Ю Несбё - Macbeth

‘Why should children be any less cruel than adults?’

‘They’re born innocent!’

‘Innocent and without any sense of morality. Isn’t peaceful passivity just something that adults force children to learn so that we recognise our place in society and let them do what they like with us?’

They kissed at the gate. And on Sunday he took her for a walk in the woods on the other side of the tunnel. He had packed a picnic basket.

‘You can cook!’ she exclaimed excitedly.

‘Banquo and Vera taught me. We used to come to this very spot.’

Then they kissed, she panted and he put his hand up her cotton dress.

‘Wait...’ she said.

And he waited. Instead he carved a heart in the big oak and used the point of his knife to write their names. Meredith and Macbeth.

‘She’s ready to be plucked,’ Duff told Macbeth when he came home and told him the details. ‘I’m going to Rita’s on Wednesday. Invite her here.’

Macbeth had opened a bottle of wine and lit candles when Meredith rang at the door. He was prepared. But not for what happened — for her loosening his belt as soon as they were inside the door and stuffing her hand down his trousers.

‘D-d-don’t,’ he said.

She looked at him in surprise.

‘S-s-stop.’

‘Why are you stammering?’

‘I d-d-don’t want you to.’

She withdrew her hand, her cheeks burning with shame.

Afterwards they drank a glass of red wine in silence.

‘I have to get up early tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Exams soon and...’

‘Of course.’

Three weeks passed. Macbeth tried ringing several times, but the few times he got an answer Rita said that Meredith wasn’t at home.

‘You and Meredith are no longer dating, I take it,’ Duff said.

‘No.’

‘Rita and I aren’t either. Do you mind if I meet Meredith?’

‘You’d better ask her.’

‘I have.’

Macbeth gulped. It was as if he had a claw around his heart. ‘Oh yes? And what did she say?’

‘She said yes.’

‘Did she? And when are you...?’

‘Yesterday. Just for a bite to eat, but... it was nice.’

The day after, Macbeth woke up and was sick. And it was only later he realised what this sickness was and that there was no remedy for a broken heart. You had to suffer your way through it and he did. Suffered in silence without mentioning her name to anyone but an old oak tree on the healthy side of the tunnel. And after a while the symptoms passed. Almost completely. And he discovered that it wasn’t true what people said, that we can only fall in love once. But unlike Meredith, Lady was the sickness and remedy in one. Thirst and water. Desire and satisfaction. And now her voice reached him from across the sea, from across the night.

‘Darling...’

Macbeth drifted through water and air, light and darkness.

‘Wake up!’

‘He opened his eyes. He was lying in bed. It had to be night still, for the room was dark. But there was a grainy element, a kind of imperceptible greyness that presaged dawn.

‘At last!’ she hissed in his ear. ‘Where have you been?’

‘Been?’ Macbeth said, trying to hold on to a scrap of the dream. ‘Haven’t I been here?’

‘Your body has, yes, but I’ve been trying to wake you for hours. It’s as if you’ve been unconscious. What have you done?’

Macbeth was still holding on to the dream, but suddenly he didn’t know whether it was a good dream or a nightmare. Duncan... He let go, and images whirled in the darkness.

‘Your pupils,’ she said, holding his face between her hands. ‘You’ve taken dope, that’s why.’

He squirmed away, from her, from the light. ‘I needed it.’

‘But you’ve done it?

‘It?’

She shook him hard. ‘Macbeth, darling, answer me! Have you done the deed you promised you would?’

‘Yes!’ He groaned and ran a hand across his face. ‘No, I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know ?’

‘I can see him in front of me with a dagger in him, but I don’t know if it really happened or I just dreamed it.’

‘There’s a clean dagger here on the bedside table. You were supposed to have put both daggers in with the bodyguards after killing Duncan, one with each of them.’

‘Yes, yes, I remember.’

‘Is the other dagger with them? Pull yourself together!’

‘Sleep no more. Macbeth is murdering sleep.’

‘What?’

‘He said that. Or I dreamed it.’

‘We’d better go in and check.’

Macbeth closed his eyes, reached out for the dream — perhaps it could tell him. Rather that than go back in. But the dream had already slipped through his fingers. When he reopened his eyes Lady was standing with an ear to the wall.

‘They’re still snoring. Come on.’ She grabbed the dagger from the bedside table.

Macbeth breathed in deeply. The day and its revealing light would soon be here. He swung his legs out of bed and discovered he was still fully dressed.

They went into the corridor. Not a sound to be heard. Those who stayed at the Inverness didn’t usually get up early.

Lady unlocked the guards’ room, and she and Macbeth went in. Each was lying asleep in an armchair. But there were no daggers anywhere, and there was no blood smeared over their suits and shirts, as per their plan.

‘I only dreamed it,’ Macbeth whispered. ‘Come on, let’s drop this.’

‘No!’ Lady snarled and strode off to the door connecting to Duncan’s room. Shifted the dagger to her right hand. Then, without any sign of hesitation, she tore open the door and went in.

Macbeth waited and listened.

Nothing.

He walked over to the door opening.

Grey light seeped in through the window.

She was standing on the opposite side of the bed with the dagger raised by her mouth. Squeezing the handle with both hands, her eyes wide with horror.

Duncan was in the bed. His eyes were open and seemed to be staring at something by the other door. Everything was sprayed with blood. The duvet, the gun lying on the duvet, the hand on the gun. And the handle of the dagger sticking out of Duncan’s neck like a hook.

‘Oh darling,’ Lady whispered. ‘My man, my hero, my saviour, Macbeth.’

Macbeth opened his mouth to say something, but at that moment the total Sunday silence was broken by a barely audible but continuous ringing sound from below.

Lady looked at her watch. ‘That’s Duff. He’s early! Darling, go downstairs and keep him busy while I sort this out.’

‘You’ve got three minutes,’ Macbeth said. ‘Don’t touch the blood. It’s semi-coagulated and will leave prints. OK?’

She angled back her head and smiled at him. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘There you are.’

And he knew what she meant. At last he was there. The zone.

Standing in front of the door to the Inverness, Duff shivered and longed to be back in Caithness’s warm bed. He was about to press the bell a second time when the door opened.

‘Sir, the entrance to the casino is down there.’

‘No, I’m here to collect Chief Commissioner Duncan.’

‘Oh, right. Come in. I’ll ring and say you’re here. Inspector Duff, isn’t it?’

Duff nodded. They had really first-class staff at the Inverness. He sank down into one of the deep armchairs.

‘No answer, sir,’ said the receptionist. ‘Neither there nor in his bodyguards’ room.’

Duff looked at his watch. ‘What’s the chief commissioner’s room number?’

‘Two thirteen, sir.’

‘Would you mind if I went up to wake him?’

‘Not at all.’

Duff was on his way up the stairs when a familiar figure came bounding down towards him.

‘Morning, Duff,’ Macbeth called cheerily. ‘Jack, could you go to the kitchen and get us both a cup of strong coffee.’