Macbeth

by Jo Nesbo

  ‘Thank you, guys, but we’re finished.’ Malcolm pointed. They couldn’t see the sun yet, but the silhouette of the upside-down cross at the top of the mountain had already caught its first rays. ‘Now it’s up to Tourtell.’

  ‘Let’s exchange hostages,’ Duff said. ‘Let Macbeth have who he wants, Malcolm. Us two. In exchange for Kasi.’

  ‘Don’t you think I’ve considered that?’ Malcolm said. ‘Macbeth will never exchange a mayor’s son for small change like you and me. If Tourtell declares a state of emergency Kasi will be spared. You and I will be executed whatever. And who will lead the fight against Macbeth then?’

  ‘Caithness,’ Duff said, ‘and all those people in this town you say you have such belief in. Are you afraid or . . . ?’

  ‘Malcolm’s right,’ Caithness said. ‘You’re worth more to this town alive.’

  ‘Damn!’ Duff tore himself away and went towards the fire engine.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Caithness shouted.

  ‘The plinth.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We have to smash the plinth. Hey, Chief!’

  The man who had driven the fire engine stood up. ‘Erm, I’m not—’

  ‘Have you got any fire axes or sledgehammers in the vehicle?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Look!’ Seyton shouted. ‘The sun’s shining on the top of the Obelisk. The boy has to die!’

  ‘We all have to die,’ Macbeth said softly and put one chip under the heart symbol on the red part of the felt, the other on black. Leaned to the left and took the ball from the roulette wheel.

  ‘What actually happened up on the roof?’ Seyton shouted.

  ‘Banquo’s boy,’ Macbeth shouted back and spun the wheel. Hard. ‘I took care of it.’

  ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘I took care of it, I said.’ The roulette wheel spun in front of Macbeth, the individual numbers blurring as they formed a clear, unbroken circle. Unclear and yet clear. He had counted down to the zone and he was still there. The wheel whirled. This time it would never stop, this time he would never leave the zone – he had closed the door behind him and locked it. The wheel. Round and round towards an unknown fate, yet so familiar. The casino always wins in the end. ‘What’s that banging out there, Seyton?’

  ‘Why don’t you come up for a look yourself, sir?’

  ‘I prefer roulette. Well?’

  ‘They’ve started banging away at Bertha, the poor thing. And now the sun’s out, sir. I can see it. Nice and big. The time’s up. Shall we—’

  ‘Are they smashing up Bertha?’

  ‘The base she’s standing on, anyway. Keep an eye on the square and shoot at everything approaching, Olafson.’

  ‘Right!’

  Macbeth heard the pad of feet on the stairs and looked up. The reddish tint to Seyton’s face was more noticeable than usual, as though he was sunburned. He walked past the roulette table and over to the pole, where Kasi was sitting hunched with his head lowered and his hair hanging in front of his face.

  ‘Who said you could leave your post?’ Macbeth said.

  ‘Won’t take long,’ Seyton said, pulling a black revolver from his belt. Put it to Kasi’s head.

  ‘Stop!’ Macbeth said.

  ‘We said to the second, sir. We can’t—’

  ‘Stop, I said!’ Macbeth turned up the volume of the radio behind him.

  ‘ . . . Mayor Tourtell speaking to you. Last night I was given an ultimatum by Chief Commissioner Macbeth, who has recently been responsible for a number of murders, including that of Chief Commissioner Duncan. Last night he kidnapped my son, Kasi, after a failed attempt to kill me. The ultimatum is that unless I declare a state of emergency, thereby giving Macbeth unlimited power and preventing federal intervention, my son will be killed when the sun rises above our town. But we don’t want, I don’t want, you don’t want, Kasi doesn’t want, this town doesn’t want another despot in power. For this, good men have sacrificed their lives over the last few days. And their sons. Sacrificed their sons the way we in this and other towns did during world wars when our democracy was threatened. And now the sun is rising and Macbeth is sitting by his radio waiting for me to confirm that this day and this town are his. Here’s my message to you, Macbeth. Take him. Kasi is yours. I’m sacrificing him as I know and hope he would have sacrificed me or the son he will never have. And if you can hear me, Kasi, goodbye, apple of my eye.’ Tourtell’s voice thickened. ‘You are loved not only by me but by a whole town, and we’ll burn candles at your grave for as long as democracy exists.’ He coughed. ‘Thank you, Kasi. Thank you, citizens of this town. And now the day is ours.’

  After a short silence there was a crackly recording of a man’s sonorous voice singing ‘A Mighty Fortress Is Our God’.

  Macbeth switched off the radio.

  Seyton laughed and applied pressure to the trigger. The hammer rose. ‘Surprised, Kasi? A whore’s son isn’t worth much to a whoremonger, you know. But if you surrender your soul to me now I promise you a painless shot in the head instead of the stomach. Plus revenge over the whoremonger and his gang. What do you say, boy?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’ Seyton fixed his disbelieving eyes on the source of the answer.

  ‘No,’ Macbeth repeated. ‘He mustn’t be killed. Put down your revolver, Seyton.’

  ‘And let them out there get what they want?’

  ‘You heard me. We don’t shoot defenceless children.’

  ‘Defenceless?’ Seyton snarled. ‘What about us ? Aren’t we defenceless? Are we going to let Duff and Malcolm piss all over us again, as they always have? Are you planning to abandon your cause now that—’

  ‘Your revolver’s pointing at me, Seyton.’

  ‘Perhaps it is. Because I’m not going to let you stop the kingdom that is coming, Macbeth. You’re not the only one with a calling. I’m going—’

  ‘I know what you’re going to do, and if you don’t put that revolver away, you’re a dead man. A dead something anyway.’

  Seyton laughed. ‘There are things you don’t know about me, Macbeth. Such as you can’t kill me.’

  Macbeth looked into the muzzle of the revolver. ‘Do it then, Seyton. Because only you can send me to her. You’re not born of woman, you were made. Made of bad dreams, evil and whatever it is that wants to break and destroy.’

  Seyton shook his head and pointed the revolver at Kasi’s head without taking his eyes off Macbeth. At that moment the first ray of sun penetrated the large windows on the mezzanine. Macbeth saw Seyton raise a hand to shade his eyes as the ray hit his face.

  Macbeth threw at the sunshine on the tree trunk out there on the other side, at the heart carved into the wood. Knowing it would hit, for lines, veins from his fingertips, went to that heart.

  There was a thud. Seyton wobbled and looked down at the handle of the dagger protruding from his chest. Then dropped the revolver and grabbed the dagger as he sank to his knees. Raised his eyes and looked at Macbeth with a fogged gaze.

  ‘Silver,’ Macbeth said, poking the matchstick between his front teeth again. ‘It’s said to work.’

  Seyton fell forward and lay with his head by the boy’s naked feet.

  Macbeth placed the white ivory ball on the wooden frame around the rotating roulette wheel and sent it hard in the opposite direction.

  ‘Keep going!’ Duff shouted to the men beating away with sledgehammers and fire axes at the front of the plinth, where they had already dislodged big lumps of concrete.

  And then the plinth cracked, and the locomotive’s plough-shaped cow catcher dropped with an almighty bang. Duff almost fell forward in the driver’s cab, but grabbed a lever and managed to hold on tight. The locomotive’s nose, in front of him, was pointing downwards, but it didn’t move.

  ‘Come on!’

  Still
nothing.

  ‘Come on then, you old woman!’

  And Duff felt something through his feet. It had moved. Hadn’t it? Or . . . He heard a sound like a low lament. Yes, it had moved, for the first time in eighty years Bertha Birnam had moved, and now the wailing of its movable metal parts rose, rose in a crescendo to a scream of protest. Years of rust and the laws of friction and inertia tried to hold on, but gravity was invincible.

  ‘Keep clear!’ Duff shrieked, tightening the strap of his machine gun and holding the butt of the reserve weapon he had tucked inside his belt.

  The steam engine’s wheels turned, wrenched out of their torpor, rolled slowly down the eight-metre length of rail and tipped off the plinth. The front wheels hit the top of the steps and the flagstones broke with a deafening crunch. For a moment it seemed the train would stop there, but then Duff heard the next step crack. And the next. And he knew that nothing could now stop this slowly accelerating massive force.

  Duff stared fixedly ahead, but from the corner of his eye he registered that someone had jumped onto the train and was standing beside him.

  ‘Single to the Inverness, please.’ It was Caithness.

  ‘Sir!’ It was Olafson.

  ‘Yes?’ Macbeth’s gaze followed the ivory’s rumbling revolutions.

  ‘I think it . . . it’s . . . coming.’

  ‘What’s coming?’

  ‘The . . . train.’

  Macbeth raised his head. ‘The train?’

  ‘Bertha! She’s coming . . . here! It’s—’

  The rest was drowned. Macbeth got up. From where he was standing in the gaming room he couldn’t see up to the station building, only the sloping square outside the tall window. But he could hear. It sounded like something was being crunched to pieces by a bellowing monster. And it was coming closer.

  And then, crossing the square in front of the Inverness, it came into his field of vision.

  He gulped.

  Bertha was coming.

  ‘Fire!’

  Deputy Chief Commissioner Malcolm stared in disbelief. Because he knew that whatever happened now he was never going to see the like of this again in his lifetime. A steam engine eating stone and making its own track across Workers’ Square. A form of transport their forefathers had built with iron, too heavy and solid to be held back, with ball bearings that didn’t rust or dry out after a mere eighty years of neglect, a locomotive against which a hail of bullets from a Gatling gun produced sparks but was repelled like water as it held its course straight towards Inverness Casino.

  ‘That is one solid building,’ someone said next to him.

  Malcolm shook his head. ‘It’s just a gambling den,’ he said.

  ‘Hold on tight!’ Duff yelled.

  Caithness had sat down on the iron floor with her back to the side of the cab to avoid ricochets from the bullets screaming over their heads. She shouted something, her facial muscles tensed and her eyes closed.

  ‘What?’ yelled Duff.

  ‘I love—’

  Then they hit the Inverness.

  Macbeth enjoyed the sight of Bertha filling the window before she smashed through. He had a feeling the whole building – the floor he was sitting on, the air in the room – everything was pushed back as the train broke through the wall into the room. The noise lay like a coating on his eardrums. The funnel on the steam engine cut through the eastern part of the mezzanine and its cow catcher dug into the floor. The Inverness had braked her, but Bertha was still eating her way forward, metre by metre. She stopped half a metre in front of him, with the funnel against the railing of the west mezzanine and the cow catcher touching the roulette table. For a moment there was total silence. Then came a rattle of crystal. And Macbeth knew what that was. Bertha had sliced the ropes holding the chandelier above him. He made no attempt to move, he didn’t even look up. All he noticed before everything went black was that he was covered in Bohemian glass.

  Duff climbed up onto the train with the machine gun in his hands. The low rays of sun shone through the dust filling the air.

  ‘The Gatling gun in the south-east corner is unmanned!’ Caithness shouted behind him. ‘What about—’

  ‘Unmanned on the south-west too,’ Duff said. ‘Seyton’s lying by the roulette table with a dagger in him. Looks pretty dead.’

  ‘Kasi’s here. Looks like he’s unharmed.’

  Duff scanned what once had been a gaming room. Coughed because of the dust. Listened. Apart from the frenetic rolling of a roulette ball in the wheel, there was silence. Sunday morning. In a few hours the church bells would peal. He clambered down. Stepped over Seyton’s body to the chandelier. Used the sabre to sweep away the bits of glass from Macbeth’s face.

  Macbeth’s eyes were wide open with surprise, like a child’s. The point of the chandelier’s gilt spire had disappeared into his right shoulder. Not much blood ran from the wound, which contracted rhythmically as if sucking from the light fitting.

  ‘Good morning, Duff.’

  ‘Good morning, Macbeth.’

  ‘Heh heh. Do you remember we used to say that every morning when we got up in the orphanage, Duff? You were in the top bunk.’

  ‘Where are the others? Where’s Olafson?’

  ‘Clever lad, that Olafson. He knows when the time’s right to scarper. Like you.’

  ‘Your SWAT men don’t scarper,’ Duff said.

  Macbeth sighed. ‘No, you’re right. Would you believe me if I said he’s behind you and will kill you in . . . erm, two seconds?’

  Duff eyed Macbeth for a moment. Then he whirled round. Up where the mezzanine was cut in two, he saw two figures against the morning sun shining in through the hole in the east wall. One was a medieval suit of armour. The second, Olafson, kneeling with his rifle resting on the balustrade. Fifteen metres. Olafson could hit a penny from there.

  A shot rang out.

  Duff knew he was dead.

  So why was he still standing?

  The echo of the shot resounded through the room.

  Macbeth saw Olafson fall against the suit of armour, which toppled back, fell through the gap in the mezzanine and clattered to the gaming-room floor. On the mezzanine Olafson lay with his face pressed to the railing. His cheek was pushed over one eye, the other was closed, as though he had fallen asleep over his Remington 700 rifle.

  ‘Fleance!’ Caithness shouted.

  Duff turned to the northern end of the mezzanine.

  And there, up where the stairs came down from the upper floors, stood Fleance. His shirt was drenched with blood, he was swaying and clinging to a still-smoking gun.

  ‘Caithness, get Kasi and Fleance out,’ Duff said. ‘Now.’

  Duff slumped into the chair beside the roulette table. The ball in the wheel was slowing; the sound had changed.

  ‘What happens now?’ Macbeth groaned.

  ‘We wait here until the others come. They’ll patch you up at the hospital. Custody. Federal case. They’ll be talking about you for years, Macbeth.’

  ‘Still think you’ve got the top bunk, do you, Duff?’

  Crystal rattled. Duff looked up. Macbeth had raised his left hand.

  ‘You know I have the speed of a fly. Before you’ve let go of that sabre and reached for your gun you’ll have a dagger in your chest. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Possibly,’ Duff said. Instead of feeling fear he felt just an immense weariness creeping over him. ‘And you’ll still lose, as always.’

  Macbeth laughed. ‘And why’s that?’

  ‘It’s just one of those self-fulfilling things. You’ve always known, all your life, you’re doomed to lose in the end. That certainty is and always has been you, Macbeth.’

  ‘Oh yes? Haven’t you heard? No man born of woman can kill me. That’s Hecate’s promise, and he’s shown several times that he keeps
his promises. So do you know what? I can just get up from here and go.’ He tried to lever himself up into a sitting position, but the weight of the chandelier pressed down on him.

  ‘Hecate forgot to take me into account when he made you that promise,’ Duff said, keeping an eye on Macbeth’s left hand. ‘I can kill you, so just lie still.’

  ‘Are you hard of hearing, Duff? I said—’

  ‘But I wasn’t born of woman,’ Duff wheezed.

  ‘You weren’t?’

  ‘No. I was cut out of my mother, not born.’ Duff leaned forward and ran his forefinger down the scar over his face.

  Macbeth was blinking with his child-eyes. ‘You . . . you weren’t born when Sweno killed her?’

  ‘She was pregnant with me. I was told she was trying to stop the bleeding at the house of an officer when Sweno swung this—’ Duff raised the sabre ‘—and cut open her stomach.’

  ‘And your face.’

  Duff nodded slowly. ‘You won’t get away from me, Macbeth. You’ve lost.’

  ‘Loss after loss. We start off having everything and then we lose everything. I thought it was the only thing that was certain, the amnesty of death. But not even that is guaranteed. Only you can give me death and send me to where I can be reunited with my beloved, Duff. Be my saviour.’

  ‘No. You’re under arrest and will rot alone in a prison.’

  Macbeth chuckled. ‘I can’t, and you can’t stop yourself. You couldn’t stop yourself trying to kill me in the alley and you can’t now. We are as we are, Duff. Free will is an illusion. So do what you have to do. Do what you are. Or shall I help you and say their names? Meredith, Emily and—’

  ‘Ewan,’ Duff said. ‘You’re the one who can’t change from the person you’ve always wanted to be, Macbeth. That’s how I knew there was still hope for Kasi even though the sun had risen over the mountain. You’ve never been able to kill a defenceless man. And even if you’re remembered as more brutal than Sweno, more corrupt than Kenneth, it is your good qualities that have brought you down, your lack of brutality.’

  ‘I was always the reverse of you, Duff. And hence your mirror image. So kill me now.’