Ю Несбё - Macbeth

‘Duff and I are not the US and the Soviet Union.’

‘No? What are you actually? You were inseparable at police college, but now you barely talk. What happened?’

Macbeth shrugged. ‘Nothing much. We were probably an odd couple anyway. He’s a Duff. His family had property once, and that kind of thing lingers. Language, upper-class manners. At the orphanage it isolated and exposed him, then he seemed to gravitate towards me. We became a duo you didn’t mess with, but at college you could see he was drawn to his own sort. He was released into the jungle like a tame lion. Duff studied at university, found himself an upper-class girl and got married. Children. We drifted apart.’

‘Or did you just get sick of him behaving like the selfish, arrogant bastard he is?’

‘People often get the wrong idea about Duff. At police college he and I swore we would get the big bad boys. Duff really wants to change this town, Banquo.’

‘Was that why you saved his skin?’

‘Duff’s competent and hard-working. He has a good chance of getting Organised Crime, everyone knows that. So why should one mistake in the heat of battle stop the career of a man who can do something good for us all?’

‘Because it’s not like you to kill a defenceless man in that way.’

Macbeth shrugged. ‘Maybe I’ve changed.’

‘People don’t change. But I see now you saw it simply as your soldier’s duty. You, Duff and I are fighting on the same side in this war. You’ve cut short the lives of two Norse Riders so that they can’t continue to cut short the lives of our children with their poison. But you don’t perform your duty by choice. I know what it costs you when you start seeing your dead enemies in traffic lights. You’re a better man than me, Macbeth.’

Macbeth smirked. ‘You see more clearly than me in the mists of battle, old man, so it’s some solace to me that I have your forgiveness.’

Banquo shook his head. ‘I don’t see better than anyone else. I’m just a chatterbox with doubt as my sole guide.’

‘Doubt, yes. Does it eat you up sometimes?’

‘No,’ Banquo answered, staring through the windscreen. ‘Not sometimes. All the time.’

Macbeth and Banquo walked from the car park up to the staff entrance at the rear of HQ, a two-hundred-year-old stone building in the centre of District 3 East. In its time the building had been a prison, and there was talk of executions and mumblings of torture. Many of those who worked late also claimed they felt an inexplicably cold draught running through the offices and heard distant screams. Banquo had said to Macbeth it was only the somewhat eccentric caretaker, who turned down the heating at five on the dot every day, and his screams when he saw someone leaving their desk without turning off the lamp.

Macbeth noticed two Asiatic-looking women shivering on the pavement among the unemployed men, looking around as if they were waiting for someone. The town’s prostitutes used to gather in Thrift Street behind the National Railway Network offices until the council chased them out a few years ago, and now the market had split into two: those attractive enough to work the casinos, and those forced to endure the hard conditions of the streets, who felt safer wall to wall with the law. Moreover, when the police, after periodic pressure from politicians or the press, ‘cleaned’ the ‘sex filth’ off the streets with mass arrests, it was convenient for all sides if the clear-up was brief and quick. Soon everything would be back to normal, and you couldn’t rule out the possibility that some of the girls’ punters came from police HQ anyway. But Macbeth had politely declined the girls’ offers for so long that they left him in peace. So when he saw the two women moving towards him and Banquo he assumed they were new to the area. And he would have remembered them. Even by the relatively low standard of these streets their appearance did not make a favourable impression. Now it was Macbeth’s experience that it was difficult to put a precise age on Asiatic women, but whatever theirs was, they must have been through hard times. It was in their eyes. They were the cold, inscrutable kind that don’t let you see in, that only reflect their surroundings and themselves. They were stooped and dressed in cheap coats, but there was something else that caught his attention, something which didn’t add up, the disfiguration of their faces. One opened her mouth and revealed a line of dirty, brown, neglected teeth.

‘Sorry, ladies,’ Macbeth said cheerfully before she managed to speak. ‘We’d have liked to say yes, but I’ve got a frighteningly jealous wife and him there, he’s got a terrible VD rash.’

Banquo mumbled something and shook his head.

‘Macbeth,’ said one of them in a staccato accent and squeaky doll-like voice at variance with her hard eyes.

‘Banquo,’ said the other woman — identical accent, identical voice.

Macbeth stopped. Both women had combed their long raven-black hair over their faces, probably to conceal them, but they couldn’t hide the big un-Asiatic fiery-red noses hanging over their mouths like glass glowing beneath the glass-blower’s pipe.

‘You know our names,’ he said. ‘So how can we help you, ladies?’

They didn’t answer. Just nodded towards a house on the other side of the street. And there, from the shadows of an archway, a third person stepped into the daylight. The contrast to the two others couldn’t have been greater. This woman — if it was a woman — was as tall and broad-shouldered as a bouncer and dressed in a tight leopardskin-print outfit that emphasised her female curves the way a swindler emphasises the false benefits of his product. But Macbeth knew what she was selling, at least what she used to sell. And the false benefits. Everything about her was extreme: her height, width, bulging breasts, the claw-like red nails that bent around her strong fingers, the wide-open eyes, the theatrical make-up, boots up to her thighs with stiletto heels. To him the only shock was that she hadn’t changed. All the years had passed without apparently leaving a mark on her.

She crossed the street in what seemed to be two gigantic steps.

‘Gentlemen,’ she said in a voice so deep Macbeth thought he could hear the glass panes behind him quiver.

‘Strega,’ Macbeth said. ‘Long time, no see.’

‘Likewise. You were a mere boy then.’

‘So you remember me?’

‘I remember all my clients, Inspector Macbeth.’

‘And who are these two?’

‘My sisters.’ Strega smiled. ‘We bring Hecate’s congratulations.’

Macbeth saw Banquo automatically reach inside his jacket at the sound of Hecate’s name, and he placed a guarded hand on his arm. ‘What for?’

‘Your appointment as head of Organised Crime,’ Strega said. ‘All hail Macbeth.’

‘All hail Macbeth,’ the sisters echoed.

‘What are you talking about?’ Macbeth said, scanning the unemployed men across the street. He had spotted a movement when Banquo went for his gun.

‘One man’s loss, another man’s gain,’ Strega said. ‘Those are the laws of the jungle. More dead, more bread. And who will get the bread, I wonder, if Chief Commissioner Duncan dies?’

‘Hey!’ Banquo took a step towards her. ‘If that’s Hecate threatening us, then...’

Macbeth held him back. He had seen it now. Three of the men across the road had looked up, braced themselves. They were standing apart but among the others, and there was a similarity: they all wore grey lightweight coats. ‘Just let her talk,’ Macbeth whispered.

Strega smiled. ‘There’s no threat. Hecate won’t do anything; he’s just stating an interesting fact. He thinks you’ll be the next chief commissioner.’