“We hardly talked when we were climbing. We didn’t have to. I always knew what he was going to try because it was always what I’d have done in the same situation.” He took a moment then to get the words in the right order. “That’s what I did on Anarchy Ridge. I did what he’d have done for me in the same situation. I did my best. I held him for as long as I could. When I couldn’t hold him anymore, and the only alternative was dying with him, I let him go.”
He moistened his bruised lips. “If you think you can make me feel worse about that, you’re wrong. If you think you can make me wonder if it was the right decision, you’re wrong about that too. I know it was the right decision. If I’d been hanging on his rope, it’s what I’d have wanted Patrick to do. I’d have wanted him to do everything in his power to save me—and when it wasn’t enough, I’d have wanted him to save himself. To survive. To get home and tell people what happened. That I’d got the death I wanted. That I’d rather have lived, but if I had to die, that was the place to do it. That I never wanted to be buried anywhere other than a mountain glacier.
“Mind,” he added as a sarcastic footnote, “I never went to university. I don’t think you can do a PhD in joinery. Pity, really. Maybe if I’d got a PhD, I’d behave more like an officer and a gentleman, and see the point of having two people dead on a mountain when you could just have one.”
It was the most talking Horn had done since McKendrick had met him. It was the nearest thing to eloquence he’d heard from him. It made him view Horn in a rather different light. It didn’t make him change his mind about anything, though.
It had more of an effect on Beth. She’d gone very white. Now a flush of pink stole up her cheeks. She opened her mouth to reply but no words came. As if, McKendrick thought critically, she were willing to beat a cowering dog but not one that might snap back.
But he remembered how upset she’d been by Patrick Hanratty’s death. She’d hardly talked about it—they had never, thought McKendrick ruefully, been great talkers—but first the news and then the details that emerged over the following weeks had swept the feet from under her. As if she and young Hanratty had been better friends than he’d realized.
She stood frozen, staring at Horn’s battered, embattled face as if he’d stepped out of one of her nightmares and she didn’t know what to do about him. Then she clamped her jaw shut, turned abruptly and left the room, slamming the door behind her so that the air in the little sitting room went on reverberating for seconds.
After a moment McKendrick said mildly, “She always used to do that when she was cross. You wouldn’t believe the number of hinges I’ve had to replace.”
Horn gave a little pant like a hunted fox as some of the tension left him. “I think,” he said carefully, “she was more than cross.”
“She was upset. It’s understandable, in the circumstances.”
“You reckon?” drawled Horn with heavy irony. “What in God’s name were you thinking? You knew she was a friend of Patrick’s, you must have realized how bringing me here was going to hurt her. Why would you do that?”
McKendrick chuckled. “I’m sorry, Nicky—Nicky?—but you’re nowhere near as famous as you think you are. I didn’t recognize you. Sure, I’d heard the story—of course I had, Beth was at university with the boy who died. But it was all years ago. I probably saw your face in the papers at the time, but I’d no reason to remember it. I’d no reason to suppose Beth would know you from Adam.”
McKendrick leaned forward to refill his cup from the coffeepot. “So that’s what it was all about—the guy with the gun. Patrick Hanratty’s father sent him. And he’s still after you four years later.” He thought about that. “A bit obsessive, I’d have thought. I mean, yes, it was his son, he was entitled to hold a grudge. But if you go in for risk sports, sometimes you draw the short straw. I’d have thought that was part of the deal. I can see he might strike you