Death in High Places

by Jo Bannister

Horn looked at him as if he were mad. “Talking to him? He sent a hired gun after me! He wants me dead, and he doesn’t care who knows it. It’s the worst-kept secret in criminology. If I went to his house, he’d do it himself. If he saw me in the street, he’d run me down in his car. Tonight wasn’t the first time he’s got close. This is how I’ve been living since the police lost interest in me. Because Tommy Hanratty is willing to do anything, pay anything, gamble anything, on seeing me dead. I wouldn’t know how to begin talking him out of that.”

  “I could have a word with him.”

  Horn laughed aloud at the sheer effrontery of it. “No, you won’t have a word with him. You’ll keep your head down, and your shutters up, and your drawbridge in the upright position, and hope Tommy Hanratty never hears your name. If he ever gets the idea that it was you who came between him and having my heart in a plastic bag tonight, he’ll come after you too. And your daughter, and anyone else he thinks you might care about. And you’ll be easier to find than me.”

  “Oh, I think I can handle Mr. Hanratty.” McKendrick smiled lazily.

  “No, you can’t,” insisted Horn. “He doesn’t play by your rules. He doesn’t play by any rules. I’m sure you’re a hard man in the City, and the closest thing your club has had to a rakehell since Byron got blackballed, but you’re not in Tommy Hanratty’s league. No one is. He hurts people for fun. When he’s seriously pissed off, he does things you’ve never dreamed of, even after a lobster supper. You don’t want him doing them to you, or to Beth.”

  “That’s true,” allowed McKendrick. “I’m not that happy about letting him do them to you, either.”

  “I am not your responsibility,” yelled Horn, beside himself with exasperation. “You’ve done enough already. I don’t know why you got involved, and I don’t know why we’re still arguing about this when I’ve told you who I am and who Tommy Hanratty is. But you’ll regret it for the rest of your life if you don’t let me get on my way right now. You bought me some time, and I’m grateful for that. Now let me use it.

  “He hasn’t given up—the guy with the gun. He never did before, he hasn’t this time. He’s still looking. If I’m here when he catches up with me, it’s going to be another of those inexplicable country-house murders that the Sunday papers love because it’s rich people coming to a sticky end and no one’s ever going to know why. He’ll kill me, and you, and Beth, and he’ll burn the house down, and he’ll make it look like something quite different. As if maybe I broke in, and we killed one another in the struggle.”

  It seemed he’d finally found some words, evoked an image, that resonated with McKendrick. He had no reply. He stood for a moment, blinking stupidly, as though he’d just realized this wasn’t a corporate team-building exercise, some kind of an elaborate game—a treasure hunt where the first one back to the hotel with a policeman’s helmet gets the magnum of champers. As if he’d thought Horn had been exaggerating the danger, and now he wasn’t sure.

  Horn pressed his advantage, momentarily forgetting what winning the argument would mean. “Your stone walls and your steel shutters won’t keep him out. Most of the people he goes after have them too. People as good at their job as this man cost a lot of money, and that means the people who hire them and most of the people they’re sent after have lots of money too. Except me.” He gave a mirthless grin.

  “But even that sort of money won’t buy everything. There isn’t enough of it, there never would be, to stop someone like him. Once he took the job, it was a matter of professional pride for him to finish it. His reputation is everything to him—he’ll do whatever’s necessary to protect it. The stone walls and the shutters will slow him down but they won’t stop him. Nothing will stop him.

  “I can keep ahead of him. I have done this far, I can keep doing. For a while longer, anyway. Maybe I can run far enough and fast enough that he’ll never catch up with me.”

  “And maybe you can’t,” said McKendrick levelly.

  “That isn’t your problem,” insisted Horn. “Keeping yourself, and Beth, safe—that’s your problem. And the thing about castles is, you pull up the drawbridge and immediately you’re out of options. All you can do is sit there and wait to see what the other guy’s going to do.

  “Mr. McKendrick, what you did back there was a hell of a thing. You risked your life for someone you didn’t even know. You risked losing all this”—Horn gave a jerky wave, encompassing the whole of the McKendrick estate with one unsteady gesture—“for a stranger. Whatever happens now won’t alter that. Don’t keep tempting fate until the old bitch bites your hand off.”

  McKendrick went on looking at him much too long, and Horn couldn’t read his expression. Something was happening behind the cool gray eyes, but Horn couldn’t tell what, or even if it was good or bad. But he knew that if McKendrick had been going to back down he’d have done it then, while the images of violence were vivid in his mind’s eye. Once he started to think about it, he’d convince himself there were alternatives—that he was a clever enough man, a rich enough man, to find alternatives.

  Horn gave up. He let the air out of his lungs in an audible sigh, weary and defeated. Without the starch of adrenaline his whole body sagged. He reached for the coffee. He’d done his best. His only consolation was that if Hanratty’s man could find a way into this little fortress, Horn could find a way out. He murmured, “Maybe you should go after Beth. She was pretty upset. I probably shouldn’t have said what I did.”

  McKendrick gave a disparaging sniff. “She overreacted. I know she was fond of the boy, but it is four years ago. She’s a grown woman. It shouldn’t still surprise her that shit happens.” He buttered a slice of toast, poured himself more coffee, and only after he’d finished his breakfast did he stand up. “Help yourself, will you? I’m just going upstairs.” He headed toward the hall and the massive stone staircase.

  “Tell her I’m sorry,” said Horn in a low voice. “For what it’s worth.”

  “Oh, I’m not going after Beth,” said McKendrick shortly. “She can come back when she’s calmed down. It’s time I saw to William. I won’t be long.”

  “Who…?” began Horn, but McKendrick had gone.

  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.