Death in High Places

by Jo Bannister

  McKendrick drew a deep breath. He was going to have to tell her. She had persuaded herself that, even if it wasn’t lawful, even if the morality of it was suspect, there was a kind of justice in Nicky Horn’s dying at the will of Patrick Hanratty’s father. She needed to know that her feelings about Horn were predicated on a lie. Somewhat to his dismay, McKendrick found he couldn’t guess how she would react. If she would believe Horn’s latest account. If believing would add to her grief or ease it. A man should know his daughter well enough to know if he was bringing her balm or brimstone. It troubled him that they had so many secrets from one another. He’d only ever wanted what was best for her. He was afraid now that he didn’t know her well enough to judge.

  He said, “Will you answer me one question honestly?” She nodded. “What if Patrick had cut Nicky Horn’s rope?”

  Beth frowned. “I told you that already. If only Patrick had come home, I’d have felt sorry for Patrick.”

  McKendrick knuckled his eyes. “Then surely to God you can understand—”

  She didn’t let him finish. “You asked for an honest answer and that was it. Patrick was the only one I cared about—Patrick, right or wrong. If he’d pushed Horn off the mountain because he wanted his climbing boots, I’d still have sided with Patrick. Nicky Horn could go to hell in a handcart and I wouldn’t have broken a nail to save him—and that’s not just now, that’s always. It’s no use asking me for an unbiased opinion, I’m not capable of giving one. I loved one of them. I didn’t give a damn about the other, until he ruined my life.

  “But if you’re asking whether it’s ever all right for one climber to cut another’s rope, the answer’s no, and that doesn’t alter regardless of who lives and who dies. We all carry a knife. We all know that if the game turns nasty enough, if it comes to a choice between one person dying and two people dying, we may have to cut ourselves loose so that someone else can live. But that’s it—you only ever cut your own rope. Whatever the consequences, you never cut someone else’s. You haven’t the right.”

  “Is that—I don’t know—an unwritten rule? Something all climbers agree on?”

  “Maybe not all. But it’s the sort of thing you discuss in the bar at the end of a long hard climb, and everyone I ever climbed with, everyone whose opinion I respected, felt that they’d rather die than kill someone else.”

  “Maybe,” McKendrick suggested softly, “it’s a conclusion that’s easier to come to in the bar at the end of a climb than halfway up a mountain in a howling gale.”

  “No doubt. That’s why you talk about these things first. You take your decisions when you’re safe and warm and calm, so you don’t have to take them when you’re frantic and freezing and scrambling on the edge of an abyss. All you have to do then is remember and act on them.”

  “And cut your own rope if you have to.”

  “If you have to,” she agreed grimly. “If there’s no way back that doesn’t involve ending someone else’s life. It’s a risk sport, Mack. If you’re not prepared to take the risks, you shouldn’t be on the mountain. You shouldn’t be on someone’s rope if you’re prepared to kill them with it.”

  “So cutting your own rope wouldn’t count as suicide?”

  She snorted a derisive laugh. “Of course not. Among climbers it’s the ultimate act of courage.”

  “I wonder if climbers’ families see it that way.”

  She became aware that the conversation had changed, was no longer about what she thought and felt, wasn’t sure what it was about now. She looked at him sideways, one eyebrow higher than the other. “Mack?”

  It was one of those now-or-never moments. McKendrick steeled himself. “Horn says Patrick cut his own rope. When he couldn’t climb back, and Horn couldn’t lift him, and it was a choice of one or both of them staying on the mountain, Patrick found the courage to cut his own rope. Horn edited the facts to spare his family’s feelings.”

  Beth’s expression had frozen on her face. McKendrick hurried on. “Of course, he’d no idea the trouble he was getting himself into. He thought that, from their point of view, the easiest thing to deal with was if Patrick died in the fall and Horn had to leave his body behind. So that’s what he said.

  “He thought he was doing the right thing, Beth. He came up with a story that allowed Patrick’s family to grieve without reservation, in the hope that the people whose opinion mattered most to him would understand. He was questioned in Alaska; he was questioned again when he got back to England. He stuck to the account he’d worked out. There was no way of proving anything different, no reason to suspect he was lying. No witnesses, no forensics—as long as he didn’t blink, the authorities had to accept what he told them.”

  Still no response from his daughter. Not from her lips and not from her eyes. McKendrick sighed. “What he didn’t allow for was the fact that Patrick’s family was headed not just by a grieving father but by a grieving thug of a father. He didn’t have to accept what he was told simply because there was no evidence to the contrary. And he didn’t have to nurse his doubts in the darkness of his own soul, powerless to do anything about them. He did what he was in a habit of doing whenever somebody crossed him. He set about making Horn pay.”

  It was amazing to McKendrick—alarming, even—that he’d been able to get the story out without interruption. He’d expected to have to fend off furious interjections and battle to the end through his daughter’s distress and disbelief. Her silent stare unnerved him. But he didn’t want to prompt her. He wanted to give her all the time she needed to absorb what he’d said and make sense of how she felt about it.

  Finally she favored him with a cool smile and said calmly, “Well, he saw you coming, didn’t he?” As if he’d been sold a racehorse with four left feet.

  “I think it’s the truth,” he managed, suddenly defensive.

  She shook her head bemusedly. “For a hardheaded businessman, you’re a mug for a sob story. Of course it isn’t the truth. We know what the truth is. It’s what he told the authorities in Alaska and again when he got back here. Do you think they wouldn’t have realized if he was lying to them? All their experience dealing with thieves and murderers, and they’re going to have the wool pulled over their eyes by a carpenter with a warped sense of right and wrong? Grow up, Mack. He said he cut Patrick loose because that’s what happened. He thought nobody could touch him for it. He’s come up with this other version because his back’s against the wall and he thinks you can help him, but only if he can convince you he’s worth helping. Well, maybe he has convinced you. He’ll have to try a lot harder to convince me.”

  He’d expected her to resist the idea. He’d expected tears and tantrums. Her calm dismissal of Horn’s new account made him wonder if he’d accepted it too readily. “It seemed to make sense,” he mumbled lamely.

  “What?” Her arrow-straight gaze almost knocked him off his seat. “That because the Hanrattys are Catholics they couldn’t be expected to see the difference between their son committing suicide as an act of despair and giving up his life to save his friend? How stupid do you think they are? No, don’t answer that—about as stupid as Horn thinks you are! Why do you think he waited until you were alone before he told you that? Because he knew I’d see it for what it is. I don’t claim to be a theologian, but doesn’t all that stained-glass commemorate martyrs of one kind or another? People who gave their lives to help other people? If the Catholic Church regarded them all as suicides, I don’t think they’d be up there in their windows.”

  McKendrick had to admit that she was right. Even he, with less knowledge of religious dogma than he had of the dark side of the moon, could see all the difference in the world between despair and self-sacrifice. When you tried to analyze it, it made no sense. If Horn had misled the police about what happened, sparing the Hanrattys’ feelings wasn’t why. “You think he’s lying?”

  She laughed out loud, a jarring discordance. “Of course he’s lying, Mack! It’s what he does, remember? Even on his own acc
ount, he’s lied to someone. Look. He had no reason to tell the police what he did if it wasn’t true. At best he was going to make himself unpopular, at worst it was going to get him into trouble. Whereas lying to you now just might buy him a bit more time. So which do you reckon is most likely? Patrick cut the rope and Horn said he did it? Or Horn cut the rope and toughed it out until it looked as though a different story would serve him better? We know what he does when he’s staring death in the face. Anything he can think of to keep himself safe a little bit longer. Do you really think that a man who left his best friend on Anarchy Ridge would draw the line at lying to someone he met a few hours ago?”

  “I suppose not,” McKendrick muttered. A pit was in the middle of him where his heart had sunk. You couldn’t blame a man for doing anything he had to in the effort to survive. Still somehow he was terribly disappointed.

  It took him another minute to realize that, actually, this was a good thing. A Nicky Horn who’d lied to protect his friend’s reputation wouldn’t be much use to him. What he needed for his purposes was the young man Beth and the world thought he was—someone who prized his own survival so highly he’d do whatever it demanded of him. Anarchy Horn. That lingering sense of disappointment was sheer sentimentality, and McKendrick had never been a sentimental man. His long jaw hardened. “Stupid of me,” he gritted. “You’re right, of course.”

  “Of course,” she echoed softly. “So you’ll do as I ask? Stop protecting him?”

  McKendrick’s eyes turned inward for a moment, searching his conscience, examining his hopes and plans. Beth hardly noticed that what he said was not an echo of what she’d said. “I have no desire to protect him,” he growled.

  CHAPTER 9

  MCKENDRICK WAS ANGRY and didn’t want to see Horn for a while. Beth suggested that they swap shifts—that she go downstairs and watch the monitors and he sit quietly with his brother for a space. She went up the tower with the mobile phones first, came back shaking her head. “Still no joy.”

  “They never used to be this bad.”

  “Name me something that did.”

  There was no arguing with that. McKendrick nodded. “Give me fifteen minutes to get my head sorted, then I’ll come down.”

  “Shall I tell him to go?”

  “No,” said McKendrick grimly. “Leave it to me.”

  “As you prefer.” She closed William’s door softly behind her.

  Horn was watching the monitors in the stone hall. He spoke before looking round, before he knew it was her. “I caught a movement on the far side of the courtyard five minutes ago. Nothing since.”

  “Maybe he’s given up and gone home.”

  Horn turned quickly at Beth’s voice, and as quickly turned back. “Somehow I doubt it,” he said gruffly to the screens.

  “Maybe you should go outside and check. We’d feel pretty silly starving to death in here if he’d gone away days before.”

  “Tell you what. Before we starve to death, I will.”

  “Fine,” said Beth airily. “Or now. Whichever.”

  Over the screens Horn’s back was hunched and tense, as if he anticipated an assault. “That’s really what you want, is it? To see me die. Will that satisfy you? Is it the only thing that will? Do you need to see me die before you can get on with your life?”

  She considered for a moment. “No, not really. I’d settle for hearing it from a reliable source.”

  He gritted his teeth. “And you think that’s what Patrick would want?”

  “When he was alive? Of course not. He liked you, he trusted you—he wouldn’t have climbed with you if he hadn’t. But you cut him loose. In the four or five seconds it took him to meet up with the mountain again, I think he may have revised his opinion.”

  Finally Horn made himself look at her. “Mack didn’t tell you?”

  “Your latest attempt at self-justification?” Her tone was scornful. “That, in contrast to everything you’ve told everyone for the last four years, in fact Patrick cut his own rope? Yes, he told me. I think, for a few innocent minutes, he actually believed it. Then reality intervened. What amazed me was that it took a few minutes. He’s not considered gullible in the City.”

  “I’m not trying to justify myself,” growled Horn mulishly. “It’s the truth.”

  “Of course it is. Along with fairy godmothers, the Loch Ness Monster, the yeti, and the alien autopsies. After all, what possible reason could you have to lie?”

  Horn swiveled his chair to meet her gaze full on. “And why do you find it so hard to believe that a man you call your friend, someone you say you were close to, did what we all hope we’d be brave enough to do in the same circumstances? Patrick Hanratty died well. Why are you so determined to take that from him?”

  “Why were you?” she countered swiftly. “If it was such a good death, why did you tell people that you dropped him off the mountain like a pack that got too heavy to carry?”

  He looked away. It may have been disdain, but it looked as if he couldn’t bear her scrutiny. “His family…”

  “His family are Catholics,” retorted Beth, “not stupid. If it had happened the way you say—the way you say now—they’d have been proud of him. Even the old thug. You knew who he was—what he does, how he does it. And you announced that you’d cut his son’s rope. You must have known how he’d react to that. You must at least have wondered if he’d come after you with a flamethrower. But that was the story you told, and that was the story you stuck to. If you’d been lying, you could have come up with something so much better. The only possible reason for telling Tommy Hanratty that you cut Patrick’s rope was that it was the truth.”

  “No.”

  “Nobody lies to get themselves into more trouble! It’s perfectly obvious what happened. You told the Alaskans what happened exactly as it happened because you were so relieved to be alive that you couldn’t see anything wrong with it. I don’t think it occurred to you that you’d be pilloried for what you’d done. You thought the old macho climbing establishment would see it your way: that when it’s a matter of survival, you’re entitled to do anything you have to. Even killing a friend.

  “Well, it may have kept you on the right side of the law, just, but the law isn’t the only arbiter of a man’s actions. The first, the really important one, is his own conscience. And if that isn’t up to the job, there’s a kind of human morality that most people share, that tells them how they should behave even in circumstances beyond their worst nightmares. That tells them this and this are all right if there’s really no alternative, but this isn’t to be contemplated even if it means the sky must fall. What you did was way beyond anything decent human beings consider acceptable.”

  She paused, watching Horn’s face. She saw the strong muscles of his jaw clench and the dull flush that assured her that her carefully aimed darts were finding their target. That four years hadn’t been enough to blunt their barbs. “You and Patrick went to Anarchy Ridge together. He fell, and you held him. I’m sure you did try to pull him up; but he was a big guy, bigger than you, and if he was a dead weight—if he was unconscious, or hurt, and he couldn’t help—I can see how you wouldn’t be able to do it. Which was a shitty position to find yourself in. You must have gone over it again and again in your mind, holding him while your muscles cracked with the effort, trying to find a third way.”

  It was as if she’d been there. As if she’d witnessed what happened. More than that: as if she’d been inside his head, seeing through his eyes, feeling what he felt, running desperately through all the options and brought up short by the realization that none of them would serve.

  “You could have lowered him,” she said. “But that ridge drops away sheer into nothing, doesn’t it? I’ve seen the pictures. No one carries enough rope for a contingency like that. You could have made the rope fast to a tree or a rock. But there aren’t any trees up there, and the rocks were under a meter of ice. You could yell for help and hope someone heard you. But that’s kind of the point o
f wild climbing, isn’t it? Going places where there aren’t guidebooks, and there aren’t belays hammered into the rocks. Having nothing and no one to depend on but yourselves. And it was wild climbing that attracted you. You and Patrick, you liked going where no one could help you. However much you yelled, no one was going to hear you.

  “Finally you were back to the same two choices you started with. Guess what? You picked the wrong one.”

  “I couldn’t save him,” muttered Horn insistently. “I tried. I couldn’t pull him up.”

  “I believe you. I think you did try to haul him up, and found you couldn’t. Maybe no one could have done.” But it wasn’t absolution in her voice. There was something implacable about her calm. She was no longer watching him through eyes red-rimmed with hatred. She was looking at him like looking down a microscope. Studying, analyzing, noting his deficiencies. “But you had to decide what to do next. If he’d been dead, it would have been easy enough. But Anarchy Ridge wasn’t going to be that kind to you. Patrick had fallen, but there was nothing around him but snow and wind—nothing to kill himself on. You could hear him shouting over the storm, couldn’t you? Telling you he was okay, give or take the odd cracked rib, waiting for you to help him. Demanding to know what was taking so long when he was freezing his nuts off. There was never a moment when you thought he was dead on your rope, or even badly injured. Was there?”

  Beth raised an interrogative eyebrow at him. When Horn didn’t reply she shrugged and continued. “As time passed he must have realized you couldn’t do it. That it was just asking too much. Maybe if you’d had more equipment. But you liked climbing fast and loose, without all the fancy paraphernalia that would let you take your granny up Everest. It’s a wonder you were on a rope at all. A wonder and, as far as you were concerned, a disaster. But you were: he was at one end of it and you were at the other. And sooner or later you were going to weaken and lose your grip, and you’d fall off the mountain together.”