Ю Несбё - Macbeth

‘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.