Death in High Places

Chapter 14





NICKY HORN HONESTLY THOUGHT he’d misheard. “Sorry—weren’t we talking about Beth?”

So McKendrick spelled it out for him—reluctantly, because once the words were said, they couldn’t be recalled. He’d been hoping to widen their options. Instead he’d narrowed them. Now he could call the police, he couldn’t afford to. Whatever else he did and didn’t want, his first priority was what it had always been: to protect his daughter.

“That’s how he found us. She phoned him. At least, she phoned Hanratty, and he called his mechanic.” But euphemisms didn’t work with Horn. “His hit man.”

This time Horn understood what he was being told. But he thought McKendrick was wrong. He shook his head with conviction. “The phones weren’t working, remember? There was no signal. You kept taking them onto the roof to look for one, but they were dead.”

“There was never a problem with the signal,” sighed McKendrick. “Beth had the phones. Beth kept taking them upstairs and saying she’d had no luck. She didn’t want me to call for help. She wanted to give Hanratty’s man time to arrive.”

“But … he followed us. You said he followed us.”

“He didn’t.”

“You can’t know that. He’s a pro—this stuff is second nature to him. He could follow you from here to Timbuktu and you’d never see him.”

“It isn’t the same man.”

“No?” Horn looked at the monitor again, his head tilting to one side. He could only see part of the man’s face behind Beth’s head, but he thought perhaps McKendrick was right. “Okay, so there’s two of them.”

“No. Only one of them works for Tommy Hanratty. This one.” McKendrick nodded at the screen. He hesitated only a moment before putting the rest of his cards on the table. “The other one—the one who broke into your flat—was working for me.”

Anyone who does anything remotely dangerous, either as a living or for fun, knows that moment when everything changes. When the quarry turns and becomes the hunter; when the sea decides to swallow you; when the mountain has had enough and shrugs you off. If you’ve only ever read about it in books, you’d think that lightning reactions are what save you then. Snatch up the rifle, throw over the helm, slam in the ice ax. The truth is a little different. What usually saves you is freezing for the split second that prevents you from making a bad decision. It’s more important not to do the wrong thing than it is to do the right thing.

Horn froze now. His muscles froze, locking his bones into a half crouch in front of the security screens. His expression froze, at the point that the tender green shoots of comprehension were pushing through the heavy clay of confusion. What remained active—what speeded up, in fact, fed by the electrical energy saved by temporarily closing down his body—was his mind. It raced. His eyes narrowed and darkened as the thoughts spun and connected and amassed information like the cogs of a Difference Engine.

So he didn’t say, “What?” again. He didn’t accuse McKendrick of making it up. He didn’t even take a swing at him, although he might have done if his muscles had unfrozen a little quicker. Instead he said in a low voice, “You hired someone to beat me up?”

“Yes.”

“You hired someone to break into my room while I was asleep, wave a gun at me and make me think I was going to die? Why?” But the answer was obvious. “So you could rescue me, and I’d owe you a favor.”

“Exactly so.” McKendrick didn’t sound as if he was confessing to something wicked. “That’s how I know he didn’t follow us here. He took his money and went home to his girlfriend, who’s called Stacey and has fifteen-month-old twin girls. He’s a bit-part actor, although he works as a nightclub bouncer at weekends. He says he’s going to marry Stacey and use the money as a deposit on a two-up two-down in Derby.”

“You paid someone to beat me up!”

“Yes. Yes, I did. Get over it.”

“I never did you any harm!”

“I know. I’d have offered you the money, but I didn’t think it would achieve the same result.”

Horn stared at him almost more in astonishment than anger. “You’ve got me killed! Between you, you and your crazy daughter, you’ve driven me out of a place where I was safe, at least for a while, and brought me here, and told the guy who wants me dead where to find me. I’m going to die here, not because I got tired and made a mistake but because you wanted the kind of help you can’t advertise for in the Tatler! And all for nothing. I was never going to do what you wanted me to do. I was never the man you thought I was.”

McKendrick gave a sullen sniff. “Whose fault is that? All this could have been avoided if you’d been honest about what happened up that mountain.”

“I didn’t want…! I was trying … I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings!”

McKendrick snorted. “You know what the road to hell’s paved with, don’t you?”

Horn shook his head in a kind of wonder. “That’s your let-off, is it? Your get-out-of-jail-free card. I did something stupid. In the heat of a moment when I was shocked and, yes, embarrassed, I said things that hurt my friend, and one way or another—because he wanted to die, or because he wasn’t concentrating on the climb and made a mistake—it cost him his life. And I lied to protect his reputation and his family’s feelings. Maybe that was wrong. Maybe it was stupid. But it doesn’t make you any less responsible for what’s happened already and what’s going to happen now.

“My life is going to end here.” McKendrick heard Horn’s voice shake, and it wasn’t with fear or even anger so much as the sheer enormity of it. The recognition that McKendrick’s plotting was going to cost him everything. “Maybe it wasn’t one of the great lives of all times. Maybe I didn’t do anything very memorable with it—create a piece of great art, support a great cause, or just make a woman happy and raise a family. Maybe it was a life full of mistakes and regrets. But it was mine, the only one I was given. And you’ve thrown it away because you thought that one day you might need a dog—someone to come running when you whistled and jump through hoops in return for a biscuit. You killed me, Mr. McKendrick, as surely as if you’d cut my throat. And I didn’t deserve that.”

McKendrick felt the flush travel up his cheeks in a way he had not for years—decades, even. Not because it was that long since he’d last done something wrong, even very wrong, but because when you reach a certain level in the business world you acquire a kind of fireproofing. People don’t tell you what they think. They tell you what they think you want to hear; or what they think someone else wants you to hear; or what it may be necessary for you to understand. They talk about profit-and-loss accounts, the best interests of the shareholders, the corporate decision-making process. Sometimes, while they’re talking about the corporate decision-making process and the best interests of shareholders, they reach down and rip the rug clean out from under you. But they never look you in the eye and say that you’ve done something bad. Something wicked. The people who would do that, because they’ve suffered as a result of your desires and ambitions, are never allowed through the foyer.

McKendrick responded as a petulant child might have done—a spoiled child unused to having his actions questioned. “Don’t be such a drama queen. We’ll sort this out. I’ll sort it out. Nobody’s going to die today.”

“You’ll sort it out?” hooted Horn. “A man who uses other people as a fire wall between him and his own genetics is going to have a quiet word with another man who had only contempt for his son when he was alive and, when he was dead, sent a hit man after his best friend. And then everything will be all right, will it? Tommy Hanratty will send me a Sorry I Tried to Kill You card and a nice bottle of wine; his hit man will quietly pack up his arsenal and go home; and your crazy daughter will stop blaming me for the fact that Patrick wanted me in his bed and not her!”

McKendrick’s voice was like gravel—cold, sharp and gray. “What you don’t understand, Nicky, is that, finally, everything comes down to money. If it’s going to take blood money to get you out of this, I’ll pay it.”

Nicky Horn was born a physical being. He was up on his feet and, yes, climbing long before anything recognizable as words were coming from his mouth. At school he excelled at sports, dragged his feet through everything else except woodwork. Even the job he did depended, to an unusual degree in these mechanized days, on the strength of his muscles and the skill of his hands.

In spite of that, he was never a violent man. Perhaps he’d always known that if you hit a man with a fist made of fingers that could, jammed into a crevice of rock, hold the entire weight of your swinging body, he was going to stay hit. A few years ago, before fear and exhaustion took their toll, he’d been quick to anger, too ready with a hot retort. But he’d never used his fists.

There’s a first time for everything. He’d never have a better excuse; indeed, he might never have another opportunity. Maybe he wasn’t firing on all cylinders, but he put everything he had behind his strong left arm and had the satisfaction of seeing Robert McKendrick stagger backward across his hall with an expression of utter amazement stamped on his face and blood spurting from his nose.

“You arrogant bloody man,” he snarled while McKendrick sprawled on the floor, groping for a piece of furniture that would help him to rise or at least remind him which way was up. “You really think that everything can be bought, don’t you? Everything can be paid for. Which makes you no better than Tommy Hanratty, or even any different. You both think you’re entitled to anything you want, to use people any way that suits you. At least he’s an honest thug—he doesn’t pretend to be anything else. He never lied to me. He said he’d get me one way or another, and that’s what he’s done. He never pretended to be my friend. He never pretended that he wanted to help me.”

Despairing of finding his handkerchief—of even finding his pockets while his head was swimming like this—McKendrick smeared the blood from his mouth with a sleeve. His voice was thick, with shock and contempt.

“Grow up, Nicky. Yes, I tricked you—but, God, you made it easy. Did you really think a total stranger would risk his own life to save you? Look at you—you’re nothing. You weren’t much before Patrick died, now you’re an itinerant workman living just one step above the gutter. No one will even notice if you disappear. Hanratty won’t have policemen beating down his door and reporters camped outside his gate. Fifteen years down the line someone making a documentary about death in the mountains might wonder what happened to you, but even he won’t go to much trouble to find out. You’re not important, not to anyone.

“I could have given you a better life than that. I still can. Sneer at my money if you want to, but be honest—the only people who claim money doesn’t matter are those who haven’t got any. I have a lot. I can use some of it buying your freedom. I can find someone Hanratty respects, or fears, or owes something to, and buy his help. I can pay off the contract and make sure Hanratty doesn’t take out another one. I probably can’t make him like you, but I can stop him killing you. With money.

“The deal is what it always was. I have money to spare, and you have time. You want to do a trade? But think carefully before you hit me again. I can find someone else to do what I need doing. And I don’t think you can.”

Horn went on staring hotly at him, but his fists stayed by his sides. He was used to being out of his depth. He hadn’t touched bottom since that night on Anarchy Ridge. Even the sensation of going down for the third time was nothing new. But he hadn’t known, until just now, how very differently the other half lived. Whatever McKendrick thought, it wasn’t the money that separated his world from Horn’s, it was the way those who lived there looked at things. Everything had a price, and nothing had much value.

Horn had wanted to believe—on a good day, had believed—that there were decent people out there, people who did things because they were right rather than merely expedient, and that if he could stay ahead of Hanratty’s money, one day he’d find people who’d help him without asking what was in it for them. Because even the life of a traitor shouldn’t be bartered on the open market.

Last night, in the alleyway, he thought he’d finally found one of them. But like Tommy Hanratty, like Hanratty’s hit man, all along McKendrick had been looking at him with pound signs in his eyes. What he could be bought for, how dear he could be sold. When he realized that, something died in him. Hope.

He wasn’t even afraid anymore, or only in the generic way that everyone is afraid of death. It was that close, that inevitable. “Mr. McKendrick, I don’t think I can afford to have you doing me any more favors. Open the door and let’s end this farce.”

The older man recoiled as if Horn had spat in his face. “Don’t be stupid. It isn’t over. We know Beth’s safe enough—she’s Hanratty’s informant. We have time to work out what to do next. Who to call. How to play this.”

It seemed to Horn that finally he saw Robert McKendrick clearly. Not as a savior, not as a monster—as a trickster. He played Monopoly with real money and forgot that for the people on the board it wasn’t a game. There was no get-out-of-jail-free card.

“Play it?” Horn echoed. “What do you think this is, a hand of poker? Amateur dramatics? No one else is playing at anything. Your daughter wasn’t playing when she phoned Tommy Hanratty, and the man out there isn’t playing now. This is for real. You’ve spent too much of your life in boardrooms, where arrogant, greedy men make the kind of mistakes that bring countries to their knees and still walk away with their pockets full. You should have been climbing mountains instead. You make a mistake on a mountain, you’re probably going to die. It focuses the mind wonderfully. It stops you thinking that, if things go wrong, you can always cash in your chips and start again.

“Well, I did make mistakes on Anarchy Ridge. I got a lot of things wrong. One was, I should have died there. That was the place I should have ended—clean and cold, with a mountain for a gravestone. Whether or not it was an accident, Patrick’s fall wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened. Only we should both have died that day. There was nothing for either of us anywhere else.

“I begged him. Beth asked me that and I denied it, but she was right. I begged him to cut the rope. I tried to pull him up, and when I couldn’t I begged him to cut himself loose. So I wouldn’t have to. I didn’t know then and I still don’t know if I could have done it. Maybe Patrick knew. Maybe that’s why he cut it. He wanted us to die together. But maybe he hadn’t realized how much I wanted to live. So much that any kind of a life, even the life of a coward, seemed worth having.

“But he was right and I was wrong. I’ve had four years that he didn’t have, and there wasn’t a day in all that time that was worth leaving him on the mountain for.” Horn sucked in a deep breath and straightened up. “Now open the door. I can’t turn the clock back, but maybe that doesn’t matter. I don’t suppose time has much meaning for the dead. Patrick was right, and he’s going to get what he wanted.”

Finally McKendrick was seeing Horn clearly too. Not a pawn but a human being: hurt, damaged, but still imbued with a kind of inalienable dignity. For the first time in years he felt ashamed of his behavior.

“Nicky, you don’t know what Patrick wanted! You don’t know what he did. All these suppositions, you’ve cobbled them together in the light of what happened and the guilt that you feel. But if he cared for you, why would he want you dead? And if he did, just fleetingly, just long enough to commit to one irrevocable action, he thought better of it. Even while he was hanging there. He cut the rope. That’s all you need to know. He cut the rope. He didn’t want you to die then, and he wouldn’t want you to die now. He’d want you to keep fighting until you found a way off this mountain too.

“I can help you.” There was an intensity in McKendrick’s tone that suggested he really meant it. “I know I can put the deal together. This is what I do, remember? I manufacture deals involving people with diametrically opposed interests, and I do it so well they all go away thinking everyone round the table had to compromise except them. I can get Tommy Hanratty off your back. I’m not going to watch you throw your life away when I know that all I need is an hour with the phone and we’ll all be safe. Go back in the kitchen. Let me do what I do best.”

And Horn thought that finally McKendrick was being honest with him. Now that it was too late. “Beth…”

McKendrick shook his head. “Beth doesn’t get a say in this. When it’s all sorted, she and I are going to have a long discussion about what she’s done. I don’t know what came over her. I understand that she was hurt by Patrick’s death, and again by finding you here, and some of the things you’ve said didn’t exactly help. But to deliberately try to get someone killed … I don’t know. Maybe she needs to talk to someone.”

Horn wasn’t even listening. He was staring at the screen. Shock emptied his voice. “You said he wouldn’t hurt her…”

When McKendrick realized what Horn was saying, he spun back to the monitor.

The man in the courtyard had finally run out of patience.