Death in High Places (14 page)

“But you don't think so.”

Her gaze was lowered, her tone at once soft and unyielding. “I know what I felt.”

McKendrick rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “I should never have brought him here. Horn. It was stupid—thoughtless. I should at least have kept you out of it.”

Now she looked at him curiously. “You could have stayed out of it yourself.”

“I thought I was doing the right thing. I didn't anticipate any of this. Not that someone would come here. And not what you've just told me. I wish to God I'd done things differently.”

Beth gave an odd, affectionate little chuckle. “It's so unlike you, somehow. Acting on impulse. You're always so … calculating. Sorry. Does that sound rude?”

“Not rude. Not exactly flattering either,” said McKendrick ruefully.

“It's true though. Usually you have all the details of the deal lined up before you pick up the phone. You know what you'll say, and what the other party'll say, and what your response will be. And you have contingencies ready in case he says something else. It's a pity, really, that when you finally do the human thing and reach out on the spur of the moment to help someone in trouble, it's someone who isn't worth saving and it's liable to get us all killed.”

He'd known her all her life, and half of his. Today he was learning things about her that stunned him to the marrow of his bones. One was the harshness of her view of him.

But maybe she was right. Their predicament was entirely of his making, and he hadn't even the excuse she credited him with—a spontaneous act of philanthropy. It had happened because he was doing what he always did, what his daughter knew he always did—playing both sides of the chessboard.

He couldn't tell her that. He diverted the conversation down the other avenue. “You think Horn's right, then? We're not going to walk away from this?”

For a moment she hesitated; then she shook her head. “No, I don't. The only one who's in any danger here is him. He wants us to think otherwise because he hopes we'll be scared enough to protect him.” She managed a wan smile. “How about you? Are you updating your will?”

Though he didn't share her analysis, he did share her conclusion. “No. For one thing there's no need—it all comes to you. But don't hold your breath. I'm not ready to part with it just yet.”

Beth's smile turned impish. “You reckon we can keep him out, then—Tommy Hanratty's hit man?”

“I think so. Long enough for him to think the balance of risk and reward is shifting. He isn't Henry the Fifth at Harfleur—he isn't going to lose a kingdom if he can't breach the walls. Horn is a job to him, that's all. If he can't do it today, he'll do it next week. He won't risk his own safety literally banging his head against a stone wall.”

“Horn thinks he will.”

“Nicky Horn is an exhausted, frightened young man who's been on the run for four years. His judgment shouldn't be relied on.”

“He isn't exaggerating about Tommy Hanratty,” Beth said quietly. “He's a seriously vicious man. Patrick was terrified of him. If he wants Horn dead, sooner or later, one way or another, it's going to happen. You can't save him. All you can do is try to keep him from dying here, and it's not worth antagonizing someone like Hanratty to do that. Possibly not for anyone; certainly not for Horn.”

McKendrick drew a deep breath. He was going to have to tell her. She had persuaded herself that, even if it wasn't lawful, even if the morality of it was suspect, there was a kind of justice in Nicky Horn's dying at the will of Patrick Hanratty's father. She needed to know that her feelings about Horn were predicated on a lie. Somewhat to his dismay, McKendrick found he couldn't guess how she would react. If she would believe Horn's latest account. If believing would add to her grief or ease it. A man should know his daughter well enough to know if he was bringing her balm or brimstone. It troubled him that they had so many secrets from one another. He'd only ever wanted what was best for her. He was afraid now that he didn't know her well enough to judge.

He said, “Will you answer me one question honestly?” She nodded. “What if Patrick had cut Nicky Horn's rope?”

Beth frowned. “I told you that already. If only Patrick had come home, I'd have felt sorry for Patrick.”

McKendrick knuckled his eyes. “Then surely to God you can understand—”

She didn't let him finish. “You asked for an honest answer and that was it. Patrick was the only one I cared about—Patrick, right or wrong. If he'd pushed Horn off the mountain because he wanted his climbing boots, I'd still have sided with Patrick. Nicky Horn could go to hell in a handcart and I wouldn't have broken a nail to save him—and that's not just now, that's always. It's no use asking me for an unbiased opinion, I'm not capable of giving one. I loved one of them. I didn't give a damn about the other, until he ruined my life.

“But if you're asking whether it's ever all right for one climber to cut another's rope, the answer's no, and that doesn't alter regardless of who lives and who dies. We all carry a knife. We all know that if the game turns nasty enough, if it comes to a choice between one person dying and two people dying, we may have to cut ourselves loose so that someone else can live. But that's it—you only ever cut your own rope. Whatever the consequences, you never cut someone else's. You haven't the right.”

“Is that—I don't know—an unwritten rule? Something all climbers agree on?”

“Maybe not all. But it's the sort of thing you discuss in the bar at the end of a long hard climb, and everyone I ever climbed with, everyone whose opinion I respected, felt that they'd rather die than kill someone else.”

“Maybe,” McKendrick suggested softly, “it's a conclusion that's easier to come to in the bar at the end of a climb than halfway up a mountain in a howling gale.”

“No doubt. That's why you talk about these things first. You take your decisions when you're safe and warm and calm, so you don't have to take them when you're frantic and freezing and scrambling on the edge of an abyss. All you have to do then is remember and act on them.”

“And cut your own rope if you have to.”

“If you have to,” she agreed grimly. “If there's no way back that doesn't involve ending someone else's life. It's a risk sport, Mack. If you're not prepared to take the risks, you shouldn't be on the mountain. You shouldn't be on someone's rope if you're prepared to kill them with it.”

“So cutting your own rope wouldn't count as suicide?”

She snorted a derisive laugh. “Of course not. Among climbers it's the ultimate act of courage.”

“I wonder if climbers' families see it that way.”

She became aware that the conversation had changed, was no longer about what she thought and felt, wasn't sure what it was about now. She looked at him sideways, one eyebrow higher than the other. “Mack?”

It was one of those now-or-never moments. McKendrick steeled himself. “Horn says Patrick cut his own rope. When he couldn't climb back, and Horn couldn't lift him, and it was a choice of one or both of them staying on the mountain, Patrick found the courage to cut his own rope. Horn edited the facts to spare his family's feelings.”

Beth's expression had frozen on her face. McKendrick hurried on. “Of course, he'd no idea the trouble he was getting himself into. He thought that, from their point of view, the easiest thing to deal with was if Patrick died in the fall and Horn had to leave his body behind. So that's what he said.

“He thought he was doing the right thing, Beth. He came up with a story that allowed Patrick's family to grieve without reservation, in the hope that the people whose opinion mattered most to him would understand. He was questioned in Alaska; he was questioned again when he got back to England. He stuck to the account he'd worked out. There was no way of proving anything different, no reason to suspect he was lying. No witnesses, no forensics—as long as he didn't blink, the authorities had to accept what he told them.”

Still no response from his daughter. Not from her lips and not from her eyes. McKendrick sighed. “What he didn't allow for was the fact that Patrick's family was headed not just by a grieving father but by a grieving thug of a father.
He
didn't have to accept what he was told simply because there was no evidence to the contrary. And he didn't have to nurse his doubts in the darkness of his own soul, powerless to do anything about them. He did what he was in a habit of doing whenever somebody crossed him. He set about making Horn pay.”

It was amazing to McKendrick—alarming, even—that he'd been able to get the story out without interruption. He'd expected to have to fend off furious interjections and battle to the end through his daughter's distress and disbelief. Her silent stare unnerved him. But he didn't want to prompt her. He wanted to give her all the time she needed to absorb what he'd said and make sense of how she felt about it.

Finally she favored him with a cool smile and said calmly, “Well, he saw you coming, didn't he?” As if he'd been sold a racehorse with four left feet.

“I think it's the truth,” he managed, suddenly defensive.

She shook her head bemusedly. “For a hardheaded businessman, you're a mug for a sob story. Of course it isn't the truth. We know what the truth is. It's what he told the authorities in Alaska and again when he got back here. Do you think they wouldn't have realized if he was lying to them? All their experience dealing with thieves and murderers, and they're going to have the wool pulled over their eyes by a carpenter with a warped sense of right and wrong? Grow up, Mack. He said he cut Patrick loose because that's what happened. He thought nobody could touch him for it. He's come up with this other version because his back's against the wall and he thinks you can help him, but only if he can convince you he's worth helping. Well, maybe he has convinced you. He'll have to try a lot harder to convince me.”

He'd expected her to resist the idea. He'd expected tears and tantrums. Her calm dismissal of Horn's new account made him wonder if he'd accepted it too readily. “It seemed to make sense,” he mumbled lamely.

“What?” Her arrow-straight gaze almost knocked him off his seat. “That because the Hanrattys are Catholics they couldn't be expected to see the difference between their son committing suicide as an act of despair and giving up his life to save his friend? How stupid do you think they are? No, don't answer that—about as stupid as Horn thinks you are! Why do you think he waited until you were alone before he told you that? Because he knew I'd see it for what it is. I don't claim to be a theologian, but doesn't all that stained-glass commemorate martyrs of one kind or another? People who gave their lives to help other people? If the Catholic Church regarded them all as suicides, I don't think they'd be up there in their windows.”

McKendrick had to admit that she was right. Even he, with less knowledge of religious dogma than he had of the dark side of the moon, could see all the difference in the world between despair and self-sacrifice. When you tried to analyze it, it made no sense. If Horn had misled the police about what happened, sparing the Hanrattys' feelings wasn't why. “You think he's lying?”

She laughed out loud, a jarring discordance. “Of course he's lying, Mack! It's what he does, remember? Even on his own account, he's lied to someone. Look. He had no reason to tell the police what he did if it wasn't true. At best he was going to make himself unpopular, at worst it was going to get him into trouble. Whereas lying to you now just might buy him a bit more time. So which do you reckon is most likely? Patrick cut the rope and Horn said he did it? Or Horn cut the rope and toughed it out until it looked as though a different story would serve him better? We know what he does when he's staring death in the face. Anything he can think of to keep himself safe a little bit longer. Do you really think that a man who left his best friend on Anarchy Ridge would draw the line at lying to someone he met a few hours ago?”

“I suppose not,” McKendrick muttered. A pit was in the middle of him where his heart had sunk. You couldn't blame a man for doing anything he had to in the effort to survive. Still somehow he was terribly disappointed.

It took him another minute to realize that, actually, this was a good thing. A Nicky Horn who'd lied to protect his friend's reputation wouldn't be much use to him. What he needed for his purposes was the young man Beth and the world thought he was—someone who prized his own survival so highly he'd do whatever it demanded of him. Anarchy Horn. That lingering sense of disappointment was sheer sentimentality, and McKendrick had never been a sentimental man. His long jaw hardened. “Stupid of me,” he gritted. “You're right, of course.”

“Of course,” she echoed softly. “So you'll do as I ask? Stop protecting him?”

McKendrick's eyes turned inward for a moment, searching his conscience, examining his hopes and plans. Beth hardly noticed that what he said was not an echo of what she'd said. “I have no desire to protect him,” he growled.

 

CHAPTER 9

M
CKENDRICK WAS ANGRY
and didn't want to see Horn for a while. Beth suggested that they swap shifts—that she go downstairs and watch the monitors and he sit quietly with his brother for a space. She went up the tower with the mobile phones first, came back shaking her head. “Still no joy.”

“They never used to be this bad.”

“Name me something that did.”

There was no arguing with that. McKendrick nodded. “Give me fifteen minutes to get my head sorted, then I'll come down.”

“Shall I tell him to go?”

“No,” said McKendrick grimly. “Leave it to me.”