by Jo Nesbo
Caithness rushed into the kitchen with a black doctor’s bag in her hand.
‘What is it?’ Duff asked when he saw her expression.
‘It was HQ. Macbeth’s deputy from SWAT . . .’
‘Banquo?’ Duff felt his throat constrict.
‘Yes,’ she said, pulling open a drawer. ‘He’s been found on Kenneth Bridge.’
‘Found? Do you mean . . . ?’
‘Yes,’ she said, rummaging angrily in the drawer.
‘How?’ The questions that accumulated were too numerous, and Duff helplessly grabbed his forehead.
‘I don’t know yet, but the police at the scene say his car’s riddled with bullets. And his head’s been removed.’
‘Removed? As in . . . cut off?’
‘We’ll soon see,’ she said, taking a pair of latex gloves from the drawer and putting them in the bag. ‘Can you drive me?’
‘Caithness, I’ve got this meeting, so . . .’
‘You didn’t say where, but if it’s a long detour . . .’
He looked at the knife again.
‘I’ll go with you,’ he said. ‘Of course I will. I’m head of the Homicide Unit, and this case is top priority.’
Then he turned and threw the knife hard at the cork board. It spun one and a half times on its axis before hitting the board handle first and falling to the kitchen floor with a clatter.
‘What are you trying to do?’ she asked.
Duff stared at the knife. ‘Something you need a lot of practice at before you succeed. Come on.’
17
‘SO, SEYTON,’ MACBETH SAID, ‘WHAT can I do for you?’
The rays of sunshine had found a break in the clouds and were now angled through the grimy windows of the chief commissioner’s office and fell on his desk, on his photo of Lady, on the calendar showing it was a Tuesday, on the drawing of the Gatling gun and, sitting in front of Macbeth’s desk, the polished, shiny pate of the lean, sinewy officer.
‘You need a bodyguard,’ Seyton said.
‘Do I? And what kind of bodyguard do I need?’
‘One who can fight evil with evil. Duncan had two, and after this business with Banquo, God bless his soul, there’s every reason to assume they’re after you as well, Chief Commissioner.’
‘Who are they ?’
Seyton looked at Macbeth with puzzlement in his eyes before answering. ‘The Norse Riders. My understanding is that they’re behind this execution.’
Macbeth nodded. ‘Witnesses in District 2 say they saw bikers, some of them wearing Norse Rider jackets, shooting at a Volvo outside a jewellery shop the car had driven into. We presume it was Banquo’s car.’
‘If Malcolm was involved, the threat to the chief commissioner may come from inside the force. I don’t trust all our so-called leaders. In my opinion, Duff is someone who lacks spine and morality. Of the threats outside the force there’s obviously Hecate.’
‘Hecate’s a businessman. Being suspected of murder is rarely good for business. Sweno, on the other hand, has a motive which trumps business sense.’
‘Revenge.’
‘Good old-fashioned revenge, yes. Some of our economists seem to undervalue the human tendency to follow our basest instincts instead of the bank book. When the black widow’s lover is lying on her back, sated and exhausted by love-making, he knows he’ll soon be eaten. Yet he would never be able to make any other choice. And there you have Sweno.’
‘So you’re less afraid of Hecate?’
‘I’ve told you today that resources should be distributed more sensibly, the witch-hunt aimed at Hecate has to be scaled down so that we can sort out other more pressing problems for the town.’
‘Such as?’
‘Such as honest, hard-working people being openly cheated and robbed of their savings by one of our more dubious casinos. But back to the point. Former chief commissioners have had bad experiences with bodyguards, but I haven’t forgotten how effective and brave you were when I was attacked by that dog at Cawdor’s. So let me sleep on this, Seyton. Actually, I’d been thinking of giving you a different post, one which is not so different from the one you were requesting, actually.’
‘Oh?’
‘Now I’m chief commissioner and Banquo’s gone, SWAT doesn’t have a head. You, Seyton, are the oldest officer with the most experience.’
‘Thank you, Chief Commissioner. That is really an unexpected honour and statement of trust. The problem is that I don’t know if I’m worthy of the trust. I’m not a politician, nor a leader of men.’
‘No, I know the type. You’re a watchdog who needs a master and a mistress, Seyton. But SWAT is a kind of watchdog. You’d be surprised at the detail of the instructions you get. I barely needed to think about how to apprehend the bad guys. And given the murders over the last two days it’s clear that the threat to someone sitting in my chair is such that SWAT will have to be used to actively protect the head of police HQ.’
‘Are you saying that SWAT will become the chief commissioner’s personal bodyguard?’
‘I can’t imagine that an arrangement of that kind would meet any resistance that can’t be quelled. In which case, we would be killing two birds with one stone. Your wishes and mine would be met. What do you say, Seyton?’
The sun was going down, and perhaps it was the sudden darkness falling in the room that made Seyton lower his voice so it sounded like a conspiratorial whisper: ‘As long as my orders come directly and in detail from you personally, Chief Commissioner.’
Macbeth studied the man in front of him. God bless his soul, Seyton had said about Banquo. Macbeth wondered what kind of blessing it had been.
‘My orders, loyal Seyton, will be unambiguous. As far as quelling protests is concerned, I’ve just ordered two of these Gatling guns.’ He passed Seyton the drawing. ‘Express delivery. Bit more expensive, but we’ll get them in two days. What do you think?’
Seyton ran his eye over the drawing, nodding slowly. ‘Tasty,’ he said. ‘Beautiful in fact.’
Duff yawned as he drove from a clear sky to dark clouds.
Ewan had woken him when he jumped up into the guest bed, with his sister hard on his heels.
‘Daddy, you’re home!’
They’d had breakfast in the kitchen with the morning sun low over the lake. Meredith had told the children to stop fighting to sit on Daddy’s lap and eat; they had to go to school. She hadn’t managed to put on the strict voice Duff knew she wanted to, and he had seen the smile in her eyes.
Now he passed the crime scene, where the bullet-riddled car had been towed away and the blood on the tarmac had been cleaned up. Caithness and her people had worked efficiently and found what evidence there was. And there hadn’t been much for him to do apart from state the obvious: that Banquo had been shot and beheaded. There was no trace of Fleance, but Duff had noticed that the seat belt on the passenger seat had been cut. That could mean anything at all; for the time being all they could do was put out a general missing-person alert for Banquo’s young son. It was a deserted stretch of road, as the bridge was closed, and it was unlikely there had been any witnesses in the vicinity, so after an hour Duff had decided that since he was halfway home he may as well sleep in Fife.
Where he had lain awake thinking to the accompaniment of the grasshoppers’ song outside. He had known. Known but hadn’t understood. It wasn’t that he had suddenly seen the bigger picture; it wasn’t that all the interlocking pieces had suddenly fitted into the jigsaw puzzle. It had been one simple detail. The knife in Caithness’s kitchen. But while he had been brooding the other pieces had emerged and slowly fitted in. Then he had fallen asleep and woken to the children’s ambush at dawn.
Duff drove over the old bridge. It was narrow and modest in comparison with Kenneth Bridge, but solidly built, and many thought it would stand for longer.
&nbs
p; The problem was: who should he talk to?
It had to be someone who not only had enough power, influence and dynamism, but also someone he could trust, who wasn’t involved.
He drove down to the garage under HQ as the break in the clouds closed and the sun’s short visit was over.
Lennox looked up from his typewriter as Duff came in. ‘Lunch soon, and you’re yawning as if you’ve just got up.’
‘For the last time, is that thing genuine?’ Duff asked, nodding at the tarnished stick with a lump of rusty metal on the end that Lennox used as a paperweight. Duff slumped down in a chair beside the door.
‘And for the last time—’ Lennox sighed ‘—I inherited it from my grandfather, who had it thrown at his head in the Somme trenches. Fortunately, as you can see, the German forgot to pull the detonator pin. His soldier pals laughed a lot at that story.’
‘Are you saying they laughed a lot in the Somme?’
‘According to my grandfather the worse it got, the more they laughed. He called it the laughter of war.’
‘I still think you’re lying, Lennox. You’re not the type to have a live grenade on your desk.’
Lennox smiled as he went on typing. ‘Grandad kept it in his house all his life. He said it reminded him of the important things – the transience of life, the role of chance, his own mortality and others’ incompetence.’
Duff motioned to the typewriter. ‘Haven’t you got a secretary to take care of that?’
‘I’ve started writing my own letters and leaving the building to post them myself. Yesterday I was told by the Public Prosecutor’s Office that one of my letters appeared to have been opened and resealed before they received it.’
‘I’m not shocked. Thanks for receiving me at such short notice.’
‘Receiving me? That sounds very formal. You didn’t say what this was about on the phone.’
‘No. As I said, I’m not shocked that someone opens letters.’
‘The switchboard. Do you think—’
‘I don’t think anything, Lennox. I agree with you that there’s no point taking risks with the situation as it is now.’
Lennox nodded slowly and tilted his head. ‘And yet, good Duff, that’s precisely why you’ve come here?’
‘Maybe. I have some evidence concerning who killed Duncan.’
Lennox’s chair creaked as he straightened his back. He pushed himself away from the typewriter and rested his elbows on the desk. ‘Close the door.’
Duff stretched out his arm and closed it.
‘What kind of evidence? Tangible?’
‘Funny you should use that word . . .’ Duff took the letter opener from Lennox’s desk and weighed it in his hand. ‘As you know, at both crime scenes, Duncan’s and the bodyguards’, everything was apparently kosher.’
‘The word apparently is used when something seems fine on the surface but isn’t.’
‘Exactly.’ Inspector Duff placed the knife across his forefinger so that it balanced and formed a cross with his finger. ‘If you stabbed a man in the neck with a dagger to kill him, wouldn’t you hold on to the dagger in case you missed the carotid artery and had to stab again?’
‘I suppose so,’ Lennox said, staring at the letter opener.
‘And if you hit the artery straight away, as we know one dagger did, enormous quantities of blood would shoot out in a couple of brief spurts, the victim’s blood pressure would fall, the heart would stop beating, and the rest would just trickle out.’
‘I follow. I think.’
‘Yet the handle of the dagger we found on Hennessy was completely covered in blood; his prints were in the blood, and the inside of his hand was also covered with Duncan’s blood.’ Duff pointed to the handle of the letter opener. ‘That means the murderer wasn’t holding the handle when the blood spurted from Duncan’s neck, but grabbed the handle afterwards. Or that someone pressed his hand around the handle later. Because someone – someone else – threw the dagger at Duncan’s neck.’
‘I see,’ Lennox said, scratching his head. ‘But throw or stab, what’s the difference? The result’s the same.’
Duff passed Lennox the letter opener. ‘Try and throw this knife so that it sticks in the noticeboard over there.’
‘I . . .’
‘Come on.’
Lennox stood up. The distance to the board was probably two metres.
‘You have to throw it hard,’ Duff said. ‘It requires strength to pierce a man’s neck.’
Lennox threw. The knife hit the board and bounced off onto the floor with a clatter.
‘Try ten times,’ Duff said, picking up the knife and letting it balance on his finger. ‘I bet you a bottle of good whisky you can’t get the point to stick in.’
‘You don’t have much confidence in my ability or my luck?’
‘If I’d given you a knife that wasn’t balanced, with either a heavy handle or a heavy blade, I’d have made the odds better. But just like the dagger in Duncan’s neck this is a balanced knife. You have to be an expert to throw one. And no one I’ve spoken to in this building has ever seen or heard anything to suggest Duncan’s bodyguards were knife-throwers. To tell the truth, only one person I know was. Someone who actually almost ended up in a circus doing just that. And who was at Inverness Casino that evening.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘The man you gave Organised Crime. Macbeth.’
Lennox stood stock still gaping at a point on Duff’s forehead. ‘Are you telling me . . . ?’
‘Yes, I am. Chief Commissioner Duncan was killed by Macbeth. And the murder of those innocent bodyguards was cold-blooded murder carried out by the same man.’
‘God have mercy on us,’ Lennox said, sitting down with a bump. ‘Have you spoken to Forensics and Caithness about this?’
Duff shook his head. ‘They noticed there was blood on the handle, but they think that was down to quick reflexes when the dagger was let go, not that the dagger was thrown. Reasonable enough theory. After all, it’s very rare for anyone to have that skill. And it’s only Macbeth’s closest colleagues who know he’s one of them.’
‘Good. We mustn’t mention this to anyone. No one.’ Lennox clenched his hands and chewed his knuckles. ‘Are you aware of the situation this puts me in, Duff?’
‘Yes. Now you know what I know, that can’t be changed, and now your head’s on the block with mine. I apologise for not giving you a choice, but what else could I do? Our moment of truth has come, Lennox.’
‘Indeed. If what you say is correct and Macbeth is the monster you believe, a wounding shot is not enough – that would make him doubly dangerous. He must be felled with a single, decisive shot.’
‘Yes, but how?’
‘With cunning and caution, Duff. I’ll have to give this some thought, and I’m no genius, so it will take time. Let’s meet again. Not here where the walls have ears.’
‘At six,’ Duff said, getting up. ‘The central station. By Bertha.’
‘The old train? Why there?’
‘That’s where I was going to meet Banquo. He was going to tell me all I’ve worked out anyway.’
‘So that’s a suitable meeting place. See you.’
Macbeth stared at the telephone on his desk.
He had just put down the receiver after talking to Sweno.
His nerves were jerking and twitching under his skin. He needed something. Not something, he knew what. He snatched the big hat Lady had bought him. Priscilla smiled as Macbeth strode towards the anteroom. ‘How long will the chief commissioner be out?’
She had, at Macbeth’s behest, been moved up from Lennox’s office, the whole process taking less than two hours. He had wanted to give Duncan’s old assistant the heave-ho, but instead had moved her down a floor after the head of admin explained to him that in the public sector not even
a chief commissioner could dismiss employees at the drop of a hat.
‘An hour,’ Macbeth said. ‘Or two.’
‘I’ll say two to callers then,’ she said.
‘You do that, Priscilla.’
He walked into the lift and pressed G for the ground floor. To callers. Not if anyone calls. Because people did call, non-bloody-stop. Unit heads, judges, council representatives. He didn’t have the slightest clue what half of them did, apart from pester him with questions he couldn’t fathom, and that meant a queue of callers. Journalists. Duncan’s death, Malcolm’s disappearance. And now another policeman, plus his son. Was everything spinning out of control? they asked. Could the chief commissioner assure them that . . . ? No comment. May I refer you to the next press conference, which . . .
And then there was Sweno.
The lift doors opened; two uniformed policemen on their way in stopped and backed out again. It was a rule Kenneth had introduced, and Duncan had abolished, that the chief commissioner should have the lift to himself. But before Macbeth could say they were welcome the lift doors had closed again and he continued down on his own.
On the pavement outside headquarters he bumped into a man in a grey coat reading a newspaper who mumbled, ‘Sorry, Macbeth.’ Not so strange because when Macbeth looked up he saw his own face on the front page. THIRD OFFICER TAKES THE HELM. Not a bad headline. Might have been Lady’s suggestion. The editor was putty in her hands.
Macbeth pulled the big hat down over his face and walked with long strides. Now, in the middle of the day, the streets were so chock-a-block with traffic it was faster to walk than drive to the central station. And besides it was just as well no one saw the chief commissioner’s limousine there.
God knows what Sweno had said to Priscilla to be put through. At any rate he hadn’t said his name when Macbeth had him on the line, he hadn’t needed to. If you heard his voice once you didn’t forget it. The bass made the plastic in the receiver quiver. He said that Macbeth’s promise had been the immediate release of the Norse Riders, and twelve hours had already passed. Macbeth had answered that it wasn’t that simple: papers had to be signed by judges and lawyers as a prosecution had already been raised. But Sweno could safely prepare a welcome speech for the homecoming party in two days.