Trains rumbled around him and he sat lost in thought, then started as his phone buzzed again, surprised at getting reception underground. He recognized the number immediately.
“Upton, this is Hugo. Do you have her?”
“Hugo.” He sounds tired. I bet I do, too. “No, I’m sorry, she wasn’t there.”
“Dammit.”
“I know. Our uniforms got there and tried to make contact. She didn’t come to the door so, after what you said, we were worried about a hostage situation. I’d sent a TAC team behind the uniforms, and when they went in, she was gone.”
“Gone how, any idea?”
“Of her own accord, best we can tell. No signs of a struggle, nothing broken in the apartment.”
“I wouldn’t expect there to have been a struggle,” Hugo said. “That’s not what I’m worried about.”
“What do you mean?”
“If Walton killed Pendrith, he’s not even on English soil,” he said, irritated at having to explain, more irritated at leaving Merlyn unprotected. “He told her to go somewhere, and she did.”
“She’s still not answering her phone?”
“No. He probably told her to turn it off, said she was in danger and could be tracked if her phone was on.” Hugo shook his head. “If I wanted someone to disappear off the grid, that’s what I’d do.”
“Sneaky bastard.”
“That he is,” said Hugo. “He must have told her to meet him somewhere. We need to figure out where.”
“Why would he hurt her? What’s this about?”
“I don’t know what this is about, but he might assume Pendrith told her. Maybe he knows they were both visitors to Braxton Hall, figures they were somehow in cahoots, that she knows something. Whatever happens, we have to find her.” Hugo heard the desperate note in his own voice, and it shocked him a little.
“Wait, what does Braxton Hall have to do with this?”
“Little bits of this make sense, but I don’t know exactly … and I still don’t know why he’s doing this. If you can get me anything and everything on Walton, from research and from his home, maybe that’ll help. I have Pendrith’s phone, maybe I can find something on it that will connect them.” He felt the desperation creep back into his voice. “In the meantime, find Merlyn. She’s an innocent in this.”
Upton paused before speaking. “You’re sure about that, Hugo? If we don’t know what’s going on, how can we know about her for sure?”
“I know it,” Hugo said. But he’d not considered the alternative, it had never even crossed his mind.
“Well, I don’t. She’s as much in the middle of this as Pendrith and Walton, and remember, you told me that she’s the one who showed up at Braxton Hall.”
“She did, that’s true. But I got her into this, Clive, I’m sure she’s on our side.” As he said the words, he knew he was partly wrong, he knew that he shouldn’t rule Merlyn out of the mix on the basis of some gut instinct, and yet he was doing just that. “It’s Walton, not Merlyn,” Hugo said. “And we need to find her before he does. If I’m right, he’s coming in from France. Can’t you watch the border, the trains and ferries?”
“I’ll do what I can,” Upton said.
“He may be using a different name and, if so, there might be evidence of it at his house. Another reason to look, and look now.”
“Like I said, I’ll do what I can. But remember, borders aren’t what they used to be.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Hugo was the last to board the train back to London, hurrying on and barely seated when the platform outside his window began to slide away.
He wanted to rest, to close his eyes and give his mind and body a few moments to catch up and recharge. He’d not slept in two days, and the velvet cloak of darkness that slipped around the train as it left the bright lights of the city seemed to wrap around his exhausted body, too, its softness and the rocking of the train an irresistible lullaby singing his tired limbs and mind to sleep. It took a force of will for him to find his phone and call Merlyn, yet again. Still no answer.
There was little he could do. Bart and DCI Upton were both mining into Walton’s life, trying to connect him to Pendrith, to find something they had in common, something that put Pendrith into Walton’s sights, find whatever got the MP killed.
Hugo sat forward, mentally urging energy back into his body and fighting the desire to close his eyes. He pulled Pendrith’s phone from his pocket and brought it to life, bleary eyes taking extra seconds to focus on the screen. He’d start with the man’s e-mails.
Two minutes later, Hugo had been through all the correspondence, what little there was. A few messages to staffers, but nothing personal. It seemed clear that Pendrith wasn’t big on e-mailing — no surprise for someone of his generation.
So why have a smartphone instead of a regular one? Hugo wondered. He turned to the other applications, opening the web browser to try and see where, if anywhere, Pendrith had been surfing the Internet. But Hugo’s poor knowledge of technical things was a barrier, and he soon became frustrated, resigning himself to the fact that one of his tech guys would have to search it for any data.
He glanced through the other applications and one looked like a notebook, so he opened it and started reading. The very first words stung him, jolted adrenalin into his blood, and made his head swim.
I need to start by saying that people were not meant to die. Not those people, anyway, and certainly not in the way they did. There was a greater purpose behind these events that I’m afraid will be overshadowed by the death of innocents; or relative innocents. That original purpose, perhaps ironically, is still alive, which is why I must remain vague.
Is a half-apology worth anything? Who knows. Perhaps I shall delete this all and try to deal with the consequences, one way or another, the best way I can. But please know that I worked for the greater good, always, even in this horror that has unfolded. And should the full facts, every twist and turn in the story, become known, then you should know that I have seen, understood, and mourned for the deep irony at play.
It was a confession. At least, a kind of confession, though Hugo had no clue what Pendrith had meant to do with it. Send it to the media? His colleagues in Parliament? The police? Worse, it didn’t answer any of the substantive questions rattling around in Hugo’s head, although it did, possibly, change one of his conclusions. After all, a confession written by a man found with a gun by his side was usually called a suicide note. As he read and reread the words, Hugo wondered whether he’d been wrong, wondered whether Pendrith had taken his own life, after all.
But then he remembered where he’d found the phone and the wave of relief surprised him. The phone had been pushed down the side of the chair, hidden. Hidden from whomever killed him.
Hugo looked at the message again and tried to distance himself from the situation, to pretend he’d found the note at another crime scene, one where he didn’t know the victims personally. What did the words tell him? Parse it, he thought, parse the message piece by piece.
Before he could start, his phone rang. Bart.
“Hey Bart, I’m on my way home.”
“Everything OK?”
“Not really. Merlyn is missing, Pendrith is dead, and Walton is on the loose. It’s only a matter of time before we get him, but in the meantime I think he’s set his sights on Merlyn.”
“Jesus, really? I only spoke to you a couple of hours ago, what the hell happened?”
“Yeah, this is moving fast. Too fast. I saw Pendrith an hour before he was killed. He told me he was planning to disappear, but I went to his apartment and found him dead.” Hugo described the scene and could hear the scratch of Bart’s pen as he took notes.