Death in High Places

Chapter 11





MCKENDRICK 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.”

But Horn was pretty sure this was his last chance to know what he was doing here and wouldn’t be put off. “You chose me for this job because you thought I killed Patrick. That’s what you want to believe—it suits you for me to be that man. Anyone else would be glad to think that Patrick Hanratty took the decision for himself, but you weren’t. You were horrified. Why? If you don’t need my help with William, what is it you want me to do that only a man with no morals would agree to?”

McKendrick smiled. He’d locked the anger away, and with it any chance that he might—inadvertently or in spite—say more than he wanted to. He was back in control, of himself if not the situation. “You’re wrong,” he said, “and so are they. I have plenty of friends, and I don’t need anyone to confess to. See this?” A glance around the kitchen encompassed by implication the whole castle and more. “I made this.” He didn’t mean he built it stone by stone. “My father was a farmer. He called himself a gentleman farmer, but that just meant he was better at opening fêtes than milking cows, and he ended up having to sell the land to pay his debts. He was bankrupt and an invalid by the time he was sixty.

“What I have, I made from scratch.” McKendrick said it with a pride so adamant you could break your knuckles on it. “And I didn’t do it by cultivating other people’s opinions. I need someone to pour my heart out to like a seal needs roller skates. I’ve taken my own decisions since I was fifteen years old. I don’t need someone to bounce them off, or talk them through with, and I certainly don’t need anyone to advise me. And if by any chance I did, I could do so much better than you.

“All you need to know—all you’re going to know—is that I have a use for you. When I’m ready, I’ll tell you what I expect you to do. If one or both of us dies first, you’re off the hook. Otherwise, you’ll do what I tell you.”

And Nicky Horn thought there was nothing more he could do, nothing more he could say, to get at the truth. He thought he was going to die in ignorance. Robert McKendrick was like a man carved from marble: shiny, hard and impervious. A man quite capable of carrying his secrets to the grave if he chose to. There was no pressure Horn could exert to make him change his mind.

Perhaps it was in becoming a self-made man that he’d tempered such a degree of mental toughness. But probably he had the attitude first, and it was that which made it possible for him to succeed. Horn was the one who did battle with mountains. But he no longer kidded himself he was as tough as McKendrick.

He gave it one last try. “You haven’t told Beth, either, have you? Why not? Because you know she won’t approve? That she’d try to stop you?”

McKendrick’s expression slammed shut almost audibly, like a vault door. “Leave Beth out of this. It has nothing to do with her.”

“It’s why someone wants to break into her house and wipe out her family! Maybe you don’t owe me one, but you sure as hell owe her an explanation. She deserves to know what she’s going to die for.”

The way McKendrick rounded on him, Horn thought he was going to be hit again. He flinched involuntarily. But the only missiles McKendrick let fly were words. “I don’t want to hear my daughter’s name on your lips again. She is none of your business. You’ve hurt her too much already. I hurt her too, bringing you here. I didn’t know how much, and anyway it needed doing, but from now on you keep away from her. I’ll look after Beth. All you have to do is keep your mouth shut and do what you’re damn well told.”

Horn’s eyes had slipped out of focus as he replayed their conversations, this one and the earlier ones, the way he replayed climbs he’d made, seeing every tortuous step, every killing inch, in his mind’s eye.

McKendrick thought he’d finally battered Horn into silence and thanked God for it. If Horn had kept picking away at him, sooner or later he’d have said too much—enough for Horn to put it together. His wild surmising had already brought him too close for comfort. McKendrick didn’t want, by words said or unsaid, by a gesture or a look, to let Horn know where he’d been near and where wide of the mark.

McKendrick resumed his patrol of the ground floor, between the front door, the monitors, the sitting room, and the kitchen door. He went down into the undercroft and listened at the bare stone walls. He heard nothing. He was only a little reassured.

The third time he passed through the kitchen, Horn said, “How did your father die?”

McKendrick froze in his tracks. It might have been a lucky shot, it might have been nothing of the kind. “What?” His voice was choked with evasion.

“It’s a simple enough question. You said he died bankrupt and an invalid. So what did he die of?”

“Old age.”

“Really? Because these days, lots of people your age still have their parents around. How old was he when he died?”

McKendrick didn’t have to answer. Somehow, he felt he did. “Seventy-three.”

“But he was an invalid by the time he was sixty.”

McKendrick said nothing.

“What about your mother? Is she dead too?”

Briefly McKendrick shut his eyes. “Yes.”

Horn gave it a little more thought. Finally he said, “And William’s been ill for years. It’s the Alzheimer’s, isn’t it—it’s like a family curse. Both your parents had it, and your older brother has it. And you’re afraid it’s going to happen to you too. Maybe you know it is—maybe you can feel it happening.

“That’s what you can’t tell Beth, and what you sure as hell can’t ask for her help with. You don’t want to go the way your parents went, the way William’s going—dying by inches. That scares you more than anything on earth. More than a gunman in the street, even more than one at your door.

“But there is a way out, for someone determined enough to meet the problem head-on. William never asked for your help, and maybe that was because he didn’t want it, but maybe it was for the same reason you won’t ask Beth—he didn’t want you to ruin your life rescuing him from his. For that you need someone you don’t care about. Someone you have a hold over, and someone with nothing to lose.

“What would you have done if Hanratty’s man hadn’t caught up with me just then? It was the perfect opportunity to put me in your debt—it could have been a while before you found another one as good. That’s why you were watching me. To find something I needed that you could provide, so when the time came I’d provide something you needed.

“It isn’t William’s life you want me to finish off, is it?” Nicky Horn’s voice was thin as paper. As if he were staring into an abyss. “When things get too hard—when the brain cells start to die, and first of all you can’t run a financial empire anymore, then you can’t keep the household accounts, then you can’t add two and two without using your fingers—you want to be able to pick up the phone and say, ‘It’s time,’ and have me come and put an end to yours.”