Ю Несбё - Macbeth

‘And if we find any survivors?’ Angus asked.

Someone laughed.

Seyton wiped a raindrop from his cheek. ‘I repeat. Macbeth’s order was that none of Banquo’s murderers should survive. Is that a good enough answer for you, Angus?’

Meredith was hanging sheets on the line over the veranda by the front door. She loved this house, the rural, unpretentious, traditional, sober but practical essence of it. When people heard that she and Duff lived on a farm in Fife they automatically assumed it was a luxurious estate and probably thought she was being coy when she described how simply they lived. What would a woman with her surname be doing on a disused smallholding, they must have thought.

She had washed all the bedlinen in the house so that Duff wouldn’t think she had only done the sheets of the marital bed. Where they would sleep tonight. Forget the bad stuff, repress what had been. Reawaken what they’d had. It had been dormant, that was all. She felt her stomach grow warm at the thought. The intimacy they had shared on the rock this morning had been so wonderful. As wonderful as in the first years. No, more wonderful. She hummed a tune she had heard on the radio — she didn’t know what it was — hung up the last sheet and ran her hand over the wet cotton, inhaled the fragrant perfume. The wind blew the sheet high in the air, and the sunshine swept over her face and dress. Warm, pleasant, bright. This is how life should be. Making love, working, living. This was what she had been brought up to do, this was still her credo.

She heard a seagull scream and shaded her eyes. What was it doing here, so far from the sea?

‘Mum!’

She had hung the washing over several lines, so she had to move between them, skip her way to the front door.

‘Yes, Ewan?’

Her son was sitting on a bench, his chin propped on one hand, looking into the distance. Squinting into the low afternoon sun. ‘Won’t Dad be here soon?’

‘Yes, he will. How’s the soup doing, Emily?’

‘It was ready aeons ago,’ the daughter said, dutifully stirring the big pot.

Broth. Simple, nutritious peasant food.

Ewan stuck out his lower lip. ‘He said he’d be here before the meal.’

‘You hang him up by his toes for breaking his promise,’ Meredith said, stroking his fringe.

‘Should people be hung for lying?’

‘Without exception.’ Meredith looked at her watch. There might be hold-ups in the rush-hour traffic, now that only the old bridge was open.

‘Who by?’ the boy asked.

‘What do you mean who by?’

‘Who should hang people who lie?’ Ewan’s eyes had a faraway look, as though he were talking to himself.

‘The honest joes of course.’

Ewan turned to his mother. ‘Then liars are stupid because there are lots more of them than there are honest joes. They could beat the joes and hang them instead.’

‘Listen!’ Emily said.

Meredith pricked up her ears. And now she could hear it too. The distant rumble of an engine getting closer.

The boy jumped down from the bench. ‘Here he comes! Emily, let’s hide and give him a fright.’

‘Yes!’

The children disappeared into the bedroom while Meredith went to the window. Tried to shade her eyes from the sun. She felt an unease she couldn’t explain. Perhaps she was afraid the Duff who came home wouldn’t be the same one who had left that morning.

Duff put his car in neutral and let it roll the last part of the gravel track to the house. The gravel murmured and fretted like subterranean trolls beneath the wheels. He had driven like a man possessed from Caithness, had broken a principle he had always adhered to, never to misuse the blue light he kept in the glove compartment. With the light on the roof he had managed to jump the queue on the road to the old bridge, but once there the carriageway was so narrow that even with the light he’d had to grit his teeth as they moved forward at a snail’s pace. He braked hard and the subterranean voices died. Switched off the engine and got out. The sun was shining on the white sheets on the veranda welcoming him home with a wave. She had done the washing. All the bedlinen so that he wouldn’t think she had only done the sheets on the marital bed. And even though he was sated with love-making, the notion warmed his heart. Because he had left Caithness. And Caithness had left him. She had stood in the door, wiping a last tear, given him a last goodbye kiss and said that now the door was closed to him. She could do this now that she had made up her mind. One day maybe someone else would come through the door he was leaving. And he replied that he hoped so, and the ‘someone else’ would be a very lucky man. On the street he had leaped in the air with relief, happiness and freedom regained. Yes, imagine that — free. To be with his wife and children! Life is strange. And wonderful.

He walked towards the veranda. ‘Ewan! Emily!’ Usually when he came home they ran out to meet him. But sometimes they also hid to launch a surprise attack on him.

He dodged between the lines of sheets.

‘Ewan! Emily!’

He stopped. He was hidden between the sheets, which cast long shadows that moved across the veranda floor. He inhaled the soap’s perfume and the freshwater in which they had been washed. There was another smell too. He smiled. Broth. His smile became even broader as he remembered the good-natured discussion they’d had when Ewan insisted on having the beard glued on before he ate his soup. It was perfectly still. The ambush could come at any second.

There were tiny dots of sunshine in the shadows the sheets cast.

He stood staring at them.

Then down at himself. At his sweater and trousers covered with tiny dots of sunshine. He felt his heart skip a beat. Ran a finger over a sheet. It found a hole at once. And another. He stopped breathing.

Pulled the sheet at the back to the side.

The kitchen window was gone. The wall was holed so badly it looked more like a hole than a wall. He looked in through where the window had been. The pot on the hotplate looked like a sieve. The stove and the floor around were covered with a steaming yellowish-green broth.

He wanted to go inside. He had to go inside. But he couldn’t; it was as if his feet were frozen to the veranda floor and his willpower was deactivated.

But there’s no one in the kitchen , he told himself. Empty. Perhaps the rest of the house was empty too. Destroyed but empty. Perhaps they had escaped to the cabin. Perhaps. Perhaps he hadn’t lost everything.

He forced himself to pass through the opening where the door had been. He went into the children’s rooms. First Emily’s, then Ewan’s. Checked the cupboards raked with machine gun fire and under the beds. No one. Nor in the guest room. He went towards the last room, his and Meredith’s bedroom, with the broad soft double bed where on Sunday mornings they made room for all four of them, lay on their sides, tickled bare toes to the children’s loud shrieks, gently scratched each other’s backs, talked about all sorts of weird and wonderful things and fought to decide who should get up first.

The bedroom door hadn’t been shot away, but the gaps between the bullet holes were the same as elsewhere in the house. Duff took a deep breath.

Perhaps not all was lost yet.

He gripped the handle. Opened the door.

Of course he knew he had been lying to himself. He had become good at it: the more he had practised self-deception the easier it had been to see what he wanted to see. But in the last few days the scales had fallen from his eyes and now he was there and couldn’t not see what lay before his eyes. The feathers from the mattress were everywhere, as though snow had been falling. Perhaps that was why everything seemed so peaceful. Meredith looked as if she had tried to keep Ewan and Emily warm as they sat on the floor in the far corner with her arms around them. Red feathers were stuck to the walls around them.