Death in High Places - By Jo Bannister Page 0,12
who the blue blinding blazes…?”
And there she stopped. Dead; as if one of them had slapped her. Her expression froze, except that her eyes saucered with an incredulity so absolute that for a moment it drove the anger out. But only a moment. When it surged back, it came like a tsunami, and she hauled her dressing gown about her and spun on her bare heel and disappeared wordlessly back into the castle, her whole vanishing body stiff with fury and disbelief.
“I don’t think she was expecting company,” said McKendrick with masterly understatement. “Come inside. Let’s see what we can do for your face.”
There were no suits of armor. Horn was vaguely disappointed. His only experience of how the rich lived was gleaned from country-house mysteries on late-night TV, and he was sure that suits of armor figured prominently. And not so much computer screens and an exercise bicycle.
McKendrick saw where Horn was looking and grinned. “Not very appropriate, I know. But then, where in a fourteenth-century castle would be?”
When they were inside, McKendrick keyed numbers into a pad, automatically, as if he did it all the time. Horn didn’t try, but he was fairly sure that if he’d wanted to leave then he wouldn’t have been able to. He followed the master of Birkholmstead through the stone-flagged hallway into a surprisingly small and comfortable sitting room.
McKendrick pointed at a sofa. “Park yourself, I’ll get the kettle on.” He disappeared through another door, from which came the unmistakable sounds of crockery. But he returned with not a breakfast tray but a first-aid kit.
In truth, there wasn’t much that needed doing. The blood from Horn’s nose had dried on his face, and he looked better once that was cleaned off. The bruising along his jaw was already purpling, and nothing but time would resolve it. “Any broken teeth?”
Horn explored carefully. “I don’t think so.”
“In that case, coffee will do as much good as anything.” McKendrick took away the first-aid kit and came back with breakfast—a pot of coffee, toast, marmalade. Three cups. “Beth’ll be down in a minute.”
He supposed McKendrick knew his own daughter, but Horn hadn’t got the impression she was in any hurry to meet him formally. He took the coffee and let the bitter steam work its magic in his throbbing sinuses.
Finally McKendrick said what Horn had been expecting him to say for the last four hours. “Whether or not you want to tell me what’s going on, you owe me an explanation.”
“Because you saved my neck?”
“It isn’t a good enough reason?”
It wasn’t a bad one. Horn could still have refused to answer. He’d been accused of a lot of things in the last few years—rudeness was hardly a blip on the radar. But the man had saved him, at considerable risk to himself, and Horn had always had a strong sense of fair play. Even if it had only delayed the inevitable, McKendrick’s intervention earned him something.
Still Horn hesitated. He wasn’t fabricating a lie: he was trying to shape a couple of tidy sentences that would outline the history between Hanratty and himself without going into all the gory details. It was taking time because he hadn’t even tried to put it into words for years, since policemen stopped asking questions about it.
Finally he said, “Someone died. On a mountain. His father blames me.”
The thin brow above McKendrick’s hawkish eye climbed. “So he sent a hit man after you?”
Horn gave a weary shrug. “He’s not a very nice man.”
“No, really?” McKendrick’s voice dropped a tone. “Is he right? Was it your fault?”
Horn was too tired to lie. “Probably.”
“What was his name? The boy who fell.”
“Patrick.” Horn said it as if they’d been close.
“And it’s his father who’s after you,” observed McKendrick. “Not the authorities. So the police accept that it was an accident but the father doesn’t. Why not?”
Horn was going to tell him. It was a matter of public record, and nothing McKendrick did with the knowledge was capable of hurting Horn any more. But he didn’t get the chance.
He hadn’t heard the door behind him open, but he heard it shut. When he looked round, Beth McKendrick, dressed now and with her hair pulled back into a thick, ragged bunch, was staring at him with undisguised disgust. “Because he did what no climber ever does,” she said, her voice vibrant with a chilly rage. “Ever. Not even to save his own neck.”
Her head jerked and she glared at her father. “Don’t you know who he