Ю Несбё - Macbeth

The faces gaped at him.

‘If I might...’ Caithness began.

‘Please, Inspector.’

‘Your question might be logical, but the human psyche doesn’t work like that.’

‘Doesn’t it?’ Duff replied. ‘I think it does. There’s something about Malcolm’s apparent suicide that doesn’t tally. Our brains will always — with great accuracy and based on available information — weigh up the pros and cons and then make an irrefutably logical decision.’

‘If the logic’s irrefutable, why, despite having no new information, do we sometimes feel remorse?’

‘Remorse?’

‘Remorse, Inspector Duff.’ Caithness looked him straight in the eye. ‘It’s a feeling in people with human qualities that tells us we wish something that we’ve done, undone. We can’t exclude the possibility that Malcolm was like that.’

Duff shook his head. ‘Remorse is a sign of illness. Einstein said proof of insanity is when someone goes through the same thought process again hoping to get a different answer.’

‘Then Einstein’s contention can be refuted if, over time, we draw different conclusions. Not because the information has changed in any way, but because people can do that.’

‘People don’t change!’

Duff noticed that the officers in the room had woken up and were following attentively now. They perhaps suspected that this exchange with Caithness was no longer only about Malcolm’s death.

‘Perhaps Malcolm changed,’ Caithness said. ‘Perhaps Duncan’s death changed him. That can’t be ruled out.’

‘Nor can we rule out the possibility that he left a suicide letter, threw his police badge in the sea and did a runner,’ Duff said. ‘As regards human qualities and all that.’

The door opened. It was an officer from the Narcotics Unit. ‘Phone call for you, Inspector Duff. He says it’s about Malcolm and it’s urgent. And he only wants to speak to you.’

Lady stood in the middle of the bedroom looking at the man sleeping in her bed. In their bed. It was gone nine o’clock, she’d had her breakfast a long time ago, but there was still no life in the body under the silk sheets.

She sat down on the side of the bed, stroked his cheek, tugged at his thick black curls and shook him. A narrow strip of white appeared under his eyelids.

‘Chief Commissioner! Wake up! The town’s on fire!’

She laughed as Macbeth groaned and rolled onto his side, his back to her. ‘What’s the time?’

‘Late.’

‘I dreamed it was Sunday.’

‘You dreamed a lot, I think.’

‘Yes, that bloody...’

‘What?’

‘Nothing. I heard storm bells. But then I realised they were church bells. Summoning churchgoers to confession and a christening.’

‘I told you not to say that word.’

‘Christening?’

‘Macbeth!’

‘Sorry.’

‘The press conference is in less than two hours. And they’ll be wondering what’s happened to their chief commissioner.’

He swung his legs out of bed. Lady stopped him, held his face between her hands and inspected him carefully. The pupils were small. Again.

She pulled a stray hair from his eyebrow.

‘Also we’ve got a dinner this evening,’ she said, searching for more. ‘You haven’t forgotten, have you?’

‘Is it really right to have it so close after Duncan’s passing-away?’

‘It’s a dinner to cultivate connections, not a banquet. And we still have to eat, darling.’

‘Who’s coming?’

‘Everyone I’ve asked. The mayor. Some of your colleagues.’ She found a grey hair, but it slipped between her long red nails. ‘We’re going to discuss how to enforce the regulations for the casinos. It’s in today’s leader column that the Obelisk is apparently running a prostitution racket under cover of the casino and that therefore it should be closed.’

‘It doesn’t help that your editor chum writes what you want him to if no one reads his newspapers.’

‘No. But now I’ve got a chief commissioner as my husband.’

‘Ow!’

‘You should get a few more grey hairs. They look good on bosses. I’ll talk to my hairdresser today. Perhaps he can discreetly dye your temples.’

‘My temples aren’t visible.’

‘Exactly. That’s why we’ll get your hair cut — so they are.’

‘Never!’

‘Mayor Tourtell might think his town should have a chief commissioner who looks like a grown man, not a boy.’

‘Oh? Are you worried?’

Lady shrugged. ‘Normally the mayor wouldn’t interfere with the police hierarchy, but he’s the one who appoints the new chief commissioner. We just have to be sure he doesn’t get any funny ideas.’

‘And how can we do that?’

‘Well, we might have to ensure we have some hold over Tourtell in the unlikely event that he cuts up rough. But don’t you worry about that, darling.’

‘All right. Apropos cutting up rough...’

She stopped searching for unruly hairs. She recognised the tone. ‘Is there something you haven’t told me, dearest?’

‘Banquo...’

‘What about him?’

‘I’ve begun to wonder whether I can trust him. Whether he hasn’t made some cunning plan for himself and Fleance.’ He took a deep breath, and she knew he was about to tell her something important. ‘Banquo didn’t kill Malcolm yesterday, he sent him off to Capitol. He made some excuse about this not being a life we risked anything by sparing.’

She knew he was waiting for her reaction. When none was forthcoming he remarked she didn’t seem so dumbfounded.

She smiled.

‘This is not the time to be dumbfounded. What do you think he’s planning?’

‘He claims he’s frightened Malcolm into silence, but I’m guessing the two of them have concocted something that will give Banquo a better and surer pay-off than he’s getting with me.’

‘Darling, surely you don’t think that nice old Banquo has any ambition to become chief commissioner?’

‘No, no, Banquo has always been someone who wants to be led, not to lead. This is about his son, Fleance. I’m only fifteen years older than Fleance, and by the time I retire Fleance will be old and grey himself. So it’s better for him to be the crown prince to an older man like Malcolm.’

‘You’re just tired, my love. Banquo’s much too loyal to want to do anything like that. You said yourself he would burn in hell for you.’

‘Yes, he has been loyal. And so have I to him.’ Macbeth got up and stood in front of the big gold-framed mirror on the wall. ‘But if you take a closer look, hasn’t this mutual loyalty been more advantageous for Banquo? Hasn’t he been the hyena who follows the lion’s footprints and eats prey he hasn’t killed himself? I made him second-in-command in SWAT and my deputy in Organised Crime. I would say he’s been well paid for the small services he’s performed for me.’

‘All the more reason why you can count on his loyalty, darling.’

‘Yes, that’s what I thought too. But now I see...’ Macbeth frowned and went closer to the mirror. Placed a hand on its surface to check if there was something there. ‘He loved me like a father loves a son, but that love turned to hatred when he drank the poison of envy. I passed him on the way up, and instead of him being my boss I became his. And as well as obeying my orders he has had to tolerate the unspoken contempt of his own blood, Fleance, who has seen his father bow his head to the cuckoo in the nest, Macbeth. Have you ever looked into a dog’s faithful brown eyes as it looks up at you, wagging its tail and hoping for food? It sits there, still, waiting, because that’s what it’s been trained to do. And you smile at it, pat its head, and you can’t see the hatred behind the obedience. You can’t see that if it got the opportunity, if it saw its chance to escape punishment, it would attack you, it would tear at your throat; your death would be its breath of freedom and it would leave you half-eaten in some filthy corridor.’