Death in High Places

Chapter 9





MCKENDRICK 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.”

“As you prefer.” She closed William’s door softly behind her.

Horn was watching the monitors in the stone hall. He spoke before looking round, before he knew it was her. “I caught a movement on the far side of the courtyard five minutes ago. Nothing since.”

“Maybe he’s given up and gone home.”

Horn turned quickly at Beth’s voice, and as quickly turned back. “Somehow I doubt it,” he said gruffly to the screens.

“Maybe you should go outside and check. We’d feel pretty silly starving to death in here if he’d gone away days before.”

“Tell you what. Before we starve to death, I will.”

“Fine,” said Beth airily. “Or now. Whichever.”

Over the screens Horn’s back was hunched and tense, as if he anticipated an assault. “That’s really what you want, is it? To see me die. Will that satisfy you? Is it the only thing that will? Do you need to see me die before you can get on with your life?”

She considered for a moment. “No, not really. I’d settle for hearing it from a reliable source.”

He gritted his teeth. “And you think that’s what Patrick would want?”

“When he was alive? Of course not. He liked you, he trusted you—he wouldn’t have climbed with you if he hadn’t. But you cut him loose. In the four or five seconds it took him to meet up with the mountain again, I think he may have revised his opinion.”

Finally Horn made himself look at her. “Mack didn’t tell you?”

“Your latest attempt at self-justification?” Her tone was scornful. “That, in contrast to everything you’ve told everyone for the last four years, in fact Patrick cut his own rope? Yes, he told me. I think, for a few innocent minutes, he actually believed it. Then reality intervened. What amazed me was that it took a few minutes. He’s not considered gullible in the City.”

“I’m not trying to justify myself,” growled Horn mulishly. “It’s the truth.”

“Of course it is. Along with fairy godmothers, the Loch Ness Monster, the yeti, and the alien autopsies. After all, what possible reason could you have to lie?”

Horn swiveled his chair to meet her gaze full on. “And why do you find it so hard to believe that a man you call your friend, someone you say you were close to, did what we all hope we’d be brave enough to do in the same circumstances? Patrick Hanratty died well. Why are you so determined to take that from him?”

“Why were you?” she countered swiftly. “If it was such a good death, why did you tell people that you dropped him off the mountain like a pack that got too heavy to carry?”

He looked away. It may have been disdain, but it looked as if he couldn’t bear her scrutiny. “His family…”

“His family are Catholics,” retorted Beth, “not stupid. If it had happened the way you say—the way you say now—they’d have been proud of him. Even the old thug. You knew who he was—what he does, how he does it. And you announced that you’d cut his son’s rope. You must have known how he’d react to that. You must at least have wondered if he’d come after you with a flamethrower. But that was the story you told, and that was the story you stuck to. If you’d been lying, you could have come up with something so much better. The only possible reason for telling Tommy Hanratty that you cut Patrick’s rope was that it was the truth.”

“No.”

“Nobody lies to get themselves into more trouble! It’s perfectly obvious what happened. You told the Alaskans what happened exactly as it happened because you were so relieved to be alive that you couldn’t see anything wrong with it. I don’t think it occurred to you that you’d be pilloried for what you’d done. You thought the old macho climbing establishment would see it your way: that when it’s a matter of survival, you’re entitled to do anything you have to. Even killing a friend.

“Well, it may have kept you on the right side of the law, just, but the law isn’t the only arbiter of a man’s actions. The first, the really important one, is his own conscience. And if that isn’t up to the job, there’s a kind of human morality that most people share, that tells them how they should behave even in circumstances beyond their worst nightmares. That tells them this and this are all right if there’s really no alternative, but this isn’t to be contemplated even if it means the sky must fall. What you did was way beyond anything decent human beings consider acceptable.”

She paused, watching Horn’s face. She saw the strong muscles of his jaw clench and the dull flush that assured her that her carefully aimed darts were finding their target. That four years hadn’t been enough to blunt their barbs. “You and Patrick went to Anarchy Ridge together. He fell, and you held him. I’m sure you did try to pull him up; but he was a big guy, bigger than you, and if he was a dead weight—if he was unconscious, or hurt, and he couldn’t help—I can see how you wouldn’t be able to do it. Which was a shitty position to find yourself in. You must have gone over it again and again in your mind, holding him while your muscles cracked with the effort, trying to find a third way.”

It was as if she’d been there. As if she’d witnessed what happened. More than that: as if she’d been inside his head, seeing through his eyes, feeling what he felt, running desperately through all the options and brought up short by the realization that none of them would serve.

“You could have lowered him,” she said. “But that ridge drops away sheer into nothing, doesn’t it? I’ve seen the pictures. No one carries enough rope for a contingency like that. You could have made the rope fast to a tree or a rock. But there aren’t any trees up there, and the rocks were under a meter of ice. You could yell for help and hope someone heard you. But that’s kind of the point of wild climbing, isn’t it? Going places where there aren’t guidebooks, and there aren’t belays hammered into the rocks. Having nothing and no one to depend on but yourselves. And it was wild climbing that attracted you. You and Patrick, you liked going where no one could help you. However much you yelled, no one was going to hear you.

“Finally you were back to the same two choices you started with. Guess what? You picked the wrong one.”

“I couldn’t save him,” muttered Horn insistently. “I tried. I couldn’t pull him up.”

“I believe you. I think you did try to haul him up, and found you couldn’t. Maybe no one could have done.” But it wasn’t absolution in her voice. There was something implacable about her calm. She was no longer watching him through eyes red-rimmed with hatred. She was looking at him like looking down a microscope. Studying, analyzing, noting his deficiencies. “But you had to decide what to do next. If he’d been dead, it would have been easy enough. But Anarchy Ridge wasn’t going to be that kind to you. Patrick had fallen, but there was nothing around him but snow and wind—nothing to kill himself on. You could hear him shouting over the storm, couldn’t you? Telling you he was okay, give or take the odd cracked rib, waiting for you to help him. Demanding to know what was taking so long when he was freezing his nuts off. There was never a moment when you thought he was dead on your rope, or even badly injured. Was there?”

Beth raised an interrogative eyebrow at him. When Horn didn’t reply she shrugged and continued. “As time passed he must have realized you couldn’t do it. That it was just asking too much. Maybe if you’d had more equipment. But you liked climbing fast and loose, without all the fancy paraphernalia that would let you take your granny up Everest. It’s a wonder you were on a rope at all. A wonder and, as far as you were concerned, a disaster. But you were: he was at one end of it and you were at the other. And sooner or later you were going to weaken and lose your grip, and you’d fall off the mountain together.”

Her strong jaw rose till she was literally looking down her nose at him. “Did you ask him to cut the rope? Did you ask him to take his knife out and cut himself free? Did you put it to him sensibly, rationally, pointing out that you’d done your best but there was no way off the mountain for both of you? And when he couldn’t bring himself to do it, did you get angry and shout at him? Cut the rope. You know what you have to do. Cut the f*cking rope! Cut the rope, or I will—”

“For God’s sake!” The words came from Nicky Horn as if wrung out by torture. “You don’t know. You can’t know—how it was, what it was like. He fell. I tried to pull him up but I couldn’t. That high, and that cold, you haven’t the same strength. It was all I could do to hold on to him. For three hours we just stayed there, him hanging in midair, me hanging on to the mountain. I carved steps in the snow, to brace my feet against, but they kept giving way under the weight. After half an hour I knew I was weakening—I wasn’t suddenly going to start getting stronger. Something that was beyond me at the start wasn’t going to become possible as I got colder and more exhausted. Half an hour in we both knew how it was going to end. That there was no chance of help coming however long we waited. But the decision was his to take. After three hours he took it.”

Beth tossed her chestnut braid like an impatient horse. “Do you know something, Horn? I’d almost be tempted to believe you. Patrick was a brave man. He was a kind, brave man and I could believe he’d cut his own rope rather than see you die trying to save him after all hope was gone. I’d have no trouble believing that, except for one thing. You. You’re not even a good liar. Every word you say, every lie you tell, makes it perfectly clear what happened up there.

“It was Patrick’s decision. But you couldn’t wait for him to make it, could you? You thought you could die waiting. You already had your knife out, to carve steps in the snow. And there was the rope right in front of you. It didn’t even need a conscious action, just a slip of the hand. And then he was falling.”

When she looked in Horn’s eyes, it was almost possible to believe she could see what had happened mirrored there—the big man dangling helplessly on the taut rope, the smaller one fighting to hold it, the wink of sunshine on steel. Then Horn blinked and tears were on his face.

Beth McKendrick didn’t care about his pain. After four years she was still too wrapped up in her own. She drove on relentlessly. “Maybe, for a split second, he misunderstood. He thought he’d pulled you off the mountain, and as he fell he’d see you come crashing over the cornice. But all he saw was the end of the rope. And in that moment he knew what you’d done. The last seconds of his life were filled with the knowledge that his best friend had killed him.

“Did he curse you as he fell? Did he damn you to hell? I would have done,” she assured him earnestly. “But this was Patrick. Maybe he used his last breath to forgive you. Is that the terrible secret you’ve been carrying round for four years? That with his last breath Patrick forgave you for killing him? Is that why you had to lie and say he was dead on the rope when anyone who’s seen a picture of Anarchy Ridge would know he couldn’t have been? And why you had to stick with the lie even if it meant Tommy Hanratty putting a price on your head? Because if Patrick was alive and conscious, people would ask what you said to one another.”

“No,” whispered Nicky Horn.

“Then what? You’ve admitted he was conscious. You say he knew what he was doing and did what he had to. He must have said something. What were his last words?”

“Nothing,” mumbled Horn.

“Oh, come on! He knew he was going to die. If this is finally the truth, he knew he was going to die a hero. He’d three hours to work out what he wanted to say, what he wanted people to remember him by. To make any explanations he felt necessary. So what did he say? After he fell, and before he fell to his death. What did he say to you?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Of course you bloody remember! The words must be seared into your brain like the brand on a beef steer’s bum. Tell me what he said.”

Once again she’d pushed him to the point where something inside Horn changed. Where he stopped backing away from his problems and turned on them with bared teeth. Where his manner went from secretive and defensive to belligerent, almost in the blink of an eye. He spun the chair in front of the monitors, rounding on her, and his voice was terse and barred with anger.

“You want to know what he said? His famous last words? You’re sure? Then I’ll tell you. Don’t expect to like them. I don’t think Patrick Hanratty was entirely the man you took him for.

“He worried about that. He knew he was going to end up disappointing you—hurting you. Oh yes, we talked about you. There’s a lot of hours on a climb when you’re not actually climbing, when it’s dark outside or there’s a blizzard keeping you inside the tent, and you huddle together for a bit of warmth and you talk. About mountains and girls.” He cast her a tight, savage little grin. “Mostly about mountains. But when you’ve relived every ascent you’ve ever made, together and separately, finally the conversation turns to sex. Who you’ve had. Who you’ve wanted but couldn’t have. Who wanted you.

“And yes, your name came up. He cared for you, he really did, but not how you cared for him. That’s what bothered him. He knew that, however lightly he tried to let you down, you were going to feel betrayed. He wanted to keep your friendship, but he didn’t think he was going to be able to. Things had gone too far. Friendship was never going to be enough for you. Patrick agonized over how he was going to tell you that the way you felt about him, he felt about someone else.”

Beth recoiled as if he’d hit her. Her cheek was white. She’d known, of course—somewhere in her heart she’d known. She hadn’t wanted to admit it to herself, and after Patrick died she never had to. She certainly hadn’t expected it to be used against her by someone with whom she was locked in a kind of mortal combat. All she could find to say was what she’d been saying all along—“I don’t believe you!”—and all she could find to say it with was a breathless ghost of a voice.

“Yes, you do,” retorted Horn fiercely. “You know you and Patrick were never going to settle down and raise two-point-four children and a cocker spaniel. You knew it long before we went to Alaska. You just didn’t want to face it. His death saved you from having to. And—be honest—there was just a little bit of relief mixed in with the sadness, wasn’t there? Because now you could live the fantasy and there was no one, there was never going to be anyone, to call you a liar.”

She slapped his face, as hard as she could. But though he rocked, his eyes barely left hers. They burned with a kind of bitter victory. Beth would have given her right arm to believe that this too was a lie, but she knew better. Mainly because he was right—none of it came as a surprise to her. She’d locked it away where she’d never expected to revisit it, but she’d known before Patrick died that they were in trouble. That he was being kind when he should have been honest. She’d known he wasn’t happy. Like a coward, she’d hoped he’d never summon up the courage to tell her. That it was over between them; or rather, it had never been what she wanted, but she’d blinded herself to the facts because she wanted it so much.

If Patrick had lived, sooner or later they’d have had to confront it. That would have been the end, not only of the future Beth had wanted for them but also of the one Patrick hoped for. She’d loved him too much to remain friends, to meet up for the occasional drink after work and send christening cards to one another’s children. If he’d lived, she’d have lost him. His death had spared her that.

“Except that there was. Me. I knew everything about you and Patrick,” said Horn, “because he told me. Those cold windy nights in the mountains, after we’d talked about the really important stuff like overhangs and traverses, he told me what was going on in his life. I really wasn’t that interested. I nodded and agreed with him from time to time, but mostly I was planning the next day’s climb or sorting out my ropes or whatever. I liked the guy, I had a lot of time for him as a climber and he was good company in a bivouac, but I can’t honestly say I was riveted by his love life. I listened with half an ear, to be polite.”

He managed a little smile. “Looking back, I think maybe I was a bit dim. I’m not good at social chitchat, mainly because if it doesn’t involve ropes and pitons I can’t work up much interest. But I should have paid more attention. Maybe then I’d have put it together. Maybe what he said that last night in the tent wouldn’t have come as such a goddamned shock.”

His eyes still hadn’t shifted from her face, and Beth felt somehow helpless to break their hold. She didn’t know what was coming. She was pretty sure she wasn’t going to like it. There seemed no possible way now to avoid it.

“You want me to tell you his famous last words? What he said as he cut the rope? You’re sure—you really want to know? We can keep the genie in the bottle: we can’t put it back once it’s out. Do you want me to tell you what Patrick said before he fell?”

She whispered, “Yes.”

Between the bruises Horn’s weather-darkened face was the gray of old leather, but his eyes blazed like a hawk’s. There was no longer any kind of victory there, though, only grief and excoriating remembrance. The words came thick in his throat. “He said he loved me.”