The Handshaker by David Robinson Read Free Book Online Page A

circles. You’re making no progress, and he probably takes a lot of satisfaction from that. Suddenly he decides it’s not enough to be clever. He needs others to know just how clever he’s been. He needs to sign his masterpiece. How can he do that without coming out into the open? By writing to someone who would understand.”
    Across the table, the two police officers looked doubtful. It was apparent to Croft that phrases like, ‘he has you running in circles’ were not endearing him to them.
    “Think about it,” he urged. “If he had sent this note to you, what would you have made of it?”
    Millie did think about it for a few seconds. “We’d have run a check on Heidelberg in those dates to find comparable crimes.”
    “And turned up nothing,” Croft assured her. “Because he wasn’t hinting at comparable crimes in Heidelberg. He was hinting at methodology, and you would have come up with nothing on that because The Heidelberg Case is so obscure. If you run a search on the Internet you’ll only get one or two genuine results, and one of those is mine, but even then you would have to enter The Heidelberg Case in the search engine. If you put in, say ‘hypnosis’ and ‘Heidelberg’ it might just get you there, but your man has been clever. He didn’t mention hypnosis. The reason he wrote to me is because he knew that I could make that vague connection.” He gave them what he imagined was a modest smile. “I’ve done more research on the case than anyone.”
    “Because it has paranormal overtones?” Shannon asked.
    “Superficially, yes,” Croft said with a nod, “but once I got into it, the whole concept intrigued me. Can you really get a subject to murder a loved one, or at least attempt it? Can you really get a subject to commit suicide? I found it fascinating.”
    Silence fell once more. Croft was a happier man now that he understood. The Handshaker was not targeting him, he was not threatening him, he was not even admitting that he had been abusing a single woman in the way that Franz Walter had. He was simply announcing to the world the manner in which he subdued his victims.
    “I don’t buy this at all.”
    The superintendent’s announcement, cutting into the silence, crushed Croft’s contentment. But as Shannon went on, the hypnotist’s disappointment gave way to more alarm.
    “If our man has been selecting his victims at random, as you claim, there would be those women he tried to hypnotise and failed. I don’t know how he’s supposed to be hypnotising them anyway, but if I choose to be generous and assume you’re right, how come we haven’t had a string of complaints from the women he didn’t succeed with?” Shannon sat forward. “You see what I’m driving at, Croft? If you’re right, we would have all these women whinging about it and we would have had a description of him. In fact we’ve had neither. All we have are some grainy images from odd CCTV cameras, and even then we don’t know that the man in those pictures is the man we’re seeking.” The superintendent leaned back again. “I don’t know how he gets to his victims, but it’s not some super-hypnotism.”
    Croft was all at sea again. There was no refuting the superintendent’s argument. Choosing women at random, trying a rapid induction on them would have worked with some but by no means all, and the remainder would have come forward. And yet it all fitted; the reference to Heidelberg, even the nickname, The Handshaker, it all fitted with hypnosis.
    “Tell me something.” Millie’s request brought him from his turbulent thoughts. “You say it’s possible to get a hypnotised subject to do whatever you want. Most hypnotists say it isn’t. How do you do it?”
    Croft chose his words with professional, academic care. “It’s all about altering the perception of reality. Let’s say I want to eliminate you but I don’t want to be implicated? I find someone who is amenable to deep hypnosis. The kind stage