The Button Man: A Hugo Marston Novel (3 page)

Hugo stood and collected their glasses. “I’ll order and get refills.”

The secret, Al had told them a few months back, was to use lamb, not mutton, and let it soak in red wine for a few hours. Warm red wine, apparently. And lots of garlic in the mashed potatoes that topped the stewy pie. “Thank the bloody Frogs for that tidbit,” he’d laughed. Hugo did thank them, and Al, every time he ate this dish.

As they tucked in, Hugo said, “We may need to move off the beer and onto something stronger.”

“Fine with me, but why?”

“I found a body in a cemetery.” He started his story, skipping over his trip to the alley for the time being and telling Cooper about the graveyard next to it, his walk through the fog-shrouded path, and the body hanging at the end of a rope in the far oaks.

Cooper listened, his mouth opening wider with each detail. “Jesus. No wonder you were late. And here I was, all concerned with my own problems.”

“I’ve seen that stuff before, John, it’s OK.”

“I suppose you have, but still.” He shook his head. “So, who was he?”

“No idea. I left as soon as they let me, and I didn’t see the crime-scene people find any identification. They left the hood in place, so they wouldn’t disturb any forensic evidence.”

“A hood, Jesus. You think suicide, or not?”

“Hard to say, but I doubt it.” Hugo frowned. “The hood, the location . . . an unusual one if it is.”

“What were you doing out there?”

“Well, the cemetery is near Gable Street.” Hugo grinned sheepishly. Cooper knew about his little obsession.

“Hugo, I admire your investigative spirit. Really. But a hundred historians and amateur crime buffs have gone over every inch of every corpse in London from that period. If she was a Ripper victim, someone would be saying so. Someone other than you.”

“You forget, I’m not an amateur.”

“No, you’re not. You’re a stubborn son of a bitch.” He speared a cube of lamb. “What was the one thing all known Ripper victims had in common?”

“You mean cuts to their abdomen.”

“Your girl didn’t have any.”

“I know. And I know how badly the other victims were mutilated, while Meg Prescott wasn’t.”

“There you go.”

“Jack might have been disturbed, run off by a passer-by.”

“In a dead-end alley?” Cooper shook his head. “And what about the timing?”

“Almost seventeen years after the others, I know. But serial killers do go dormant, you know, they go to jail or get sick or go somewhere else. Or they control the urge, or maybe even evolve so they don’t get caught, to the degree that their crimes aren’t even discovered. They become masters of their art.”

“It’s art now, is it?”

Hugo smiled. “You know what I mean. It’s possible that Meg Prescott was a late victim and that others killed in the years before her simply weren’t found, or all that killing in 1888 had frightened him into inaction for a few years until he couldn’t stop himself. Those are possible, John, you have to admit.”

“You sound like a lawyer, Hugo. I’ll admit those things are possible, and that you’re the expert. They just don’t seem very plausible.” He sipped his beer. “Look, I get it. It’s an unsolved murder, which bugs the crap out of you. But I don’t get why this is so personal for you. And Hugo, the fact is, you’re on your own. There’s not going to be any new evidence to back up your position, and the existing evidence isn’t enough to prove you right.”

“Or wrong.” Hugo sat back and rested his hands on his stomach. He’d run the pie off tomorrow, if it wasn’t raining. “I know, you’re right. But let me keep hitting my head against that brick wall until it shakes loose, won’t you?”

Cooper held his hands up in surrender. “It’s your head.” Cooper looked into his almost-empty glass. “As you said, time for something a little stronger.”

“Good idea,” Hugo said. “My treat.”

“Thanks. I’ll have what you’re having.” Cooper’s cell phone buzzed on the table and, with a discreet burp, he picked it up and answered. His eyes swung up to Hugo, who guessed the subject was Dayton Harper. He listened for a full minute before speaking. “I see,” Cooper said. “Thank you for letting me know, Superintendent.” He hung up and looked at Hugo. “You’d better make those doubles.”

“Oh yes? Something happen with Harper?”

“Not Harper, his wife.”

“They found her?” Hugo asked.

“No,” Cooper said. His eyes rested on Hugo for a moment. “They didn’t find her, Hugo, you did. Two hours ago, hanging in the graveyard.”

CHAPTER THREE

T
hey moved Dayton Harper in the night, finding him awake and cowering on his bunk. His only knowledge of prison came from the silver screen, watching and a little acting, and he believed in the tales of crooked guards opening prison doors for blood-thirsty inmates, and had small faith in the reality of the heavy metal and thick glass that kept him in and others out.

They took him down the long, narrow corridor normally reserved for guards moving between the men’s and women’s sections of the Whitechapel jail. There, in a cell with the door open, he changed into civilian clothes before walking in lockstep with his guards to an elevator that took them down to the basement parking lot. One of the guards held the car door open for him, the other shook his hand, and Dayton Harper climbed into the back seat of the waiting, unmarked police car. Fifteen minutes later he was at the Hammersmith Police Station, taken in through the rear entrance and locked, for his own safety, in a cream-colored cell with a cup of tea and a packet of biscuits. He was not surprised, and was somehow comforted, by the curious eyes that peered in at him every few minutes. Comforted, especially, by the soft brown eyes that bore mascara and lingered a little longer than the others.

Just before ten in the morning he woke up to the sound of keys in the lock. A red-headed policeman, as large as any linebacker, stepped into the cell and handed him a brown paper bag. “Your things, sir. If you’d sign for them.”

Harper took the clipboard and pen from the man and signed.

“Thank you, sir. Now, if you’d please follow me.”

They left the cells and walked past several uniformed officers who stared, two of them women constables who shifted uneasily from foot to foot, trying not to smile at the movie star. At the back door, the large policeman stopped. They stood there for a moment and then his radio crackled, the word Clear being the only one Harper could understand. The constable unlocked the door and stood aside. “That black one’s your car, sir. No media anywhere, and it stopped raining for you.”

Harper stepped into the wet street and turned to shake the policeman’s hand, but the door clicked shut in his face. He threw a look up at the sky, a solid gray that hung low over the city, and started toward the black SUV that idled by the curb. He smiled when he saw the Cadillac insignia. He went to the rear door, but before he could open it, the front window rolled down.

“Sit in the front, please,” said the driver. “I’m your nanny, not your chauffeur.”

Harper had been following orders like a conscripted private for two days and reacted automatically, pulling open the front passenger door and climbing in. The driver, a solidly-built, brown-haired man, looked at him. “How’d the Brits treat you?” the man asked.

“Fine. Fine, I guess.” The man had the kind of face his wife and costar, Ginny, would go for. Strong jaw, intelligent brown eyes, and a fatherly quality that he, Harper, with his delicate features, would never possess. “Sorry, who are you?”

The man reached into his coat and pulled out a black wallet. He flipped it open and Harper inspected the bronze badge. “US Embassy security,” he read aloud. “Are you arresting me now?”

“Nope. Like I said, I’m your au pair.”

“Why do I need one of those?”

The man put the car into gear and started to pull away from the curb. “Do you drink?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“I’ll explain why you need me when we get to the embassy. And, if you drink, you might want to start early today.”

Harper looked out of the window. No city, he thought, ever looked so drab and depressing as London on a rainy day. Maybe because it had so many of them, day after day, year after year, that the color had just been washed from the buildings and its people. “You didn’t tell me your name.”

“Oh, right,” said the man, looking over and smiling, though Harper couldn’t tell if it was sincere. “Where are my manners? I’m Hugo Marston.”

A light drizzle started the wipers of the Cadillac automatically as Hugo turned the car onto Upper Brook Street from Park Lane. He’d taken a roundabout route, partly for security reasons—but mostly because he wasn’t entirely looking forward to sharing his apartment with a pampered movie star charged with vehicular homicide. Or whatever the British equivalent was.

Policy at the US Embassy in London, as he saw it, forced him to live on campus. He’d been given a three-bedroom apartment in the embassy complex, fully furnished by its previous occupant and partially refurnished by his wife, Christine. The chintz-to-leather ratio now tilted the wrong way, but Hugo hadn’t said anything—challenge enough to get Christine to London in the first place. He hoped, vainly he suspected, that an emotional investment in delicate chairs and blown-glass vases would persuade her to use the place as more than a staging point for shopping expeditions. But with her family money and friends in Dallas, where she was now, his hopes weren’t high.

Inside the compound, Hugo waved his passkey and waited as the grill slid up to allow them into the underground parking lot. Harper, as best Hugo could tell, was in a daze, registering events and sights with some delay. He’d asked a question about Hyde Park several minutes after they’d turned away from Park Lane, which bordered the green space. Now, the actor shook his head and looked over as Hugo pulled into his parking spot. “Is this the US Embassy?” he asked.

“Yep,” Hugo said.

“We should go to my hotel,” Harper protested mildly. “My stuff is all there. I have a room booked for the whole shoot.”

“Not anymore.” Hugo opened his door and climbed out. He bent down and looked at the blank face of the actor. “You’re staying with me now. Your stuff is already here.” He closed the door and waited for Harper to unbuckle himself and get out of the car. “Elevator’s this way, follow me.”

Harper trailed a few steps behind, clutching his paper bag to his chest. He looked at Hugo as the lift bumped them slowly up to the fourth floor. “Is Ginny here? She already got bail, right?”

“Yes,” Hugo said. “She already got bail.”

“She’s here already?”

“No.” Mercifully the lift stopped and the doors opened into the marbled foyer of Hugo’s apartment. In front of them the enormous living room, bright even on dull days thanks to the ceiling-high, bulletproof windows that overlooked Grosvenor Gardens.

“Nice place,” Harper said, his voice distant.

“Thanks. Kitchen and my bedroom off to the left. Your room is off the living room, first door on the right. Shares a bathroom with the third bedroom, which I use as a study.”

“Right. Thanks.” Harper walked to the windows and looked out, then turned and put his paper bag on the coffee table that Christine had bought from an antiques shop in Camden. He walked to a pure-white armchair and turned to Hugo. “Where’s Ginny?”

Hugo had done this before. Many times. Too many times. For a while it had gotten easier, but not any more, not now. It had been years since he’d looked someone in the eye and told them the worst news a person could hear. He poured a shot of brandy into a tumbler and walked over to Harper, putting the drink in his hand and steering him into the chair.

“There’s no easy way to say this,” Hugo began, his voice softening for the first time since they’d met. “I’m very sorry, but Ginny is dead.”

“What?” Harper’s eyes widened. “No, she’s not. She can’t be.”

“I’m sorry, she is.”

“But she was just . . . in jail, she was in protective custody, right? Like I was.”

“Yes, she was but—”

“So nothing could happen to her, that’s why . . .” His voice trailed off. “That’s not right. It can’t be.”