by Jo Nesbo
Macbeth ran his hand up her leg, past her knee. She fell quiet, closed her eyes, and he listened to her breathing. The breathing that with non-verbal commands determined what his hand should and shouldn’t do.
Through the afternoon and night the rain continued to wash the town that was never clean. Hammered down on the roof of the Grand Hotel, where Fleance, Duff, Malcolm and Caithness had agreed they would stay until it was over. It was two o’clock in the morning when Caithness was woken by knocking on the door to her room. At once she knew who it was.
It wasn’t the number of knocks, the interval between them or the force of them. It was the style. He knocked with a flat hand. And she knew the hand, every crease and cranny of it.
She opened the door a fraction.
Rain dripped from Duff’s clothes and hair, his teeth were chattering and his face was so pale the scar was barely visible. ‘Sorry, but I need a really hot shower.’
‘Haven’t you . . . ?’
‘Fleance and I share a room with bunk beds and a sink.’
She opened the door a bit more, and he slipped in.
‘Where have you been?’ she asked.
‘To the cemetery,’ he said from inside the bathroom.
‘In the middle of the night?’
‘Not so many people out and about.’ She heard the water being switched on. She stood close to the bathroom door. ‘Duff?’
‘Yes.’
‘I just wanted to say I’m sorry.’
‘What?’ he shouted.
She cleared her throat and raised her voice. ‘About your family.’
She listened to the beating of the water, which muffled her words, and stared into the steam that hid him from her.
When Duff came out again in the dressing gown that hung in the bathroom and with his wet clothes over one arm Caithness was dressed and lying on the broad bed. He pulled a soggy packet of cigarettes from the pocket of his wet trousers. She nodded, and he lay beside her. Caithness rested her head on his arm and looked up at the domed yellow glass ceiling light. The bowl was dotted with dead insects.
‘That’s what happens when you get too close to the light,’ he said. So he still had the ability to guess what she was thinking.
‘Icarus,’ she said.
‘Macbeth,’ he said and lit a cigarette.
‘I didn’t know you’d started smoking again,’ she said.
‘Well, it’s a little strange. I’ve actually never liked this shit.’ He grimaced and blew a big fat smoke ring up at the ceiling.
She sniggered. ‘So why did you start?’
‘Have I never told you?’
‘There’s a lot you’ve never told me.’
He coughed and passed her the cigarette. ‘Because I wanted to be like Macbeth.’
‘I’d have thought he wanted to be like you.’
‘He looked so damned good. And was so . . . free. In harmony with himself and happy, so happy in his own skin. I never was.’
‘But you had intellect.’ She inhaled and passed the cigarette back. ‘And the ability to persuade people you were right.’
‘People don’t like to realise they’re wrong. And I didn’t have the ability to persuade them to like me. He did.’
‘Cheap charm, Duff. Look who he is now. He duped everyone.’
‘No.’ Duff shook his head. ‘No, Macbeth didn’t dupe anyone. He was straight-talking and upfront. No saint, but no ulterior motives – what you saw was what you got. Perhaps he didn’t impress everyone with his wit or originality when he spoke, but you trusted every word. And rightly so.’
‘Trust? He’s an unfeeling murderer, Duff.’
‘You’re wrong. Macbeth is full of feelings. That’s why he can’t hurt a fly. Or to be accurate, especially not a fly. An aggressive wasp, yes, but a defenceless fly? Never, regardless of how annoying it is.’
‘How can you defend him, Duff? You who have lost—’
‘I’m not defending him. Of course he’s a murderer. All I’m saying is he can’t kill anyone who can’t defend himself. It’s happened only once. And he did it to save me.’
‘Oh yes?’ she said. ‘Are you going to tell me about it?’
He sucked hard on the cigarette. ‘It was when he killed the Norse Rider on the country road out by Forres. A young guy who’d just seen me kill his comrade, who I’d mistaken for Sweno.’
‘So they didn’t pull guns on you?’
Duff shook his head.
‘But then Macbeth’s no better than you,’ Caithness said.
‘Yes, he was. I killed for my own sake. He did it for someone else.’
‘Because that’s what we do in the police. We take care of each other.’
‘No, because he thought he owed it to me.’
Caithness sat up on her elbows. ‘Owed it to you?’
Duff held his cigarette up to the ceiling, pinched one eye shut and aimed above the glow with the other. ‘When Grandad died and I ended up in the orphanage, I was almost too old – I was fourteen. Macbeth and I were the same age, but he’d been there since he was five. Macbeth and I shared a room and became friends straight away. In those days Macbeth stammered. And especially when Saturday night approached, which was when he disappeared from the room in the middle of the night and returned an hour later. He would never tell me where he’d been; it was only when I jokingly threatened to report him to the home’s feared director, Lorreal, that he said he doubted that would do much good.’ Duff pulled hard on the cigarette. ‘Because that was where he’d been.’
‘You mean . . . the director—’
‘—had been abusing Macbeth for as long as he could remember. I couldn’t believe my ears. Lorreal had done things to him . . . you can’t imagine anyone would do to another person or find any enjoyment in. The one time Macbeth had stood up against him Lorreal had half-killed him and kept him locked up for two weeks in the so-called correction room in the cellar, a genuine cell. I was so furious I cried. Because I knew every word was true. Macbeth never lies. So I said we had to kill Lorreal. I would help him. And Macbeth agreed.’
‘You planned to kill him?’
‘No,’ Duff said, passing her the cigarette. ‘We didn’t plan so much. We just killed him.’
‘You . . .’
‘We went to his room one Thursday. Checked at the door that Lorreal was snoring. Went in. Macbeth knew the room inside out. I kept watch inside the door while Macbeth went to the bed and raised a knife. But time passed, and when my eyes had got used to the darkness I saw he was standing there as rigid as a pillar of salt. Then he crumpled and came over to me, whispering that he c-c-couldn’t do it. So I took the knife, went over to Lorreal and thrust it hard into his snoring mouth. Lorreal twitched one more time, then he stopped snoring. There wasn’t much blood. We left straight after.’
‘My God.’ Caithness was curled up in the fetal position. ‘What happened afterwards?’
‘Not much. There were two hundred young suspects to choose from. No one noticed that Macbeth was stammering more than before. And when he did a runner a couple of weeks later, no one connected that with the murder. Kids ran away all the time.’
‘And then you and Macbeth met up again?’
‘I saw him a couple of times down by the central station. I wanted to talk to him, but he legged it. You know, like a bankruptee from a creditor. Then we met several years later at police college. By then he was clean and had completely stopped stammering – he was a very different boy. The boy I wanted to be.’
‘Because he was a clean-living kind-hearted man without a murder on his conscience like you?’
‘Macbeth has never seen being able to murder in cold blood as a virtue but a weakness. In all his time at SWAT he killed only if he, or any of his men, was attacked.’
‘And all these murders?’
; ‘He ordered others to carry them out for him.’
‘Killing women and children. I think he’s become a different man from the one you knew, Duff.’
‘People don’t change.’
‘You ’ve changed.’
‘Have I really?’
‘If not, you wouldn’t be here. Fighting this fight. Spoken as you have about Macbeth. You’re a total egoist. Ready to ride roughshod over everything and everyone who’s in your way. Your colleagues, your family. Me.’
‘I can only remember really wanting to change once, and that was when I wanted to be like Macbeth. And when I realised that was impossible I had to become something better. Someone who could take what he wanted, even if it had less value for me than for who it belonged to, the way Hecate took that boy’s eye. Do you know when I fell in love with Meredith?’
Caithness shook her head.
‘When all four of us were sitting there – Macbeth, me, Meredith and her girlfriend – and I saw the way Macbeth was looking at Meredith.’
‘Tell me this isn’t true, Duff.’
‘I regret to say it is.’
‘You’re a petty man, Duff.’
‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you. So when you say I’m fighting this fight for others, I don’t know if it’s true or I only want to take something away from Macbeth that I know he wants.’
‘But he doesn’t want it, Duff. The town, power, wealth – he couldn’t care less about them. He wants only her love.’
‘Lady.’
‘Everything’s about Lady. Haven’t you realised?’
Duff blew a deformed smoke ring up to the ceiling. ‘Macbeth’s driven by love while I’m driven by envy and hatred. Where he has shown mercy, I’ve killed. And tomorrow I’m going to kill the person who was once my best friend – ambush him – and mercy and love will have lost again.’
‘That’s just cynicism and your self-loathing talking, Duff.’
‘Hm.’ He stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray on the bedside table. ‘You forgot self-pity.’
‘Yes, I did. And self-pity.’
‘I’ve been an arrogant egoist all my life. I can’t understand how you could have loved me.’
‘Some women have a weakness for men they think can save them, others for men they think they can save.’
‘Amen,’ Duff said, getting up. ‘You women don’t understand that we men don’t change. Not when we discover love, not when we realise we’re going to die. Never.’
‘Some use false arrogance to cover up their lack of confidence, but your arrogance is genuine, Duff. It’s down to total confidence.’
Duff smiled and pulled on his wet trousers. ‘Try to sleep now. We have to have our wits about us tomorrow.’
After he had left, Caithness got up, pulled the curtain to one side and looked down at the street. The swish of tyres through pools of water. Faded adverts for Joey’s Hamburger Bar, Peking Dry-Cleaners and the Tandrella Bingo Hall. A cigarette glowing for a second in an alleyway.
In a few hours day would break.
She wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep now.
37
SATURDAY ARRIVED WITH MORE RAIN. The front pages of both the town’s newspapers carried Tourtell’s announcement and the explosion on top of the Obelisk. The Times commented in its leader that Macbeth’s radio interview had to be understood as him not categorically rejecting standing for mayor. And said Tourtell wasn’t available for comment as he was at his son’s mother’s bedside in St Jordi’s Hospital. Late that morning the rain cleared.
‘You’re home early,’ Sheila said, wiping her hands on her apron in the hall and looking at her husband with a little concern.
‘I couldn’t find anything to do. I think I was the only person at work,’ Lennox said, putting his bag by the chest of drawers, taking a clothes hanger from the wardrobe and hanging up his coat. Two years had passed since the town council had adopted the five-day week for the public sector, but at police HQ it was an unspoken rule that if you wanted to get on you had to show your face on Saturdays as well.
Lennox kissed his wife lightly on the cheek, noticed a new, unfamiliar perfume and a hitherto un-thought notion fluttered through his brain: what if he had caught her in bed with another man? He rejected this at once. First because she wasn’t the type. Second because she wasn’t attractive enough – after all there was a reason why she had ended up with a diminutive albino. The third and strongest reason for rejecting the notion was, however, simple: it was too hard to bear.
‘Is there anything wrong?’ she asked and followed him into the sitting room.
‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘I’m just tired. Where are the kids?’
‘In the garden,’ she said. ‘Finally some decent weather.’
He stood by the big window. Watching his children as they romped around screaming and laughing and playing a game the point of which he couldn’t work out. Escaping, it seemed. Good skill to learn. He looked up at the sky. Decent? A little break before the piss came hammering down again. He slumped into an armchair. How long could he carry on like this?
‘Lunch won’t be ready for an hour,’ she said.
‘That’s fine, love.’ He looked at her. He genuinely liked her, but had he ever been in love with her? He couldn’t remember and perhaps it wasn’t that important. She hadn’t said a word one way or the other, but he was fairly sure she hadn’t been in love with him either. Generally Sheila didn’t say much. Perhaps that was why she had given in to his persuasion and in the end said yes to being his girlfriend and eventually his wife. She had found someone who could talk for them both.
‘Sure there’s nothing wrong?’
‘Absolutely sure, sweetheart. That smells good. What is it?’
‘Erm, cod,’ she said, her frown framing a question.
He was going to explain that he meant her perfume, not the lunch she had barely started, but she went to the kitchen and he swung his chair round to face the garden. His elder daughter saw him, beamed and shouted something to the other two. He waved to them. How could two such unattractive people have such beautiful children? And that was when the notion struck him again: If they really were his.
Infidelity and treachery.
Now his son was calling to him – what, he couldn’t hear – but when he saw he had caught his father’s attention he did a cartwheel on the grass. Lennox applauded with his hands raised high in the air, and now all three of them were doing cartwheels. Impress their daddy, impress the daddy they still admired, the daddy they thought was worth emulating. Shouting, laughter and frolics. Lennox thought of the silence out in Fife, the sunshine, the curtains fluttering in a window that had been shot to pieces, the gentle breeze whistling a barely audible doleful note through one of the holes in the wall. All the unbearable thoughts. There were so many ways to lose those you loved. What if one day they found out, realised, what kind of person their husband or father really was? Would the wind sing the same lament then?
He closed his eyes. Bit of a rest. Bit of decent weather.
He sensed someone was there, standing over him and breathing on him. He opened his eyes. It was Sheila.
‘Didn’t you hear me shouting?’ she said.
‘What?’
‘There’s a phone call for you. Some Inspector Seyton.’
Lennox went into the hall, picked up the receiver from the table. ‘Hello?’
‘Home early, Lennox? I’ll need some help this evening.’
‘I’m not well. You’d better try someone else.’
‘The chief commissioner said to take you.’
Lennox swallowed. His mouth tasted of lead. ‘Take me where?’
‘To a hospital. Be ready in an hour. I’ll pick you up.’ There was a click. Lennox had rung off. Lead.
‘What is it?’ Sheila called from the kitchen.
<
br /> A pale metal shaped by its environment, which poisons and kills, a heavy but unresisting material that melts at three hundred and fifty degrees.
‘Nothing, sweetheart. Nothing.’
Macbeth woke from a dream about death. There was a knock at the door. Something about the knocking told him it had been going on for a long time.
‘Sir!’ It was Jack’s voice.
‘Yes,’ Macbeth grunted, looking around. The room was flooded with daylight. What was the time? He had been dreaming. Dreaming he had been standing over the bed with a dagger in his hand. But whenever he blinked the face on the pillow changed.
‘It’s Inspector Caithness on the phone, sir. She says it’s urgent.’
‘Put her through,’ Macbeth said, rolling over towards the bedside table. ‘Caithness?’
‘Sorry to ring you on a Saturday, but we’ve found a body. I’m afraid we’ll have to ask you to help.’ She sounded out of breath.
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because we think it could be Fleance, Banquo’s son. The body is in a bad way, and as he has no close relatives in town it seems you’re the best person to identify him.’
‘Oh,’ Macbeth said, feeling his throat tighten.
‘Sorry?’
‘Yes, I suppose I am,’ Macbeth said and pulled the duvet tighter around him. ‘When a body’s been in seawater for so long . . .’
‘That’s the point.’
‘What’s the point?’
‘We didn’t find the body in the sea but in an alleyway between 14th and 15th Streets.’
‘What?’
‘That’s why we want to be absolutely sure it’s Fleance before we go any further.’
‘14th and 15th, you say?’
‘Go to 14th and Doheney. I’ll wait for you outside Joey’s Hamburger Bar.’
‘OK, Caithness. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
Macbeth rang off. Lilies. The flowers in the carpet were lilies. Lily. That was the name of Lady’s child. Why hadn’t he made the connection before? Dead. Because he hadn’t seen, tasted, eaten and slept so much death before. He closed his eyes. Recalled the changing faces from the dream. Orphanage Director Lorreal’s unknowing face as he snored with his mouth open became Chief Commissioner Duncan’s, eyes that opened and stared at him, knowing. Then Banquo’s stiff, brutal glare. No bodies, only the head on the pillow. Then the nameless young Norse Rider’s panic-stricken expression as he knelt on the tarmac staring at his already dead comrade and Macbeth coming towards him. He looked at the ceiling. And remembered all the times he had woken from a nightmare and breathed a sigh of relief. Relieved to find in reality he wasn’t drowning in quicksand or being eaten by dogs. But sometimes he thought he had woken from a nightmare but was still dreaming, still drowning, and he had to break through several layers before he reached consciousness. He shut his eyes tight. Opened them again. Then he got up.