Ю Несбё - Macbeth

‘Darling, what is the matter with you?’

‘That’s what I dreamed.’

‘You’re paranoid. Banquo really is your friend! If he was planning to betray you he could have just gone to Malcolm and told him about your schemes.’

‘No, he knows he’ll be stronger if he plays his ace at the end. First kill me, a dangerous murderer, and then bring back Malcolm as chief commissioner. What a heroic deed! How can you reward a man like that and his family?’

‘Do you really believe this?’

‘No,’ said Macbeth. He was standing close to the mirror now, his nose touching the glass, which had misted up. ‘I don’t believe it, I know it. I can see . I can see the two of them. Banquo and Fleance. I have to forestall them, but how?’ Suddenly he turned to her. ‘How? You, my only one, you have to help me. You have to help us .’

Lady crossed her arms. However warped Macbeth’s reasoning sounded, there was some sense in it. He might be right. And if he wasn’t, Banquo was still a fellow conspirator and a potential witness and blabber. The fewer there were of them, the better. And what real use did they have for Banquo and Fleance? None. She sighed. As Jack would say, If you’ve got less than twelve in blackjack you ask for another card. Because you can’t lose.

‘Invite them here one evening,’ she said. ‘Then we know where they are.’

‘And we do it here?’

‘No, no, there have been enough murders at the Inverness; one more would cast suspicion on us and also frighten away the clientele. We’ll do it on the road.’

Macbeth nodded. ‘I’ll ask Banquo and Fleance to come by car. I’ll tell them we’ve promised someone a lift home with them. I know exactly the route he’ll take, so if I tell them to be punctual we’ll know to the minute where on the route they’ll be. Do you know what, woman of my dreams?’

Yes, she thought, as he embraced her, but let him say it anyway.

‘I love you above everything on this earth and in the sky above.’

Duff found the young boy sitting on a bollard at the edge of the quay. There was a break in the rain, and more light than usual penetrated the layer of white cloud above them. But out in the river new troops of bluish-grey clouds stood lined up ready to ride in on the north-westerly wind against them — all you could rely on in this town.

‘I’m Duff. Are you the person who rang about Malcolm?’

‘Cool scar,’ the boy said, straightening his eyepatch. ‘They said you weren’t the head of Narco any more?’

‘You said it was urgent.’

‘It’s always urgent, Mr Narco Boss.’

‘Suits me fine. Spit it out.’

‘ Fork it out, I think we say.’

‘Oh, so that’s why it’s urgent. When do you have to have your next shot?’

‘A couple of hours ago. And as this is important enough for the boss himself to show up, I think we’ll say you pay for not only the next one, but the next ten.’

‘Or I wait half an hour and you’ll happily spit it out for half the price. Another half an hour and it’ll cost half again...’

‘I cannot deny this, Mr Narco Boss, but the question is: which of us is in a greater hurry? I read about Malcolm in the papers this morning and recognised him in the photo. Drowned, kind of. Deputy chief commissioner and shit. Heavy stuff.’

‘Come on, lad, and I’ll pay you what it’s worth.’

The one-eyed boy chuckled. ‘Sorry, Mr Narco Boss, but I’ve stopped trusting the fuzz. Here’s your first bite. I wake up after nodding off, sitting between the lines of containers you can see over there, where you can shoot up and have a trip without being robbed, know what I mean? No one sees me, but I can see him, Malcolm, on the other side of the canal. Well, Narco Boss? First shot’s for free, the next one will cost you big time. Heard that one before?’ The boy laughed.

‘Not sure I’m hooked there,’ Duff said. ‘We know Malcolm was here, we found his car.’

‘But you didn’t know he wasn’t alone here. Or who was here with him.’

From bitter experience Duff knew a junkie told more lies than the truth, especially if that way they could finance their next shot. But, as a rule, a junkie preferred easier and quicker ways of tricking you than ringing HQ and insisting on talking to one of the unit heads, then waiting an hour in the rain, and all of that without a guaranteed payment.

‘And you know that, do you?’ Duff asked. ‘Who this person is?’

‘I’ve seen him before, yes.’

Duff took out his wallet. Produced a wad, counted, passed the banknotes to the boy.

‘I was thinking of calling Macbeth himself,’ the boy said as he recounted. ‘But then I realised he would probably refuse to believe me when I told him who it was.’

‘Personal?’

‘That Malcolm was talking to Macbeth’s sidekick,’ the boy said. ‘Old guy, white hair.’

Duff gasped involuntarily. ‘Banquo?’

‘I dunno what his name is, but I’ve seen him with Macbeth at the station.’

‘And what were Banquo and Malcolm talking about?’

‘They were too far away for me to hear.’

‘What erm... did it seem as if they were talking about? Were they laughing? Or were there loud, angry voices?’

‘Impossible to say. The rain was hammering down on the containers and mostly they had their backs to me. They might have been arguing. The old boy was waving his shooter for a while. But then things quietened down, they got into a Volvo and drove off. The old boy was driving.’

Duff scratched his head. Banquo and Malcolm in cahoots?

‘This is too much,’ the boy said, holding up a note.

Duff looked down at him. A junkie giving him change? He took the note. ‘You didn’t tell me this just for the money for another shot, did you?’

‘Eh?’

‘You said you’d read the papers and knew this was heavy stuff. And it is. So heavy that if you’d rung a journalist with this story you’d have got ten times more than from a policeman. So either it’s Hecate who sent you to spread false info or you’ve got another agenda.’

‘Go to hell, Mr Narco Boss.’

Duff grabbed the junkie’s collar and pulled him off the bollard. The boy weighed almost nothing.

‘Listen to me,’ Duff said, trying to avoid inhaling the boy’s stinking breath. ‘I can put you behind bars, and let’s see then what you think when you hit cold turkey and you know you’ve got two days in the wilderness in front of you. Or you tell me now why you came to me. You’ve got five seconds. Four...’

The boy glared back at Duff.

‘Three...’

‘You piece of cop shit, you’re fuckin’...’

‘Two...’

‘My eye.’

‘One...’

‘My eye, I said!’

‘What about it?’

‘I only wanted to help you catch the man that took my eye.’

‘Who was it?’

The boy snorted. ‘The same guy that’s busting your arse. Don’t you know who’s behind all this shit? There’s only one person in this town who can kill a chief commissioner and get away with it, and that’s the Invisible Hand.’

Hecate?

Macbeth drove along the dirty road between the old factories. The cloud hung so low and Monday-grey over the chimneys that it was difficult to see which were smoking, but some of the gates had CLOSED signs or chains secured across them like ironic bow ties.

The press conference had passed painlessly. Painlessly because he had been too high to feel anything. He had concentrated on sitting back in a relaxed manner with his arms crossed and leaving the questions to Lennox and Caithness. Apart from those directed at him personally, which he had answered with, ‘We cannot comment on that at the present time,’ delivered with an expression that said they had much too much information and were in full control. Calm and assured. That was the impression he hoped he had given. An acting chief commissioner who did not allow himself to be affected by the hysteria around him, who answered journalists’ shrill questions — ‘Doesn’t the public have the right to know?’ — with a somewhat resigned, tolerant smile.