Death in High Places - By Jo Bannister Page 0,44

is. It’s what he told the authorities in Alaska and again when he got back here. Do you think they wouldn’t have realized if he was lying to them? All their experience dealing with thieves and murderers, and they’re going to have the wool pulled over their eyes by a carpenter with a warped sense of right and wrong? Grow up, Mack. He said he cut Patrick loose because that’s what happened. He thought nobody could touch him for it. He’s come up with this other version because his back’s against the wall and he thinks you can help him, but only if he can convince you he’s worth helping. Well, maybe he has convinced you. He’ll have to try a lot harder to convince me.”

He’d expected her to resist the idea. He’d expected tears and tantrums. Her calm dismissal of Horn’s new account made him wonder if he’d accepted it too readily. “It seemed to make sense,” he mumbled lamely.

“What?” Her arrow-straight gaze almost knocked him off his seat. “That because the Hanrattys are Catholics they couldn’t be expected to see the difference between their son committing suicide as an act of despair and giving up his life to save his friend? How stupid do you think they are? No, don’t answer that—about as stupid as Horn thinks you are! Why do you think he waited until you were alone before he told you that? Because he knew I’d see it for what it is. I don’t claim to be a theologian, but doesn’t all that stained-glass commemorate martyrs of one kind or another? People who gave their lives to help other people? If the Catholic Church regarded them all as suicides, I don’t think they’d be up there in their windows.”

McKendrick had to admit that she was right. Even he, with less knowledge of religious dogma than he had of the dark side of the moon, could see all the difference in the world between despair and self-sacrifice. When you tried to analyze it, it made no sense. If Horn had misled the police about what happened, sparing the Hanrattys’ feelings wasn’t why. “You think he’s lying?”

She laughed out loud, a jarring discordance. “Of course he’s lying, Mack! It’s what he does, remember? Even on his own account, he’s lied to someone. Look. He had no reason to tell the police what he did if it wasn’t true. At best he was going to make himself unpopular, at worst it was going to get him into trouble. Whereas lying to you now just might buy him a bit more time. So which do you reckon is most likely? Patrick cut the rope and Horn said he did it? Or Horn cut the rope and toughed it out until it looked as though a different story would serve him better? We know what he does when he’s staring death in the face. Anything he can think of to keep himself safe a little bit longer. Do you really think that a man who left his best friend on Anarchy Ridge would draw the line at lying to someone he met a few hours ago?”

“I suppose not,” McKendrick muttered. A pit was in the middle of him where his heart had sunk. You couldn’t blame a man for doing anything he had to in the effort to survive. Still somehow he was terribly disappointed.

It took him another minute to realize that, actually, this was a good thing. A Nicky Horn who’d lied to protect his friend’s reputation wouldn’t be much use to him. What he needed for his purposes was the young man Beth and the world thought he was—someone who prized his own survival so highly he’d do whatever it demanded of him. Anarchy Horn. That lingering sense of disappointment was sheer sentimentality, and McKendrick had never been a sentimental man. His long jaw hardened. “Stupid of me,” he gritted. “You’re right, of course.”

“Of course,” she echoed softly. “So you’ll do as I ask? Stop protecting him?”

McKendrick’s eyes turned inward for a moment, searching his conscience, examining his hopes and plans. Beth hardly noticed that what he said was not an echo of what she’d said. “I have no desire to protect him,” he growled.

CHAPTER 9

MCKENDRICK WAS ANGRY and didn’t want to see Horn for a while. Beth suggested that they swap shifts—that she go downstairs and watch the monitors and he sit quietly with his brother for a space. She went up the tower with the mobile phones