Death in High Places - By Jo Bannister Page 0,13

is? You bring him to our house, and you don’t even know who he is? One day you must try reading that bit of your newspaper wrapped round the financial pages.”

McKendrick was looking between the two of them—the battered young man on his sofa, the angry young woman behind it—as if this development were nearly as fascinating as a Mexican standoff with a professional killer. “All right, tell me. Who is he?”

Horn said, through tight lips, “My name’s Nicky Horn.”

Beth gave a little snort of laughter with absolutely no amusement in it. “The tabloids called him Anarchy Horn. He’s the man who cut Patrick Hanratty’s rope.”

CHAPTER 3

THE SILENCE went on and on. A glacial silence. Beth said nothing to break it because everything she’d had to say she’d said in those two sentences. Even with time to think, she knew they couldn’t be improved on. Horn said nothing because he had nothing to say. Everyone and his dog knew the story and had an opinion about what had happened on Anarchy Ridge above the Little Horse River. Horn hadn’t been left with a lot, but he still had too much pride to beg forgiveness of total strangers.

McKendrick said nothing because he seemed to be waiting. As if he thought Beth’s revelation were an opening gambit rather than a last word. But no further information was forthcoming, so finally he looked at Horn. “I notice you’re not denying it.”

Horn turned to face him, and it seemed to take more effort than even the residual concussion might have explained. “Why would I deny it? She knows who I am. Most people know who I am. Most people reckon they know what happened.”

“You’re saying they don’t?”

“I’m saying none of the fireside experts has the faintest idea what they’re talking about.” Horn’s eyes were hot, red-rimmed with resentment. “Climbers know. What it’s like in the mountains, where you put your life in other people’s hands so often, so totally, that it stops seeming like a big deal. You hold them, they hold you. It’s the norm. You trust one another. Then something goes wrong and suddenly it’s a big deal again. Other climbers have the right to judge me. People in pubs haven’t. Nor have people who care so much about their own safety that they live in castles.”

“Actually—” began McKendrick, but Beth interrupted him.

“Other climbers have judged you.”

The flash of desperate anger died in Horn’s eyes as quickly as it had flared. She wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t know. He lived with the knowledge; the knowledge was like a worm in his gut, eating away even when he was asleep. He growled, “They weren’t there.”

“Well, that’s true enough,” said Beth McKendrick tartly. “The only one there was you, which is why Patrick Hanratty’s buried in a glacier in Alaska. Anyone else—anyone—would have got him out of there, or died trying. But it was you. And you cut his rope.”

“I held him for three hours,” gritted Nicky Horn. “I couldn’t hold him any longer. I thought by then he was dead. That I was holding a dead man.”

“But you would say that, wouldn’t you?” spat Beth. “And we’ve only your word for the three hours. Maybe you got tired after the first ten minutes. When you couldn’t pull him up and he couldn’t help himself. Maybe that’s when you got your knife out. Maybe you thought, since that was how it was likely to end anyway, there was no point straining yourself first.”

“It was hours,” repeated Horn. There was something odd, thought McKendrick, about the way Horn spoke. Almost mechanical. As if he’d told the story so often that the words came automatically now, almost without his thinking about them. But that was just the words. Behind them, in the pits of his eyes, the emotion was still raw—as raw as if it had happened yesterday. “The wind was whipping the snow off the ridge around us. He was hanging on the end of a rope in the wind and the snow. He hadn’t answered me, and I hadn’t felt him move, for hours. When I cut him loose, I thought he was dead. I still think that.”

He didn’t say aloud, “I have to,” but McKendrick heard it as clearly as if he had.

Beth’s voice dropped softer. “But you’re the man who killed his partner rather than risk being pulled off the mountain by him. Why would anyone believe a word you say?”

Incredibly, Horn laughed. “They don’t,” he said, as if she’d missed