The Button Man: A Hugo Marston Novel (6 page)

“Yes,” Hugo said. The idea of an evening inside with a grieving and bipolar Harper was even less appealing than a rainy drive around London. But the embassy was a safe zone.

“Well then. And I’ll come along, too, be your tour guide. No harm in that, eh?” Pendrith was talking to Harper now, and the actor held up two thumbs and disappeared into his room. Pendrith looked back at Hugo. “What? Oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t start that again. I’m just trying to help. International comity, and all that.”

“Yes, of course,” said Hugo, chewing back a smile. “You know, I have a pen and paper if you want to go ahead and get his autograph before we leave.”

“Hush, man,” Pendrith snorted, “you’re being ridiculous.”

Hugo drove the Cadillac with Pendrith sitting next to him; Harper had insisted on sitting in the back seat. “I move around a lot, want to see everything,” he’d said. They drove in silence down Saint Audrey Street toward Piccadilly, shuffling along in the traffic, the only sounds the brush of the windshield wipers and the occasional, heavy tick of the car’s turn signals. Hugo always wondered how the English stayed sane in this weather, the endless rain and drizzle and the sun setting before four o’clock in the depths of winter. Once he’d tried to shake the blues by using a tanning bed, like the Scandinavians do, but he spent the rest of that day catching whiffs of burned pork, so he didn’t do that again.

A car honked at them as he swung onto Hertford Street, toward Park Lane and Hyde Park Corner, one of the thousands of undersized cars that in America would have been laughed off the road but that here, Hugo had to concede, were far more sensible than the hunk of metal he had to drive. He braked hard as the car hopped in front of them, red brake lights flashing. Sensible, but crushable, he couldn’t help thinking.

“Bloody fool,” Pendrith muttered. “There’s no one in front of him, why’s he braking?”

Hugo felt a cold hand clutch his stomach as the doors to the little car swung open. He checked the rear view mirror but a flat-nosed van was inches from his bumper, giving him no room to reverse. He looked back at the two men, now out of the car, both wearing long overcoats and hats.

“Get down, both of you,” he snapped, pulling his embassy-issue pistol. A patter of rain blurred the windshield, but Hugo saw a black object in the right hand of one of the men, the car’s passenger. Hugo’s mind screamed
Gun!
and his whole body tensed as the man raised it up.

Hugo reached for the door latch and threw the door open, instinctively hitting the button to lower the window to clear his view. In two seconds he was crouching behind the open door shouting at the men to stand still, his eyes blinking away the rain. A bright flash, then another from the passenger, and immediately Hugo knew he’d made a mistake. He swore under his breath and quickly tucked the gun back into his shoulder holster.

“Is that Dayton Harper in the car?” the car’s driver said. “Have him step out. We’re the press. We just have a few questions.”

“You’re blocking traffic,” Hugo said.

“And you’re waving a gun in a public place, arsehole,” the photographer snapped.

“Shut up, Gary, he’s just doing his job,” the driver said. He held up both hands, the peacemaker. “I’m Phil Larson,
Daily Express
. You his bodyguard?”

“Nice to meet you, Phil,” Hugo said. “Sorry we can’t stay and chat.”

“So when did he get out of jail?”

“Call our press office, they’ll answer all your questions.”

“Whose press office? And no they won’t, mate. You know that. If I want information the last place I go is someone’s bloody press office. Come on, do me a favor, give me something. Where are you taking him?”

“What makes you think he’s in the car?”

“A tip and some surveillance.”

“Tip from whom?” Hugo didn’t much care, but he wanted to keep the reporter and photographer where they were until he figured a way out of this. A horn sounded from behind the Cadillac and the photographer shifted on his feet.

“Can’t say, you know that,” Larson said.

“Course not,” said Hugo. “But no harm in asking. Look, why don’t you leave me your card, and we can talk later.”

“Now’s better.” Larson’s tone was polite, gentle even, but he wasn’t budging. To Hugo’s left, the photographer started forward, apparently tired of the civility, intent on doing his job whether Hugo liked it or not. As he approached the passenger side of the car, Pendrith stepped out. The photographer stopped and looked at Larson, the sight of an MP in the company of an American security officer and a recently released movie star too much to take in. But not for long. His camera leapt to his face and Hugo heard the shutter whirring, the
click-click
as Pendrith was captured for the public, standing beside a shiny black Cadillac.

Another door opened behind Hugo, and he looked over his shoulder to see Harper slipping out of the car. Hugo turned back to Larson, exasperated that the situation was going in completely the wrong direction.

In front of Hugo, the photographer let his camera fall to his side and Larson started forward, pointing. Hugo swiveled to see the rear passenger door still open and no sign of Harper.

Pendrith strode to the back of the car and received a chorus of honks from frustrated drivers, and his calls to Harper were lost in the din. Hugo ran to join him and was immediately flanked by the journalists.

“What the hell’s going on?” Larson turned to Hugo. “He just ran off. Dayton Harper just ran off.”

“No shit.” Hugo was already on his way back to the driver’s seat, closing Harper’s door and shouting at Pendrith to get in. Hugo glanced at his mirrors, looking for a tiny break in traffic. When he didn’t see one, he squealed into a U-turn anyway, clipping the reporter’s rear bumper and setting off an angry chorus from the cars on the other side of Hertford Street. He ignored them, eyes scanning for Harper. “What the hell is he playing at?”

“There!” Pendrith pointed through the windshield, and Hugo saw him jogging thirty yards ahead, apparently trying to keep a moving van between him and them. Harper turned and looked over his shoulder, hair flat and face glistening in the drizzle, and he quickened his step. Hugo feathered the steering wheel and whisked the car past a cyclist.

“Careful man, these are my constituents,” Pendrith said.

“Feel free to get out any time you like,” Hugo replied. “I’ll take full responsibility. In the meantime, hold on tight.” He yanked the wheel to the right and the tires squealed as he followed Harper onto Down Street.

“I say, stop!” Pendrith grabbed the dash. “Lord, man, this is a one-way street.”

Hugo clenched his teeth. “I’m only going one way.” He hit the horn to let Harper know he wasn’t giving up and to push the oncoming Mini over the curb and onto the narrow sidewalk. “When I get my hands on that little shit . . .”
If I get my hands on him
, he thought.
If I don’t, Cooper will be the one doing the throttling.

Harper was thirty yards ahead still, the iron railings that fronted the redbrick homes keeping him from jinking left or right. Hugo looked forward and saw trees the other side of a main road. “What’s ahead?”

“That’s Piccadilly. And Green Park is the other side of it.”

“A park? Shit.”

They were right behind Harper now, Hugo could see his hair flopping as he ran. Ten yards from the intersection with Piccadilly, Hugo slowed, then stamped on the brake as a blue truck loomed on the right. But Harper barely paused, flitting between the back of the truck and a pair of motorcyclists who swerved in unison to miss him. He hopped the metal barrier that divided the road, and Hugo and Pendrith could do nothing but watch as he jogged across the street and disappeared into the trees.

CHAPTER SIX

T
he Cadillac swept along Constitution Hill, the rolling grounds of Buckingham Palace Gardens visible through the trees on their right. But the beauty of the carefully tended green space went ignored as Pendrith and Hugo stared into the gloom for a glimpse of Dayton Harper.

As they drew near the marble Victoria Memorial, Hugo swung into a gentle U-turn to head back the way they’d come. As he straightened up, they passed a policeman on a bicycle flagging down a red Mini for the exact same maneuver. Hugo had forgotten U-turns were illegal in England. He looked over at Pendrith and grimaced, then watched with concern as the Englishman pulled out his phone.

“Who are you calling?” Hugo asked.

“You’re not going to like it, but I think we need to get the police involved.” Pendrith held up a hand, “It’s not ideal, I know, but what else can we do?”

“Wait just a minute.” Hugo swerved to the side of the road and stopped. He stared at Pendrith. “About twenty seconds after you call the cops, the press will know that Dayton Harper, movie icon and farmer-killer, is wandering the streets of London. Every human being north of the equator will be out looking for him, and what do you think they’ll do when they find him?”

“I have no idea, old boy. Not been in this situation before.”

“Me neither, but a mob has three options: kill him, hide him, or turn him over to the authorities. You willing to gamble on them picking number three?”

“And your suggestion,” Pendrith said quietly, “would be to drive around London until we find him? How long do you think it’ll be before someone out there spots him and recognizes him?”

“That’s the truth.” Hugo sank back into his seat. “We need to find him in the next hour. After that we’ll call in the cavalry.”

“Agreed.” Pendrith rubbed his chin. “Those bloody reporters.”

Hugo had momentarily forgotten the reason Harper was able to run off—the journalists, who had witnessed firsthand Harper’s flight. “Let’s find them first.”

“Drop me off where we last saw them,” Pendrith said. “I’ll tackle those buggers while you look for Harper. If I don’t find them, I have some sway with their boss. Maybe I can hold the story up for a little while.”

“Good. Write your phone number down, and take mine.” Hugo rattled off his number as he pulled back into traffic. “I’ll start with the assumption he’s headed somewhere familiar. Maybe his hotel.”

“I believe he took rooms at the Ritz.”

“That’s right,” said Hugo. “But how did you know that?”

“Homework, old boy,” Pendrith said with a slight smile. “Always do your homework.”

Hugo drove slowly along Piccadilly, scanning the rain-soaked sidewalk for Harper, touching his brakes every now and again as pedestrians ducked across the road in front of him, scurrying toward the raised islands of safety between the waves of smog-chugging cars and buses. The blank faces of those on foot matched the featureless sky, and Hugo wondered briefly if the sun would ever shine again. Rain in Texas was a respite, a welcome and occasional relief from the ever-present threat of drought, a threat realized virtually every summer as the plains and hill country surrounding Austin baked, day after day, under a merciless sun.

But not here. In England, especially in London, it seemed as though a heavy sky and constant drizzle were part of the scenery, landmarks as permanent and gray as Parliament or Saint Paul’s Cathedral. He longed to escape, just for a weekend, and was convinced that his normally positive mood—his optimistic view of the world, even—had been slowly but surely worn down, eroded away by the relentless drizzle and perpetually overcast skies.

Soon the Ritz London Hotel loomed to his left, and not for the first time Hugo wondered why one of London’s most famous hotels had been built to resemble a French chateau. Not that he minded: the intricate stone architecture of Paris had always been more appealing to him than London’s mishmash of occasional beauty wedged alongside postwar mediocrity.

He pulled to the curb just before reaching a marked bus stop, hoping that his car wouldn’t be crushed or towed. As he climbed out, a white-gloved and uniformed employee swept toward him.

“Are you a guest, sir? I’m afraid the authorities don’t allow cars . . .”

Hugo pointed to the diplomatic plates on the front of the Cadillac and brushed past him with a smile. He didn’t like to abuse the privilege, but this was an emergency.