Death in High Places

Chapter 4





HE’D HAVE GIVEN a lot for the chance to stay here, for just a few days, to catch his breath and catch up on some sleep—proper sleep, not snatched with one eye open and one ear cocked. But it wasn’t an option, and he never for a moment thought it was. As soon as McKendrick’s footsteps had faded on the stairs, Nicky Horn was up and through the kitchen door, looking for the way out.

He found the back door. It was locked. It wasn’t like most people’s back doors, locked if at all by a mortise with the key left in it. There was another keypad. The kitchen windows were also locked, sufficiently ajar to admit the air—it smelled of mown grass and wet earth—but only a fingertip.

He turned away, meaning to try his luck elsewhere, and found Beth McKendrick standing behind him. She hadn’t a dagger in her hand—he checked—but there were plenty in her eyes. Horn took a step back.

“Looking for the milk?” asked Beth coldly.

“Looking for the emergency exit,” admitted Horn.

She managed an icy little chuckle. “What, aren’t you enjoying our hospitality? I’d have thought it would make a nice change. I don’t suppose you get asked out much.”

He understood her hostility, but he wasn’t a patient man by nature. “Okay,” he said shortly, “so we’ve established that you don’t want me here. And I don’t want to be here. If you’ll open the door, I’ll be on my way, and you can cheer yourself with the thought that I may be dead in a ditch before the day is out.”

She made no move toward the keypad. Now he was looking at her directly rather than through the filters of shock, he could see the strong muscles in her hands and under her sleeves, the open skies in her clear blue eyes. It was a look that all climbers have, body and soul designed for strength and endurance and goals you can’t achieve in an afternoon. Even if they weren’t wearing crampons when they met, they recognized the look in one another and gravitated together as if drawn by magnets. Most climbers only have two kinds of friends—other climbers and paramedics.

“Patrick’s father sent a hired killer after you?” She’d plaited the long chestnut hair into a thick rope to keep it out of her way. She used to wear it in pigtails, four years and a lifetime ago.

Horn nodded. “Yes.”

“And my father brought you here. Took the risk that he’d follow you here.”

“I said at the time it wasn’t a great idea,” growled Horn.

“Did he kidnap you? Did he force you into his car?” Horn shook his head. “So actually you could have got out and disappeared into the night,” Beth pointed out. “Mack may not have known who you were and the risk he was taking by helping you, but you did. You didn’t have to come back here with him. You could have thanked him for his help and said good-bye.”

“I was”—he couldn’t find a description that didn’t sound like a plea for sympathy and finished lamely—“pretty groggy.”

“Pretty groggy,” she echoed, expressionless. “That’s an excuse, is it? For leading a dangerous man to someone’s door?”

“I didn’t…” He heard himself starting to rise to her bait, forced his voice level again. “You’re right, I shouldn’t be here. Once I leave you’ll be safe.”

“Mack wants you to stay.”

“You don’t know how to open the door?”

“I didn’t say that.” She took the step forward that Horn had taken back, her head tipped a little to one side, exploring his face intently, as if searching for holds, for a way in. “What are you doing here?”

“I told you. Trying to leave.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

“To keep us safe? That’s a pretty noble gesture from anyone with a killer on his heels. From someone who dropped his best friend off a mountain when the going got tough, it’s incredible.” Her voice dropped a tone into cynicism. “Literally.”

She seemed to want to have it all out with him again. In case there’d been some comment on his shortcomings she’d forgotten to make, some part of the old wound she’d omitted to claw open. But there was no time to indulge her; and anyway Horn knew the recriminations would just go round and round and get her nowhere. He’d ridden the carousel often enough himself.

“Beth, I can’t change what happened. I can’t change how you feel about me. All I can do is leave you in peace, and I can’t do that unless you open the door.”

“Why would I do that? I’ve spent the last four years wanting to meet you, working out what I’d say.”

“And now you’ve said it. So let me go.”

“Four years is a long time,” she said quietly. “You have no idea how many nights I’ve lain awake thinking what I’d do, what I’d say, if I had you to myself. Oh no. I’ve a lot more I want to say before I open the door. And then I won’t let you out. I’ll throw you out.”

Horn breathed heavily. It seemed to be all he could do right now. “Fine. But do it quickly.”

She shook her head. “Revenge is a dish best served cold. Have some more coffee.” She looked around. “Where’s Mack?”

“Why do you call him that?”

She elevated an eyebrow. “You really don’t know anything about us, do you? Everyone calls him that. Even in the City. I believe the prime minister calls him that.”

“And that means you have to?” Horn shook his head, bemused. He’d never understood what made the upper classes tick. Until now, he’d had no reason to care.

“He likes it. Someone at the FT called him Mack the Knife and it stuck.” She gave him a crocodile grin. “I suppose you call your father Dad. No—Da. Fewer consonants.”

In the English comedy of manners, it’s considered perfectly acceptable for the working class to deride the wealthy, but not the other way round. There were probably no other circumstances in which she’d have mocked his two-up, two-down accent. But she was too angry to be fair.

Horn had been called a lot worse than common. He’d never wasted much time fretting about his antecedents. “I never knew my father.”

She laughed with a kind of savage delight. “You mean, you’re a bastard in more ways than one.”

“That’s right,” he said calmly. “My mother was the local bike—anyone could get on and give her a run round. And she never could read a bloody calendar—I’ve got three sisters and a brother. Funny thing is, though, she looked after us. She loved us. All I meant to my father was that he had to find another hooker. Even if I knew his name, why would I want to use it?”

He could have left it at that. Beth was looking chastened, almost a little ashamed, and he already knew her well enough to know that was a victory in itself. He didn’t have to add, casually but with the sort of perfect timing that ensured the dart got clean under the skin, “Anyway, what do you suppose your father was doing in a red-light district at three in the morning? Advising the prostitutes on their share holdings?”

He was pretty sure he’d told her something she didn’t know. Perhaps he’d told her something she didn’t need to know. Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped for a moment before she regained control. “Like I’m going to believe you!”

Horn shrugged. “It’s nothing to me if he spends his nights trawling the back streets of Black Country towns sixty miles from where he lives. He’s not my father. At least”—he gave a sharklike grin—“I don’t think he is. But if he was, I probably wouldn’t look down my nose at people who owe their existence to men exactly like him.”

“My father doesn’t use prostitutes!” she shouted in his face. “He doesn’t need to use prostitutes. Look at him—look at how we live. You think women don’t queue up for a chance with him?”

“You explain it, then,” said Horn, aware he’d found the chink in her armor but not particularly happy with the advantage it gave him. “I know what I was doing there—I was living there. I know what the man with the gun was doing there—he was looking for me. What was McKendrick doing there?”

She had no answer. She didn’t know and couldn’t imagine what would take him to such a place at such a time. She didn’t believe it was the need for no-strings-attached sex. Not because the idea was anathema to her but because it was so wildly improbable. She wouldn’t have been horrified if it turned out to be the truth, but she would have been astonished. If Robert McKendrick had wanted no-strings-attached sex, he could have got it a lot closer than sixty miles away. There were country clubs and golf clubs within five miles of the castle where they’d have drawn lots.

So it wasn’t that. In Beth McKendrick’s experience, things that improbable didn’t happen; but sometimes it was in someone’s interests to make it look as if they happened. She said slowly, the words putting themselves together and in the process shaping the unfledged notion in her head, “None of this is entirely real, is it?”

Horn barked a surprised laugh. He knew from the tightness of the skin, the still exquisite tenderness of the nerves of his teeth, that his face was swollen out of shape. “It felt pretty real. Especially the bit where I was looking down the barrel of a gun. And the bit where he rattled every tooth in my head—I don’t think I imagined that.”

But she was chewing her lip pensively. “Nor do I. I think that whoever set this up wanted to make it seem real. To both of you—you and Mack.”

She’d lost him. “Set what up?”

“Someone wanted to bring you two together. Someone clever, and with money to spend on making it happen. That hit man—whether he was a real one or just a good actor—wouldn’t come cheap. And it was a pretty complicated scenario. There were a lot of ways it could have gone wrong, and it didn’t. So it wasn’t done on the spur of the moment—it was planned, carefully, even meticulously. Somebody tracked you down, and put the fear of God into you, and found a way of having Mack on the spot to save your sorry ass. Why? Whose interests are served by getting you and Mack together that couldn’t be served by asking you both to lunch?”

Horn didn’t think it was complicated. He thought it was very simple. “There’s no plot. Tommy Hanratty’s the one spending the money, but I wouldn’t say he’s particularly clever. He doesn’t need to be. There’s only one thought in his mind—to wipe me out.” It wasn’t a metaphor: that was exactly what Hanratty wanted. To expunge him, to strike him from the record. “Your head’s full of wee sweetie mice.”

Beth stared at him open-mouthed for a full three seconds before the sob came. Horn remembered, belatedly, where he’d first heard the expression—from Patrick. He supposed Beth had heard it from the same source. He felt a twinge of contrition. He hadn’t meant to hurt her. Mostly, he’d been defending himself. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

She pulled herself together almost physically, forcing down the grief that had choked her. She cleared her throat. “I’ve never heard anyone else say that.”

“Me neither. I suppose it’s an Irish thing.” Horn took a deep breath. “Listen, I know how you feel about me. I don’t blame you. I can apologize till the cows come home, but I can’t bring him back. I can’t make it not have happened. But I can go where you don’t have to look at me. Just let me out. Let me go, and forget that I was ever here. You’ll get what you want in the end. Sooner or later Hanratty’ll catch up with me.”

Now as she looked at him, for the first time Beth saw him as he was: not the monster of her nightmares, just a rather battered human being with strong arms and a stubborn expression, and fear behind his eyes that had dwelt there so long it seemed a part of him, something he would never be rid of. For a fleeting moment she almost found it in her to be sorry for him.

But she’d hated Nicky Horn for four years—more than four years, in fact. Even while Patrick was alive, she’d had reason to resent the friend who’d taken him places where she couldn’t follow. The hatred had fed her, sustained her. The sight of his bruises, and knowing about the ones that didn’t show, couldn’t alter that.

But she was confused. He didn’t seem to be lying about how he and McKendrick had met. But Beth didn’t believe in a coincidence that outrageous: that when the past finally caught up with him, the only man both near enough and tough enough to come between Anarchy Horn and his just deserts was her father. There are over 60 million people in the British Isles, the vast majority of whom had no connection to Patrick Hanratty. McKendrick did. What he didn’t have was a good reason for having been there. All she could think was that someone had lured him there—not Horn, who had nothing to gain from the meeting, nor Hanratty, who had everything to lose, but someone else. But think as she might, she couldn’t begin to guess who, or why, or what possible bait he could have used to tempt a rich man to drive sixty miles and gamble his own life to save a pariah.

“Stay here,” she said thickly. “I need to talk to Mack.”

She wasn’t going to open the back door. Horn gave in with a weary sigh. “He went upstairs to see to William. Who’s William?”

“My uncle.”

“I didn’t know anyone else lived here.”

“Now you do.”

Horn frowned. He’d assumed William was a child. A grown man wouldn’t need help getting up in the morning. So maybe that wasn’t why McKendrick had left the room. Between the bruises the color drained from his face as if a tap had been turned. “Is that what’s going on?” he choked, the fear flooding back. “Is that where McKendrick’s gone—to call Tommy Hanratty?”

Beth blinked once, then looked away in disdain. “Don’t be stupid.”

But it made sense. Too much sense, more than anything else that had happened this morning. Horn’s voice was stretched thin with shock. “That’s it, isn’t it? When he realized who I was, he guessed there was a price on my head. If he’d let events take their course he wouldn’t have seen any of it, but if he brought me here and let Hanratty know where to find me … Dear God!—and I’ve been so bloody grateful!”

He spun on his heel, back toward the door; but his new understanding changed nothing. If he couldn’t open it before, he still couldn’t open it. One hand, accustomed to moving fast enough and gripping hard enough to ensure his survival, shot out and grabbed Beth McKendrick by the throat. “Open it. Now.”

She gave a startled squawk; and perhaps she’d have done as he said, or perhaps she’d have spat in his eye and dared him to do his worst. There was no time for either of them to burn their boats. Robert McKendrick came back through the sitting room. “Well, that’s William comfortable…” His voice petered out as his eyes took in the scene.

The tableau of momentary violence had frozen, giving no clue as to when their relationship had turned physical. McKendrick looked at his daughter, all icy rebellion, and at Horn, pale, angry and afraid; and probably if he’d seen any signs of injury he would not have said, as he did, quite mildly, “Getting to know one another, I see.” But it was hard to be sure.