Death in High Places - By Jo Bannister Page 0,9

face and road dirt on his clothes, struggling to keep his feet both actually and metaphorically. A young man in his midtwenties, not tall but sturdy, strong. Dark hair, overdue a trim, falling in his face in rats’ tails courtesy of the rain. No coat, and no shoes. He didn’t look as if he’d fallen in the gutter. He looked as if he’d been living in it.

His voice was gruff, plainly well-educated, and laced in equal quantities with humor and irritation. “You’re—what?—twenty-six, twenty-seven years old? It doesn’t seem beyond the realms of possibility that somewhere in the next fifty years you might do something of value to someone. In fact, you might make it a kind of New Life’s Resolution. That one day you’ll help someone else who has no one left to turn to.”

“He could have killed you!” Disbelief sent the words soaring. “I thought he was going to kill you.”

The man shook his head. “No one was paying him to kill me. And he couldn’t kill you and leave me standing here, so he couldn’t kill you either. Today. Tomorrow will be different. If I were you, I’d try to sort out my differences with whoever sent him.”

“I wish I could,” said Horn feelingly.

“Too much water under the bridge?”

“Too much blood.”

The man’s head was tilted to one side as he studied Nicky Horn, apparently unsure what to make of him. Something about the tilt was familiar. Yes—the mirror. The man in the car who met his eyes before looking away to check his mirror. “I’ve seen you before,” said Horn.

“That’s possible,” the man agreed negligently.

“Last night. Outside the sandwich bar.”

“Yes?”

“You live round here?”

“I was on my way home.”

Though Horn wasn’t on top form mentally, he could see the problem with that. “So what are you still doing here five hours later?”

The man chuckled, enjoying Horn’s confusion. “You’re accusing me of loitering? Of lowering the tone of the neighborhood? You wish I’d taken my cheese-on-rye and gone home?”

The whole tenor of the conversation was troubling Horn. It was as if the man was enjoying a joke at his expense. They’d both come close to dying, Horn closest, but the other man closer than he’d probably ever been before, and he thought it was funny.

Then he realized what the man had been doing here. The only possible explanation—for his presence in this run-down district, for the time he’d spent here, for his being on the street at three in the morning. It even explained the mood of recklessness that had led him to intervene in a situation he should have passed with an averted eye. “You were with a hooker.”

The man laughed out loud. “That’s right, Officer, you’ve got me bang to rights. Oh, the shame! Please don’t tell my wife. The shock would kill my mother.” He looked round. “Now, if we’ve got that out of the way, and if you’re not too embarrassed to be seen with an old curb-crawler, can I give you a lift anywhere?”

Horn blinked, waved a hand that was still not quite steady. “My room’s only up there…”

“Your room,” said the man evenly. “Your room where a hired killer found you. You’re planning on going back there, are you?”

“I…” If his head had been a bit clearer he wouldn’t have considered it. He didn’t own so many clothes that leaving them behind would be much loss. His toolkit was another matter. He needed it to work. If he couldn’t work, he couldn’t buy a new one. He also needed his boots. “I have to get a couple of things. If you can wait, I won’t be a minute. If you can’t, thanks anyway.” It wasn’t much to say to a man he owed his life to, but it was sincere.

The man shrugged. “I’ll wait.”

Horn got as far as the hallway. But the stairs defeated him. While he was regarding them owlishly, wondering if he’d wake the whole house by going up on his hands and knees, a hand on his shoulder moved him quite gently aside. “Tell me what you need.”

He was too grateful to argue. “The toolbag’s just inside the door. My jacket’s on the hook. My wallet’s in the pocket, and my boots are probably under the bed. Everything else I can leave.”

In fact the man took a moment longer and threw everything he could see into the haversack Horn used as a suitcase. He reappeared carrying it in one hand and the toolbag in the other, a combined load that would