The Handshaker (25 page)

Then he saw her.

At first he thought it was some strange configuration of an oak tree; a branch hanging down at a severe angle, depressed into a contorted bow by the weight of wet weather and the restrictions of the wall just a few inches from its tip. As he narrowed his eyes on it, he could see that it had a rough, human form. It was no overhanging branch.

He trod the soft, damp grass along the wall side, frequently stumbling on the uneven ground, putting a hand to the mossy stone to support himself.

Under the tree, he trembled, afraid to look up.
Not Trish. Please don’t let it be Trish.
He realised instantly that his prayer was so unfair. Some woman had been hanged here, and if it was not Trish, then it meant some other poor creature, every bit as innocent as his partner, had met her doom.

Her feet were twelve to eighteen inches from the ground, well within his line of sight. To avoid looking at them, he concentrated upon his shoes, the black leather soaked and already showing a line of ingrained, white salt. He was conscious once more of his own disarray, the wet shirt sticking to his chest as it dried from his body heat, his legs, trembling, aching after their mad dash, the trousers of his business suit creased, bagging, soaked in a mixture of cold perspiration and even colder rain. His heart pounded and he began to shiver, as if, with the end of his crazy race into the woods, the cold had permeated for the first time. He knew, however, that the beating of his heart and the shivering had nothing to do with breathlessness or the cold.

He drew in breath, charged his lungs with oxygen and stared at those feet, forcing a memory into his mind of Trish’s feet. Did they look the same? It was impossible to know. Feet were not that recognisable. They were bodily addenda, not enhancement. A woman’s feet did not attract a man, her personality and the rest of her body did.

Slowly he forced his head up to look up and up past the strong legs, the flat tummy, sagging breasts until they came to the dead, staring features.

Relief flooded him, followed rapidly by guilt at the relief, followed even more rapidly by fury.

In life Victoria Reid – she was still recognisable as the woman whose face had been all over the previous evening’s
Scarbeck Reporter –
had been a vibrant and attractive woman; a curvaceous and sexy temptress, a little lacking in breast to be a true beauty, but nevertheless holding forth promise as a thrilling partner. Now she was a mere shell. The eyes were open, staring at the ground. Her tongue lolled grotesquely from her mouth, the blonde hair was a straggled mass of weed strung around her neck and face, the skin had a grey cast and a leathery look to it. Around her face, she was bright red, and there was a barely visible weal where the narrow rope had cut into her skin. Her legs too were livid, the blood having settled to the lowest point. At her midriff, the skin had already begun to wrinkle, prior to flaking. He did not know how long she had been here and he dare not touch her. Naked, dehumanised, she had suffered god knows what indignities heaped upon her by this evil man only to be faced by the final terror of a slow and tortuous death, without even the blessing of a long drop to break her neck and leave her unconscious while she expired.

Croft fell to his knees, the frantic dash from Oaklands to this shocking site of execution, the horrifying sight up above, had drained him of energy. He felt sick, wanted to throw up, but he forced the queasiness down. In its place, there came a growing sense of rage. Rage for this innocent woman whose only crime was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, rage against the arbitrary manner in which The Handshaker had dragged her – and Croft – into this web of insanity, and rage against the man himself. A maniac, whose clasped palm spelled death for anyone grasping it.

32

The Handshaker was up early. It was the habit of a lifetime and old habits were never truly conquered. However, even if he had been in the habit of lazing away half the day in bed, like the late Alf Lumb, he would still have been up early this morning. He needed to be out in Allington Village to watch developments.

Driving off the estate, he stopped outside the newsagents opposite the Winridge Inn, and rang the police station from a call box.

“Listen, mate, no names, no pack drill, but that pross what lives on Dorset, I bin watching her, see, through the binoc’s and she’s hanging there in the bedroom. The curtains is open and everything and you can see her.”

He slammed the phone down on Sergeant Simpson’s protests that he needed the caller’s name and address.

33

In Shannon’s office, Millie did not like the things her boss told her.

“So we’re looking for someone other than The Handshaker,” she argued, “but where do you get the idea that it’s Croft?”

“Can you think of anyone else?” demanded the superintendent.

Without bothering to ask permission, Millie lit a cigarette. “Ernie, I had a meal with this guy last night. You should see the state he’s in. If he’s not eating himself inside out over Sinclair’s disappearance, then he’s the best actor the Oscars have never seen.”

“And that’s all it is. An act.” Shannon reached across and pulled the string on the window-mounted extractor to draw her cigarette smoke out of the room. “Think, Millie, when he first came here on Tuesday morning, who did he ask to speak to? The desk sergeant? One of the DCs? No, he specifically asked for me. The officer in charge, and when he couldn’t have me, he settled for you. Someone senior. He even waited for three quarters of an hour to speak to you. Why?”

“Because Sinclair advised him to,” Millie reminded him. “She’s the big legal eagle, isn’t she? She knew that if he brought it to anyone else’s attention – Ronnie Simpson say – it would be filed and forgotten. Because it referred to this Heidelberg stuff, it meant that it was a dangerous piece of paper and needed urgent attention. So she told him to ask for you. No one else. That way it would get the attention he believed it warranted.” Millie looked down her nose. “And he was right, wasn’t he?”

“Was he? Let me run another idea past you. Just suppose Sinclair was already dead on Tuesday morning –”

Millie cut him off. “She can’t have been. The daily saw her leave for work, and we can soon confirm that by talking to her.”

“All right, all right.” Shannon paused to cool his temper. “Let’s suppose that for the last god knows how long, their relationship’s been on the slide and Croft sees that she’ll take him for a fortune if it comes to a split, so he plans to do away with her. Remember, Millie, most murders are domestics. So he cobbles together this plan. He’ll send himself notes churned out on a manual typewriter, chocabloc with anagrams which are easy for him to crack because he put them together.”

“And how did he know The Handshaker sends us typewritten notes; we’ve never said anything to anyone about it?”

Shannon was derisively dismissive “For crying out loud, that’s easy. The first note really was from The Handshaker, remember. Maybe that’s what gave him the idea.”

Millie considered the implications and didn’t like them. “What about Sandra and Alf Lumb?”

Shannon shrugged. “Adding grist to the mill. He murders Alf, rushes into town to get there when Sandra is about to throw herself off and even after Begum told him to keep back, he pushed his way through and talked to Sandra. Now everyone heard him tell her she was in no pain and she should come down, but Begum also heard him say the only sound of any importance was his voice. You’re the one who’s been sold on this hypnotism thing since he turned up. How do you know that his words weren’t a trigger ordering Sandra to chuck herself off the balcony? You don’t.”

Millie’s unwillingness to accept the idea showed through. “All I can say is you’re gonna have a hell of a job proving it.”

Shannon looked smugly satisfied. “There’s more. This Heidelberg business. I –” The phone trilled, cutting Shannon off. He picked it up and listened, the colour draining from his face. When he slammed down the receiver, he stared at her. “We may be closer than either of us think. Two reports. Croft has a body in Allington Woods, and someone’s rung in to report a dead prostitute on Winridge Estate.”

He practically dragged Millie back into the CID room where the day shift awaited their orders. He briefed them quickly and then marshalled his troops.

“We have two reports, but it seems Croft has a definite body, so I’ll take the SOCOs and a couple of uniformed people out to Allington. Wilkins, you’re with me. Someone get onto Fletcher, tell him to get out of his pit and meet me at Oaklands. Millie and Dave Thurrock will go to Winridge, see whether this joker on the phone was telling it like it is. I want a check on known pervs, any peeping toms on the estate, especially those near Joyce Dunn. Millie, if you find nothing, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you don’t, come straight to Croft’s place.”

Several minutes later, a stream of vehicles ran out of the rear yard, headlamps blazing, emergency lights and sirens blaring, cleaving gaps in the traffic for a high speed journey through the rush hour on Huddersfield Road. At Pearman’s, Millie and Thurrock parted company with the main convoy, tearing up Pennine Road towards Winridge.

“You’re the local expert, Dave, what’s the score with this tart?”

“Joyce is the only brass on Dorset, guv,” said Thurrock, lighting two cigarettes and passing one to Millie. “She’s worked on her back as long as I can remember and I know that the old man, Shannon, suspended one of our lads for taking a freebie with her about ten years ago.”

Skirting a bus that pulled into the kerb to let them pass, Millie was disgusted. “A CID officer?”

Thurrock nodded. “A sergeant, would you believe? He resigned before the disciplinary panel could sack him. Word is he was working vice and supposed to bring her in but she gave him a free ride and then bubbled him when Shannon hauled her in. She was one of the best, but she’s a bit long in the tooth now. Down to thirty nicker a jump.” He grinned. “At least that’s the rumour. I wouldn’t know, being a good little plod.”

Millie gave a throaty laugh. “She wouldn’t be likely to hang herself?”

“Joyce Dunn never gave a shit about anyone but Joyce Dunn,” Thurrock confirmed as they hared up the hill towards Winridge Estate. “If some perv was eyeing her through binoculars, she’d be charging him for it. She didn’t even take the day off when her old man died.”

“She was married?” Millie sounded surprised.

“I don’t know that they were married,” Thurrock confessed, “but she lived with Billy Dunn for long enough to take his surname. He was a burglar. Got himself killed breaking into a factory about five, six years back.”

The car rolling hazardously, they turned off the main drag onto the Winridge Ring Road, accelerated along and into Avon Way. Millie threaded it through the streets in low gears, keeping her speed up, her control absolute. Children and teenagers, making their way early to school turned to watch the crazed vehicle hurtle along the road. Millie turned onto Dorset, screamed along in first and jammed the brakes on sharply outside number 39.

They climbed out and looked up at the house.

“Curtains are open upstairs,” Thurrock noted and hurried across the street. Returning a moment later, he said, “I can see something up there, but I’m not sure what.”

“Let’s find out, huh?”

Under the watchful eyes of neighbours, they scurried along the path. Millie hammered on the door. After a few moments without an answer, she hammered again. This time she was not prepared to wait long.

“Do it,” she ordered.

The upper centre panel of the door was composed of a small, decorative window, Georgian leaded with a rose design. Scouting around the narrow flowerbeds under the hedgerow, Thurrock came up with a half brick. On the other side of the unkempt hedges, the next-door neighbour emerged with a look of suspicious interest on his face.

“What you up to?” he wanted to know.

Millie fished out her warrant card and flashed it too quickly for him to read. “Police,” she said and left it at that.

Thurrock hit the window with no discernible effect.

“Bit much this, just to take a slapper in,” grumbled the neighbour.

With a grin at the comment, Thurrock struck the window again and the glass cracked. At the third attempt, it shattered. The DC reached in and turned the deadlock.

“If she’s in,” he remarked, “she must have heard us by now.”

He rammed the door open, rushed in and straight upstairs with Millie close on his heels. Thurrock stopped dead as he burst into the upper room. He gawped up. Millie stopped too and stared in repugnant horror at Joyce’s suspended, decaying body.

She took out her mobile and first rang the station to get SOCOs and sentries out, and then Shannon to tell him of her discovery.

Thurrock had flopped onto a chair by the door, his face pale.

Millie disregarded her younger colleague and circled the body, stepping carefully over the mess where Joyce, in her final death throes, had evacuated on the carpet. Millie silently wondered at the sick mind that had perpetrated this abomination. Whoever he was, he had no business living and breathing.

Thurrock, she suddenly noticed, was staring intently at the floor just under the bed.