Death in High Places (18 page)

“Listen,” said Horn.

They both listened. Beth shook her head. “I can't hear anything.”

Horn still couldn't look at her. “No,
listen
. We can't see what he's up to, but we'll hear if he starts trying to dismantle a castle. Put your ear to the stonework and listen. He might be able to get in here unseen. He won't be able to do it in silence.”

McKendrick nodded. “Yes. Good. Beth, you're the quickest. Well”—a hint of apology crept into his gaze—“right now you are. You take the upstairs. Set up a patrol route and listen at every wall, every window, for half a minute. Then on to the next. I'll do the same down here. Hell, I'd better go down into the cellars too—who knows what he has in mind? But this building was built to keep people out, and the shutters actually came with a guarantee. We'll get some warning. Once we know where he's coming in, we can figure out where to fight, and where to retreat.”

Beth was looking at the bare stones. “Nobody's coming through there!”

“There isn't a prison in the world that's never been broken out of,” said McKendrick shortly. “If you can break out of a prison, you can break into a fortress. And this is only a very small fortress. We need to be ready.”

Convinced or not, she deferred to his authority. “All right. I'll do the Great Hall, the bedrooms, the roofs.” She picked up the phones again. “And I'll keep trying these. We may still get lucky.”

“That's the spirit,” said McKendrick, but not as if he had much faith in it.

When she was gone, Horn put a hand out. McKendrick ignored it, turning his back. Horn sighed. “You can leave me here on the floor. Or you can help me up so I can listen at the kitchen door. Your choice.”

McKendrick wanted to leave him where he was, bleeding on the floor. But common sense prevailed. He gripped Horn's wrist and hauled him to his feet, and the way the younger man's breath hissed in his teeth was some recompense.

He steered Horn into the kitchen, hooked up a chair with his toe, located him against the wall between the back door and the shuttered window. “Call me if you hear anything. You shouldn't—he'd have taken out the courtyard camera if he was going to be working out there.”

But it was the only job Horn was currently capable of, so he listened assiduously at the kitchen wall. He heard nothing. McKendrick did a circuit of the rest of the ground floor, and down into the basement, with the same result. He orbited through the kitchen at regular intervals, like a long-period comet.

About the third time he passed through, Horn said quietly, “I wasn't lying, you know. About Patrick. About how he fell.”

McKendrick's jaw hardened. “I said I didn't want to hear any more about Patrick Hanratty. Not from Beth, and not from you.”

“I know you did. But I'm not your daughter, and I'm not in your will. I don't see much need to do what you say.”

“You need me to remind you?”

“You want to hit me again,” sighed Horn, “go right ahead. Beating one another stupid will improve our chances enormously.”

McKendrick, crossing the kitchen, paused to regard him coldly. “Maybe later. In the meantime, try to get your head round the fact that I don't care what happened to Patrick. He wasn't my friend, and I didn't want his babies. I don't care if he killed himself to save you, or you killed him to save yourself, or it really was an accident. Get that? I don't care. Now, can we drop it?”

“You seemed to care,” said Horn, ignoring that. “When I told you I hadn't done what everyone thinks I did, it seemed to matter to you. You were shocked.
That
was the bit that shocked you!”

“Don't be absurd.”

“I saw your face. Whatever it is you want me to do, that I could go to jail for, you thought it needed a man who'd cut his friend loose on a mountain. If that isn't what happened, you weren't sure I'd serve your purpose.”

“I must have hit you once too often.” McKendrick sniffed offhandedly. “Or not quite often enough.” He headed back toward the hall.

Next time he passed through Horn said, “I know what you want me to do.”

McKendrick broke his stride, turned and looked at him. Then he shook his head. “No, you don't. You don't need to know. When you need to know, I'll tell you.”

But Horn wasn't being fobbed off again. While he'd nothing better to do than hold his ear against a wall he'd been thinking, and he'd finally made sense of everything McKendrick had done, everything he'd said. And he didn't want to say it aloud, and not only because he expected McKendrick would get his fists out once more. But he'd agreed in principle to something that, if he'd had more detail, or less need, he would never have countenanced. If he was going to die here today, he didn't want to do it with that agreement still in place.

He said, “You want me to kill someone for you. And I told you I wouldn't do that. I don't care what you did or tried to do for me, I won't do that for you.”

It was hard to read McKendrick's expression. Partly because he was still angry with Horn, but also because of the ambivalence in it. Horn saw, or thought he saw, outrage in his face, and also amusement, which is a hard combination to carry off. McKendrick's head tilted quizzically to one side. “Who on earth do you suppose I want you to kill?”

Horn gritted his teeth, ready for the blow. “You want me to kill your brother William.”

 

CHAPTER 11

M
CKENDRICK DIDN'T HIT HIM,
although for a moment it seemed a close-run thing. He stared at Horn as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing. “I love my brother.”

“I know you do. That's why you want me to kill him. Because his life is pretty well intolerable, and he could live another ten years like this. Because you think the kindest thing you can do for him now is put an end to his suffering. And you don't want to do it yourself—you're not sure you
could
do it yourself, but if you could, you don't want to go to prison for it. Better to get someone else to do it. Someone who owes you a favor.”

McKendrick was still standing over him, close enough to knock him from the chair with one swing that would arrive too fast for him to see it coming. The requisite tension was in his shoulders. But his arms stayed at his sides. “Is that what you think?”

“Yes.”

“Anything else?”

“I think, if it still matters after today, you'll need to find someone else.”

McKendrick gave a chilly smile. “Because you're coy about ending the misery of a helpless old man? You, who cut your best friend's rope! Patrick Hanratty, who was young and strong and didn't want to die, fell a thousand feet off Anarchy Ridge so you could come home safe. Don't you dare play the morality card.”

“That's not what happened. I told you.”

“You told me a pack of lies.”

“No.”

“You told
somebody
a pack of lies.”

Horn couldn't argue with that. “I told you the truth.”

McKendrick shook his head. “No. It happened the way you told the authorities it happened. At that point you didn't see any need to lie. You thought everyone would agree that you were right to cut the rope. You couldn't save Patrick, but you could stop him killing you. I can respect that. It's not very attractive, but I can respect it. But this other thing—
Patrick cut the rope because he loved me
—that's harder to forgive. That's scraping the bottom of a pretty murky barrel. Have the guts to be true to who you are. You're young and strong, and you haven't much time for weakness. You're pragmatic—you have to be to take on a mountain, the idea may be romantic but the reality is sheer bloody slog punctuated by moments of terror. And thoughts, and intentions, and
caring
, don't matter a damn to a mountain. Either you're strong and focused and practical or you die. That's who you are. And that's why I need you.”

“I won't kill your brother,” Nicky Horn repeated stubbornly. “However honorable your intentions, I won't do it.”

“I didn't ask you to.”

Horn's broken lips twisted in a sneer. “Then what the hell are we talking about? The win-win situation? Of course that's what you want. If you do it, you go to jail, and you've way too much to lose. If I do it, I still go to jail, but I won't be an old man when I come out. And you're not going to ask Beth, are you? You needed someone tough enough to do it, with no reputation left to lose, and desperate enough to take the deal. You must have thought it was your birthday when you found me.

“Which means there was nothing random about how we met. You didn't just happen to be passing, and you don't visit a prostitute in the area. You were looking for me too. You knew the story—of course you did, your daughter knew Patrick, that was reason enough for you to remember what happened in Alaska. And when you found you needed a ruthless bastard, to think of me.”

Horn gave a desperate little snort that almost sounded like mirth. “I knew I'd got careless—I didn't realize I'd been careless enough for
two
hounds to pick up my trail. Of course, you can afford good help—as good as Tommy Hanratty's, I expect.

“And when he found me, he let you know, and you drove sixty miles to see me. I spotted you outside the café earlier. What were you waiting for? Did you think your proposition would sound better in daylight?

“Before that, though, fate stepped in. The
other
hound found me too. You saw what was happening and realized if you waited any longer I wasn't going to be any use to you. That's why you were willing to face down a gunman—you had a lot depending on it. And you didn't think you were going to be shot down in the street. People like you never do. You think you're too important to die.” Horn grinned like a cornered wolf snarling. “Maybe you should take up climbing.”

“Maybe you should
stick
to climbing,” said McKendrick sharply, “and leave philosophy to those better qualified. I don't want you to kill William. I've no way of knowing if his life still has any meaning for him or not, but I'm not taking a decision that important for him. He never asked me to hasten his death if he became too ill to do it himself. We never discussed it. If we had, if I was sure it was what he wanted, I'd do it myself and damn the consequences. Not because he's a burden to me, but because he's my brother and I love him and I'd do pretty much anything I could to help him, whatever the cost. I sure as hell wouldn't ask a self-obsessed little coward to do it for me.”

Horn blinked. Not so much at the words—he'd heard worse, even in the privacy of his own head—but because he'd been sure he was right. All the pieces stacked up. The favor he'd promised to do without knowing what it was, that might cost him a spell in jail but only if the law caught up with him. The fact that McKendrick wouldn't talk in front of his daughter. When McKendrick knew that the time had come, that the job couldn't be put off any longer, he'd contact Horn—and Horn would do it because he wasn't sentimental, was he, he'd dropped his best friend off a mountain rather than risk falling with him. The world and its dog knew that Anarchy Horn would do just about anything if he thought it was in his own best interests. And promising a favor—any favor—to someone in a position to save his life would qualify. No wonder McKendrick had seemed thrown for those few minutes when he believed that Patrick had cut his own rope. If Horn hadn't killed his friend when the need was so pressing, the arguments so clear, there was no reason to hope he'd kill anyone else and McKendrick's plan would fail.

But there was no mistaking that stunned contempt in McKendrick's eyes and in his voice. A lot of things can be feigned, but Horn didn't believe anyone was that good an actor. He'd seen contempt in people's eyes before, he knew what it looked like. “I—I'm sorry,” he stumbled. “I thought … I'm sorry.”

“So I should bloody well think,” grunted McKendrick. He sounded almost breathless, as if the very idea had knocked the wind out of him.

“Then … what
is
it you want me to do? You might as well tell me. We're neither of us going to live long enough for it to be of more than academic interest.”

McKendrick considered. He still hadn't forgiven Horn. “That sounds like a good reason for
not
telling you.”

Horn shrugged. “Your choice. But if you can't or won't talk to Beth about it, and you do want to get it off your chest, I'm your only option. At least if you tell me, you know I'm not going to tell anyone else. If I did, they wouldn't believe me.”

McKendrick's eyebrows climbed. “You think I need someone to hear my confession? And that, if I did, I'd choose you?”

“They say everyone needs someone to hear their confessions. It's what most people have friends for. Actually, it's not true. I haven't had a friend since Patrick. You can manage without. I think you're a man without many friends as well. Not the kind of friends you can share your darkest fears and secrets with. I'm not your friend either, but we seem to be in this together.” Horn sniffed sourly. “If I got it wrong about William, at least I was right about you looking for me. Wasn't I?”

McKendrick looked away as if he deemed Horn unworthy of attention. “I don't owe you an explanation.”

“No? You saved my life last night. And I thought it was incredible that a man would do that for someone he didn't even know. Only you
did
know me, didn't you? At least by repute. And you had a job for me, something important enough to be worth the cost of tracking me down, and the potentially greater cost of hanging on to me. Yes, I'm pretty sure you owe me an explanation.”

“Don't flatter yourself,” sneered McKendrick. “There's nothing special about you, except that I knew enough about you to recognize the qualities I was looking for: youth, self-importance, and no morals. But that's nothing to be proud of. The best that can be said of you is that you can't help being young.”