by Pryor, Mark
“And yet what?”
“I don’t know. The guy’s a journalist. He’s been planning this for years.”
“Yet he couldn’t know Ferro and Harper would be involved.”
“Oh, no, he didn’t know the details,” Hugo said. “But he’d been waiting for something like this to set him off; he may not even have known it. And as a journalist, one who’s not afraid of what’s going to happen to him, why would he go out with a whimper?”
“I have a couple of people working on that list, but when I looked at it no one stood out. And I checked before I left—none are from or planning to head into London, at least according to their parole files.”
“You got a look at their parole files?”
Denum smiled sheepishly. “Friends in high places.”
“Always helpful,” Hugo nodded. “This line bugs me: ‘Instead of a length of rope for my neck for just a few pounds, you’d be stumping up a couple million.’”
“Bugs you?”
“He uses the conditional tense.” Hugo tapped the paper and sat back, thinking. “Where the hell is he going?”
“His apartment isn’t safe. His face will be all over the news and Internet by now. He has to go somewhere he won’t be known.”
Hugo sat bolt upright. “Yet somewhere he knows.”
“And from your tone of voice, you’ve thought of that place.”
“It’s about his father, he feels a responsibility to his father, and I was right, he does want to end this with a bang.”
“He’s going to kill again?”
“No,” said Hugo. “His father is.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The rain had stopped by the time they splashed onto Marylebone Road, the sidewalks refilling with window-shoppers and those out for an afternoon stroll, the adults relieved at the break in the rain and the kids jumping delightedly, two-footed, into the shallow puddles.
Bart Denum steered the car skillfully, taking them as directly as he could to their destination where, when they abandoned the car out front, the tourists were already back in line, shaking out umbrellas and looking hopefully toward the brightening sky.
“How do we get in?” Denum asked as he rounded the front of the car.
“Shiny badges and attitude,” Hugo said grimly. “If that doesn’t work, we push and let them call the cops—we’ll need them anyway.” Hugo chose the door designated for groups to enter the museum, figuring it would be easier to deal with people already in sheep mode than dozens of irritated singles and couples.
Their badges got them the initial attention, but it was Hugo’s brusque and urgent tone that got them inside. Two guards gave him their full attention as he dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, relaying the threat of a danger much greater than merely letting two American officials in without paying. After radioing for their chief, the two anxious guards started turning guests away and steered those nearby back into the street. Hugo and Denum moved to a map of the interior.
“I’ve never been here before, which way?” asked Hugo.
“I was here with the wife and kids, it should be . . .” Denum quickly traced a path from where they stood to where they were going. “Here.”
“Not exactly direct. And God knows how long he’s been here already.”
“If he’s here at all.” Denum looked around. “Wouldn’t there be a commotion?”
“That’s the beauty of it, from his perspective. He’s worked here and knows the place, which includes the shortcuts. He can go through his entire weird setup and no one will bat an eyelid.”
“OK, then I’m going to have security clear that area. I know, I know.” Denum held up a hand. “Quietly and without alerting him.”
“Fine, but the security people may not know who they’re looking for, so have them close off that part of the museum subtly. People will leave of their own volition, so we just need to stop people going in.”
“You don’t think any of the tourists are in danger?” Denum asked.
“Do you?”
“No, but you seem to know him better than I do. I just want to be sure of that if we’re not going to hit the panic button and clear the whole place.”
“We do that and he disappears with the crowds. Bad idea, Bart, very bad.”
“OK, I hope you’re right.” He nodded at a broad-shouldered man in his midfifties, tall and lean, headed their way. “Here’s the cavalry leader. I’ll start giving orders.”
“Good, but I’m not going to wait.”
Denum patted Hugo’s shoulder. “I never thought you would.”
Hugo took another look at the map, drilling the route into his mind. Dammit, gotta go up before I can go down. He nodded to Denum and started up the stairs to the first exhibit, his eyes automatically drawn to the people around him. He passed plenty he didn’t recognize but several he did and had to resist the temptation to slow down; he wasn’t there to stare into Nicole Kidman’s sparkling eyes or check out the tone of Brad Pitt’s skin. A pink light tinted the whole room, and he brushed past the tourists who laughed and pointed at the stars, many going nose to nose with their favorites. He followed directions to the next space, where red and gold dominated, except for the looming green figure of Shrek and the even greener and larger Incredible Hulk. Hugo looked for the way through, stepping around the gawkers who lingered in the spaces between Marilyn Monroe and Spiderman, all the while the buzz of voices around him giving the colorful room the air of a Hollywood after-party. He spotted the way out and moved quickly down some stairs into the Sports Zone, where a Formula 1 motor-racing exhibit seemed to be drawing most of the spectators, the waxen Pele almost ignored, save for a small boy who stood gazing upward, his head tilted to one side as if trying to place the soccer legend.
As Hugo pressed on, a sense of surreality wrapped itself around him, a many-layered blanket woven from the lifelike images of the Tussauds exhibits, the blissful ignorance of the tourists who admired them, the bizarre nature of the man he was looking for, and the horror of what that man had planned. Hugo had already noted that cameras were allowed in the museum—not just allowed, but being held in almost every hand, a fact that Walton was no doubt counting on.
In the next exhibit, Hugo bumped into a German couple as he passed several members of British royalty, almost tripped over a little girl taking some kind of interactive test with Albert Einstein, and wanted to block his ears at the music as he sped through the Music Megastars Zone. Finally, adrenaline pumping and barely able to think amid the crowds and visual stimulation, Hugo moved to the last door, the exit out of the World Leaders Room. Two men stood in front of the closed door, calmly steering customers to an alternate exit to their left, their buzz haircuts and cold eyes persuasive enough for most, their bulk and stony silence adequate deterrents to at least one irate tourist, an Eastern European who’d paid to see the Chamber of Horrors and was going to either see it or get his money back.
Hugo caught the eye of the security guard farthest from the now-crowded exit, a rock of a man whose narrow eyes told of an Asian lineage, and showed him his US security badge, hoping these guys had been told he was coming.
The man looked at him, unblinking, then took Hugo’s ID in a meaty paw. He handed it back with the merest of nods. “You want some company down there?”
“No, I’ll be fine.” If I’m right about what he’s doing.
“I hear you screaming, I’ll be down.” The man nodded again and stepped aside, opening the door with the flat of his hand. Hugo started down the stone steps.
The door to the bustling exhibition room closed behind him, darkening the stairwell and bringing a quiet that had been sorely missing for the last five minutes. Hugo took a calming breath and moved slowly downward, aware of the cold air that pressed up to meet him.
The stairs were wide and made of stone, the walls slick blocks of granite like those of a medieval, Thames-side dungeon. The realism of his descent into the museum’s most gruesome display extended his earlier su
rreal feeling, the garish colors of the entertainment world supplanted by indistinct black-and-white images that flickered in the back of his mind, creating a schizoid and dichotomous eeriness that put him as either a soon-to-be victim in a Béla Lugosi horror flick or a doomed explorer in the real world.
He touched the cold wall to bring himself back into reality, sure that tiredness was helping play tricks with his mind. It’s a museum, just a museum.
His feet echoed softly on the steps and he tried not to scuff them. Halfway down, he paused, listening, glad to hear silence because it meant that the exhibit had emptied. Almost emptied, anyway. As he started forward, he heard a shuffling sound from the foot of the stairs, then the squeak of something metallic opening or closing. He kept going, now able to see the cobbled floor of the chamber, eerie glow from recessed lighting casting shadows in front of him.
As he reached the last step, he looked around for Walton, but his eyes were drawn to the men and woman who lay, or hung, dead and dying around him. A pair of ragged figures were strapped to suspended wheels, their frail bodies broken by the executioners’ rods. Gaunt figures, hard to discern whether men or women, hung around the little anteroom, imprisoned in rusting gibbets for the feasting eyes of the curious. Under his feet, Hugo noticed that the cobblestones had been laid in concentric circles, in rings that grew smaller and smaller, the last one encircling a grate in the floor that looked like it would welcome the blood of the tortured hanging from the walls.
The only figure not dressed in rags was the wax statue of a man, standing in a deep stone recess and wearing a dark suit and tie, his collar cinched high and tight in the style of the forties. A perfect mustache gave character to an otherwise weak face, a nose that was small and thin, an insignificant chin. Black eyes bored out from under a bowler hat, glaring at Hugo, as if daring him to inspect the rope that he held in his right hand, his thumb and forefinger gripping it just below the noose. In his left hand, the man carried what looked, to Hugo, to be a white silken bag. The man had been placed between two oak beams that stood erect, a crossbeam joining them, and a square hole in the ground was visible behind him. The trapdoor.
A gentle voice floated down from above Hugo’s head. “It’s my father. Do you see a resemblance?”
Hugo stepped back to the foot of the stairs and looked up. “Harry. Yes, I do. You look a lot like him.”
Walton sat on the cross beam, a rope looped around his own neck. “How did you know?”
“Lucky guess,” said Hugo. “How about you come down and we talk about this?”
Walton smirked. “I’ll be down in a minute, don’t worry.”
Hugo looked around and saw the step ladder lying on its side, kicked over after Walton had pulled himself up to his drop spot. Beside it was Walton’s tote bag. Hugo sat on the lowest of the stone steps and stretched out his legs. “I’m not going to stop you Harry. You murdered a lot of people.”
“No!” Walton shouted the word. “I executed criminals. They are the murderers.”
“You’re full of crap, Harry. If you’re the great executioner, then what are you doing up there? If you were only carrying out justice, then you’re a hero, and no one hangs heroes. Not even in Texas.”
Walton shifted position and Hugo felt his gut tighten. But the old man just sat there, chewing his lip, watching Hugo with his coal-black eyes.
“Oh, I get it,” said Hugo. “Brian Drinker and Pendrith. They didn’t deserve to die, so you’re going to atone for killing them?”
“That’s right.”
“You even killed the wrong Stanton, didn’t you?”
“That wasn’t my fault,” Walton spat. “How was I even to know? She could have said something, told me.”
“You put a gag in her mouth, Harry,” Hugo said, his voice cold. “She couldn’t tell you. And what would you have done if she’d insisted she wasn’t June Stanton? You’d have hanged her anyway, just to be sure.”
“The price of justice is high. Are you telling me Texas never killed an innocent man?”
“No idea, Harry, but when we take someone’s life, we sure as hell know who it is we’re killing.” Hugo pointed to his father. “You think the old man would be proud of what you’ve been doing?”
“Of course he would. It’s what he did for a living. It’s what he wanted me to do.”
“Not exactly,” Hugo said. “So how would he feel, then, seeing his son hanging by his neck? Think that’s what the old man wants?”
“He knew about justice. And anyway this isn’t just about me, or him.”
“Sure it is. It’s why you came here, to be with him at the end. Come on, Harry, it’s pretty obvious even for a dumb Yank.”
Walton suddenly grinned. “Yeah, you figured me out, didn’t you?”
“I also figured out that you want the publicity. But look around, there’s no one here but you and me.”
A look of concern flitted across Walton’s face, and the old man turned his head to look through the high archway on his right, into the next part of the exhibit. “Where . . . where is everyone?”
“We couldn’t let people be around you, Harry. Too many end up dying that way. You know, in the cause of justice.”
Walton’s eyes flashed. “I didn’t come here to hurt anyone else, you know that. But I need them in here.”
“I know. But against all my instincts I’m supposed to persuade you not to do this thing, Harry. And it seems to me, without anyone here to watch, there’s no point.”
“Get them back in here!”
“No.”
“I have my gun—do what I say.”
“First of all, if you shoot me there’ll be no one to get your adoring crowds back in here. Second of all, I’m guessing your gun is in your bag, not on you. Your father would never let an armed man onto the gallows, would he?”
Walton laughed. “You called my bluff, very nice. The problem is, and I know this to be true, it’ll get out. Within minutes of me being executed, someone will tell the media and then you can bet there’ll be reporters crawling all over the place. An executioner’s son hanged in Madame Tussauds. It’s a beautiful story, one that will serve my purpose wonderfully.”
Hugo softened his tone. “We don’t do public executions anymore. They’re not coming back and, if you die today, I promise that I’ll just cut you down and say you tripped on the stairs. An old journalist falling down some stairs, even at Madame Tussauds, isn’t much of a story, is it?”
“You’d lie, Marston?” His voice had changed again and was lighter now, almost mocking. “You’d lie to the media, to the police? You’d lie under oath at an official inquest? Somehow I don’t think you would.”
Hugo returned the smile. “Calling my bluff now?”
“You’re a rule follower, you do it all by the book. You don’t get that sometimes to get to justice you have to tread on a few toes. Crack a few heads. Or necks.”
“It’s not going to happen, Harry. You’re not going to change anything, especially with this little stunt. Better you go to jail, preach from there. I’m betting you’d get more followers that way.”
“But that wouldn’t be justice, would it? That’d make me a hypocrite, that’s all.”
Hugo shrugged. “I’ll say it again. Hanging yourself isn’t justice and it won’t change anything out there.”
“Well,” said Walton quietly. “I’ll just do the best I can, and leave the rest to God.”
Hugo opened his mouth to speak but stopped when Walton shifted position again, putting both hands flat on the cross beam and looking down at his father below. Without another word Walton eased his weight forward and slid from his high perch on the beam, his body stiff and his arms by his sides, as if he were jumping into a lake on a hot summer day. Hugo started forward but didn’t get there in time, couldn’t have crossed the fifteen feet of cobbled ground in the second it took Walton to drop to the end of his rope, for the noose under the left side of his chin to jerk tight and snap his head back, severing
his cervical cord as cleanly as if a surgeon’s knife had made the cut.
Harry Walton swung gently on the end of his own rope, his legs brushing against the waxen image of his father, the smartly dressed man who stared defiantly at Hugo as if daring him to cut his son down.
Hugo stood in front of them both for a moment, resisting the urge to speak to them. He shook his head and passed through the rest of the Chamber of Horrors, following the path a million tourists had taken before him to the exit where Bart Denum, four members of museum security, and a dozen armed police officers had no trouble reading the look on his face.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
They watched the press conference at the Coachman pub on a television Al had recently installed so his customers could watch the weekend football games.
Chief Constable Dayna Blazey stood at the podium and spoke without breaking eye contact with the assorted journalists, telling them about her force’s role in tracking and cornering Harry Walton. Hugo sat beside Ambassador Cooper, glad for Blazey to take the credit if it meant the heat was turned down on everyone who had rubbed her the wrong way, including Upton and himself.
“Working in close proximity with agents from the American embassy,” she was saying, “and with officers from Scotland Yard and the Metropolitan police, as well as French authorities in Paris, we were able to discover . . .”
Cooper took a long drink from his early-evening beer. “Looks like Walton got his publicity after all.”
“I never doubted it,” Hugo said. His own beer was untouched—he was too intent on what Blazey was saying, hoping that his boss wouldn’t be maligned, that the memories of those killed would be properly recognized. For Hugo, that was the trouble with these operations; the exploits of the captured or dead murderer stole most of the show, and whatever was left got soaked up by those taking credit for the capture or kill. Which left nothing for those who’d suffered the most: the dead, and those who survived them.