Ю Несбё - Macbeth

‘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—’