“I gathered,” said Hugo. His travel had been smooth and uninterrupted, and not a uniform in sight. “Did you ever get a list of the people being released from prison, the little group that included Stanton?”
“Sure did, you had someone e-mail it to me.”
“OK, I need you to go over it in more detail, try and figure out if there is someone else on there Walton might go after.”
“Any parameters?”
“Well, the first one is that the victim might be in or heading to London. Of course, Walton may just be heading into the city to find a way out. Planes, trains, motorways … So don’t get stuck on that. Think like Walton; ask yourself whether he’d see one of the four being released as a particular injustice. You know what I mean, Bart, right?”
“Sure, I’ll do it right now and call if anything leaps out at me.”
“No, assign it to someone else, I want you to meet me at King’s Cross. But first, tell me what his blog says.”
“It’s just one entry.”
“OK. Read it.”
Time alters everything, and not always for the better. Why do we assume that societal changes automatically mean progress? Are we so arrogant to think that we can’t, collectively, make mistakes? That we shouldn’t reexamine policy shifts, no matter what?
I have done all I can do to show you what should have happened. Those who died at my hand should have died by the State. You may look at me with spite, even fear, but I did the work for you, just as my father did, as I should have been able to do with him. He was your executioner back then, and I have been today. I don’t expect your thanks. My father never even got a pension.
If you revile me, so be it. But think about paying for my food, my shelter, my television, my medical care. Instead of a length of rope for my neck costing just a few pounds, you’d be stumping up a couple million.
It’s not a moral issue, or shouldn’t be. Every day our weak and timid politicians make decisions that consign people to the grave. Those stuck on NHS waiting lists get sicker and die because money is being funneled to defense contractors. Soldiers are sent to fight other people’s wars, and die. We can’t pretend that life is precious, that we value human life so greatly that executing murderers is out of the question. Sick people and soldiers can die, but not serial killers? Explain that to the parents of those who die in Afghanistan, or the little girl who dies waiting for treatment in a Newcastle hospital.
Don’t mourn for me or those I killed. Mourn for the death of justice in this country.
When Hugo emerged from King’s Cross station, a wash of cold air greeted him, and his ears were filled by the sound of the rain that pounded the street, drumming off the roofs of the black cabs waiting for business, filling the gutters.
Hugo spotted the US Embassy vehicle, another black Cadillac Escalade, as it pressed its way under the station’s canopy. Once it was out of the rain, Hugo trotted over and slid into the front passenger seat of the familiar vehicle, and it felt like coming home. Hugo and Bart shook hands, an expression of relief as much as anything.
“Just for the record,” Bart said, “Your boss approved your request for leave, effective immediately.”
Hugo closed the door and the beat of the rain disappeared almost entirely, a leather-enforced hush taking over. “My request for …?”
“Precisely. Some ruffled English feathers, plus we have no official interest in any of this right now.”
“Except the bastard tried to kill me.”
“Which is still a matter for the Brits, you know that.”
Hugo looked at the square head of the former marine, his large hands on the wheel. A reassuring presence in any situation. “Yeah, I know,” said Hugo. “Did you bring the printout of his blog?”
“Yep, just that one article, as I said. Find any hidden meaning?”
A taxi honked behind them, unimpressed by the diplomatic plates, only concerned with its place in line.
“Not yet,” said Hugo. “You drive, and I’ll read it again. Maybe something will jump out.”
“Will do. Anywhere in particular?”
“Nope.” Hugo already had the article in front of him. He read it once more for the overall impression, then started to take it line by line, letting everything he knew about Walton filter through the prism of this missive, like water running through coffee grounds. “I was right about his father,” Hugo murmured.
Denum looked across. “What do you mean?”
“He feels very close to him, he wanted to be like him, and when his father was robbed of his career, and ultimately his life, Harry Walton felt like he, too, had been robbed of everything.”
“I thought serial killers were all about their mothers?”
Hugo allowed himself a smile. “Technically, I don’t think he’d qualify as a serial killer.” Even though I called him one to his face.
“Why not?”
“He has the required number of bodies, but the FBI also mandates a cooling-off period between kills. And there’s usually a sexual element to the crimes, manifested in a way most people wouldn’t see as sexual.”
“So you don’t think he gets off on what he does?”
“He gets satisfaction, sure, but not the way Ted Bundy or David Berkowitz did. His is almost a professional satisfaction. And his motives seem political, not sexually perverse.”
“Maybe time to rethink the FBI definition,” Denum said. “After all, I’m not sure the victims give a crap why he kills them, do they?”
“Good point. But the question is, what’s he going to do next?”
“He must know the net is closing.”
“Definitely.” Hugo stared at the piece of paper in his hand. “He’s readying himself for prison. For him, it’s the soft option. He’s railed for so long about killers getting prison instead of hanging, he really sees it as a decent ending for him. And yet …”
“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.