Death in High Places

Chapter 6





IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN a trick, a strategy to keep him there. Horn didn’t think so, for two reasons. One was that stunned note in McKendrick’s voice. The other was that he went on standing there, staring at the distant hedge, framed in the doorway like an assassin’s birthday present, long after anyone who’d been even half expecting this would have dived back inside.

“McKendrick! McKendrick!” But he seemed not to hear until Horn grabbed the back of his jacket and hauled him bodily inside. “Lock it down. Now!”

The sound of the lockdown that had startled her from sleep two hours earlier now brought Beth hurrying into the hall. “Now what?”

“I saw someone.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know!”

“I do,” said Horn grimly. “I knew this was taking too damn long.”

“You mean…?” As if McKendrick hadn’t taken seriously anything Horn had said until now. “It’s not possible. No one could have followed us here.”

“He’s followed me everywhere else.”

McKendrick shook his head. “He wasn’t behind us on the road. I’ll swear to it.”

“I don’t know how he does it. I don’t know how they perform brain surgery either. It’s what he does for a living, and he’s good at it. Tommy Hanratty wouldn’t employ him if he wasn’t.”

“Perhaps it was Childs,” said Beth.

Horn didn’t believe these people. It was as if nothing that had happened, nothing that had been said, had struck them as important enough to remember. As if, with the deck chairs floating off around them, they were still telling one another that the Titanic couldn’t sink. He gritted his teeth. “Who’s Childs?”

“The local vicar. He’s a bit of a twitcher. He comes up here bird-watching sometimes,” said McKendrick.

Horn was working hard at not screaming. “You have to listen to me. Your lives depend on it. That isn’t a vicar wandering around looking for godwits, it’s a hired killer. I know it’s a lot to take in. But you know he isn’t a figment of my imagination—you’ve seen him, spoken to him. You’ve seen his gun.”

McKendrick gave a reluctant nod.

“I told you he was coming, and now he’s here. Do you remember what else I said? That when he left, he’d leave no one alive to talk about it. Now do you believe me?”

Neither of them answered him. But he felt the air about them shiver with their thinking.

“Get the police,” said Horn. “It’s too late for anything else. But for pity’s sake, warn them what they’re up against. They need to come armed and mob-handed. He’ll kill anyone who gets in his way.”

After a long moment McKendrick turned to his daughter. “Do it. We can explain later. Use the landline, I don’t think we’ve time to be hunting for a mobile signal.”

Finally, thought Horn. Finally the man realizes he’s put his own life and his daughter’s life and even his brother William’s life in danger. Maybe now I can get some sense out of him.

Still for a moment Beth hesitated. But then she nodded, and turned and ran across the hall, back into the sitting room.

“How long will it take them to get here?”

McKendrick shrugged. “Our nearest police station is about twenty minutes away. I don’t know if they’re equipped to deal with a professional assassin.”

Horn looked at the windows, steel-shuttered again and admitting no light. When he’d installed the castle’s latest defenses, McKendrick had known that one day his life might depend on them. He’d spared no expense. “Okay. Well, these shutters should keep him out for longer than that.”

The tall man looked indignant. “These shutters should keep him out, full stop! Have you any idea what they cost?”

Horn neither knew nor cared. “Nothing will keep him out forever. Men like him found ways across the Iron Curtain at the height of the Cold War. If armies and mines couldn’t beat them, a bit of steel shuttering won’t either. But it will slow him down. The cavalry should get here before he finds the weak spot.”

“There is no weak spot.”

“There’s always a weak spot. Give him time to feel his way round, look at what you’ve got and what you haven’t, work out where you compromised because of the Grade II listing, and he’ll be walking round in here like he owns the place. But time’s on our side. All we have to do is make sure he can’t get inside in the next twenty minutes.

“One thing,” Horn added. “You’d better warn your brother, and get him down here. We should all be together.”

McKendrick blinked stupidly at him. “My brother?”

Horn rolled his eyes. “Your brother William. He doesn’t know what’s going on, does he? And if we’re not all together, we can’t be sure who’s making any noises we hear.”

McKendrick pursed his lips. “You’re quite good at this, aren’t you?”

“I’ve got good at it,” growled Horn. “Now—William?”

“Problem with that,” said McKendrick pensively. “William has to stay in his room.”

Horn stared at him in disbelief. “What—use the wrong knife for his fish, did he? Punish him another time. Right now he needs to come down here.”

McKendrick regarded him with dislike. “William’s an invalid. He can’t leave his room.”

“Oh, for…!” But there wasn’t time to waste talking about it. “Okay. These shutters—they cover his windows as well?”

“Well, no,” admitted McKendrick. “I was advised that securing the first three floors was all that was necessary—that no one could mount a serious attack any higher than that. William’s room is on the next floor up. For the view.”

Momentarily distracted, Horn looked puzzled. “Who did you upset? I know who’s trying to kill me, and why. But why does someone like you need this level of security?”

McKendrick raised a haughty eyebrow at him. “Money, of course. I told you. It’s not just my personal fortune, I control assets equal to the gross national product of quite a large country. That makes me a target for anyone with more muscle than morals. I consulted a security expert and he said the biggest danger I faced was kidnapping. Not so much me as Beth—that someone could snatch her and hold her to ransom.”

Privately, Horn thought that anyone who snatched Beth McKendrick would send her back pretty quickly and might pay a small premium to complete the deal. He thought about the shutters and the keypads, and the bank of monitors in the entrance hall, and sniffed. “It might have been cheaper to pay the ransom.”

McKendrick shook his head decisively. “You don’t pay ransom. Ever. If you do, it’s going to happen again.”

And the really scary thing was, Horn believed him. It wasn’t just lip service that would collapse as soon as it was put under any pressure. This rich, important and powerful man had supplemented his stone walls with steel shutters because he didn’t want to lose his daughter, not because he didn’t want to lose his money.

Horn gave himself a mental shake. McKendrick’s priorities weren’t the issue right now. “Those screens in the hall—that’s the CCTV?” McKendrick nodded. “Then the rest of us stay there and watch. Of course, he’ll have located the cameras by now. But we might get a bit of warning when he’s ready to make his play.”

Four monitors were grouped around a console behind the exercise bike. Currently they were showing four entirely static views of the McKendrick estate. In one a couple of sheep were grazing in the middle distance; none of the others showed a living soul.

Horn thought there’d be more channels but he couldn’t work out how to access them. Joiners don’t spend that much computer time. Recognizing his difficulty, McKendrick took over. “What do you want to see?”

“Everything. How many cameras are there?”

“Sixteen.” McKendrick tapped keys crisply, and each of the four screens divided itself into four. “They cover all the approaches, all the doors, the courtyard, the front terrace and the gardens.”

Horn leaned closer to the monitors, watching for movement. But there was nothing.

Then there was. Not a movement, but suddenly one corner of one screen went blank. McKendrick frowned and tapped the glass repeatedly. “Malfunc—?” Before he’d even finished the word he realized how stupid it would sound. “Probably not.”

“Where’s that camera?” asked Horn quietly. His absolute focus gave McKendrick a glimpse of how someone whose idea of fun was playing Russian roulette with a mountaintop dealt with stress. By moving onto a separate level where there’s no room for panic because doing the right things in the right order is what keeps death at bay. A man whose mind worked like that could believe he was capable of anything.

“At the gateway into the courtyard,” said McKendrick. “That’s where he is.”

Horn shook his head. “That’s where he was twenty seconds ago. He’ll be somewhere else now.”

“Why didn’t we see him?”

“Because he doesn’t want to be seen.” McKendrick might be playing catch-up with the crisis, but at least Horn no longer suspected him of orchestrating it. He’d been genuinely taken aback by the turn events had taken. No one is that good an actor. McKendrick had thought they couldn’t be found right up to the moment that they were, and possibly a little longer.

Horn had known they could be found, and would be found, and the only question was how quickly. He wasn’t shocked at the development. He was sickened to find himself doing this again so soon. And he was tired, tired to the marrow of his bones, with running and running and only taking his problems with him. And he felt guilty that someone who’d tried to help him, whatever his reasons, however selfish his motives, was going to pay a price he could never have guessed for his intervention. Horn hadn’t sought his help, had tried to warn him what it would mean, had tried to be somewhere else when the pursuit caught up with him. None of this stopped him from feeling like a murderer.

“You think I’m good at this? I’m an amateur. The guy out there’s the professional. He does it again and again, and he always wins in the end. He wouldn’t stay in business if he didn’t.”

“But…” McKendrick was still struggling with the evidence of his eyes. “This isn’t right…”

Horn barked a grim little laugh. “Well, no. I guess contract killings are frowned on in polite society. I wouldn’t know—more to the point, neither would Tommy Hanratty. He thinks it’s right enough if it’s what he wants.”

Movement behind them made both of them start. But it was Beth. Her face was expressionless but her voice was as taut as a steel hawser. “The landline’s dead.”

McKendrick sucked in a sharp breath. Horn gave a shrug that was a brave attempt at fatalism. “He’s cut it. Of course he has.”

“And the mobiles?” asked McKendrick.

“Couldn’t get a signal on either of them. But there’s nothing unusual about that.”

Horn stared at her. “You have mobile phones that can’t get a signal?”

“At home we use the landline,” she retorted. “Or walk as far as the ha-ha.” She offered him her phone. “Give it a try.”

“Ha ha,” said Horn coldly, and it might have been a question or a comment, but he didn’t take up her invitation.

There was half a minute’s silence while they all considered the situation. McKendrick broke it. “So, essentially, we can’t get help, we can’t tell anybody we’re in trouble, you don’t reckon the vastly expensive security system I installed will keep him out forever, and you reckon that when he gets in he’ll kill us all. Is that a fair assessment?”

The shock was dissipating. Horn was impressed by McKendrick’s businesslike tone. “Pretty much.” Something occurred to him. “With all these shutters and things, didn’t you get one of those alarms that ring in the nearest police station?”

McKendrick had the grace to look embarrassed. “Well, yes and no. I installed one. It went off so often when it wasn’t meant to that they said they wouldn’t answer it anymore.”

Horn’s expression froze on his face. “So twenty minutes away there’s a policeman looking at a flashing light saying, ‘Not them again!’ and sending out for a cup of tea?”

“’Fraid so.”

Beth was eyeing her father with a mixture of exasperation and almost enough affection to eclipse the fear. “Go on—tell him the rest.”

McKendrick dropped his eyes and mumbled something.

“Sorry?”

“I said,” he repeated forcefully, “I kept playing with it! All right? This is my fault. You can die with a clear conscience, and Beth with a satisfied smile, because this is all my fault. Or, and this is just a thought, we can try to find some way of not dying, at least not yet. What do you think?”

“I know a way of not dying,” said Beth softly. “For most of us, anyway.”

Horn had a fair idea what was coming. McKendrick seemed not to. “Let’s hear it.”

She nodded at Horn. “If Mr. Hanratty’s man gets what he came for, he’ll go away.”

Neither of them looked at the visitor. They looked at one another, the cool, narrow man and the strong, passionate woman, father and daughter with so much in common and so much not, chips cut off opposite facets of the same block. McKendrick blinked first. “I’m not going to open the door and shove him outside!”

“You won’t have to. Not if he volunteers.”

Her father’s voice soared. “Do you know what you’re asking?”

Beth gave a disingenuous shrug. “He’s been begging you to let him out of here. Do as he asks.”

“That was before”—her father jerked a nod at the bank of monitors—“turned up. When he thought he had a head start.”

“So now it’s a short head. Maybe he can still get away. He said it himself, he’s been doing this long enough to get good at it. He has a better chance out there than either of us. If he gets through, he can send help.”

“He won’t get through.”

“He might.”

“He won’t.”

Finally Beth looked at the subject of their discussion. Her eyes were cold and her voice unyielding. “Then better him than us. He should have died four years ago, trying to save Patrick. He bottled it. Now he gets another chance. He can die saving us instead.”

When Horn at last found a voice, it seemed to come from a lot farther away than the pit of his stomach. “You know, don’t you, that it won’t change anything? After he’s killed me, he’ll come in here and kill you.”

Her smile was more than half a sneer, then she looked back at McKendrick. “It’s just another lie. He’s trying to hide behind us. Why would anybody risk hanging around after he’d committed a murder?”

“Because you’ve seen his face.” Horn too was speaking directly to McKendrick. He knew that if his fate depended on persuading Beth, he was already a dead man. “He won’t leave any witnesses.”

“But…” McKendrick stopped, swallowed, started again, his voice cranked down to a normal, rational tone. “Look, Beth, maybe he’s mistaken. Pro or not, maybe the shutters will keep him out. He knows Horn won’t be here forever. When he leaves, he’ll pick up the trail again and corner him somewhere he’ll be easier to deal with. Where there won’t be any witnesses.”

“You’re missing the point,” growled Horn. “You’re already a danger to him—you were the moment you decided to step into that alleyway instead of walking past. You’ve seen him, talked to him. He knows you know what he is. You don’t have to see him kill me to be a witness against him. This man’s livelihood, his whole way of life, depends on him not having a face. You’ve seen his face.”

Horn turned to Beth, and his expression was stony but there was regret in his eyes. “I’ll tell you something else. If I take my chances out there, and somehow manage to get past him, he won’t follow me. Right now McKendrick is more of a threat to him than I can ever be. He can always find me again. But if he leaves here now, he knows what’ll happen. McKendrick’ll go to the police. He’ll sit down with a PhotoFit guy and come up with a likeness that’ll go out to every police station, railway station, airport and dock in England, and across the Channel to Interpol. He’ll never be able to work again. Finally he’ll be picked up as the result of a minor traffic accident in Marseille or somewhere. That’s why he has to kill you. All of you. If it’ll make him safer, even just a little bit safer, he won’t hesitate.”

Beth’s jaw was clamped so tight she had to force the words out. “Don’t believe him. He’d say anything, do anything, to save his precious skin.”

Horn managed a cynical laugh. “Unlike you, of course, willing to lay down your life to do what’s right.”

“This is right,” she sneered.

McKendrick sighed. “Beth, I know how you feel about him. But you can’t kill a man for doing something that upset you. You lost a good friend on Anarchy Ridge; but it wasn’t Horn’s fault. Maybe he could have acted differently. Maybe you would have acted differently. Or maybe you just think you would. I don’t know. I don’t know what I’d have done in the same circumstances.

“I do know that the authorities both in Alaska and back here in England looked at the facts and decided he didn’t have a case to answer. That Patrick Hanratty’s death wasn’t murder, or even manslaughter, but misadventure. Those boys were up there doing something they loved, and it went wrong and only one of them came back. It happened to be Horn; it could as easily have been Patrick. The mountains take a tithe. It was their turn to pay, that’s all.”

He turned to Horn, was startled to see a brilliance in his eye that looked for a moment like tears. McKendrick cleared his throat. “Just so we’re not making any assumptions, would you sooner take your chances out there alone or in here with us?”

It took Horn a few seconds to answer. McKendrick hadn’t imagined the tears—they’d welled in sheer gratitude that finally someone understood. Horn had never hoped for forgiveness, that would be too much, but dear God he’d ached for a gram of human understanding. His voice was gruff, to disguise what he believed was a weakness. “I doubt it’ll make much difference. Not in the long term. Probably not in the short term either.”

“All the more reason,” McKendrick insisted, “that you get a say in how we do this.”

Horn hadn’t expected to be consulted. It was a long time since anyone had put much value on either his life or his opinions. He wasn’t sure what to say. “If you think—if Beth thinks—you’ll have a better chance if we split up, I’ll make a run for it.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“No.” Still he hesitated. “Okay. Then, I don’t know how long your shutters will keep out bullets, but they’ll do it for longer than my skin will. If I get a choice, I’ll stay here.”

“Fine. Good,” said McKendrick.

Beth stared at him as if he’d given away her birthright—which perhaps, in a way, he had. “You’d protect him? You’d put our lives on the line to protect him?”

McKendrick nodded. “I brought him here. What happens now is my responsibility. I’m not throwing him to the wolves as the price of our safety. For one thing, I think he’s right—I doubt it would work.”

“Let’s try it and find out.”

“No. Sorry, Beth, but when it comes right down to it, this is my house and I’ll extend whatever protection it can offer to whoever I choose. If I’m going to die today, I don’t want to go trying to appease a hired killer. I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my life, but I don’t think I’ve done much to be ashamed of. That changes if I open the front door and push Horn through it. Even if he’s wrong and you’re right, and we could save ourselves that way, it’s too high a price. I’m sorry.”

If it had been someone else—anyone else—she’d probably have agreed with him. She was a strong and determined woman, who’d faced the prospect of death and the idea that there are things worth dying for when she first started climbing. No one needs to risk their neck on the snow and ice and crumbling rotten rock of a mountain ascent. They do it because the emotional payback of success is worth the possibility of disaster.

McKendrick believed with all his heart that if it had been just the family here, or if they’d found themselves protecting some luckless fugitive whose life and struggles she knew nothing about, his daughter would have applied herself to the task with a courage and dignity that would have made him proud. That it was only her hatred of Horn, that soul-consuming passion she could see neither through nor past, that made her think that buying her life with his was a bargain.

“What the hell are you thinking?” she yelled, the chestnut braid flying in her rage. “Maybe you have the right to risk your own life, however worthless the prize—but it isn’t just your life you’re risking, is it? I’m your daughter—Uncle William’s your brother. And you’re prepared to sacrifice us all, and for what? That? That abject apology for a man? A deadweight who cut his best friend’s rope when the going got tough?”

“Beth,” said McKendrick softly, “can’t you see that you’re proposing to do exactly the same thing? To cut Horn loose because trying to save him will put us in danger? At least Horn and Patrick were friends, and they were up on Anarchy Ridge because they couldn’t think of anywhere they’d rather be. Can’t you see, it would be so much worse to do it to someone you didn’t care about? Someone who never chose to put his life in your hands?”

The comparison hurt her womb-deep. The mere mention of her lost friend’s name brought bitter tears to her eyes and her voice. “I don’t know how you can say that to me.”

“Because we’re up against the wall here,” said McKendrick apologetically. “It’s my fault and I’m sorry. If I could go back and do it differently, I would. I never thought for a moment that what I was doing could have any implications for you. You must believe that. I would never willingly put you in danger. You matter more to me than anything. I hoped one day you’d understand that, but if we’re running out of one days…”

He stopped and swallowed, then went on. “If we’re running out of one days it’s important that we do this right. We’ll only get one chance. If we make a bad decision now, it won’t be a question of living with it but it will be what posterity remembers us by. Do you believe there’s a hired killer out there?”

“Yes!” she said hotly. “Like I’ve been trying to tell you! Like Horn has been trying to tell you.”

“A professional. A man hired by Tommy Hanratty to avenge the death of his son.”

“Exactly.”

“Then do you honestly believe that, having killed Horn, he’ll drive away and leave us alone?”

She stood her ground. “Yes.”

McKendrick stooped a little to peer into her eyes. “Honestly?”

“Yes,” she repeated firmly. “A professional won’t kill anyone he doesn’t have to, because every hit increases the danger to himself and the risk of exposure to his employer.”

“Horn thinks he’ll kill us to protect himself and Hanratty.”

“But then”—her lip curled—“he would think that, wouldn’t he?”

McKendrick gave an oddly gentle little sigh. “He’s offered to try and make a run for it. If you’re right, I should take that offer. If he’s right, I shouldn’t.”

Beth shrugged, her strong, limber body stiff with resentment. “What’s the alternative? Waiting till we starve to death? Drawing lots for who we eat first?”

“That’s pretty much how castle sieges used to end,” agreed McKendrick ruefully. “Either the guys inside got hungry and came out, or the guys outside got hungry and went away.”

“Is anybody going to come looking for you?” Horn wasn’t sure if he was helping his own cause or not.

“In a few days, maybe. Not before.”

“Even when they can’t get you on the phone?”

“Like I say—in a few days.”

Horn scowled. “I thought you big international businessmen had to keep in touch? That the economy would collapse if you didn’t?”

McKendrick gave a small smile. “A myth put about by us big international businessmen, to justify our absurd salaries.”

“So we’re on our own?” Horn shook his head and shut his eyes to conceal the despair. “It won’t take him days to find a way in.”

“Castles like this held out for months,” objected McKendrick, though he didn’t sound altogether convinced.

“At a time when gunpowder and the armour-piercing bodkin were cutting-edge technology,” said Horn dismissively. “The guy out there will have access to plastic explosive, shaped charges, rocket-propelled grenades, the lot. A tin-pot little toy castle? Given a couple of hours, he could muster enough firepower to take over a city.”

It was time for a decision, and McKendrick made it. “Well, actually the choice isn’t that difficult. If you’re right we’re all going to die whatever we do. There’s no need to make it easy for him, or throw away the outside chance that we can hold him off long enough for something to change. And if Beth’s right and he’s only interested in killing you, we don’t have to make a choice now—only if he gets in here. We’ll batten down the hatches and wait to see what happens.”

Beth opened her mouth to argue but McKendrick stilled her with a hard look. “I know—you’d do it differently. But this is my house, and the responsibility is mine. I’m sorry if it turns out to be a bad call.

“So let’s come up with some ideas to improve the odds. Make it harder for him. Keep him out for longer, prepare a plan of action for if he gets inside. Birkholmstead is still a stone-built fortification—even if he gets in, we can retreat from room to room and keep him at bay for hours, maybe days. In the meantime, we’ll keep checking the mobiles—we only have to get a signal on one of them for five minutes and we can end this.”

She still didn’t like it, but finally Beth accepted that it wasn’t a battle she could win. “I’ll do the phones. I’ll take them up on the roof every ten minutes or so—if there’s a signal going, that’s where we’ll get it.”

“Make sure he doesn’t see you,” warned Horn. “With a good sniper rifle he could be accurate to as much as a mile.”

“I won’t stay still long enough for him to use it.”

“Do you have a flagpole?” asked Horn.

McKendrick looked puzzled. “On top of the tower.”

“Then we can fly a distress signal.”

“This isn’t a ship of the line!” snorted Beth. “We have a Union Jack, not a wardrobe of pennants! We can’t send England Expects and all that stuff.”

“We can fly the Union Jack upside down,” said McKendrick. “The universal distress signal.”

Trying to picture it, Horn frowned. “Doesn’t it look pretty much the same both ways up?”

“Pretty much,” admitted McKendrick. “It would take an expert to notice, even from close up.”

“And anyone who gets that close probably won’t get to leave,” said Horn grimly. “I don’t think we should count on anyone noticing which way up the flag is.”

“Then we’ll fly a tablecloth instead,” said McKendrick, suddenly inspired. “The biggest, whitest one I can find. Flag of truce. That would be noticed, even from a distance. Whoever saw it might not know what it meant, but he’d know it meant something.”

“Would he know to call the police rather than come blundering up to the front door to ask what the problem is?” wondered Beth. “Come to that, would the police know to send a SWAT team, or would we get a couple of PCs on their way back from liaising with a Neighborhood Watch scheme?”

McKendrick looked as if she’d slapped his face. But it was a point. He didn’t want to see a couple of twenty-something constables mown down investigating a bit of table linen on a stick.

“I think,” said Horn, “he won’t pick a fight with the police unless he’s cornered. Because he knows that, the world over, there are two kinds of murder hunts—those where the victim was a civilian, and those where he was a police officer. They pull out every stop in the organ when it was a cop who got killed. Of course they do—it’s personal. It also means they’re dealing with someone who’ll stop at nothing. No professional hit man wants to be the subject of that kind of manhunt. I think, if he sees a police car coming and he has the chance to slip away, that’s what he’ll do.”

“All right,” decided McKendrick. “We’ll hoist a tablecloth and try to attract attention. Beth will keep trying the phones. Next we need a line of retreat…”

Beth touched his arm. “No, next you should check on Uncle William. Will you tell him what’s going on?”

McKendrick shook his head. “No point upsetting him when there’s nothing he can do to help. But I will draw the curtains.”

Horn shook his head. “Don’t do anything to mark out his room as different. You draw his curtains, the guy outside knows there’s something in there you want to protect.” He hesitated. “Look, I don’t want to be insensitive, but what’s the problem with your brother William? Why can’t we bring him down here with us?”

For a moment he thought McKendrick wasn’t going to answer. “Beth, where’s that damask tablecloth your mother used to use for dinner parties? Oh, yes—I know. Horn, you come with me. When we’ve got it flying, I’ll take you in to meet William. You can see for yourself what the problem is.”