off his Christmas-card list, but a hired killer seems a bit much.”
“I told you,” growled Horn, “he’s not a nice man. I mean, really. He runs one of Dublin’s crime syndicates. He scared the shit out of Patrick—from when he was old enough to leave home he stayed as far away from his dad as he could. He bullied him as a child, used his fists on him as a teenager. He’s got some nerve now pretending Patrick was the apple of his eye.
“He isn’t doing it for Patrick. He’s doing it because someone took something away from him. From him—Tommy Hanratty. If I’d boosted a slab of his cocaine, he’d have called the same guy. Nobody takes anything from Tommy Hanratty.”
McKendrick was nodding slowly. “I still think four years is long enough to make a point. Have you tried talking to him?”
Horn looked at him as if he were mad. “Talking to him? He sent a hired gun after me! He wants me dead, and he doesn’t care who knows it. It’s the worst-kept secret in criminology. If I went to his house, he’d do it himself. If he saw me in the street, he’d run me down in his car. Tonight wasn’t the first time he’s got close. This is how I’ve been living since the police lost interest in me. Because Tommy Hanratty is willing to do anything, pay anything, gamble anything, on seeing me dead. I wouldn’t know how to begin talking him out of that.”
“I could have a word with him.”
Horn laughed aloud at the sheer effrontery of it. “No, you won’t have a word with him. You’ll keep your head down, and your shutters up, and your drawbridge in the upright position, and hope Tommy Hanratty never hears your name. If he ever gets the idea that it was you who came between him and having my heart in a plastic bag tonight, he’ll come after you too. And your daughter, and anyone else he thinks you might care about. And you’ll be easier to find than me.”
“Oh, I think I can handle Mr. Hanratty.” McKendrick smiled lazily.
“No, you can’t,” insisted Horn. “He doesn’t play by your rules. He doesn’t play by any rules. I’m sure you’re a hard man in the City, and the closest thing your club has had to a rakehell since Byron got blackballed, but you’re not in Tommy Hanratty’s league. No one is. He hurts people for fun. When he’s seriously pissed off, he does things you’ve never dreamed of, even after a lobster supper. You don’t want him doing them to you, or to Beth.”
“That’s true,” allowed McKendrick. “I’m not that happy about letting him do them to you, either.”
“I am not your responsibility,” yelled Horn, beside himself with exasperation. “You’ve done enough already. I don’t know why you got involved, and I don’t know why we’re still arguing about this when I’ve told you who I am and who Tommy Hanratty is. But you’ll regret it for the rest of your life if you don’t let me get on my way right now. You bought me some time, and I’m grateful for that. Now let me use it.
“He hasn’t given up—the guy with the gun. He never did before, he hasn’t this time. He’s still looking. If I’m here when he catches up with me, it’s going to be another of those inexplicable country-house murders that the Sunday papers love because it’s rich people coming to a sticky end and no one’s ever going to know why. He’ll kill me, and you, and Beth, and he’ll burn the house down, and he’ll make it look like something quite different. As if maybe I broke in, and we killed one another in the struggle.”
It seemed he’d finally found some words, evoked an image, that resonated with McKendrick. He had no reply. He stood for a moment, blinking stupidly, as though he’d just realized this wasn’t a corporate team-building exercise, some kind of an elaborate game—a treasure hunt where the first one back to the hotel with a policeman’s helmet gets the magnum of champers. As if he’d thought Horn had been exaggerating the danger, and now he wasn’t sure.
Horn pressed his advantage, momentarily forgetting what winning the argument would mean. “Your stone walls and your steel shutters won’t keep him out. Most of the people he goes after have them too. People as good at their job as this man cost a lot of money, and that means