by Jo Nesbo
‘Darling.’
How many times had she heard this voice whisper this word in her ear? And yet every time was like the first. He lifted her long red hair to the side, and she felt currents run through her body as his lips touched her neck. It was unprofessional – she knew the two men at the bar were watching – but she let it go. He was here.
‘Where’ve you been?’
‘In my new office,’ he said, wrapping an arm around her midriff.
‘New office?’ She caressed his forearm. Felt the scar tissue under her fingertips. He had told her the reason the scars were there was because he’d had to inject in the dark and couldn’t see his veins, so he would feel his way to the wound from the previous injection and shoot up in the same spot. If you did that enough times, for several years, plus the unavoidable infection now and then, you ended up with forearms that looked like his, as though they had been dragged through barbed wire. But she couldn’t feel any fresh wounds. It was some years ago now. So long that sometimes – in fits of childlike optimism – she considered him cured.
‘I didn’t think you called those coal bins in the cellar offices.’
‘On the third floor,’ Macbeth said.
Lady turned to him. ‘What?’
His white teeth shone in his dark beard. ‘You see before you the new head of Organised Crime in this town.’
‘Is that true?’
‘Yes.’ He laughed. ‘And now you look as shocked as I imagine I did in Duncan’s office.’
‘I’m not shocked, my love. I’m . . . I’m just happy. It’s so deserved! Haven’t I kept telling you? Haven’t I said you’re worth more than that office in the basement?’
‘Yes, you have. Again and again, darling. But you were the only one.’ Macbeth leaned back and laughed again.
‘And now we’re going up, my love. Out of your cellar obscurity! I hope you demanded a good salary.’
‘Salary? No, I forgot to ask. My sole demand was that I had Banquo as my deputy, and they both agreed. It’s quite mad—’
‘Mad? Not at all. It’s a wise appointment.’
‘Not the appointment. On the way to HQ we met three sisters sent by Hecate, who prophesied I would get the job.’
‘Prophesied?’
‘Yes!’
‘They must have known.’
‘No. When I got to Duncan’s office he said the decision had been made just five minutes before.’
‘Hm. Witchcraft, nothing less.’
‘They were probably high on their own dope and talking nonsense. They said I’d be the chief commissioner, too. And do you know what? Duncan suggested we celebrate my appointment here, at the Inverness!’
‘Hang on a moment. What did they say?’
‘He wanted to celebrate it here. Wouldn’t the chief commissioner choosing to organise a party in your casino be good for your reputation?’
‘No, I mean the sisters. Did they say you’d be chief commissioner?’
‘Yes, but forget it, darling. I suggested to Duncan that we make an evening of it, and he and all the people who live out of town can stay overnight in the hotel. You’ve got quite a lot of unoccupied rooms at the moment, so . . .’
‘Of course we’ll do that.’ She stroked his cheek. ‘I can hear you’re happy, but you still look pale, my love.’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I think I’m sickening for something. I see dead men in traffic lights.’
She put a hand under his arm. ‘Come on. I’ve got what you need, my boy.’
He smiled. ‘Yes, you do.’
They sailed through the casino. She knew it was her high heels that made her half a head taller than him. Knew her young figure, elegant evening gown and stately, lissom walk made the men at the bar still stare after her. Knew this was something they didn’t have at the Obelisk.
Duff lay on the large double bed staring at the ceiling, at the crack in the paint he knew so well.
‘Afterwards, as I was leaving the meeting, Duncan took me aside and asked if I was disappointed,’ he explained. ‘He said we both knew I’d have been the natural candidate for the post.’
The crack had offshoots spreading in an apparently random way, but when he scrunched up his eyes, thereby losing focus, the crack seemed to follow a pattern, form an image. He just couldn’t work out what it was.
‘And what did you answer?’ came the voice over the running water in the bathroom. Even now, after having seen as much of each other as any two people can, she disliked him seeing her until she was ready. And that was fine by him.
‘I answered that, yes, I was disappointed. When he said they wanted Macbeth because he didn’t belong to the inner circle, my being one of those who had supported Duncan’s project right from the start was used against me.’
‘Well, that’s true. What did—?’
‘Duncan said there was another reason, but he didn’t want to mention it with the others present. The Sweno raid had only been partly successful as Sweno had got away. And it turned out I had received the tip-off so early that there would have been enough time to inform him. I had almost undone a year’s undercover work by what looked a lot like an ego trip. And Macbeth and SWAT had saved the whole operation. Therefore it would seem suspicious to choose me ahead of him. But at least he did give me a consolation prize.’
‘He gave you the Homicide Unit, and that’s not bad, is it?’
‘It’s smaller than Narco, but at least I escaped the humiliation of being a subordinate officer in Organised Crime.’
‘Who persuaded Duncan anyway?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Who argued Macbeth’s case? Duncan’s a listener; he likes consensus and goes for group decisions.’
‘Believe me, my dearest, no one lobbies for Macbeth. I doubt he knows what the word means. All he wants in life is to catch baddies and make sure his casino queen is happy.’
‘Speaking of which.’ She posed by the bathroom door. The gauzy negligee revealed more than it hid of course. Duff liked a lot about this woman, some things he wasn’t even able to articulate, but what he idolised was plain enough: her youth. The glow from the candles on the floor made the moisture in her eyes, on her red lips, on her shining teeth, sparkle. And yet tonight he needed something more. He wasn’t in the mood. After what had happened he didn’t feel like the buck he had been when he had started the day. But that could perhaps be changed.
‘Take it off,’ he said.
She laughed. ‘I’ve just put it on.’
‘It’s an order. Stay where you are and take it off. Slowly.’
‘Hm. Maybe. If I’m given a clearer order . . .’
‘Caithness, you are hereby ordered by a superior officer to turn your back, pull what you’re wearing over your head, lean forward and take a good hold of the door frame.’
Duff heard her little girlie gasp of shock. Perhaps it was put on for his sake, perhaps not. It was fine by him. He was getting in the mood.
Hecate strode across the damp floor of the central station, between the peeling walls and mumbling drug addicts. He noticed the gaze of two guys stooped over a spoon and syringe they were obviously sharing. They didn’t know him. No one knew him. Perhaps they were thinking the big man with the mustard-yellow cashmere coat, the carefully groomed, almost unnaturally black hair and the resplendent heavy Rolex looked like perfect prey which had just walked into the lion’s den. Or they may have had suspicions; perhaps there was something about the self-assured, determined gait, something about the gold-capped walking stick, which made a rhythmic tick-tock in time with the stiletto heels of the tall broad-shouldered woman who walked two steps behind him. If she was a woman. There might also have been something about the three men, all wearing grey lightweight coats, who had entered the station immediately before him and taken up a position by the wall. Perhaps that was why
they sensed that they were in his den. He was the lion.
Hecate stopped, and let Strega go first down the narrow stairs reeking of urine to the toilet. Saw the two druggies lower their heads and concentrate on the task in hand – heating and injecting. Addicts. For Hecate this was a statement of fact without contempt or irritation. After all, they were his bread and butter.
Strega opened the door at the bottom of the stairs, lifted a sleeping man to his feet, bared her teeth to show him her mood and a thumb to point him in the right direction. Hecate followed her in between the cubicles and the running sinks. The stench was so intense that Hecate could still get tears in his eyes. But it also had a function: it kept away curious eyes and made even the hardened addicts keep their visits as brief as possible. Strega and Hecate went into the furthest cubicle with the sign DO NOT USE on the door and a bowl filled to the brim with excrement. Furthermore, the neon tube in the ceiling above had been removed, so it was impossible to see or hit veins in there. Strega removed one of the tiles above the disconnected loo, turned a handle and pushed. The wall swung open, and they stepped inside.
‘Close it quickly,’ Hecate said and coughed. He looked around the room. It had been a railway storeroom, and the other door led to the tunnel for the southern lines. He had moved his production here two years after the train traffic had ceased. He’d had to chase out some tramps and junkies, and although no one ever came here and Chief Commissioner Kenneth had been their highest-ranking protector he had installed camouflaged CCTV in the tunnel and over the stairs down to the toilet. There were twelve people in total on the evening shift, all wearing masks and white coats. On this side of the glass partition dividing the room into two, brew was chopped up, weighed and packed into plastic bags by seven people. By the tunnel door sat two armed guards keeping an eye on the workers and the CCTV monitors. Inside the glass partition was what they called the inner sanctum or simply the kitchen. The tank was there, and only the sisters had access. The kitchen was hermetically sealed for many reasons. First, so that nothing outside could contaminate the processes inside and because some idiot might inadvertently flick a lighter or throw down a lit cigarette end, blowing them all to pieces. But mostly because everyone in the room would soon be hooked if they inhaled the molecules floating in the air on a daily basis.
Hecate had found the sisters in a Chinatown opium den in Bangkok, where the two had set up a home-made laboratory to make heroin from the opium in Chang Rai. He didn’t know much about them, only that they had fled China with Chiang Kai-shek’s people, the disease that had ravaged their faces had reportedly spread through the village they came from, and as long as he paid them punctually they would deliver whatever he asked. The ingredients were well known, the proportions the same, and others could follow the procedures through the glass window. Yet there was a mystery about the way they mixed and heated the ingredients. And Hecate saw no reason to deny the rumours that they used toads’ glands, bumble bee wings, juice from rats’ tails and even blew their noses into the tank. It created a sense of black magic, and if there was something that people would pay for in their all-too-real working lives, it was precisely that: black magic. And brew was going down a bomb. Hecate had never seen so many become so desperately addicted in such a short time. But it was equally obvious that the day the sisters produced a slightly less potent product he would have to get rid of them. That was how it was. Everything had its day, its cycle. Like the two decades under Kenneth. The good times. And now with Duncan, who if he was allowed to go his merry way would mean bad times for the magic industry. It is obvious that if the gods bring good and bad times, short human lives and death, you have to make sure you become a god yourself. It is easier than you might think. The obstacle to most people achieving god-like status is that they are afraid and superstitious, and in their anxiety-ridden submission they believe there is a morality, a set of heaven-sent rules that apply to all people. But these rules are made by precisely those that tell you they are gods, and in some strange way the rules serve these gods. Well, OK, not everyone can be a god, and every god needs followers, a client base. A market. A town. Many towns.
Hecate took up a position at the end of the room, placed both hands on the top of his stick and just stood there. This was his factory. Here he was the factory owner. In a growing industry. He would soon have to expand. If he didn’t meet the demand others would, those were the simple rules of capitalism. He’d long had plans to take over one of the town’s disused factories, set up some fictitious business as a cover while he concocted his brew in the back rooms. Guards, barbed-wire fences, his own lorries going in and out. He could increase production tenfold and export to the rest of the country. But it would be more visible and would require police protection. It would require a chief commissioner who was in his pocket. It would require a Kenneth. So what do you do if Kenneth is dead? You make a new one and clear a path for him.
He received stiff smiles and brief nods from his choppers and packers before they launched themselves at their tasks with renewed energy. They were frightened. That was the principal purpose of these inspections. Not to stop the cycle – it was inevitable – but to delay it. Everyone in this cellar room would at some point try to cheat him, take a few grams home and sell it themselves. They would be found out, and the sentence would be carried out speedily. By Strega. She seemed to enjoy her varied assignments. Like being a messenger together with the sisters.
‘Well, Strega,’ he said. ‘Do you think the seed we sowed in Macbeth will grow?’
‘Human ambition will always stretch towards the sun like a thistle and overshadow and kill everything around it.’
‘Let’s hope so.’
‘They’re thistles. They can’t help themselves. They’re evil and foolish. If people see the soothsayer’s first prophecy fulfilled they’ll believe the next one blindly. And now Macbeth has found out he’s the new head of Organised Crime. The only question is whether Macbeth has enough of the thistle’s ambition in him. And the necessary cruelty to go the whole way.’
‘Macbeth doesn’t,’ Hecate said. ‘But she does.’
‘She?’
‘Lady, his beloved dominatrix. I’ve never met her, yet I know her innermost secrets and understand her better than I understand you, Strega. All Lady needs is time to reach the inescapable conclusion. Believe me.’
‘Which is?’
‘That Duncan has to be got rid of.’
‘And then?’
‘Then,’ Hecate said, tapping his stick on the ground, tap-tap. ‘The good times will roll again.’
‘Are you sure we can control Macbeth? Now he’s clean he’s probably . . . moralistic, isn’t he?’
‘My dear Strega, the only person more predictable than a junkie or a moralist is a love-smitten junkie and moralist.’
Banquo lay in the bedroom on the first floor listening to the rain, to the silence in the room, to the train that never came. The railway track ran past outside, and he visualised the wet, glistening gravel where some of the rails and the sleepers had been removed. Well, stolen. They had been happy here, he and Vera. They’d had good times. He had met Vera while she was working for the goldsmith Jacobs & Sons, where the finer folk went to buy wedding rings and gifts for each other. One evening the burglar alarm went off, and Banquo – who was on patrol – arrived on the spot, sirens howling, within a minute. Inside, a terrified young woman was desperately shouting over the ear-piercing bell that she was only closing up, she was new and must have done something wrong when she was putting the alarm on. He had only caught the odd word here and there and had had all the more time to observe her. And when eventually she burst into tears he had put a gentle, consoling arm around her. She felt like a warm, tremulous, fledgling bird. During the next few weeks they went to the cinema, walked on the sunny side of the tunnel and he had kissed her at the gate. She came from a working-class family and lived at home. Right from a young girl she’d h
ad to make a contribution and had worked at the Estex factory like her parents. Until she got a bad cough, unofficial advice from a doctor to work elsewhere and a job at Jacobs via recommendations.
‘The pay’s worse,’ she said, ‘but you live longer.’
‘You still cough?’
‘Only on rainy days.’
‘We’d better make sure you get more sunshine. Another walk on Sunday?’
After six months Banquo went to the jeweller’s shop and asked her if she had an engagement ring she could recommend. She looked so bewildered he had to laugh.
After getting married they moved into a poky two-bed flat, with neighbours beneath them on the ground floor. They had saved up for, bought and made love in the bed where he was lying now. Out of consideration for their neighbours, Vera – who was a passionate but shy woman – would wait for a train until she came. When a train thundered past, shaking the walls and ceiling lamps, she let herself go, screamed and dug her nails into his back. She did the same when she gave birth to Fleance in that very bed – waited until the train came and then screamed, dug her nails into his hand and squeezed out a son.
They bought the ground floor the following year to have more room. There were three of them and could soon be many more. But five years later there were only two of them: a boy and a man. It was her lungs. The doctors blamed the polluted air, all the toxins from the factories forced down by low-pressure weather systems hovering over the town like a lid. And with lungs that were already damaged . . . Banquo blamed himself. He hadn’t been able to scrape enough money together to move the family to the other side of the tunnel, to Fife, to somewhere with a bit of sunshine and fresh air you could breathe.