The Button Man: A Hugo Marston Novel

by Pryor, Mark

  “Frightfully sorry,” Pendrith said, through an open window. “Tried phoning but the call wouldn’t go through. Dashed around the back wondering if maybe you’d headed out that way, but saw the blighter with the gun again and had to turn back.”

  “Glad you did,” said Hugo. “Now hop out and let me drive. And say hello to our passenger.”

  Pendrith turned in the driver’s seat and looked over Hugo’s shoulder. “I say, what the bloody hell is she doing here?”

  “I’ll tell you on the way.” Hugo went around and opened the driver’s side door and waited as Pendrith slid out. With everyone buckled in, Hugo sped to the lay-by and executed a quick three-point turn. “Now then, Merlyn,” he said. “Where to?”

  She’d called it a farm, but that was too rustic a word. It was a manor house, redbrick in the symmetrical Georgian style with five large, rectangular windows across the top floor and dormer windows, once for the servants’ quarters, Hugo assumed, set into the roof. Thick ivy clambering up the brick walls, and the cracks that made way for the clinging green tendrils, suggested that there were no servants now, nor had there been for some time. The ends of the house were capped with tall chimney stacks, and at least one of them still worked, judging by the smell of wood smoke in the air.

  Hugo knocked on the door, and after ten seconds of silence the visitors swapped glances. Hugo looked past them and saw no cars, no signs that the house was occupied. Just the chimney smoke.

  “Wait here,” Hugo said, “I’ll check around the back.”

  Merlyn started to say something, then changed her mind. She waited with Pendrith as Hugo moved off to his right, peering into each window that he passed. So far, all had been dark. He reached the front right corner of the house and looked into the night, able to make out a lawn stretching away into the darkness as it reached around to the back of the house. He stood there for a moment, then made his way back to the front door and, without saying anything, turned the handle.

  “You sure that’s a good idea?” Pendrith said.

  “Nope,” Hugo said. “But I don’t have any others.”

  The door opened silently, and Hugo stepped into the house. Pendrith followed him, and Merlyn stood in the doorway, eyes wide and worried.

  “Police!” Hugo called. “Anyone home?”

  Pendrith looked at him sideways. “‘Police’?” he whispered.

  Hugo turned and flashed a quick smile. “You’d rather I announced us as burglars?”

  They moved into the hallway. To the right, a staircase curved up to a landing and then on to the second floor. On their left, a door stood open and Hugo stepped through it into an untidy study. In front of him sat a large wooden desk, littered with pens and glass paperweights. Sagging cardboard boxes lined the wall on the left, and opposite them, stacks of yellowing papers spilled across a leather couch that had also seen better days.

  He joined the other two and led them past the staircase into a large room that took up the back half of the house and, in daylight, looked out over the back garden. The left half of the high-ceilinged space was used as a dining room and was dominated by an oversized table covered in a cloth that had once been white, a dozen chairs tucked tidily under its skirt. Former generations of the Drinker family gazed at each other across the table, grim and formal in their gilt frames. On the right side was the sitting room, populated by cloth couches and a scattering of armchairs, an even mixture of cracked leather and faded floral prints. Here, the pasty-faced relatives made way for various bucolic scenes, a few in heavy oil and a handful of smaller and more cheerful watercolors. One of the large windows had been converted into French doors, and he guessed that a patio lay just outside.

  The room smelled musty, dusty even, and Hugo saw that the walk-in fireplace glowed orange. He listened but heard no one, no sounds at all. And yet he felt sure they weren’t the only ones here. He started to his left, to head through the dining room toward where he thought the kitchen would be, when a sudden thump from upstairs stopped them. A weak cry filtered through the ceiling and they heard another thump, then silence.

  Hugo pushed past Pendrith and Merlyn, heading back toward the stairs. He grabbed the banister and started up, taking them two at a time and drawing his gun as he ran. He paused at the top and looked both ways. He saw no one but the sound came again, from his left, so he went that way, slower now, more careful. He heard Pendrith behind him and hoped the Englishman had had the sense to make Merlyn wait at the bottom of the stairs.

  The hallway was wide and dim, and on each side there were two closed doors leading to bedrooms or bathrooms, Hugo assumed. From one of them, on his left, light was leaking out from under the door. He looked down the hallway, but the others seemed to be dark. He stood to one side of the door and motioned for Pendrith to stop where he was, ten feet away. Hugo rapped on the door with the butt of his gun.

  “Anyone in there?” he called. “Police here.”

  From inside the room they heard another cry, and Hugo recognized the sound of a man in pain. He reached down and tried the handle, and it turned in his hand. Still to one side, he pushed the door open and light spilled out into the hall. Hugo moved into the doorway, gun raised, and found himself in a large bedroom.

  Directly opposite him, propped up with his back against a wooden dresser, sat a man clutching his stomach. Blood coated the man’s left hand, and his right held an object that Hugo couldn’t immediately recognize. His legs stuck straight out toward the door, and his eyes rolled slowly up as Hugo moved closer. They had the glazed look Hugo had seen a handful of times before when he was with the FBI, a look that spoke of a man in deep physical shock, a whisper away from death.

  Hugo turned when he heard Pendrith speak behind him. “I’ll call for an ambulance.”

  “Good,” said Hugo. “Tell them to hurry.” He turned to the wounded man. “Are you Brian Drinker?”

  The man seemed to nod, but Hugo wasn’t sure. Red bubbles appeared on his lower lip and the man groaned, then managed a whisper. “Yes.”

  “Brian, who did this?” Hugo said. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  Drinker grimaced and his eyes slid down and to the right, to the object in his hand. Hugo looked and saw an open cell phone, the buttons slick with blood. “I tried . . . couldn’t . . .”

  “It’s OK,” Hugo said, his voice low and calm. “Help is on the way. I just need you to tell me what happened, can you do that?”

  “He came here,” Drinker gasped. “I wasn’t going to let him in.”

  “Who?” Hugo urged.

  “But he said . . . he apologized.” Drinker suddenly gripped Hugo’s wrist with his bloody left hand. “He said he was sorry.”

  “Harper? Are you saying Dayton Harper did this?”

  Drinker groaned and looked away, then his hand fell from Hugo’s wrist. He coughed once and then looked up.

  “It wasn’t meant to happen this way,” Drinker said. “That’s what he told me.” He turned to Hugo, his eyes wide and brimming with tears, his voice rasping. “I don’t understand. Why did he shoot me? I didn’t do anything.”

  Drinker closed his eyes and his breath rattled in his throat. Hugo looked at the wound in the farmer’s stomach but didn’t touch it. The bleeding looked to have stopped and Hugo didn’t want to restart it by adding pressure. He looked up at Pendrith, who shook his head and spoke quietly.

  “We’re in the country, an ambulance will take twenty minutes to get out here. Same for the police, probably.”

  “I don’t mind waiting for an ambulance, but we don’t have time to explain this to the police,” Hugo said. “And Harper can’t be too far away.”

  “You go,” Pendrith said. “I’ll wait with him. I can call some people I used to work with, make sure the police keep this wrapped up—for now, anyway.”

  Hugo stood and looked over Pendrith’s shoulder to see Merlyn standing in the hallway. She was pale and her big eyes looked like those of a deer face-to-face with its hunter.

&n
bsp; “What’s happening?” she said.

  “Buggered if I know,” said Pendrith, as the two men moved into the hall. “Hugo, why would Harper shoot this man?”

  “I wish I knew,” said Hugo. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “He’s gone stark-raving mad,” said Pendrith. “Off his rocker.”

  Hugo nodded. “That’s about all I can come up with, too. All the more reason for me to find him.”

  “Damn right,” said Pendrith. “And the sooner the better.”

  They looked back into the room as Brian Drinker moaned and opened his eyes. He was trying to speak, but Pendrith stepped into the doorway ahead of Hugo. The Englishman looked back at and nodded toward Merlyn, who had a hand over her mouth. “Go,” Pendrith said to Hugo. “And you better take her with you.”

  “OK,” Hugo said. “But for God’s sake call me if he says anything else. If I don’t catch Harper, I’ll come right back for you.” Hugo gave him a small smile. “Let’s hope I don’t see you for a while.” He took Merlyn by the arm and steered her down the hallway and down the stairs.

  At the bottom, Merlyn stopped him.

  “I don’t understand what’s happening,” she said.

  Hugo looked at her, not knowing what to say. “I wish I could tell you.”

  “You mean you know and won’t?”

  “No,” he smiled. “I don’t know, so I can’t. Come on, let’s go.”

  She moved slowly after him. “Do you really think Dayton shot that man?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “But why would he?”

  “No idea,” he said. “That’s why we need to go, and right now. We need to find him and figure out what’s going on before anyone else gets hurt. And if we do find him, you can be a friendly face, which he’s gonna need.”

  She nodded and they moved to the front door. Just as he was about to open it, light cut through the window opposite the staircase, white flashes from the headlights of a vehicle passing the front of the house.

  “The ambulance?” Merlyn said.

  “No.” Hugo stopped her. Whoever it was had come from behind the house and was heading for the main road. “It’s gotta be him. Dayton Harper.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  They sprinted out of the farmhouse and made straight for Hugo’s vehicle, gravel kicking up behind them as they ran. As he opened the driver’s side door, Hugo looked for the taillights of the Smart Car but saw nothing. A faint sound that might just have been the wind was the only suggestion as to which direction Harper might have taken.

  The huge car’s wheels spun for a second before gripping the loose surface, and they fishtailed away from the house and down the short driveway to the main road. Hugo had already decided that Harper would likely head back to London, and he was even more sure of that when a sign at the end of the driveway pointed to the town of Stevenage, a jumping-off point onto the A1, the main road from there to the capital. Hugo was sure that Harper had taken care of any business he had in the Hertfordshire countryside, here at the farm and at Braxton Hall, which meant that the only logical destination for Harper was London, a place the actor knew and where he could be relatively safe.

  But as Hugo fought the car around the tight turn onto the main road, he knew that his theory relied on Harper acting logically. And there’d not been much evidence of that lately.

  He punched London into his GPS device and saw Merlyn looking at him.

  “You OK?” he asked.

  “Sure. I think. I just don’t get what’s happening.”

  “Me neither, but I’m guessing he’s on his way back to London.”

  “Why?”

  He looked at her sharply. “Is there somewhere else he’d be going?”

  “No,” she said quickly. “Not that I know of. Do you think he’s turning himself in?”

  “No idea.” He gripped the wheel as the car tore along the winding country road toward Stevenage. “No idea at all.”

  Hugo stared through the windshield, the road in front of him a ribbon of black that swept through villages, an empty track with no sign of his quarry. He went as fast as the car and the winding highway would let him, but it wasn’t fast enough, and soon he felt like a greyhound chasing a rabbit that had already fled into its burrow.

  They sped on for five minutes, long minutes, catching cars like fireflies, but each set of rear lights was a disappointment. Hugo’s sense of desperation and pessimism increased with each.

  Merlyn seemed to be thinking the same thing. “Shouldn’t we have caught up with him by now?” she asked, as they raced up behind a cattle truck.

  “Yes, probably.” He’d been thinking the same thing. “This is the most direct route to London.”

  At the top of a steep hill, Hugo checked for oncoming traffic, then swung the Cadillac into the oncoming lane. He flicked on his high beams and gave them a view of at least half a mile, down the hill and back up the slope opposite them. No small car. He tucked back in behind the cattle truck and waited for the entrance to a field, which he pulled into and, with a reluctance that was almost painful, turned the car around and started back to the farm. Harper had gotten away.

  When they arrived, the farmhouse was awash with lights, and Hugo had to park the car on the grass that bordered the driveway into the property. He and Merlyn walked toward the gaggle of police cars, Hugo scanning the small crowd for Pendrith. He saw him talking to one of the non-uniformed officers and decided against joining the group.

  It took less than a minute for a uniformed officer to spot Hugo and Merlyn lurking on the edge of things, and when he approached them Hugo had his story ready. He had to assume that Pendrith had told them he’d gone there alone, been dropped off. He was smart enough not to escalate things by involving two more participants, one an armed US Embassy officer.

  “Can I help you?” the officer said.

  “Sure,” said Hugo. “Constable . . . ?”

  “Christie. You are?”

  Hugo pulled out his credentials, and while the officer was inspecting them, Hugo motioned to Merlyn. “And she’s with me.”

  Uncertainty clouded PC Christie’s face. “Yes, sir. Do you need to speak to someone in charge?”

  “No,” Hugo said. “I’m just waiting for Lord Stopford-Pendrith. You might say I’m his chauffeur for today.”

  “Yes, sir. He’s just giving his statement, he should be done soon. I’ll let him know you’re here.” He started to move away but turned back, pulling a small notepad and pen from his breast pocket. “Excuse me, sir, but do you have any knowledge about what happened here?”

  “No, can’t say I do,” Hugo said genially. “We just arrived, I’m sure there’s nothing I can tell you that you don’t already know.”

  Christie looked back and forth between them, then tucked his notepad and pen back into his jacket pocket. “Very well, sir.”

  They watched him walk back to the officers surrounding Pendrith, who turned and looked over toward them without giving anything away. Within a minute, the MP himself was striding toward them.

  “I say, what a bloody mess,” he said. “Poor fellow’s unconscious but hanging on. For now, anyway. Local chaps don’t get many of these, so they’re calling the brass in.”

  Hugo grimaced. “What did you tell them?”

  “Just that I was here on a mission of goodwill, sort of a liaison thing to sort out the mess with Harper. I told them that you dropped me off in front of the house, planning to pick me up or come by and meet with Mr. Drinker, if he agreed. I said that the door was open when I got here, and so I went in and found him. No mention of Harper being here, don’t worry.” Pendrith shrugged. “So far they’re buying it, but once the big boys start arriving, the lid’s coming off this little melting pot, I’m afraid.”

  Hugo looked at the activity around him. A man was gut-shot, a man who happened to be a prominent local farmer and the father of the man recently killed by two movie stars. Hugo shook his head at the thought of the senior brass lining up
to demand a quick resolution. The chief constable himself would probably be arriving any minute.

  “So,” said Pendrith. “Back to London? Isn’t that where you thought Harper was headed?”

  “Yes,” said Hugo. “That is what I thought.” He eyed his companions for a moment. The left side of the house and gardens was surrounded by a brick wall, which separated the property from a field. A wooden signpost twenty yards away pointed into the field, and Hugo had walked enough in the countryside to know a public footpath when he saw one. With any luck, this path would lead them around the back of the property. “Anyone fancy a walk after all this excitement?” he asked cheerily.

  “A walk?” Pendrith stared at him, bug-eyed. “What the bloody hell are you talking about? We need to get a move on, get back to London.”

  “He thought that Dayton was driving to London,” Merlyn interjected. “Past tense. Looks to me like he doesn’t think that anymore.”

  “Then where the hell is that bloody man going?” Pendrith asked.

  “No idea.” Merlyn shrugged, then jerked a thumb toward Hugo. “Ask the Yank.”

  “Follow me and I’ll tell you,” Hugo said. He opened the passenger door of the Cadillac and rifled through the glove box, pulling out a flashlight. He flicked it on, testing it, then off. “Let’s go.”

  Ignoring Pendrith’s mutterings, Hugo led them across the driveway toward the pasture. He pushed his way through a rusty kissing gate and waited for them to follow. When they did, he set off in the direction the sign pointed, parallel to the wall that surrounded that side of the farmhouse. They began walking.

  “So what’re you thinking?” Pendrith asked, as he trailed behind Merlyn.

  “It’s just an idea, nothing more,” Hugo said, “but as Merlyn pointed out in the car, if he’d been going to London we’d have caught up with him.”