Ю Несбё - Macbeth

‘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.’

‘Why the hurry? The place awaiting the likes of you is hell.’

‘So let me go.’

‘If you ask for your sins to be forgiven, maybe you’ll escape.’

‘I’ve sold that chance, Duff. And happily, because I’m looking forward to meeting my beloved again, even if it’s to burn together for all eternity.’

‘Well, you’ll get a fair trial and your sentence will be neither too severe nor too mild. It will be the first proof that this town can be civilised. It can become whole again.’

‘You fatuous idiot!’ Macbeth screamed. ‘You’re fooling yourself. You believe you’re thinking the thoughts you want to think, you believe you’re the person you want to be, but your brain’s desperately searching right now for a pretext to kill me as I lie here defenceless, and that’s precisely why something in you resists. But your hatred is like that train: it can’t be stopped once it has got going.’

‘You’re mistaken, Macbeth. We can change.’

‘Oh yes? Then taste this dagger, free man.’ Macbeth’s hand reached inside his jacket.

Duff reacted instinctively, folded both hands round the handle of the sabre and thrust.

He was surprised by how easily the blade sliced through Macbeth’s chest. And when it met the floor beneath, he felt a tremble spread from Macbeth’s body to the sabre and himself. A long sigh issued from Macbeth’s lips, and a fine spray of pink blood came from his mouth and settled on Duff’s hands like warm rain. He looked down into Macbeth’s eyes, not knowing what he was after, only that he didn’t find it. All he saw was a light extinguishing as the pupils grew and slowly ousted the irises.

Duff let go of the sabre and stepped back two paces.

Stood there in silence.

Sunday morning.

Heard voices approaching from Workers’ Square.

He didn’t want to. But he knew he would have to. So he did. Pulled Macbeth’s jacket open.

Macbeth’s left hand lay flat on his chest. There was nothing there, no shoulder holster, no dagger, only a white shirt gradually turning red.

A pecking sound. Duff turned. It came from the roulette table. He got to his feet. On the felt a chip lay on red, under the heart, another on black. But the sound came from the wheel, which was still spinning but more and more slowly. The white ball danced between the numbers. Then it came to rest, finally trapped.

In the one green slot, which means the house takes all.

None of the players wins.

Church bells pealed in the distance. The one-eyed boy stood in the waiting room at the central station looking out into the daylight. It was a strange sight. From the waiting room Bertha had always blocked the view of the Inverness, but now the old steam engine skewered the facade of the casino. Even in the sharp sunlight he could see the rotating blue lights of the police cars and the flashes of the press photographers. People had flocked to Workers’ Square, and occasionally there was a glimpse of light behind the windows in the Inverness too. That would be the SOC team taking pictures of the dead.

The boy turned and went down the corridor. As he approached the stairs down to the toilet he heard something. A low continuous howl, as if from a dog. He had heard it before, a penniless junkie who hadn’t had his fix. He peered over the railing and saw pale clothes shining in the fetid darkness below. He was about to go on when he heard a cry, like a scream: ‘Wait! Don’t go! I’ve got money!’

‘Sorry, Grandad. I haven’t got any dope and you haven’t got any money. Have a not very nice day.’

‘But I’ve got your eye!’ The boy stopped in his tracks. Went back to the railing. Stared down. That voice. Could it really be...? He went over to the stairs, looked around. There was no one else there. Then he descended into the cold damp darkness. The stench got worse with every step.

The man was lying across the threshold of the men’s toilet. Wearing what had perhaps once been a white linen suit. Now it was the ragged remains soaked in blood. Just like the man himself. Ragged, blood-soaked remains. A triangular shard of glass protruded from his forehead under a dark fringe. And there was the stick with the gilt handle. It damn well was him! The man he had been searching for all these years. Hecate. The boy’s eye gradually got used to the darkness and he saw the gaping wound, a tear across stomach and chest. It was pumping out blood, but not so much, as though he was running dry. Between each new surge of blood he could see the slimy pale-pink intestines inside.

‘Bring my suffering to an end,’ the old man rasped. ‘Then take the money I have in my inside pocket.’

The boy eyed the man. The man from all his dreams, his fantasies. Tears of pain ran down the old man’s soft cheeks. If the boy wanted, he could take out the short flick knife that he used to chop powder, the one with the narrow blade that had once removed an eye. He could stick it into the old man. It would be poetic justice.

‘Has your stomach sprung a leak?’ the boy asked, reaching inside the man’s jacket. ‘Is there acid in the wound?’ He examined the contents of the wallet.

‘Hurry!’ the old man sobbed.

‘Macbeth’s dead,’ the boy said, quickly counting the notes. ‘Do you think that makes the world a better place?’

‘What?’

‘Do you think Macbeth’s successors will be any better, fairer or more compassionate? Is there any reason to think they will be?’

‘Shut up, boy, and get it over with. Use the stick if you want.’

‘If death is what’s most precious for you, Hecate, I won’t take death from you as you took my eye. Do you know why?’

The old man frowned, stared, and the boy saw signs of recognition in his tear-filled eyes.

‘Because I think we have the ability to change and become better people,’ the boy said, putting the wallet in his ragged trousers. ‘That’s why I think Macbeth’s successors will be a little better. Small, small steps, but a little better. A little more humane. Isn’t it strange, by the way, that we use the word humane , human really, to describe what is good and compassionate?’ The boy pulled his knife, and the blade sprang out. ‘Bearing in mind all we’ve done to one another all the way through history, I mean?’

‘Here,’ groaned the old man, pointing to his throat. ‘Quickly.’

‘Do you remember that I had to cut out my eye myself?’

‘What?’

The boy pressed the handle of the knife into the man’s hand. ‘Do it yourself.’

‘But you said... more humane... I can’t do it... please!’

‘Small steps, small steps,’ the boy said, getting up and patting his pocket. ‘We’re getting better, but we won’t be saints overnight, you know.’

The howls followed the boy through the station, all the way until he emerged into the radiant sunshine.

The shiny raindrop fell from the sky, through the darkness, towards the shivering lights of the port below. North-westerly gusts of wind drove the raindrop east of the slow-flowing river that divided the town in two and south of the busy train line that split the town diagonally. The wind carried the raindrop over District 4 to the Obelisk and a new building, the Spring, two hotels where business people from Capitol stayed. Occasionally a yokel wandered into the Obelisk and asked whether this hadn’t been a casino before. Most had forgotten, but they all remembered the other casino, the one that had been in the railway building which now housed the recently opened town library. The raindrop drifted over police HQ, where lights burned in Chief Commissioner Malcolm’s office as he held a management meeting about restructuring. At first there had been some frustration among staff that Mayor Tourtell and the town council were demanding downsizing — a consequence of the statistics showing a strong fall in crime rates. Was this how you rewarded the police for doing such a good job over the last three years? But they realised that Malcolm was right: the job of the police was, as far as possible, to make themselves redundant. Of course this predominantly affected the Narcotics Unit and those departments that had an indirect link to the collapse of the drugs trade, such as the Homicide Unit. Staff numbers remained the same at Anti-Corruption, while the new Financial Crime Unit was the only one allowed to employ more staff. This was because of increased financial activity as a consequence of the town attracting more business and a recognition that white-collar criminals had had it too easy, contributing to a feeling that the police first and foremost served the rich. Duff had defended the size of the Organised Crime Unit by saying that he needed resources to prevent crime and that if professional criminals were to gain a foothold in the town again, this would be far more expensive to clear up. But he understood that he, like everyone else, had to accept cuts. The head of the Homicide Unit, Caithness — who had argued convincingly that with present officer numbers they could finally offer citizens a satisfactory level of efficiency in murder investigations — had even been forced to resign. So Duff was happy it was finally the weekend, and he and Caithness had planned a picnic in Fife. He was both looking forward to it and dreading it. The house had been demolished and he had let the plot grow wild. But the cabin was still there. He wanted them to lie there in the boiling sun and smell the fragrance of the tar in the planks. And listen to see if the echo of Emily and Ewan’s laughter and joyous shouts still hung there. And then he wanted to swim alone out to the smooth rock. They say there are no roads back to the places — and the person — you were. He just had to find out if this was true. Not to forget. But so that he could finally look ahead.