Death in High Places

Chapter 13





HORN COULDN’T SEE the monitors from where he sat in the kitchen. And McKendrick didn’t cry out or even gasp. Instead he locked down, willing his body to be still, freeing up all his energies, all his considerable mental acumen, to tackle this new challenge. To weigh up what it meant and work out how to deal with it.

But a stillness that absolute creates a kind of shock wave. It traveled out from the hall, and when it reached the kitchen Horn straightened up and listened, and after a moment he hauled himself to his feet and walked quietly through the sitting room. He couldn’t have guessed what was meant by the almost concrete silence, but he knew it wasn’t natural and he doubted it was good.

When he reached the hall, he could see what McKendrick could see. Immediately he knew exactly what it meant. Though his tone was tissue-thin, he managed to keep it steady. He was pleased about that. “So now you open the door.”

McKendrick didn’t answer. Perhaps he didn’t hear. All his attention was focused on the monitor. “What the hell did she go outside for?”

“She didn’t,” said Horn. “He did what I said he’d do—he found a way inside.”

McKendrick looked round at Horn as if he’d forgotten he was there. “Then why is he out there again and not in here?”

It was pretty obvious to Horn, but then his emotions weren’t involved, or not in the same way. “Because we can’t rush him down a camera cable. He can update us on the new situation without the risk that one or both of us will come over all heroic and take him on.”

McKendrick looked the younger man up and down, taking in the old bruises and the new ones.

Horn felt himself flush under the scrutiny. “Yeah, well,” he growled, “he doesn’t know about that, does he? As far as he’s aware, I’m pretty well back to fighting fitness. And you’re in good shape for a middle-aged guy, and you’re her father. Any animal will fight for its cub. He doesn’t want to fight. He just wants to get the job done. Now he has.”

McKendrick’s face had drained to the color of old grate-ash. Behind that, though, the intellectual arrogance that had made him a rich man was wrestling with the shock. Deep in the marrow of his bones was a part of him that couldn’t believe, that wouldn’t believe, that he’d been outmaneuvered. “He thinks now he can have you without a fight. That I’ll open the shutters and you’ll walk meekly outside.”

“Yes.” Horn couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“A straight trade. You for Beth.”

“Yes.”

“Will he honor it? When he has you, will he leave?”

The truth couldn’t do him much good now. Whatever the ultimate outcome, McKendrick had no choice about what he did next. Horn said what the man needed to hear. “He might. If he can get me without a struggle, he might decide to quit while he’s ahead. You’ll call the police as soon as you can get to a phone that works, but he’ll be miles away by then, with all middle England to vanish into.”

McKendrick’s eyes were coming back into focus. “Won’t he be worried that I’ll give the police his description?”

“He’s a pro. He’ll change how he looks. You could see him again, a week from now, crossing Waterloo Bridge with an umbrella under his arm, and you’d never recognize him. He knows that.”

“That’s not what you said before.”

A moment’s hesitation as Horn back-pedaled. “No.” He gave a tiny grin. “I thought I had a better chance if your best interests were the same as my best interests.”

“And now you don’t?”

“I think my chances are all used up. But you may still have one, if you play your cards right. Dead right, first time.”

McKendrick wanted to be absolutely sure that he understood what Horn was telling him. “You’re saying I should hand you over and hope for the best.”

“I don’t think there’s anything else you can do.”

There was a pause while McKendrick almost seemed to wonder, to resist coming to the same conclusion. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t find an alternative because there wasn’t one. “I can’t let him hurt Beth. Not if there’s any hope she can come safe through this.”

“I’ll…” Horn was going to say he’d get his things. One word into the sentence he realized there was no point. He wouldn’t be doing any more carpentry. “Open the door. Shut it and lock it again as soon as I’m outside. If he can’t see an easy way to get at you, I think he’ll let Beth go. If he can’t silence all the witnesses, he’s better not killing any of them.”

“Just you.”

There was a world of tiredness, of acceptance, in Horn’s pale smile. “I’ve stayed ahead of the game for four years. That’s four years more than Patrick got. I think maybe it’s enough.”

Incredibly, McKendrick found a lump in his throat. “There has to be another way. How can I…?”

Horn knew the answer to that. “Because you have to. You can find someone else to do … what you wanted me for. You can’t find yourself another daughter.”

“We could make a fight of it…”

“If we do that, we’ll all die. He’s not just the man with the gun, he’s the one who knows what he’s doing. How this works, how it pans out. Every time. And he has no conscience. That’s more than an edge—it’s a whole bloody sword. Even in a crisis, most people hesitate before they’ll hurt someone else. He won’t. He’ll kill you like swatting a fly if you give him the ghost of a chance. So don’t. Keep the castle locked down until you know he’s gone. Don’t even open the door to let Beth in. She’s safe as long as you’re safe.” Probably, Horn added privately. He moved toward the door.

McKendrick put out a hand that stopped short of actually touching him. As if he were already out of reach. Then his fingers went to the console but again hesitated, as if he couldn’t bring himself to touch it either.

“You have to open the door,” Horn said again. It almost sounded as if he was pleading. As if dying was no longer the worst thing that he faced. “You have to let me go. Or he’ll hurt her.”

Eyes haunted by guilt, McKendrick tore his gaze away from the young man’s face and sought his daughter’s on the monitor. The man was still standing behind her, showing little of himself besides his hands gripping her shoulders—firmly rather than tightly, no hint of panic or desperation, still comfortably in control.

Finally McKendrick steeled himself to do what needed doing. Circumstances had left him no choice. He glanced again at Horn. “I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault,” mumbled Horn, “not your problem. Do it.”

“I can’t let him hurt her.”

“I know. Open the door.”

With one long finger already on the button, still he hesitated. “Although…”

Horn waited, but nothing followed. Bizarrely, he found himself growing impatient. “Although what?”

McKendrick was regarding the monitor with one of those intelligent, speculative looks that Horn imagined was the last thing seen by any number of CEOs before they went on gardening leave. “Although,” McKendrick repeated slowly, “actually he isn’t hurting her, is he?”

“Yet,” said Horn, underlining heavily. “He isn’t hurting her yet.”

“Quite.” But other thoughts were marshaling behind his eyes. “I wonder why not.”

“What?”

“Okay,” said McKendrick quickly, “I could have put that better. But think about it. He knows we’re watching these monitors—it’s what they’re for. He knows we know he’s got Beth. Now, he might wait a minute while we wail and gnash our teeth a bit, but after that he’s going to want to focus my attention. So why isn’t he hurting her? Making her yell, and bleed? Why is he standing there as if he’s got all the time in the world and doesn’t mind how long I think about what to do next?”

“Because he has,” suggested Hood grimly, “and he doesn’t?”

“Nobody’s that safe. And a real professional should know it. Anything could happen. Someone could spot our tablecloth and come to investigate. Beth might get away from him. I might make a last stand with Grampa’s old elephant gun—anything. To make sure I do what he wants me to do, he needs to keep driving events forward, not give me time to look for options. He took Beth because he reckoned the moment I saw that I’d open the front door and kick you down the steps. So why does he not care that I haven’t done it yet? Why isn’t he using the one very obvious advantage he holds to force me?”

“Maybe he’s giving you time to come to terms with what you have to do.”

“He doesn’t want me coming to terms with it,” said McKendrick, shaking his head insistently. “He wants me acting on raw emotion. That way he knows what I’ll do—what any father would do. It’s not in his interests to give me time to think. He should be hurting her by now. He doesn’t have to kill her. He doesn’t want me to think he’s killed her. He just wants me to know that he’s prepared to hurt her, and he’ll keep hurting her until I give in.”

Nicky Horn had never known anyone like Robert McKendrick. Not even the man who’d paid someone to kill him. Tommy Hanratty was a thug, plain and simple, but when it came to coolheaded, coldhearted intellectual viciousness, the city gent took the biscuit every time. Horn’s eyes were shocked. “Keep standing there,” he managed thickly, “and he probably will.”

Still McKendrick waited. “But I’ve been standing here, for a couple of minutes now. And I still haven’t opened the door. So what he’s got to reckon is that I’ve decided not to. That I’m calling his bluff. That I’m putting my integrity ahead of my daughter’s safety.”

“It’s not a question of integrity,” began Horn; but McKendrick hadn’t finished, dismissed his interruption with a perfunctory movement of one hand and went on.

“A man like that must know a lot about human nature. He’ll have been in this situation before. He must have come up against people who thought they could stand strong against the worst he could throw at them. And he knows they can’t—that nobody can and nobody does. He knows they all fold the moment it becomes real. When it stops being a threat and becomes actual butchery. He knows I’m not going to hold to a principle once he starts chopping my daughter’s fingers off.

“So why isn’t he doing it?”

And when the question was put to him like that, Horn didn’t know the answer either.

“Do you have a mobile phone?”

Horn’s head was still reeling. He couldn’t keep up with McKendrick’s lightning forays into the heart of darkness. “Er—Beth has them.”

McKendrick shook his head. “She has ours. Have you got one—in your rucksack, maybe?”

“There’s no signal.”

“Just answer the question. It’s a very simple question, but it could be a matter of life and death. Specifically, yours. Do you have a mobile phone?”

“Yes. In my toolbag.” McKendrick threw him the heavy canvas bag as if it weighed nothing. Horn fumbled for the phone, turned it on. “See…”

But what they both saw was the signal indicator come up. Not strongly, but enough to make calls.

Horn didn’t understand. “Why would mine work when yours wouldn’t? Different network? Or maybe…” He couldn’t think of an or maybe.

McKendrick could. He put his hand out and Horn gave him the phone. But he didn’t use it. He put it in his pocket.

Horn stared at him as if he were mad. “We can get help now. Call the police. Tell them we need help!”

McKendrick gave a weary, disappointed sigh. “Nicky—there’s a reason the man Tommy Hanratty hired to kill you, the professional who was chosen because he wouldn’t let anything stop him carrying out the contract, isn’t killing my daughter slowly while I watch. He isn’t hurting her, and he isn’t going to hurt her, because they’re on the same side.”

It had to be the shock, or maybe that combined with a little leftover concussion, because still Horn could make no sense of what McKendrick was saying. “You mean, they both hate my living guts?”

McKendrick breathed heavily at him. He really didn’t want to put it into words. But he needed Horn to understand, so he was going to have to. Handy as the young man was halfway up a mountain, when it came to anything subtle or complex he was one chisel short of a tool kit. “I mean, they’re both working for Tommy Hanratty.”