by Jo Bannister
“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 wit
h 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.”
CHAPTER 7
FROM THE top of the tower Horn had a panoramic view of the heart of England. It was very green, and rather flat, and populated by trees and hedgerows and not so many people. In fact, none that he could see. Not only no people but no signs of people, unless you knew that the straight lines carved through the fields were the mark of tractors. There were no dwellings in sight. He could see no roads other than the driveway by which they had arrived.
From this vantage he could see Birkholmstead more or less as a plan on a map, and it gave him a better impression of the castle than he’d managed from inside. It really wasn’t very big. There would be comfortable stockbroker Tudor houses in any leafy suburb that covered as much ground, though none would have matched it for height. The tower was the highest point, but it was only the size of one fairly small room—the attic room the spiraling steps had brought them through—with a crenellated parapet through whose slits an earlier generation of defenders had ranged their arrows.
The tower was not central but offset to one side so that looking down he could see the leads of another roof, and below it again a wider one that had been turned into a terrace by the addition of a couple of bistro chairs and a table. The main entrance where McKendrick had left his car was on the south side, and there was another in the stone-flagged courtyard to the west, which Horn supposed was Beth’s. He walked round the high parapet, looking for a third, and couldn’t spot it.
And then he did. A dark green station wagon was drawn up against the boundary hedge a quarter of a mile away, all but invisible to anyone who hadn’t a really good reason for looking, totally unmemorable to anyone lacking a really good reason to remember. Horn had such a reason. And that wasn’t the car he’d been forced into six hours earlier. The first thing Hanratty’s man had done after McKendrick interrupted him at his work was change his car. The consummate professional. The thought cheered Nicky Horn not at all.
McKendrick was attaching his mother-in-law’s best supper cloth to the flag halyard with deft movements of his wrists and knots that Horn didn’t recognize. Of course, when Horn tied a knot he was about to trust his life to it, not a nice bit of table linen. “Do this a lot, do you?”
McKendrick grinned. “Not as much as I do it on the boat.”
Horn nodded toward the distant car. “I’m guessing that doesn’t belong to the bird-watching vicar.”
McKendrick peered where he was indicating. “You think that’s our friend’s?”
Horn strove to remain polite. “I’m pretty sure it will be.”
“I still don’t know how the hell he got here.”
“He followed us. He just did it carefully.”
But McKendrick wouldn’t have it. “I’d have known. It’s a two-hour drive, and a lot of it’s on roads that no one else uses, at least not in the early hours of the morning. He couldn’t have kept us in sight without me seeing him, at least from time to time. I’m telling you, there was no one behind us.”
To Horn the answer was obvious. “There must have been. Unless you really did call him when we got here.”
McKendrick bent on him a look of disfavor, declining to dignify the accusation with a reply. He peered at the distant car. “Can you see him?”
“I don’t expect to. Not till it’s too late.”
McKendrick frowned at him. “You’re a pessimistic son of a bitch, aren’t you?”
“I’m a realist.”
McKendrick considered for a moment. “You climb, I sail. We’ve both been in more life-threatening situations than most people. We’ve both walked away from situations that could have killed us—that should have killed us. What’s to say this won’t be another one?”
“The sea isn’t trying to kill you,” Horn reminded him, tight-lipped. “The mountains don’t care if you live or die. Him out there: he cares. He cares enough to keep trying until he succeeds. He won’t give up. He’ll keep coming back till he finishes the job.”
“Believe that and you’re as good as dead already.”
“I know,” said Horn, and it was in his eyes and in his voice that while he’d long ago reached the same conclusion, he had never come to terms with it. “Mr. McKendrick, I’ve been a dead man running since Tommy Hanratty realized the law wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction he required. At first it was his own people, heavies off his payroll. It wasn’t too hard staying ahead of them. They’re not the sharpest knives in the drawer—most of them could be out-thought by a rubber duck. When Hanratty realized that as well, he got in a pro. And he’s a whole different ball game. I’m still running. But I know I can’t stay ahead of him forever.”
McKendrick regarded him thoughtfully. “Call me Mack.”
Somehow, that wasn’t what Horn was expecting. “What?”
“Everyone calls me Mack. Even Beth. If we’re going to die together, we might as well be on first-name terms.”
“Fine. Whatever.” It really wasn’t Horn’s highest priority just now. “You can call me…”
“Yes?” A small waiting smile.
“Anything but Anarchy Horn.”
They went back inside, down one flight of narrow stairs onto a corridor, stopped at a black oak door. “This is William’s room.” But McKendrick didn’t knock before they went in.
Invalids’ rooms, whether in castles or cottages, have only two smells. Well-cared-for invalids smell of talcum powder; neglected invalids smell of urine. William McKendrick’s room smelled of talcum powder.
It was a big room, and because it occupied one corner of the castle its mullioned windows commanded views on two sides. Under one was a comfortable sofa with a coffee table and a scattering of magazines. The second had been converted to French windows that opened onto the little terrace Horn had seen from the tower. Inside the door to the left was a large oak armoire, to the right a chest of drawers with a television on top of it, at the foot of the bed a big carved blanket-box. It was a high bed, higher than normal, and not Jacobean oak but painted metal festooned with power lines. A hospital bed. It had been positioned close to the French windows, for the air and the view.
As he looked, at first Horn thought the bed was empty. The sheets seemed too flat to conceal a human being. Nevertheless, that was where William McKendrick was: in his high hospital bed, sitting up against his starched white pillows, gazing out of his French window with the distant preoccupation that the very clever sometimes share with the almost vegetative.
For another moment Horn wasn’t sure which camp the other McKendrick belonged in. Then Mack left Horn’s side and, taking a tissue, wiped a strand of drool from his brother’s perfectly shaven jaw. He said softly, “This is my brother William. Someone to see you, Billy.”
Horn hesitated in the doorway, feeling awkward. “Won’t he mind…?”
Robert McKendrick smiled and shook his head. “William likes visitors. His social circle isn’t what it once was. I’m sure he’s bored to death seeing the same old faces all the time.”
William McKendrick’s eyes were a pale and faded blue, and Horn was not convinced that they saw anything at all. Or, if they saw, that his brain made any sense of the image. He looked at Horn with the same uncritical incomprehension that Horn had once looked at a painting by Picasso.
Horn swallowed. “Was it a stroke?”
Mack shook his head again. “Alzheimer’s disease. Senile dementia.”
“He doesn’t look old enough.”
“He was unlucky,” said McKendrick distantly. “It started while he was in his early fifties. The peak of his career. He was a barrister.” He smiled at the man in the bed, who smiled back hesitantly as if wondering if that was th
e expected response. “The terror of the Old Bailey, weren’t you, Billy? Horace Rumpole had nothing on you. And then this started.”
Horn wasn’t sure how much he was expected to contribute. “How old is William now?”
“He’s sixty-two. He’s ten years older than I am.”
“And how long…?” Horn didn’t finish the sentence, aware that it verged on the impertinent.
“Has he been like this? Completely locked in, about three years. But he’s been ill for nearly ten, and every one of those years took away more of his past and his personality. It’s a cruel disease, Nicky. Most illnesses can only threaten your present and your future. Dementia steals both the past and the person who lived it.”
“I’m sorry,” said Horn, though he was aware it didn’t go far. He looked again at the man in the bed, trying to fathom how much of him was left. “Does he understand what we’re saying?” He meant, Should we be talking in front of him?
“I’m not sure,” said McKendrick honestly. “There’s a lot that passes him by. On the other hand, he knows where he is—if we have to move him he becomes terribly distressed. I stopped taking him for hospital appointments. They weren’t doing him any good, and being in a strange place upset him. So now we do what we can for him here, and what we can’t do doesn’t get done.”
“You look after him?” Even with all the equipment, it was hard to overestimate the scale of the commitment.
“He has a nurse who comes in by day.” McKendrick saw Horn’s eyes widen, anticipated his next question. “Usually. I gave him the week off. I knew I was going to be around, it seemed a good chance.” He lifted narrow shoulders in a rueful shrug. “Not necessarily the best call ever. Except, of course, from the nurse’s point of view.”
Horn nodded slowly. “And that’s it, is it? That’s everyone in the house? No more surprises? William doesn’t have a wife and six children that you haven’t got round to mentioning yet?”