Ю Несбё - Macbeth

‘Caithness, I’ve got this meeting, so...’

‘You didn’t say where, but if it’s a long detour...’

He looked at the knife again.

‘I’ll go with you,’ he said. ‘Of course I will. I’m head of the Homicide Unit, and this case is top priority.’

Then he turned and threw the knife hard at the cork board. It spun one and a half times on its axis before hitting the board handle first and falling to the kitchen floor with a clatter.

‘What are you trying to do?’ she asked.

Duff stared at the knife. ‘Something you need a lot of practice at before you succeed. Come on.’

‘So, Seyton,’ Macbeth said, ‘What can I do for you?’

The rays of sunshine had found a break in the clouds and were now angled through the grimy windows of the chief commissioner’s office and fell on his desk, on his photo of Lady, on the calendar showing it was a Tuesday, on the drawing of the Gatling gun and, sitting in front of Macbeth’s desk, the polished, shiny pate of the lean, sinewy officer.

‘You need a bodyguard,’ Seyton said.

‘Do I? And what kind of bodyguard do I need?’

‘One who can fight evil with evil. Duncan had two, and after this business with Banquo, God bless his soul, there’s every reason to assume they’re after you as well, Chief Commissioner.’

‘Who are they ?’

Seyton looked at Macbeth with puzzlement in his eyes before answering. ‘The Norse Riders. My understanding is that they’re behind this execution.’

Macbeth nodded. ‘Witnesses in District 2 say they saw bikers, some of them wearing Norse Rider jackets, shooting at a Volvo outside a jewellery shop the car had driven into. We presume it was Banquo’s car.’

‘If Malcolm was involved, the threat to the chief commissioner may come from inside the force. I don’t trust all our so-called leaders. In my opinion, Duff is someone who lacks spine and morality. Of the threats outside the force there’s obviously Hecate.’

‘Hecate’s a businessman. Being suspected of murder is rarely good for business. Sweno, on the other hand, has a motive which trumps business sense.’

‘Revenge.’

‘Good old-fashioned revenge, yes. Some of our economists seem to undervalue the human tendency to follow our basest instincts instead of the bank book. When the black widow’s lover is lying on her back, sated and exhausted by love-making, he knows he’ll soon be eaten. Yet he would never be able to make any other choice. And there you have Sweno.’

‘So you’re less afraid of Hecate?’

‘I’ve told you today that resources should be distributed more sensibly, the witch-hunt aimed at Hecate has to be scaled down so that we can sort out other more pressing problems for the town.’

‘Such as?’

‘Such as honest, hard-working people being openly cheated and robbed of their savings by one of our more dubious casinos. But back to the point. Former chief commissioners have had bad experiences with bodyguards, but I haven’t forgotten how effective and brave you were when I was attacked by that dog at Cawdor’s. So let me sleep on this, Seyton. Actually, I’d been thinking of giving you a different post, one which is not so different from the one you were requesting, actually.’

‘Oh?’

‘Now I’m chief commissioner and Banquo’s gone, SWAT doesn’t have a head. You, Seyton, are the oldest officer with the most experience.’

‘Thank you, Chief Commissioner. That is really an unexpected honour and statement of trust. The problem is that I don’t know if I’m worthy of the trust. I’m not a politician, nor a leader of men.’

‘No, I know the type. You’re a watchdog who needs a master and a mistress, Seyton. But SWAT is a kind of watchdog. You’d be surprised at the detail of the instructions you get. I barely needed to think about how to apprehend the bad guys. And given the murders over the last two days it’s clear that the threat to someone sitting in my chair is such that SWAT will have to be used to actively protect the head of police HQ.’

‘Are you saying that SWAT will become the chief commissioner’s personal bodyguard?’

‘I can’t imagine that an arrangement of that kind would meet any resistance that can’t be quelled. In which case, we would be killing two birds with one stone. Your wishes and mine would be met. What do you say, Seyton?’

The sun was going down, and perhaps it was the sudden darkness falling in the room that made Seyton lower his voice so it sounded like a conspiratorial whisper: ‘As long as my orders come directly and in detail from you personally, Chief Commissioner.’

Macbeth studied the man in front of him. God bless his soul , Seyton had said about Banquo. Macbeth wondered what kind of blessing it had been.

‘My orders, loyal Seyton, will be unambiguous. As far as quelling protests is concerned, I’ve just ordered two of these Gatling guns.’ He passed Seyton the drawing. ‘Express delivery. Bit more expensive, but we’ll get them in two days. What do you think?’

Seyton ran his eye over the drawing, nodding slowly. ‘Tasty,’ he said. ‘Beautiful in fact.’

Duff yawned as he drove from a clear sky to dark clouds.

Ewan had woken him when he jumped up into the guest bed, with his sister hard on his heels.

‘Daddy, you’re home!’

They’d had breakfast in the kitchen with the morning sun low over the lake. Meredith had told the children to stop fighting to sit on Daddy’s lap and eat; they had to go to school. She hadn’t managed to put on the strict voice Duff knew she wanted to, and he had seen the smile in her eyes.

Now he passed the crime scene, where the bullet-riddled car had been towed away and the blood on the tarmac had been cleaned up. Caithness and her people had worked efficiently and found what evidence there was. And there hadn’t been much for him to do apart from state the obvious: that Banquo had been shot and beheaded. There was no trace of Fleance, but Duff had noticed that the seat belt on the passenger seat had been cut. That could mean anything at all; for the time being all they could do was put out a general missing-person alert for Banquo’s young son. It was a deserted stretch of road, as the bridge was closed, and it was unlikely there had been any witnesses in the vicinity, so after an hour Duff had decided that since he was halfway home he may as well sleep in Fife.

Where he had lain awake thinking to the accompaniment of the grasshoppers’ song outside. He had known. Known but hadn’t understood. It wasn’t that he had suddenly seen the bigger picture; it wasn’t that all the interlocking pieces had suddenly fitted into the jigsaw puzzle. It had been one simple detail. The knife in Caithness’s kitchen. But while he had been brooding the other pieces had emerged and slowly fitted in. Then he had fallen asleep and woken to the children’s ambush at dawn.

Duff drove over the old bridge. It was narrow and modest in comparison with Kenneth Bridge, but solidly built, and many thought it would stand for longer.

The problem was: who should he talk to?

It had to be someone who not only had enough power, influence and dynamism, but also someone he could trust, who wasn’t involved.

He drove down to the garage under HQ as the break in the clouds closed and the sun’s short visit was over.

Lennox looked up from his typewriter as Duff came in. ‘Lunch soon, and you’re yawning as if you’ve just got up.’

‘For the last time, is that thing genuine?’ Duff asked, nodding at the tarnished stick with a lump of rusty metal on the end that Lennox used as a paperweight. Duff slumped down in a chair beside the door.

‘And for the last time—’ Lennox sighed ‘—I inherited it from my grandfather, who had it thrown at his head in the Somme trenches. Fortunately, as you can see, the German forgot to pull the detonator pin. His soldier pals laughed a lot at that story.’