Death in High Places - By Jo Bannister Page 0,45

first, came back shaking her head. “Still no joy.”

“They never used to be this bad.”

“Name me something that did.”

There was no arguing with that. McKendrick nodded. “Give me fifteen minutes to get my head sorted, then I’ll come down.”

“Shall I tell him to go?”

“No,” said McKendrick grimly. “Leave it to me.”

“As you prefer.” She closed William’s door softly behind her.

Horn was watching the monitors in the stone hall. He spoke before looking round, before he knew it was her. “I caught a movement on the far side of the courtyard five minutes ago. Nothing since.”

“Maybe he’s given up and gone home.”

Horn turned quickly at Beth’s voice, and as quickly turned back. “Somehow I doubt it,” he said gruffly to the screens.

“Maybe you should go outside and check. We’d feel pretty silly starving to death in here if he’d gone away days before.”

“Tell you what. Before we starve to death, I will.”

“Fine,” said Beth airily. “Or now. Whichever.”

Over the screens Horn’s back was hunched and tense, as if he anticipated an assault. “That’s really what you want, is it? To see me die. Will that satisfy you? Is it the only thing that will? Do you need to see me die before you can get on with your life?”

She considered for a moment. “No, not really. I’d settle for hearing it from a reliable source.”

He gritted his teeth. “And you think that’s what Patrick would want?”

“When he was alive? Of course not. He liked you, he trusted you—he wouldn’t have climbed with you if he hadn’t. But you cut him loose. In the four or five seconds it took him to meet up with the mountain again, I think he may have revised his opinion.”

Finally Horn made himself look at her. “Mack didn’t tell you?”

“Your latest attempt at self-justification?” Her tone was scornful. “That, in contrast to everything you’ve told everyone for the last four years, in fact Patrick cut his own rope? Yes, he told me. I think, for a few innocent minutes, he actually believed it. Then reality intervened. What amazed me was that it took a few minutes. He’s not considered gullible in the City.”

“I’m not trying to justify myself,” growled Horn mulishly. “It’s the truth.”

“Of course it is. Along with fairy godmothers, the Loch Ness Monster, the yeti, and the alien autopsies. After all, what possible reason could you have to lie?”

Horn swiveled his chair to meet her gaze full on. “And why do you find it so hard to believe that a man you call your friend, someone you say you were close to, did what we all hope we’d be brave enough to do in the same circumstances? Patrick Hanratty died well. Why are you so determined to take that from him?”

“Why were you?” she countered swiftly. “If it was such a good death, why did you tell people that you dropped him off the mountain like a pack that got too heavy to carry?”

He looked away. It may have been disdain, but it looked as if he couldn’t bear her scrutiny. “His family…”

“His family are Catholics,” retorted Beth, “not stupid. If it had happened the way you say—the way you say now—they’d have been proud of him. Even the old thug. You knew who he was—what he does, how he does it. And you announced that you’d cut his son’s rope. You must have known how he’d react to that. You must at least have wondered if he’d come after you with a flamethrower. But that was the story you told, and that was the story you stuck to. If you’d been lying, you could have come up with something so much better. The only possible reason for telling Tommy Hanratty that you cut Patrick’s rope was that it was the truth.”

“No.”

“Nobody lies to get themselves into more trouble! It’s perfectly obvious what happened. You told the Alaskans what happened exactly as it happened because you were so relieved to be alive that you couldn’t see anything wrong with it. I don’t think it occurred to you that you’d be pilloried for what you’d done. You thought the old macho climbing establishment would see it your way: that when it’s a matter of survival, you’re entitled to do anything you have to. Even killing a friend.

“Well, it may have kept you on the right side of the law, just, but the law isn’t the only arbiter of a man’s actions. The first, the really important one, is his own conscience. And if that isn’t