The Button Man: A Hugo Marston Novel by Pryor Mark

Author:Pryor, Mark [Pryor, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Published: 2014-09-01T16:00:00+00:00

The landlord told Hugo and DCI Upton the same thing he’d told the constable, adding for Hugo’s benefit the observation that just because a guest had walked off into the sunset, or sunrise, as the case may be, and just because the cops were all worried, didn’t mean those rooms didn’t need to be paid for.

Hugo dug out his wallet and handed the man cash, then dialed Pendrith’s phone for the third time in ten minutes. When it went to voicemail, Hugo climbed the stairs with Upton and stood at the entrance to Pendrith’s small room. The landlord assured them that the rooms hadn’t been touched, what with his wife being sick, which was the first good news Hugo had heard in hours. The bed had been made, as Agarwal had said, and a cursory search also confirmed what was obvious from the outset: no indication of where Pendrith had gone or why he’d left.

“No signs of a struggle,” Upton said. “That’s something.”

“I guess.” Hugo stood at the end of the bed and ran his hand over the blanket. He looked down at it. “Did you go to boarding school, Clive?”

“Boarding school? No, why?”

“How about the military?”

“Nope. Local grammar school, local university, local police. My life in a nutshell. Why?”

“Look at the bed, the way it’s made.”

“Like a maid did it,” Upton shrugged. “A nicely made bed, your point being that he wasn’t in a hurry?”

“My point being that perhaps he didn’t make it.”

“Explain.”

“The FBI is famous for its training and application of the behavioral sciences, right?”

“Profiling, you mean. Yes, that’s right.”

“But you Brits are pretty good at it, too. I came over here a few years ago and took a course with a guy from Scotland Yard. Anyway, profiling courses and training are naturally full of examples, real-life examples, that show a little about the unsub.”

“Unsub?”

“Unknown subject, sorry,” Hugo smiled. “Anyway, one example this Scotland Yard guy gave us really stuck in my head. There had been a few murders in a town called Colchester, women raped and strangled in their beds. The locals didn’t have any idea who did it or why, so these guys from Scotland Yard came and looked at pictures of the crime scenes. This detective saw what the local police had seen, that the unsub killed these women and then left them in their beds but remade them, tucked them in almost. But what this Yard detective saw was the way the beds were made. The corners had been tucked a certain way, I think he called them hospital corners.”

“Hospital corners, right. So . . . ?”

“So we know that people are creatures of habit, especially when carrying out an action they can do without thinking, an action they’ve done thousands of times before. Pendrith went to boarding school and was in the military. For years the guy made his own bed, and every time the same way, which means that he’d make his bed with hospital corners no matter how much of a hurry he was in because it’d be easier and quicker for him.

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