Death in High Places - By Jo Bannister Page 0,7

could hear it in his voice. “I’m sure you can. I’ll help.” He draped Horn’s arm over his shoulder, and that was how they went down the stairs, out into the dark street, and round the first corner to where an unremarkable navy blue saloon car was waiting. It might have taken a minute, no more. Anyone seeing them would have thought Horn was drunk, his killer a helpful friend.

Horn spent the time thinking—almost expecting—that something would happen. Someone would stop them, or a police patrol would swing by, or Horn would recover just enough of his strength to knee his assailant in the groin and leg it, trusting he could get back round the corner faster than a man nursing that most personal of hurts could draw his gun.

But none of those things happened. They reached the car. The man opened the back door. Horn planted an unsteady hand against the frame, as sure as death and taxes that if he allowed himself to be forced inside the game was over. “You don’t have to do this,” he mumbled, steering the words carefully past his throbbing teeth. “Tell him you couldn’t find me.”

“And what? You think he’ll pay me anyway? You think my employer will worry if my children don’t get their ski trip this year? I’m sorry. But this is how I make my living.”

“I don’t deserve this,” insisted Horn weakly. “I haven’t done anything to deserve it.”

“No? But you see, I don’t care.” Quite calmly the man exchanged his grip on Horn’s arm for a handful of his hair and banged his forehead smartly on the top of the car. The shooting stars took flight again like a flock of startled starlings, the pain in his face exploded like fireworks, and as Horn’s knees buckled the man folded him expertly onto the backseat.

Then something unexpected happened.

Because in all honesty, nothing that had happened up to this point had been in any way unpredictable. It had only been a matter of time. Horn had run as long as he could, laid up as carefully as he could; but he’d always known that one of Hanratty’s dogs, faster or keener or more persistent than the others, would find him one day. Today was that day. He couldn’t honestly claim to be surprised.

But the smooth inevitability of it seemed now to meet an obstacle. The car door that should have closed with the crisp snap of a hangman’s trapdoor remained open, the engine silent. Instead, after a moment, he heard voices.

“The sensible thing,” said the one he hadn’t heard before, “would be to leave him here and drive away.”

There was a brief pause in which Horn almost heard the sound of mental cogs changing gear. Then Hanratty’s man said mildly, “I don’t know what you mean. There’s no problem here.”

“No? Let’s ask him.”

The man with the gun hadn’t forgotten he had it. He just wasn’t ready to draw it in front of someone he hadn’t come here to kill. He moved proprietorially between Horn and the new arrival. “I’ve got a better idea. Let’s not.”

“It doesn’t look to me as if he wants to come with you.”

“He doesn’t.” A light, inconsequential laugh. “But his wife wants him home just the same.”

“He isn’t married.”

Horn heard the elevated eyebrow. “You know him?”

“Never met him in my life. But I know a lie when I hear one.”

When his lie has been rumbled, a wise man stops lying. This wise man’s voice dropped a couple of tones. He wasn’t trying to sound menacing. He didn’t have to, any more than a tiger has to try. “You don’t know what you’re getting involved in. So I’ll tell you what you need to do. Turn round and walk away.”

The other man laughed. There was gravel in it. “Oh, I’ve a pretty good idea what’s going on. If I walk away, he’s going to end up dead.”

“If you don’t, maybe you will.”

“Or maybe he survives, and I survive, and you die in prison for all the times you did this and got away with it.”

A longer silence this time. When Hanratty’s man spoke again, for the first time Horn heard a fractional uncertainty. “You know me?”

“Not your name. Not where to find you—though I know where to find people like you. But I know what you do, and how you do it. What’s the preferred term these days? You’re a mechanic—a hit man, a professional killer. You aren’t going to compromise your own safety doing your job.