by Jo Nesbo
Macbeth lifted his head from Lady’s cold chest and looked up. It was Jack. He had returned and was standing in the doorway.
‘There’s someone down in reception who’d like to talk to you.’
‘Have you let s-s-someone in?’
‘He’s alone and he kept knocking. I had to let him in. And now he doesn’t want to go away.’
‘Who is it?’
‘A young man by the name of Sivart.’
‘Sivart?’
‘He says you saved his life down by the quay during the raid on the Norse Riders.’
‘Oh, the hostage. Wh-wh-what does he want?’
‘To volunteer. He says he’s been contacted by Malcolm, and Malcolm is getting people together to launch an attack on the Inverness.’
‘Then,’ Macbeth said, resting his head back on Lady’s chest and closing his eyes, ‘t-t-tell him to go.’
‘He won’t, sir.’
Macbeth sighed heavily, got to his feet and held out a hand. ‘Lend me the gun I gave you, Jack.’
They went down to reception, where the young man was nervously waiting. From the stairs Macbeth pointed the gun at him. ‘Out!’
‘Chief Commissioner . . .’ the man stammered.
‘Out! You’ve been sent by Malcolm to kill me. Now out!’
‘No, no, I . . .’
‘Now! I’ll count to three! One . . .’
The man stumbled backwards, grabbed the door handle, but it was locked.
‘Two!’
Jack rushed forward with the key and helped the man to open the door.
‘Three!’
The door slammed behind the man and they heard running footsteps fade in the distance.
‘Do you really think he—’
‘No,’ Macbeth said, handing back the gun to Jack. ‘But a young man like him here would have just got in the way.’
‘There aren’t many of you, and he’s the same age as Olafson, sir.’
‘Have you done what I asked you to do, Jack?’
‘I’m still doing it, sir.’
‘Tell me when you’ve finished. I’m in the gaming room.’
Macbeth opened the double doors to the casino. The night grew old and grey behind the tall windows to the east.
42
THE SUN WAS HIDDEN BEHIND the mountain, but it had sent a red harbinger of its arrival. Inspector Lennox thought he had never seen a finer daybreak in the town. Or perhaps he had, but had never noticed it. Or perhaps it was the morphine more than the sun that coloured everything. The streets were adorned with smashed beer bottles, stinking piles of spew and cigarette ends after a lively Saturday night, but no one was about, only a little man in a black maritime uniform and white hat, who hurried past them. Everyone else, as the town’s fate was decided, lay at home in bed with the blankets pulled over their heads. And despite this he had never seen his town looking more beautiful.
Lennox gazed down at the tartan blanket Priscilla had spread over his knees. They were approaching the modest eastern entrance to the central station. He noticed the wheelchair was moving more slowly. She was hesitant; he guessed she had hardly ever been to the station before.
‘There’s nothing to be afraid of, Priscilla. They only want to sell dope. Or buy it.’ He saw from her shadow as they passed under a street light that she had straightened up. Their speed increased.
As arranged, she had picked him up while it was still dark outside, before the corridors were full of nurses and doctors who would have stopped them. And she had brought various things from the office which he had requested. He didn’t even need to persuade her or explain anything to her; she had immediately done what he had said, even if officially he was no longer her boss.
‘That’s fine,’ she had said. ‘You’ll always be my boss. And Macbeth won’t continue as chief commissioner, will he?’
‘Why not?’
‘He’s off his trolley, isn’t he.’
They passed cigarette-smoking pushers and junkies dozing on blankets who woke up and automatically reached out a begging hand.
But Priscilla didn’t stop until they were in front of the stairs by the toilets.
It was here they used to collect him. All he had to do was stand there and they came. Lennox had never worked out where they took him because they not only put goggles on him but also gave him earplugs so that he couldn’t speculate from the background noises.
It was a part of the agreement. When he needed a real trip, one that couldn’t happen at home or at the office in the evening without the risk of being caught, they took him into the kitchen, the place where they made brew. And there he was given the purest drug that could be produced, injected by specialists. He was placed in a reclining chair, a bit like they did in the old days in opium dens, and after sleeping off his high in safe surroundings he could go into town and move around for a while like a new and better man.
In a way which he would never be able to do again.
He had felt how helpless he was when Priscilla freed him from all the wires and tubes and manoeuvred him across into the wheelchair. How useless he had become. How little he could be expected to do.
‘Go,’ he said now.
‘What? Are we going?’
‘You are.’
‘And just leave you here, you mean?’
‘It’ll be fine. I’ll ring you. Go now.’
She didn’t move.
‘It’s an order, Priscilla—’ he smiled ‘—from the man who will always be your boss.’
She sighed. Gently placed a hand on his shoulder. Then she left.
Less than ten minutes passed before Strega was standing in front of him with her arms crossed. ‘Wow!’ was all she said.
‘I know,’ Lennox said. ‘It’s an ungodly hour.’
She laughed briefly. ‘You’re in good humour despite the wheelchair. What can I do for you?’
‘Something to stop the pain and an hour in the recliner.’
She passed him the earplugs and the goggles.
‘My legs are not what they were, so you might have to help me get there.’
‘A feather like you?’ she said.
‘I need the wheelchair with me.’
‘We’ll have to skip the car trip today.’
She pushed him. The pains had come and gone all morning, but when she lifted him out of the wheelchair a few minutes later and lowered him onto what felt like crushed stone it hurt so much he cried. He felt Strega’s muscular arms around him, the almost overwhelming scent of her. After she managed to get him back in the wheelchair she began to push it. Every metre the wheelchair hit something in the gravel. A sleeper. There was a smell of tar and burned metal. He was being pushed along a railway track.
Fancy not realising. The other times they had ridden in a car, not a long way, but clearly in a circle, back to their starting point at the central station. He had known before that they were under cover as he hadn’t felt the rain, but not that the brewing took place in one of the disused tunnels right under their noses! He groaned with impotence as Strega lifted him and laid him cheek down on something cold and damp. Concrete. Then she put him back in the wheelchair. Pushed it. The air was getting warmer, drier. They were approaching the kitchen now, the easily recognisable smells activating something in his brain which made his heart beat faster and gave him a foretaste of the trip. Someone removed the goggles and earplugs and he caught the tail end of Strega’s sentence.
‘ . . . wash the trail of blood after him.’
‘All right,’ said one of the sisters stirring the tank.
Strega was about to lift him into the reclining chair, but Lennox waved her away and rolled up his left shirtsleeve. Brew straight from the pot. It didn’t get any better than that. A junkie’s heaven. This was where he wanted to go. Or not. He would see. Or not
.
‘Isn’t that Inspector Lennox from the Anti-Corruption Unit?’ Jack said. He was standing by the one-way glass looking in at the kitchen and the man in the wheelchair.
‘Yes,’ Hecate said. He was wearing a white linen suit and hat. ‘It’s not enough to have eyes and ears in the Inverness.’
‘Did you hear that Lennox has accused Macbeth of murder? Doesn’t he know Macbeth is your instrument?’
‘No one’s allowed to know more than they have to, not even you, Bonus. But back to the matters in hand. Lady has taken her own life, but Macbeth seems paralysed rather than upset, would you say?’
‘That’s my interpretation.’
‘Hm. And if Tourtell declares a state of emergency, do you think Macbeth in his present state of mind will manage to take power, to do what has to be done to establish himself as the town’s leader?’
‘I don’t know. He seems . . . not to care. As though nothing is very important any more. Either that or he believes himself to be invulnerable. You will save him whatever happens.’
‘Hm.’ Hecate tapped his stick on the floor twice. ‘Without Lady the value of Macbeth as chief commissioner has sunk.’
‘He’ll still obey.’
‘He might succeed in taking power now, but without her he won’t be able to keep it. She was the one who understood the game, could see the wood for the trees, knew what manoeuvres were required. Macbeth can throw daggers, but someone has to tell him why and at whom.’
‘I could become his new adviser,’ Jack said. ‘I’m winning his confidence.’
Hecate laughed. ‘I can’t quite make up my mind whether you’re a mud-eating flounder or actually a sly predatory fish, Bonus.’
‘I am a fish though, I gather.’
‘Even if you could bolster his impaired ability to rule, I doubt you could do much about his will. He lacks Lady’s lust for power. He seems to desire things you and I have not been dependent on, dear Bonus.’
‘Brew?’
‘Lady. Women. Friends maybe. You know, this love between humans. And now that Lady’s dead he’s no longer driven by the desire to satisfy her hunger for power.’
‘Lady also needed love,’ Jack said quietly.
‘The desire to be loved and the ability to love, which give humans such strength, are also their Achilles heel. Give them the prospect of love and they move mountains; take it from them and a puff of wind will blow them over.’
‘Maybe, maybe.’
‘If the wind blows Macbeth over, what do you think about him there as chief commissioner?’ Hecate nodded towards the glass. One of the sisters was drying Lennox’s left arm with an alcohol swab and searching for a vein while holding a syringe ready.
‘Lennox?’ Jack said. ‘Are you serious?’
Hecate smacked his lips. ‘He’s the man who brought Macbeth down. The hero who sacrificed his mobility to save the town’s mayor. And no one knows that Lennox works for me.’
‘But Malcolm’s back. And everyone knows Lennox runs Macbeth’s errands.’
‘Lennox followed orders like a loyal policeman should. And Malcolms and Duffs can disappear again. Roosevelt won a world war from a wheelchair. Yes, I could get Lennox into the chief commissioner’s office. What do you reckon?’
Jack looked at Lennox. Without answering.
Hecate laughed and laid a big soft hand on Jack’s narrow shoulder. ‘I know what you’re thinking, flounder. What about you? Who will employ you if Macbeth has gone? So let’s hope Macbeth rides the storm, eh? Come on, let me show you out.’
Jack cast a final glance at Lennox, then he turned and walked back with Hecate to the toilet door and the station.
‘Wait,’ Lennox said as the sister placed the needle against his skin. He put his free right hand into the big side pocket of the wheelchair. Pulled the cord from the end of the handle.
‘Now,’ he said.
She pushed the needle in and pressed the plunger as he took his hand from the pocket, swung his arm low alongside the chair and let go. What Priscilla had brought from the office rumbled along the concrete floor and disappeared under the table bearing the flasks, tubes and pipes beside the tank.
‘Hey, what was that?’ Strega asked.
‘According to my grandfather, it was a grenade he had thrown at his head,’ Lennox said, feeling the high, which would never be like the first time but still made him shiver with pleasure. Which was, after all these years of searching, still the closest he had come to the meaning of life. Unless it was this. The full stop.
‘It might be a Model 24 Stielhandgranate. Or an ashtr—’
That was as far as he got.
Jack was halfway up the stairs when the explosion sent him flying. He picked himself up and turned back to the toilet. The door had been blown off and smoke was drifting out. He waited. When there were no more explosions he walked slowly down the stairs and into the toilet. The cubicle and door to the kitchen had gone. There was a fierce fire inside, and in the light of the flames he could see everything had been destroyed. The kitchen and those inside didn’t exist any more. And five seconds earlier he had been—
‘Bonus . . .’
The voice came from directly in front of him. And there, from under the steel door on the floor, it crawled out. A smashed cockroach in a white linen suit. The soft face was covered with shit and his eyes were black with shock.
‘Help me . . .’
Bonus grabbed hold of the old man’s hands and pulled him across the floor to the toilet door. There he turned Hecate onto his back. He was a wreck. His stomach was slashed open and blood was pouring out. The immortal Hecate. The Invisible Hand, he couldn’t have many minutes or seconds left to live. All the blood . . . Jack turned away.
‘Hurry, Jack. Find something you can—’
‘I have to get a doctor,’ Jack said.
‘No! Find something to close the wound with before I run out of blood.’
‘You need medical help. I’ll hurry.’
‘Don’t leave me, Jack! Don’t . . .’ The body in front of Jack arced and let out a howl.
‘What?’
‘Stomach acid! Something’s leaking. Christ, I’m burning up. Help, Jack! Hel—’ The shout morphed into another hoarse howl. Jack watched him, unable to move. He did look like a cockroach lying on its back, its arms and legs thrashing helplessly.
‘I’ll be back soon,’ Jack said.
‘No, no!’ Hecate screamed and made a grab for his legs.
But Jack stepped away, turned and left.
At the top of the stairs he stopped, looked left, west towards the Inverness. Towards Macbeth. Towards St Jordi’s. There was a phone box in the waiting area that way. He turned to the east. To the mountain. To the other side. To new waters. Dangerous, open waters. But these were decisions a man – and a suckerfish – had to make sometimes to survive.
Jack breathed in. Not because he was hesitant, but because he needed air.
Then he headed east.
The crystal murmured and sang above Macbeth’s head. He looked up. The chandelier swung back and forth, tugging at the ropes from which it hung.
‘What was that?’ yelled Seyton from the mezzanine, from the Gatling gun in the south-eastern corner of the Inverness.
‘The end of the world,’ Macbeth said. And added, in a low voice and to himself, ‘I hope.’
‘It came from the station,’ Olafson shouted from the machine gun in the south-west corner. ‘Was that an explosion?’
‘Yessir!’ Seyton sang. ‘They’re bringing up the artillery.’
‘Are they?’ Olafson said, shocked.
Seyton’s laughter echoed between the walls. When they had discussed how the Inverness should be defended it had been easy to conclude that any attack would have to come from Workers’ Square, as the bricked-up, windowless side faci
ng Thrift Street was nothing less than a fortress wall.
‘I can smell your fear from over here, Olafson. Can you smell it down there, boss?’
Macbeth yawned. ‘I can barely remember the smell of fear, Seyton.’ He rubbed his face hard. He had dropped off and dreamed he was lying on the bed next to Lady when the door to the suite slid silently open. The figure in the doorway was wearing a cloak, with a hat pulled so low that it was only when the figure stepped in and the light fell on him that he could see it was Banquo. One eye was gone and white; worms were wriggling out of his cheek and forehead. Macbeth had reached inside his jacket, drawn a dagger from his double shoulder holster and thrown. It bored into Banquo’s brow with a soft thud as if the bone behind had already been eaten up. But it didn’t stop the ghost advancing towards the bed. Macbeth screamed and shook Lady.
‘She’s dead,’ the ghost said. ‘And you have to throw a silver dagger, not steel.’ It wasn’t Banquo’s voice. It was . . .
Banquo’s head toppled from under the hat, fell on the floor and rolled under the bed, and from the hat Seyton’s face laughed at him.
‘What do you want?’ Macbeth whispered.
‘What you want, sir. To give you both a child. Look, she’s waiting for me.’
‘You’re crazy.’
‘Trust me. I don’t want much in return.’
‘She’s dead. Go away.’
‘We’re all dead. Do it now, sow your seeds. If you don’t I’ll sow mine.’
‘Get away!’
‘Move over, Macbeth. I’ll take her like Duff took Meredi—’
The second dagger hit Seyton in his open mouth. He clenched his teeth, grasped the handle, broke it off and passed it back to Macbeth. Showed him his bloody, sliced tongue and laughed.
‘Anything on the radio?’
Macbeth gave a start. It was Seyton, shouting.
‘Nothing,’ Macbeth said, rubbing his face hard and turning up the volume on the radio. ‘Still twenty minutes to sun-up.’ He looked at the white line of finely chopped powder on the mirror he had placed on the felt in front of him. Saw his face reflected. The line of power ran like a scar across the shiny surface.
‘And then will we really kill the boy?’ Olafson shouted.