have made most men half his age think twice. But he passed Horn briskly and threw the gear onto the backseat of his car. “Get in.”
Horn did as he was told.
The man drove off immediately, without waiting for directions. They’d already pushed their luck further than it could be expected to stretch—anything they had to say to one another could be said as they drove. It was time to be somewhere else.
He crossed the center of town, cut through the park, circled a couple of roundabouts. With no sign of pursuit, he glanced at the young man in the seat beside him. “How’s the face?”
“Sore,” admitted Horn.
“There’s ibuprofen in the glove box. It might help a bit.”
A double brandy might have helped more, but even if one had been on offer Horn couldn’t have risked dulling his rattled wits any further. He took the ibuprofen, struggling to swallow it with no water and teeth too painful to chew.
“Is there somewhere you can go where you’ll be safe?”
Horn grinned mirthlessly into the night, a savage slash of white across his face. “Not for long.”
“This has happened before?”
“Oh yeah.”
“So it’ll happen again.”
Horn nodded.
“But you’re still alive.”
“Born lucky, I guess,” muttered Horn.
“You were lucky tonight. What about next time?”
Horn gave a sigh of infinite weariness and let his aching head rock back against the headrest. “Who knows? Who cares?”
The man went on looking at him almost too long for someone driving a car. Then he cranked his eyes back to the road. “Do you want to tell me what it’s all about?”
Horn shook his head, wished he hadn’t. “Not particularly.”
The man breathed in and out a few times, with mounting annoyance. “You can’t just say that and then expect me to leave you at a bus stop. Whatever’s brought you to this point, there has to be a way forward. What about the police?”
“It’s not a police matter,” said Horn.
“Somebody’s trying to kill you. That makes it a police matter!”
“Just … let me out near the motorway. I’ll hitch. I’ll break the trail. I’ll be all right.”
“How long for?”
Horn managed a grim little chuckle. “The rest of my life.”
He knew all the roads in and out of this town, as he’d known all the roads in and out of every town where he’d broken his endless journey. The car missed two turnings for the motorway. “Where are we going?”
The man didn’t look at him. “My place.”
“No.”
“Till I can figure out what to do with you.”
“No,” Horn said again, with as much insistence as he could muster. “It isn’t safe.”
“You know somewhere better?”
“I don’t mean for me!”
The man considered for a moment. “It’s probably safer than you think. It was designed to keep people out. It’ll do for what’s left of tonight.”
They drove for what seemed like hours. Not so much oblivious of the danger on his heels as unable to do much about it, Horn slept for a lot of it, his sore head rocking gently against the headrest. When he woke, disturbed by the sudden grate of gravel under the wheels, sunrise was painting the horizon with streaks of oyster and pink. And silhouetting …
He sat up straighter, knuckled his eyes, and looked again. It was still there, and still what he’d first thought. Which went some way to explaining the last thing the man had said to him before he fell asleep, although it made everything else that had happened even more incomprehensible. Chills played up and down his spine. He said in a harsh, flat voice, “Who the hell lives in a castle?”
The man chuckled complacently. “Rich people. Welcome to Birkholmstead—this Englishman’s home.”
“You’re rich?”
“Rich enough.”
So much to lose … “Am I supposed to know who you are? Royalty—a duke or something?”
The man laughed. “I’m not famous. The only way you’d know my name is if you study the financial pages very closely.”
“What is your name?”
“Robert McKendrick.”
“And you’re, what, a banker?”
“Near enough.”
Horn looked at the castle again. All right, it wasn’t a big castle, but you couldn’t have described it as anything else. It was constructed of honey-colored stone and rose from a compact footprint up through five stories. The front door was at head height—a powerful defense when the place was built, now approached by a broad flight of steps. Beyond a wide graveled terrace there were gardens. “I thought the stock market had pretty much crashed.”
There was something ruthless about McKendrick’s grin. “Lose a lot of your portfolio, did you?”
Horn bristled. He wasn’t stupid. There was a reason he