Death in High Places (6 page)

“You know why? Because I'm good.” There wasn't much pride in the way he said it: mostly it was bitterness. “I'm strong, and I'm savvy, and I don't give up easily. I can take the pain, and the exhaustion, and still want to go on—still find some way of going on. Patrick was the same. Apart from the university thing, of course. He talked posher than me. He was cleverer than me. But up there, where the wind and the ice don't much care about your accent or the letters after your name, we were pretty much alike. Most of the time”—the most fractional of catches—“I knew what he was thinking, what he was going to do next.

“We hardly talked when we were climbing. We didn't have to. I always knew what he was going to try because it was always what I'd have done in the same situation.” He took a moment then to get the words in the right order. “That's what I did on Anarchy Ridge. I did what he'd have done for me in the same situation. I did my best. I held him for as long as I could. When I couldn't hold him anymore, and the only alternative was dying with him, I let him go.”

He moistened his bruised lips. “If you think you can make me feel worse about that, you're wrong. If you think you can make me wonder if it was the right decision, you're wrong about that too. I know it was the right decision. If I'd been hanging on his rope, it's what I'd have wanted Patrick to do. I'd have wanted him to do everything in his power to save me—and when it wasn't enough, I'd have wanted him to save himself. To survive. To get home and tell people what happened. That I'd got the death I wanted. That I'd rather have lived, but if I had to die, that was the place to do it. That I never wanted to be buried anywhere other than a mountain glacier.

“Mind,” he added as a sarcastic footnote, “I never went to university. I don't think you can do a PhD in joinery. Pity, really. Maybe if I'd got a PhD, I'd behave more like an officer and a gentleman, and see the point of having two people dead on a mountain when you could just have one.”

It was the most talking Horn had done since McKendrick had met him. It was the nearest thing to eloquence he'd heard from him. It made him view Horn in a rather different light. It didn't make him change his mind about anything, though.

It had more of an effect on Beth. She'd gone very white. Now a flush of pink stole up her cheeks. She opened her mouth to reply but no words came. As if, McKendrick thought critically, she were willing to beat a cowering dog but not one that might snap back.

But he remembered how upset she'd been by Patrick Hanratty's death. She'd hardly talked about it—they had never, thought McKendrick ruefully, been great talkers—but first the news and then the details that emerged over the following weeks had swept the feet from under her. As if she and young Hanratty had been better friends than he'd realized.

She stood frozen, staring at Horn's battered, embattled face as if he'd stepped out of one of her nightmares and she didn't know what to do about him. Then she clamped her jaw shut, turned abruptly and left the room, slamming the door behind her so that the air in the little sitting room went on reverberating for seconds.

After a moment McKendrick said mildly, “She always used to do that when she was cross. You wouldn't believe the number of hinges I've had to replace.”

Horn gave a little pant like a hunted fox as some of the tension left him. “I think,” he said carefully, “she was more than cross.”

“She was upset. It's understandable, in the circumstances.”

“You reckon?” drawled Horn with heavy irony. “What in God's name were you thinking? You knew she was a friend of Patrick's, you must have realized how bringing me here was going to hurt her. Why would you do that?”

McKendrick chuckled. “I'm sorry, Nicky—Nicky?—but you're nowhere near as famous as you think you are. I didn't recognize you. Sure, I'd heard the story—of course I had, Beth was at university with the boy who died. But it was all years ago. I probably saw your face in the papers at the time, but I'd no reason to remember it. I'd no reason to suppose Beth would know you from Adam.”

McKendrick leaned forward to refill his cup from the coffeepot. “So that's what it was all about—the guy with the gun. Patrick Hanratty's father sent him. And he's still after you four years later.” He thought about that. “A bit obsessive, I'd have thought. I mean, yes, it was his son, he was entitled to hold a grudge. But if you go in for risk sports, sometimes you draw the short straw. I'd have thought that was part of the deal. I can see he might strike you off his Christmas-card list, but a hired killer seems a bit much.”

“I told you,” growled Horn, “he's not a nice man. I mean, really. He runs one of Dublin's crime syndicates. He scared the shit out of Patrick—from when he was old enough to leave home he stayed as far away from his dad as he could. He bullied him as a child, used his fists on him as a teenager. He's got some nerve now pretending Patrick was the apple of his eye.

“He isn't doing it for Patrick. He's doing it because someone took something away from him. From
him
—Tommy Hanratty. If I'd boosted a slab of his cocaine, he'd have called the same guy. Nobody takes anything from Tommy Hanratty.”

McKendrick was nodding slowly. “I still think four years is long enough to make a point. Have you tried talking to him?”

Horn looked at him as if he were mad. “
Talking
to him? He sent a hired gun after me! He wants me dead, and he doesn't care who knows it. It's the worst-kept secret in criminology. If I went to his house, he'd do it himself. If he saw me in the street, he'd run me down in his car. Tonight wasn't the first time he's got close. This is how I've been living since the police lost interest in me. Because Tommy Hanratty is willing to do anything, pay anything, gamble anything, on seeing me dead. I wouldn't know how to begin talking him out of that.”

“I could have a word with him.”

Horn laughed aloud at the sheer effrontery of it. “No, you won't have a word with him. You'll keep your head down, and your shutters up, and your drawbridge in the upright position, and hope Tommy Hanratty never hears your name. If he ever gets the idea that it was you who came between him and having my heart in a plastic bag tonight, he'll come after you too. And your daughter, and anyone else he thinks you might care about. And you'll be easier to find than me.”

“Oh, I think I can handle Mr. Hanratty.” McKendrick smiled lazily.

“No, you can't,” insisted Horn. “He doesn't play by your rules. He doesn't play by
any
rules. I'm sure you're a hard man in the City, and the closest thing your club has had to a rakehell since Byron got blackballed, but you're not in Tommy Hanratty's league. No one is. He hurts people for fun. When he's seriously pissed off, he does things you've never dreamed of, even after a lobster supper. You don't want him doing them to you, or to Beth.”

“That's true,” allowed McKendrick. “I'm not that happy about letting him do them to you, either.”

“I am not your responsibility,” yelled Horn, beside himself with exasperation. “You've done enough already. I don't know why you got involved, and I don't know why we're still arguing about this when I've told you who I am and who Tommy Hanratty is. But you'll regret it for the rest of your life if you don't let me get on my way right now. You bought me some time, and I'm grateful for that. Now let me use it.

“He hasn't given up—the guy with the gun. He never did before, he hasn't this time. He's still looking. If I'm here when he catches up with me, it's going to be another of those inexplicable country-house murders that the Sunday papers love because it's rich people coming to a sticky end and no one's ever going to know why. He'll kill me, and you, and Beth, and he'll burn the house down, and he'll make it look like something quite different. As if maybe I broke in, and we killed one another in the struggle.”

It seemed he'd finally found some words, evoked an image, that resonated with McKendrick. He had no reply. He stood for a moment, blinking stupidly, as though he'd just realized this wasn't a corporate team-building exercise, some kind of an elaborate game—a treasure hunt where the first one back to the hotel with a policeman's helmet gets the magnum of champers. As if he'd thought Horn had been exaggerating the danger, and now he wasn't sure.

Horn pressed his advantage, momentarily forgetting what winning the argument would mean. “Your stone walls and your steel shutters won't keep him out. Most of the people he goes after have them too. People as good at their job as this man cost a lot of money, and that means the people who hire them and most of the people they're sent after have lots of money too. Except me.” He gave a mirthless grin.

“But even that sort of money won't buy everything. There isn't enough of it, there never would be, to stop someone like him. Once he took the job, it was a matter of professional pride for him to finish it. His reputation is everything to him—he'll do whatever's necessary to protect it. The stone walls and the shutters will slow him down but they won't stop him. Nothing will stop him.

“I can keep ahead of him. I have done this far, I can keep doing. For a while longer, anyway. Maybe I can run far enough and fast enough that he'll never catch up with me.”

“And maybe you can't,” said McKendrick levelly.

“That isn't your problem,” insisted Horn. “Keeping yourself, and Beth, safe—that's your problem. And the thing about castles is, you pull up the drawbridge and immediately you're out of options. All you can do is sit there and wait to see what the other guy's going to do.

“Mr. McKendrick, what you did back there was a hell of a thing. You risked your life for someone you didn't even know. You risked losing all this”—Horn gave a jerky wave, encompassing the whole of the McKendrick estate with one unsteady gesture—“for a stranger. Whatever happens now won't alter that. Don't keep tempting fate until the old bitch bites your hand off.”

McKendrick went on looking at him much too long, and Horn couldn't read his expression. Something was happening behind the cool gray eyes, but Horn couldn't tell what, or even if it was good or bad. But he knew that if McKendrick had been going to back down he'd have done it then, while the images of violence were vivid in his mind's eye. Once he started to think about it, he'd convince himself there were alternatives—that he was a clever enough man, a rich enough man, to find alternatives.

Horn gave up. He let the air out of his lungs in an audible sigh, weary and defeated. Without the starch of adrenaline his whole body sagged. He reached for the coffee. He'd done his best. His only consolation was that if Hanratty's man could find a way into this little fortress, Horn could find a way out. He murmured, “Maybe you should go after Beth. She was pretty upset. I probably shouldn't have said what I did.”

McKendrick gave a disparaging sniff. “She overreacted. I know she was fond of the boy, but it is four years ago. She's a grown woman. It shouldn't still surprise her that shit happens.” He buttered a slice of toast, poured himself more coffee, and only after he'd finished his breakfast did he stand up. “Help yourself, will you? I'm just going upstairs.” He headed toward the hall and the massive stone staircase.

“Tell her I'm sorry,” said Horn in a low voice. “For what it's worth.”

“Oh, I'm not going after Beth,” said McKendrick shortly. “She can come back when she's calmed down. It's time I saw to William. I won't be long.”

“Who…?” began Horn, but McKendrick had gone.

 

CHAPTER 4

H
E'D HAVE GIVEN
a lot for the chance to stay here, for just a few days, to catch his breath and catch up on some sleep—proper sleep, not snatched with one eye open and one ear cocked. But it wasn't an option, and he never for a moment thought it was. As soon as McKendrick's footsteps had faded on the stairs, Nicky Horn was up and through the kitchen door, looking for the way out.

He found the back door. It was locked. It wasn't like most people's back doors, locked if at all by a mortise with the key left in it. There was another keypad. The kitchen windows were also locked, sufficiently ajar to admit the air—it smelled of mown grass and wet earth—but only a fingertip.

He turned away, meaning to try his luck elsewhere, and found Beth McKendrick standing behind him. She hadn't a dagger in her hand—he checked—but there were plenty in her eyes. Horn took a step back.

“Looking for the milk?” asked Beth coldly.

“Looking for the emergency exit,” admitted Horn.

She managed an icy little chuckle. “What, aren't you enjoying our hospitality? I'd have thought it would make a nice change. I don't suppose you get asked out much.”

He understood her hostility, but he wasn't a patient man by nature. “Okay,” he said shortly, “so we've established that you don't want me here. And I don't want to be here. If you'll open the door, I'll be on my way, and you can cheer yourself with the thought that I may be dead in a ditch before the day is out.”

She made no move toward the keypad. Now he was looking at her directly rather than through the filters of shock, he could see the strong muscles in her hands and under her sleeves, the open skies in her clear blue eyes. It was a look that all climbers have, body and soul designed for strength and endurance and goals you can't achieve in an afternoon. Even if they weren't wearing crampons when they met, they recognized the look in one another and gravitated together as if drawn by magnets. Most climbers only have two kinds of friends—other climbers and paramedics.

“Patrick's father sent a hired killer after you?” She'd plaited the long chestnut hair into a thick rope to keep it out of her way. She used to wear it in pigtails, four years and a lifetime ago.