Death in High Places

by Jo Bannister

  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.

  CHAPTER 5

  HORN SNATCHED HIS HAND BACK as if Beth’s skin had burned him. “You have got to let me go,” he insisted thickly. “Right now. You didn’t have to get involved. If you’d stayed out of it, what came next wouldn’t have been your fault. But bringing me here, and telling Hanratty where I am, that makes it your fault. That makes it murder.”

  He flashed a quick glance at Beth. “She said it was all a plot. That it was too neat to be coincidence. I thought she was imagining things. But she was right and I was wrong. I was more than wrong—I was crazy, believing that someone like you would risk all this”—his unsteady gaze swept only the kitchen but implied the castle and everything it represented—“for someone like me. But it wasn’t for someone like me—it had to be me, didn’t it? I’m worth a small fortune to you. And when you’re rich, one fortune is never enough.”

  For a moment McKendrick said nothing. Then he said distantly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He didn’t even try to make it sound like the truth.

  “Please,” begged Nicky Horn, “there’s still time. It’ll take him a while to get here. Hours, maybe. I can get a head start, if you let me go now.” He would never have believed that, after living the way he had for four years, his life still meant enough to him that he was prepared to plead for it.

  “Nobody’s coming here. I told you that.”

  Horn tried to see things the way someone such as McKendrick might look at them. “I can’t buy you off. I haven’t got the sort of money Tommy Hanratty has. I haven’t got the sort of money Tommy Hanratty’s head gardener has. But I can do something for you that no one else can. I can save you from being a murderer. Even today, I can run far enough and fast enough that he won’t catch me. So it won’t matter that you phoned him.”

  “I didn’t phone him.”

  “All right!” Horn made an explosive gesture with his hands. “All right. Beth was wrong. It was just coincidence that you happened to be walking past a back alley sixty miles from where you live at three in the morning, and nothing but old-fashioned courage that made you step in front of a gun. I believe you. Thousands wouldn’t, but I’ll try really hard to believe you. If you’ll do something for me.”

  “Haven’t I done enough already?”

  Horn ignored that. “If you’ll explain to me why you’re so damned determined to keep me here. Because if it isn’t for the money—if you haven’t done a deal with Hanratty—you’re going to die. All of you—you, Beth, William, the cat—the whole bloody family. If you made the call, the guy with the gun will be here soon to make a murderer of you. If you didn’t, he may take a little longer, but he’ll still get here, and after he’s killed me he’ll tidy up the loose ends. All the loose ends. All the people who might have seen, or heard, or heard about him. You, and everyone you care about. So tell me why. Why in God’s name would you take that risk?”

  McKendrick deliberated. Finally he said, “I want you to do something for me.”

  “What?” yelled Horn, exasperated beyond bearing. “You want me to do you a favor?”

  “You think I haven’t earned it?”

  To judge from her expression, Beth was no less astonished by this development than Horn was. She turned a furrowed brow to the tall man beside her. “Mack? What’s this about?”

  He hushed her with a minimalist wave of the hand, his diamond gaze never leaving Horn’s face. “Well?”

  “I don’t know,” Horn responded bemusedly. He rubbed the side of his hand across his eyes. “I don’t know anything anymore. I thought you saved my life out of simple humanity. Now you tell me it was so I can do something for you. So I’m wondering if maybe Beth got it right and somebody did plan all this. If maybe it was you.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” said McKendrick coldly. “I saw you were in trouble and I stepped in to help. I’d no idea what I was getting involved in. But since you turned out to be you, and the guy with the gun turned out to be working for Tommy Hanratty, and that upped the ante way beyond anything I expected, is it so unreasonable to ask you for something in return? If I can keep you alive, why would you refuse to do something for me?”

  Beth, following the exchange like a spectator at a tennis match, gave Horn no chance to answer. Peering into her father’s face, she demanded, “Did you phone someone?”

  “I told you,” he gritted. “No. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Don’t worry about it?” echoed Horn, recoiling from the pair of them, the girl who wore her hatred on her sleeve and the man who guarded his thoughts behind gray eyes like the steel shutters of his house. “The fact that there’s a paid assassin on his way here right now? You think that’s nothing to worry about?”

  “Nobody’s coming here,” said McKendrick distantly. “Nobody’d get in if they came. And nobody gets out until I say so.”

  Horn gave up. “Then tell me what it is you want and let’s put an end to this pantomime. What is it? Having trouble getting a window cleaner to go up the tower? You want someone who isn’t scared of heights—or someone who won’t be missed if he f
alls? I’m your man. Let’s get on with it.”

  He was of course being facetious. But it was a measure of his complete bafflement that he wouldn’t have been entirely surprised if McKendrick had handed him a bucket and a chammy leather.

  McKendrick was still regarding him speculatively, as if he was weighing very carefully what was in front of him but hadn’t decided yet what it was worth. Finally he said, “I don’t want anything just now. But I’m going to want something. Maybe five years from now, maybe fifteen. Before you leave, I want your word that you’ll come back when I need you to and do what I need you to do.”

  So this was it, thought Horn, his mind spinning, the point at which the bill was presented. He’d known no one acted as McKendrick had from sheer altruism—and in his admittedly limited experience, rich men were less inclined to altruism than others. It was how they became rich. McKendrick had saved Horn’s sorry skin only because he had a use for it. There was a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach, as if deep in the core of him he’d dared to hope someone had found him worth helping for his own sake. Now he knew better. He shouldn’t have been disappointed but he was. Being in the gutter makes it easy for people to kick you in the face. It doesn’t make it compulsory, and it doesn’t make it any less painful.

  “All right,” he growled, trying to hide the hurt, “what is it you want me to do?”

  “Promise you’ll do it.”

  Horn raised an eyebrow. “Without knowing what it is?”

  “I saved your life,” McKendrick reminded him. He was looking at the younger man as a cat looks at a baby bird, half hungry and half amused. “Can you think of anything that would be too high a price?”

  Horn didn’t have to think for long. “I won’t hurt anyone for you.”

  “Okay,” said McKendrick slowly. Almost as if that might present a problem. “And if there’s no victim? If it’s a win/win situation where everyone gets what they want?”

  “Give me a for instance.”

  McKendrick shook his head. “Give me your word.”

  “Not without knowing what I’m signing up for. I might be stupid, but I’m not that stupid.”

  McKendrick smiled haughtily. “You owe me. You owe me anything I care to ask of you.”

  “Then ask.”

  “I’m asking for your word.”

  “And I’m wondering what it is you want that’s so obscene you daren’t even name it.”

  McKendrick backed off with a sudden grin. As if it was a game of chess they were playing, and he could appreciate a smart move even when it put him at a disadvantage. “Fair enough. If I wanted a gofer I could hire one; if I wanted a personal favor, you’d expect me to ask my daughter. Clearly there’s a downside.

  “What you’ll have to do isn’t legal. If you’re caught doing it, you could go to prison. A couple of years, maybe. Maybe not even that—you could get away with a suspended sentence. Even better, you may not be caught. You’re used to staying ahead of the hunt. It wouldn’t materially alter your lifestyle to be avoiding the police as well as Tommy Hanratty. I won’t put Beth in that position because it would destroy hers.”

  Beth was still looking between the two of them as if she had no more idea what this was about than Horn had. “Mack? You think the two of us should have a quiet word on our own?”

  McKendrick rejected that. “There’s nothing to discuss. This doesn’t concern you.”

  Her voice and her eyebrows climbed in tandem. “You reckon? If he’s right, there’s a hired killer on his way here. I could die today because you brought Anarchy Horn to Birkholmstead instead of leaving him to pay for what he did. If you think you’re cutting me out of the loop on this, think again.”

  For the first time in minutes McKendrick dragged his gaze away from Nicky Horn’s bruised and bewildered face and looked at his daughter. “Sorry, Beth, but that’s exactly what I’m doing. Fate, providence, call it what you will, has presented me with an opportunity I can use—someone to do something for me that I can’t do for myself and I won’t ask you to do. Him serving a few years in Parkhurst is one thing. Maybe it’s the best place for him. You spending a few years in Holloway is another thing entirely. This is between him and me. You don’t get a say. You don’t even get to know what I’m going to ask of him. You have to trust that I’m not doing it lightly, and I wouldn’t be doing it at all if it wasn’t the best thing for you and me both.”

  “When do I get to know what it is you want?” asked Horn.

  “When the time comes that I need it.”

  “And you’re willing to trust me? You’re going to take my word that if I say I’ll come back, and do what you want and go to prison for it, I will?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m not going to keep you here for anything up to fifteen years! You’d cost more to feed than a pony. I’ve told you what I want, Horn. I want you to acknowledge the debt you owe me and promise to repay it at a time of my choosing, even if there are consequences. A couple of years is still only a couple of years. When you get out, you’ll have a lifetime that you wouldn’t have had but for me.”

  “I don’t know where I’ll be in fifteen years.”

  “I’ll find you,” said McKendrick with a faint smile.

  “The chances are I’ll be dead.”

  “Then you’ll be off the hook.”

  Horn gave an incredulous little chuckle. “That’s it? I promise to come back here, if I can, at some undefined point in the future, and you let me go?”

  “Exactly.”

  Thinking about it, Horn had to agree it was a good deal. Particularly since, if McKendrick was looking that far into the future, Horn saw little prospect that he could be called upon to keep his side of it. And whatever McKendrick wanted, word or no word, Horn could always refuse to do it. It might cost him the little honor he had left, but he’d do that rather than be forced into another ignoble act. All he had to do was promise, and he could leave here and take his troubles with him. From what he could see, the McKendricks had troubles enough of their own.

  “Okay,” he said at length. “I’ll be your terrier. Whatever heels you need biting in five or fifteen years’ time, if you can find me and if I can come, I’ll bite them.”

  “On your life?”

  “Right now that’s a pretty cheap oath. But yes, on my life.”

  McKendrick smiled and let out a breath he seemed to have been holding for some time. “Good. Now—can we make you a packed lunch? Then I’ll drive you to the station.”

  Horn declined the packed lunch. He wanted to leave here as soon as he could. Partly to protect the McKendricks, partly to get away from them. He collected his bags and went to stand pointedly in the front hall.

  But McKendrick was as good as his word. A moment later he came through the little sitting room jangling his car keys, and his fingers danced over the keypad as if it were a small accordion. Horn heard the soft rasp of hidden bolts sliding, and McKendrick threw the heavy oak door wide. “There,” he declared cheerfully, “it’s going to be a lovely…”

  And there he stopped. His tall, spare frame froze rigid on the top step, his steel-gray eyes lancing across the surrounding gardens to the dark line of high hedges beyond. “What the hell…?”

  Horn, all alertness and dread, was beside him in a moment; even so he was too late. He looked where McKendrick was looking but saw nothing. “What?”

  “There’s someone down there,” said Robert McKendrick, and the indignation in his voice was barred with an unmistakable note of shock.

  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.”