The Button Man: A Hugo Marston Novel (16 page)

After a quarter mile, Pendrith stopped. “Where the hell is this getting us?”

Hugo clicked on the flashlight. He ran the beam of light along the narrow trail, starting at his feet and directing it along the worn track. The smell of wet earth beneath their feet and the tumble of black trees ahead of them gave Hugo the sensation of being lost, a hapless wanderer in a strange land.

Which
, he thought,
I pretty much am.

Beside them, the dark silhouette of the wall curved off to the right, but the path went straight ahead, bisecting the lumpy pasture. Hugo turned the beam onto the wall and, twenty yards away, saw that it ended in a tumble of ivy that dangled down from the bricks and roped itself around a waist-high wooden fence designed to keep cattle from wandering onto the property.

“Here we go,” he said.

He climbed over first, putting out a helping hand to Merlyn, who took it, and to Pendrith, who ignored it with a grunt of what Hugo took to be outrage. All safely over, Hugo looked toward the back of the house. They were standing at the edge of the garden, at least sixty yards from the house that sat as a gray hulk rimmed with white from the lights of the police activity out front.

Hugo led the way, flicking the flashlight on every few seconds, just long enough to know the way was clear. After just a few paces, Pendrith piped up.

“What the hell are we looking for?”

“An outbuilding with lights on,” Hugo said, “or a tree house with people whispering in it. Use your imagination.” For a former MI5 officer, Pendrith had a very blunt investigative edge, Hugo thought.

“I see a pond, how’s that?” Pendrith said, stopping to point. Hugo ran the light to his left and saw a circular pond thirty yards across. A gentle bank sloped about two feet to a heavy-looking surface, and Hugo assumed it was covered in duckweed, or maybe an unbroken layer of lily pads. He moved closer, eyes straining in the dim light. A few feet from the pond, his ankle flexed as he stood on what felt like a dip in the lawn. He ran the light over the ground and his stomach tightened.

“Guys, stay where you are,” he said, his voice low and urgent. He took two steps back and then aimed the flashlight at the surface of the pond. At the edge he’d just backed away from, the dark water sucked in the beam, telling Hugo there was a gap in the reflective greenery on its surface. He moved to his left, to the edge of the pond, and knelt. The weed-free patch of water was ten feet away, and he kept the light on it as he pulled a coin from his pocket. He took aim and lobbed it underhand toward the patch, following its flight with the beam from the flashlight. The coin arced over the green close to his feet and fell toward the dark water, landing with a gentle plink and seeming to hover on its surface for a moment before skittering away from Hugo, apparently along the surface of the water, before disappearing from view.

“There’s something under there,” Pendrith said from over Hugo’s shoulder.

“There is,” said Hugo. “And I’m afraid I know what it is.”

“You do?” Pendrith said, as he helped Hugo up. They stood side by side looking at the pond, then Pendrith spoke again. “That was the roof of a car, wasn’t it?”

“That’s my guess,” said Hugo.

“The question is, whose car?” Pendrith muttered.

“A car?” Merlyn moved forward and touched Hugo’s arm. “Oh my god. Is there someone in it?”

“That,” said Hugo grimly, “is the other question.”

It took thirty minutes for the police to shift their battery of lights to the back lawn and for a tow truck to appear. Hugo, Pendrith, and Merlyn stood to one side, enduring the suspicious looks of the police who were busy orchestrating the extraction of whatever lay beneath the surface of the pond.

“You have some explaining to do,” Detective Chief Inspector Clive Upton had told Hugo, happier to wag his finger at an American, Hugo thought, than at an MP or a frightened-looking civilian. A pretty, frightened-looking civilian. Upton had been furious at first, stalking across the lawn behind Pendrith, who had gone to fetch him. But the senior officer circled away from the tire tracks almost instinctively and directed his attention at the small amount of visible evidence before turning to Hugo. And even then, after the initial outrage that someone other than one of his men had found a crucial piece of evidence, a new crime scene maybe, Upton had calmed down and nodded along as Hugo explained why they were there, sticking as close to Pendrith’s version as he could.

DCI Upton carried himself like a sergeant-major, ramrod straight and shoulders squared off with a ruler. His hair looked white in the dark, but his eyes were clear like a young man’s, hard and silver though perhaps pale blue in daylight, his skin smooth enough to make even Dayton Harper jealous. And when Hugo had finished, Upton watched him for a moment, as if deciding whether or not to believe his story, ask for more, or go with what he had for now.

Hugo was relieved when he decided on the latter. Upton radioed for a line of constables to pick their way across the expansive lawn toward the pond, scouring the grass for further clues. Upton shouted at one young constable who wandered too close to the tire tracks, making the constable leap back into formation without a word other than, Hugo imagined, a quiet curse aimed at himself.

The thin blue search line pincered around the pond and stopped at the water’s edge without finding anything, and everyone stood waiting and watching as two flatbed trucks drove around the side of the house and positioned themselves thirty yards from the pond, on either side. With a clicking sound followed by a
whump
, a dozen lights colored the scene in a yellowy green, forcing the night back to the fence that Hugo had crossed half an hour ago. A crime-scene specialist appeared and started photographing the ground around the pond, as well as the pond itself, a dozen men watching his steady progress around the scene.

Soon a lone policeman trudged across the lawn toward them, leading a tow truck whose diesel engine growled with impatience at the slow crawl along its safe path to the pond. When it got there, the driver shut off the engine and hopped down from the cab at his guide’s behest. A short, round man in oily overalls, he wore a look of uncertainty that told Hugo he wasn’t used to pulling cars out of water, especially when they might have bodies in them.

The crime-scene tech finally knelt to put his camera in its bag, and they all watched as he pulled out a video camera and walked to the far side of the pond. Moments after he’d set it atop a tripod, his voice crackled through Upton’s radio that he was ready. Upton turned to the fidgeting tow-truck driver.

“Let’s go, Mr. Crouch. Nice and easy, we’d like to keep whatever’s in there as intact as possible.”

The driver hesitated, then looked at the pond. “You want me to go in there, hook it up?”

“Correct.”

“What if it’s facing the wrong way?”

Upton smiled thinly. “You’re the expert charging us a hundred quid an hour. So I want you to put your waders on, go in there, and hook it up.”

Crouch licked his lips and nodded, then went to the back of his truck. He wrestled with a pair of fishing waders, losing his balance twice before getting them on properly. He leaned over some controls, and Hugo heard the clanking of metal on metal.

Crouch walked tentatively to the edge of the pond with a hoist cable in his hand, then stepped into the pond. He shuffled onward, feeling with his toes, but he slid forward anyway and stood there, suddenly waist deep in the water, eyes wide with the shock of the cold. Crouch looked around for a second, then shrugged as if giving in to the inevitable, and dipped his right side under the water as he felt around him. He stepped forward again, then stooped down so that the water rose to his shoulders and Hugo could hear him puffing away, his round chin brushing the frigid water as he worked. He seemed to stay like that for a long time, wrestling the cable and hoist pan with both hands.

Then he was out of the water and walking to his truck, leaning behind the cab and pulling a lever that tilted the flat bed to a forty-five degree angle. He pulled another lever and the cable went taut, the drum reeling it in with a grinding sound. All eyes turned to where the cable lifted out of the water and quivered, strands of weed dropping from the roped steel as it took the strain.

Then, with a lurch and a rush of water, the green top of the pond parted and a dark mass broke the surface. A murmur ran through the ring of policemen around the pond, but they soon quieted when progress halted. The winch motor changed pitch with the effort of dragging its load. The little pond, with its muddy floor and steep sides, didn’t want to give up its prize. Hugo realized he was holding his breath, and he imagined everyone else was too. He looked back at the struggle going on at the edge of the water and heard a sucking sound, followed by a sudden whoosh, as the pond finally conceded defeat.

Hugo felt a hand on his arm. He looked down at Merlyn’s pale face and watched the confusion and anger in her eyes as her little car was dragged over the rim of the pond. It sat there, plastered with weeds and bleeding pond water, a tiny capsule with opaque windows, a treasure chest or a coffin, pulled from the deep.

The winch fell silent and DCI Upton moved toward the passenger door. He shone his flashlight through the window but gave no indication of what he saw.

“Where’s my crime-scene team?” he called, and nodded when the photographer and another officer appeared at his side. Upton reached for the door handle, then pulled it, swinging the car door open as he stepped back. A rush of dirty water spilled out and everyone on that side of the car, Hugo and Merlyn included, leaned forward to look inside.

Merlyn sighed with relief at the empty seats, no doubt glad her friend had not been under that turgid water. But she wasn’t seeing what Hugo saw: a temporary victory and a sign that they needed to get back on the road.

“Thank God!” Merlyn whispered. “Screw the car, I’m just glad Dayton wasn’t in there.”

“And that means he’s somewhere else,” Hugo murmured. He looked at Pendrith, standing halfway between him and Upton, and read the relief on his face. Pendrith started toward them, the movement catching Upton’s eye. The policeman leaned over to a burly officer beside him and gave a quick order, and the constable trotted over to the threesome.

“Not planning on leaving, are you sir?” he said to Hugo.

“Actually, yes,” Hugo replied. “Places to go, people to find. You know how it is.”

“Oh, I do, sir,” the constable said cheerily. “Thing is, DCI Upton may not. Perhaps a quick word with him before you go.” It wasn’t a suggestion.

“Wait here,” Hugo told Pendrith and Merlyn. “I won’t be long.” He strode quickly to where Upton was giving directions to his crime-scene technicians. “Chief, we need to be on our way. Lord Stopford-Pendrith has given a statement already, so I assume you won’t be needing us.”

Upton turned cold, gray eyes on Hugo, appraising him. “Right. Because all you did was find a recently submerged car in a pond in the middle of the night. How could I possibly have any more questions for you?”

“Look, I’ll tell you what I can,” Hugo said. “I’m looking for someone, someone who’s been driving that car.”

Upton jerked a thumb at the house. “Yeah, I think we’re looking for him too, assuming he put that farmer into a coma. Who is it?”

Hugo shook his head. “I don’t think the man I’m looking for did that. At least, I can’t imagine why he would have. You and I are looking for two different people, Inspector.”

“And I’m supposed to take your word for that?”

Hugo looked at him, trying to figure a way to convince Upton. “Look, I’ll make you a deal. If I find the driver of that car, I’ll bring him wherever you want for an interview. I can guarantee that you’ll see why he’s not your shooter.”

“I need a name, Mr. Marston. Now.”

“He’s not your man, Inspector. Let me find him and bring him in, you start here and look for the shooter. The real shooter.”

“Name. You have three seconds.”

“Talk to Pendrith. You’re making a mistake because all I’m trying to do is help you—”

Hugo stopped talking as his arms were grabbed from his sides and pulled behind him. He had no time to resist as the burly constable clicked handcuffs onto his wrists. Hugo looked over his shoulder at the startled look on Pendrith’s face. The old man started forward, but his path was blocked by two constables much stronger and swifter. Hugo turned back to Upton and spoke firmly, trying hard to control the anger rising inside him.

“I’m a security agent for the US Embassy. I am on official State Department business, and I have diplomatic immunity. I don’t like to pull rank, Chief Inspector, but we have two men out here somewhere, one trying to kill the other and happy to shoot anyone else who gets in his way. We don’t have time for this shit, so take these handcuffs off.”

Upton reached up and patted Hugo’s shoulder, a smile playing on his lips.

“That so, Mr. Marston? Well, here’s the thing. You’re in Hertfordshire now, not your US Embassy, so it’ll take a little while to confirm your immunity. In the meantime, we can get a nice cup of tea and talk about it down at the station.”