanted to find Trish, and he may need allies.

At length, he nodded. “Yes, of course.”

“You have my mobile number,” Millie reminded him. “Don’t ring the station. If you do, Ernie might get to the message first.”

Once more he gave his agreement and they stepped out into the rain.

“What’s your next move?” Millie asked.

He pulled his topcoat close about him to keep out the rain and cold. “The Handshaker hypnotises his victims. He must have hypnotised Trish at some time, and she must have been aware of it even if she didn’t know the extent he was taking it to. I need to know how he got to her, and I know exactly where to begin asking. I’ll catch you later.” He hurried off towards Spinners Shopping Mall, leaving Millie in the doorway staring after him.

The drive home was faster, less harassing than the morning’s journey to Scarbeck. Inside fifteen minutes, he was pulling in through the gates at Oaklands, where Mrs Hitchins waited for news.

“I can’t tell you anything, Christine,” he confessed, “because I don’t know anything.” It was not reassuring, but the daily left him with a cup of tea, her best wishes and a polite request that he keep her up to date on any developments.

Croft assured her that he would and when she left, he moved to the lounge, seeking Trish’s appointments diary, her pocketbook, mobile telephone, anything that might point him to her counsellor – the only person, other than himself, who might have hypnotised her. All he could remember was the person’s forename: Evelyn; one of those genderless names like Leslie, Pat or even his own shortened Christian name, Felix. But what was the counsellor’s surname?

He searched drawers and cupboards without success, then made his way to the bedroom, where he checked her bedside cabinet, drawing a blank once more. It was unlikely that it would be in his study, because Trish hated that room, but he checked it anyway, and again came away empty handed.

Turning from his desk, he made for the study door and paused. On one of the bookshelves was a photograph. He and Trish, taken at a Christmas party a couple of years back. It reminded him instantly of the night they met, just before Christmas, 2004.

Croft’s fame ensured that during the party season he received many invitations. He declined most of them, but in the dying throes of a sterile marriage, with his wife using any excuse to sneak off and meet with her lover, left to his own devices, and given the recent success of his weight control book, attendance at the university’s staff party was practically compulsory, and at the time he was a mere deputy department head.

He had been in the room less than an hour and was already becoming bored with the ‘shop talk’ when he found himself buttonholed by the bursar whining about cuts in government funding, and he noticed Trish standing at the makeshift bar. He excused himself, made his way to the bar, and ordered a whiskey sour.

“And lose the cherry,” he concluded.

Stood next to him, Trish smiled. “In the USA that kind of remark would raise quite few eyebrows.”

He grinned by return. “Whilst at the University of North West England it would cause no more than a frown of disapproval, and that would be from the Senior Tutor of Catering.” He offered his hand. “Felix Croft. Parapsychology.”

“Trish Sinclair. Soon to be Trish Sinclair, QC. I know your father.” She paused, her eyes raised to her left. “Come to think, everyone in the profession knows your father.”

Croft accepted his drink. “It’s sad when one’s renown is no more than a reflection of one’s father.”

Her humour, which would become one of the mainstays of his attraction to her, came to the surface. “Well, we can’t all expect to be famous in our own right, can we?”

The pleasant jibe at his recent elevation to the ranks of celebrity, pleased him. Sipping at his drink, savouring the bite of neat scotch offset with raw lemon juice and sugar, he gestured at the room and its various cliques gathered in clutches, each with its own reserved space, senior faculty members wandering from one group to another, seeking fresh horizons or another set of ears upon which they could reiterate their favourite tales.

“Here we are,” he observed, “in the midst of the sharpest brains in Greater Manchester, and they don’t have an ounce of conversational creativity between them. Talking shop is the closest they can come.”

“Legal parties are the same,” she agreed. “I came here instead of going to chambers because I thought it might be different. Having chambers in the middle of Manchester helped, mind you. I didn’t fancy fighting my way into the city.”

“It will be worse on New Year’s Eve,” Croft observed, his interest already aroused. “So how come you got in here? Did you come with someone?”

She shook her head. “No. Like you, I teach here. I’m an occasional lecturer in criminal law.”

Croft’s interest level rose quickly. “Really? Does that mean I may get to see more of you?”

The ice well and truly broken, they spent the remainder of the evening monopolising each others’ company to the exclusion of everyone else, and when they left the university at just after midnight, they had made arrangements for dinner on Christmas Eve.

Over that meal, in a moorland restaurant that would become one of their favourites, they took time to get to know one another, and before the evening was over, Croft felt emboldened enough to ask what she was doing for New Year’s Eve.

“I’ve been invited to a concert at the Bridgewater hall with a colleague. The Northern Symphony Orchestra and a
programme for the new decade.
” She described speech quotes in the air as she delivered the final words. “Bach, Mozart, Sibelius, and would you believe Mussorgsky?” She chuckled as he made a face. “What? You don’t approve? You don’t think Mussorgsky suits the New Year.”

“I think the final movement of
Pictures At An Exhibition
would augment the chimes of midnight quite admirably,” he conceded, “but it’s all so glum, isn’t it? Classical music is fine in its place, but this is New Year’s Eve, and we should be
celebrating.
”

“So what are you planning?” she asked.

Croft’s anticipatory enthusiasm burned through his words. “A sixties concert. An entire series of bands, some of them quite well known, others I’ve never come across, and they’ll be belting out everything from Elvis to the Beatles, Cliff and the Shadows to Matthew Southern Comfort. Sadly, my wife doesn’t share my enthusiasm and I’ll be alone, unless…”

His childlike eagerness persuaded her and in the end, she spent New Year’s Eve with him while his wife was with family and friends. Both Croft and Trish were worse for wear through drink by the early hours and it was mid-morning on the first day of the New Year when they made love for the first time. Three months later, his wife was history and Trish was with him when he secured the deal for Oaklands, and a month after that, he gave up his flat and moved in with her as a temporary arrangement until Oaklands was ready. Since then they had been all but inseparable.

All but. Now, thanks to this maniac, not only were they temporarily parted, but unless someone did something, it would become permanent...

Croft snapped himself out of the nostalgia. This would not help him find Trish. Taking out his mobile phone, he rang his doctor and had a brief argument with the receptionist, before she put him through.

While he waited for Christopher Parsons to answer, Croft thought back on his privileged life. He could not remember ever having visited an NHS doctor. As a boy, the family had made private health care arrangements. Even at University, scraping by on a student income after his father had refused to supplement his meagre funds, the healthcare had nevertheless still been available to him, and as an adult, he had taken out similar insurances for himself.

Croft had never given the matter any serious consideration. It was not something to cause him any guilt, it was not a reason to lord it over others, it just was.

Now he had cause to be grateful for it. Had he been ringing an NHS surgery, no amount of argument would have got him through to a doctor.

“Felix, good to hear from you.” Parsons’ voice, as cheerful as ever, snapped him from his thoughts once more. “What’s the trouble? Bust a few knuckles in your karate classes.” The doctor laughed.

Croft did not find it funny. Aside from anything else, he’d given up karate years ago. “I’m not ringing about me, Chris, but Trish.”

“Oh.” Parsons was suddenly more serious. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Nothing wrong,” Croft assured him, “but I need some information.”

The doctor was suddenly more guarded. “Now, come on, Felix, you know the rules. Patient confidentiality. I can’t tell you anything about Trish.”

“You haven’t heard me out,” Croft insisted. “After her father died, you referred her to a counsellor. I need to know who that counsellor was.”

Parsons’ discomfort turned to stern obduracy. “I can’t do it, Felix. Anyway, the counsellor will not tell you anything.”

Croft stood his ground. “Not good enough, Chris. Trish has been abducted, and the kidnapper has got to her through hypnosis.”

He paused, imagining Parsons’ pliable features, twisting from the professionally cautious practitioner to the horrified confidante, taking in news of such shocking proportions that it was almost too difficult to handle.

“Aside from me,” Croft went on, “the only other person who could have hypnotised her is the counsellor. Now I need to know who he is.”

“But . . . kidnapped . . . but . . . the police –”

Croft cut off the disjointed thinking. “The Scarbeck police are looking for her, and it won’t be long before they get around to you. Chris, I don’t want to waste time while they apply for a warrant. Every second could be vital. Now, for Christ’s sake, give me the name and address of the counsellor.”

“Hold on,” the doctor ordered. There was a delay. In the background, Croft could hear the tap of computer keys as Parsons sought the name and address. “I always use the same counsellor,” he muttered as a way of letting Croft know he was still there. “She’s one of the best.”

Croft’s heart sank. “She?” if the counsellor was a woman, then the counsellor would not be The Handshaker.

“Yes,” said Parsons distractedly. He was still obviously searching the computer files. “Ah, here she is. Evelyn Kearns. 62 Formby Avenue, Scarbeck. Evelyn is the bees knees when it comes to bereavement counselling but whether she’ll be willing to talk to you…”

He trailed off. Croft was not listening anyway. He was busily scribbling out the address. “62 Formby Avenue,” he repeated. “Thanks, Chris.”

“Felix...”

Croft cut the connection. Slipping the phone into his pocket, he hurried back to the lounge, opened a drawer in the lower display cabinet and took out an A-Z street map of Scarbeck.

“Why don’t you get yourself a satnav?” he grumbled to himself. It was non-starter. Satnav would go well with his shiny executive saloon, but it was anathema to his fanaticism for the 60s.

Moments later, he had the street fixed in his memory and was on his way out again.

He hit the familiar jam at Pearman’s, but this time he was not driving into Scarbeck, and instead turned off to the left, behind Pearman’s Supermarket, after which the junction was named, into a forest of high density, terraced housing, cruising slowly along the streets, until he came to Formby Avenue, where he turned left again and crawled along the street, watching the numbers, 20, 30, 54, 62. He slotted the car into a nearby space, climbed out and locked up.

It was a house no different to any of the others along the street. A three-storey, Edwardian built, mid-town house, once the residence of upper working class mill managers, now snapped up by working class men and women eager to get a first foot on the property ladder. The main difference between this and its neighbours, he noticed as he walked up the path, was a brass plate beneath the doorbell.
Evelyn Kearns, Counsellor
, it read in stylised script.

He rang the bell. Moments later, he detected movement behind the frosted glass of the door. The lock snapped back and the door opened.

“Yes?”

Evelyn was about 50 years old, her fair hair brushed neatly into a professional sweep keeping it away from her clear skin. She was modestly dressed in dark trousers and a warm jumper.