Ю Несбё - Macbeth

‘Especially if his successor were someone Hecate had tabs on,’ Duff said. Realising at once what he had insinuated, he closed his eyes. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to...’

‘That’s fine,’ Malcolm said. ‘We can speak and think freely here, and what you said follows from my reasoning. Hecate might think he would have an easier time than under Duncan. So let’s show him how wrong he is.’ Malcolm pushed all the chips onto black. ‘So our provisional hypothesis is Hecate, but let’s hope we know more by six o’clock. To work.’

Banquo could feel sleep letting go. Felt the dream letting go. Felt Vera letting go. He blinked. Was it the church bells that had woken him? No. There was someone in the room. A person sitting by the window and looking down at the framed photograph, who, without looking up, asked, ‘Hangover?’

‘Macbeth? How...?’

‘Fleance let me in. He’s taken over my room, I see. Even the winkle-pickers you bought me.’

‘What’s the time?’

‘And there was me thinking pointed shoes were way out of fashion.’

‘That was why you left them here. But Fleance will wear anything if he knows it was once yours.’

‘Books and school stuff everywhere. He’s hard-working, he’s got the right attitude to get to the top.’

‘Yes, he’s getting there.’

‘But, as we know, that’s not always enough to get to the top. You’re one of many, so it’s a question of opportunity. Having the skill and the courage to strike when the opportunity presents itself. Do you remember who took this picture?’

Macbeth held it up. Fleance and Banquo under the dead apple tree. The shadow of the photographer falling across them.

‘You did. What do you want?’ Banquo rubbed his face. Macbeth was right: he did have a hangover.

‘Duncan’s dead.’

Banquo’s hands dropped to the duvet. ‘What was that you said?’

‘His bodyguards stabbed him in the neck while he was asleep at the Inverness last night.’

Banquo felt nausea on the march and had to breathe in several times to stop himself throwing up.

‘This is the opportunity,’ Macbeth said. ‘That is, it’s a parting of the ways. From here one way goes to hell and the other to heaven. I’m here to ask which you’ll choose.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I want to know if you’ll follow me.’

‘I’ve already answered that. And the answer’s yes.’

Macbeth turned to him. Smiled. ‘And you can say that without asking whether it’ll lead to heaven or hell?’ His face was pale, his pupils abnormally small. Had to be the sharp morning light because if Banquo hadn’t known Macbeth better he would have said he was back on dope. But the moment he was about to push that thought away the certainty broke over him like a sudden freezing-cold deluge.

‘Was it you?’ Banquo said. ‘Was it you who killed him?’

Macbeth tilted his head and studied Banquo. Studied him the way you study a parachute before you jump, a woman before you try to kiss her for the first time.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I killed Duncan.’

Banquo had difficulty breathing. Squeezed his eyes shut. Hoping that Macbeth, that this would be gone when he opened them again. ‘And what now?’

‘Now I have to kill Malcolm,’ he heard Macbeth say. ‘That is, you have to kill Malcolm.’

Banquo opened his eyes.

‘For me,’ Macbeth said. ‘And for my crown prince, Fleance.’

Banquo sat in the frugal light of the cellar listening to Fleance stamping to and fro upstairs. The boy wanted to go out. Meet friends. Maybe a girl. It would be good for him.

Banquo let the chain slide through his fingers.

He had said yes to Macbeth. Why? Why had he crossed this boundary so easily? Was it because of Macbeth’s promise that he was of the people, with the people and for the people, in a way that an upper-class man like Malcolm could never be? No. It was because you simply couldn’t say no when it was about a son. And even less when it was about two.

Macbeth had described it as following fate’s call, clearing a path to the chief commissioner’s office. He hadn’t said anything about Lady being the brains behind it. He hadn’t needed to. Macbeth preferred simple plans. Plans that didn’t require too much thinking in critical situations. Banquo closed his eyes. Tried to imagine it. Macbeth taking over as chief commissioner and running the town with absolute power, the way Kenneth had done but with the honest aim of making the town a better place for all its inhabitants. If you want to make all the drastic changes that are needed, the slowness of democracy and the free rein it gives simple-mindedness are no good. A strong, just hand. And so, by the time Macbeth is too old, he will let Fleance take over at the helm. By then Banquo will have died of old age, happy. Perhaps that was why he couldn’t imagine it.

Banquo heard the front door slam.

But it’s obvious, even if visions of this nature take time to become completely clear.

He put on his gloves.

It was half past five and the rain was hammering down on the cobblestones and on the windscreen of Malcolm’s Chevelle 454 SS as he wound his way through the streets. He was aware it was stupid to buy a petrol guzzler in the middle of an oil crisis, and even if he had bought it second-hand for what he considered a reasonable price, he had fallen short in the responsibility argument. First of all, with his ecology-conscious daughter, then with Duncan, who had underscored the significance of leaders showing moderation. In the end Malcolm had said what he felt: he had loved these American exaggerations of cars ever since he was a boy, and Duncan had said that at least it showed economists were humans too.

He had quickly popped home to have a shower and change his clothes, which fortunately didn’t take long because it was a Sunday and there was very little traffic. A large press gathering awaited him at the entrance to HQ, probably hoping for a comment or a better picture than they would get at the press conference at half past seven. The mayor, Tourtell, had already been on TV to make a statement. ‘Incomprehensible’, ‘tragedy’, ‘our thoughts go out to the family’ and ‘the town must stand united against this evil’ was what he had said, only accompanied by a great many more words. Malcolm’s, by contrast, minimal comment had been to ask the press for their understanding; his focus was now on the investigation, and he referred them to the press conference.

Malcolm drove down the ramp to the basement garage, nodded to the guard, who opened the barrier, and swung in. The distance from your parking slot to the lift was in direct proportion to your place in the hierarchy. And when Malcolm backed into his slot it struck him that, from a formal point of view, he could have actually parked in the one that was closest.

He was about to take out the ignition key when the door on the passenger side opened and someone slipped into the back, sliding over behind the driver’s seat. And for the first time since Duncan’s murder Malcolm confronted the thought. With the chief commissioner’s job came not only a parking slot closer to the lift but also a death threat, whenever, wherever; security was a privilege accorded to those who parked further away.

‘Start up the car,’ the person in the back seat said.

Malcolm looked in the rear-view mirror. The person had moved so quickly and so soundlessly that he could only conclude SWAT training was effective. ‘Anything wrong, Banquo?’

‘Yes, sir. We’ve uncovered plans for an attack on your life.’

‘Inside police HQ?’

‘Yes. Drive slowly, please. We have to get away. We don’t know who is involved in the force yet, but we think they’re the same people who killed Duncan.’