Ю Несбё - Macbeth

The police radio crackled, and a nasal voice informed them that all the rooms at the Obelisk, including the penthouse suite, had been searched without success.

The caretaker stood waiting for them with a big bunch of keys outside the staff entrance to HQ. It took Lennox, Seyton and eight officers less than twenty minutes to search the Narco rooms. Less to trawl through Homicide. And they had even checked behind the ceiling boards and the pipes in the ventilation system.

‘That’s that then.’ Lennox yawned. ‘That’s it, folks. Grab a few hours’ sleep. We’ll continue tomorrow.’

‘The garage,’ Seyton said.

‘As I said—’

‘The garage.’

Lennox shrugged. ‘You’re right. Won’t take long. Lads, you go home, and Seyton, Olafson and I will check the garage.’

The three of them took the lift down to the basement floor with the caretaker, who let them in and switched on the lights.

In the silence as the electricity worked to get the phosphates in the neon tubes to fluoresce Lennox heard something.

‘Did you hear that?’ he whispered.

‘No,’ the caretaker said. ‘But it’ll be rats if it’s anything.’

Lennox had his doubts. It hadn’t been a rattling or a scurrying, it had been a creak. As if from shoes.

‘A plague,’ the caretaker sighed. ‘Can’t get rid of ’em, not down here.’

The large cellar room was empty apart from a trolley carrying various tools and Banquo’s Volvo covered with a tarpaulin by the garage door. Ranged along the wall there were five closed doors.

‘If you want to get rid of rats,’ Seyton said, releasing the safety catch on his machine gun, ‘just contact me. Olafson, let’s start from the left.’

Lennox watched as the bald man moved quickly and nimbly across the room with Olafson hard on his heels. They took the doors one by one as if in a precisely choreographed and practised dance. Seyton opened, Olafson went in with his gun to his shoulder, sank to his knees while Seyton followed and passed him. Lennox counted the minutes. It was getting late for his shot, he could feel. There, the final room at last. Seyton pressed the handle.

‘Locked!’ he shouted.

‘Oh yes, the darkroom is always locked,’ the caretaker said. ‘Photos are considered evidence. Duff hasn’t got a key for this room. At least, he didn’t get it from me.’

‘Let’s go then,’ Lennox said.

Seyton and Olafson came towards them with the short barrels of their machine guns lowered as the caretaker held the door open.

At last.

Seyton held out his hand. ‘The key.’

‘What?’

‘To the darkroom.’

The caretaker hesitated, glanced at Lennox, who sighed and nodded. The caretaker removed a key from his bunch and gave it to Seyton.

‘What’s he doing?’ asked the caretaker as they watched Seyton and Olafson walk past the Volvo to the darkroom door.

‘His job,’ growled Lennox.

‘I mean with his nose. Looks like he’s sniffing, like an animal.’

Lennox nodded. Thinking he wasn’t alone in noticing that Seyton could assume the shape of a... he didn’t know what. Something that wasn’t human anyway.

Seyton could smell him now. That smell. The same as the one in the house in Fife and Caithness’s flat. Either he was here or he had been here recently. Seyton unlocked the door and opened it. Olafson went in and sank to his knees. When the caretaker turned on the switch at the front door all the lights in the garage and the side rooms had come on as well, but in here it was still dark. Of course. A darkroom.

Seyton went in. The stench of chemicals drowned the smell of the prey, of Duff. He found the light switch on the inside of the door, twisted it on, but still no light came. Maybe the fuse had gone during the power cut. Or someone had removed the bulb. Seyton switched on his torch. The wall above the table was covered with big photos hanging from a line. Seyton shone his torch across them. They showed a dagger with a bloodstained blade and handle. Duff had been here. Seyton was absolutely sure.

‘Hey! What’s going on?’ It was Lennox. The little albino wimp wanted to go home. He was sweating and yawning. The bloody old woman.

‘Coming,’ Seyton shouted, switching off the torch. ‘Come on, Olafson.’

Seyton let Olafson pass. Shut the door hard after him and stood inside the door. Listened in the darkness. Until Duff thought the coast was clear and relaxed. Seyton lifted his gun to the photos. Pressed the trigger. The weapon shook in his hands, the sound reverberated against his eardrums. He drew a cross with the burst. Then he switched on his torch again, walked over to the perforated photos and pulled them aside.

Stared at the bullet holes in the wall behind.

No Duff.

The explosions were still ringing in his ears. He noted that one of the holes was extra-deep — must have been two bullets hitting the same spot. Chance.

Of course.

Seyton marched out towards the others.

‘What was that?’ Lennox asked.

‘I didn’t like the photos,’ Seyton said. ‘There’s one place we’ve forgotten.’

‘Yes,’ Lennox groaned. ‘Our beds.’

‘Duff thinks like they did during the bomb attacks in the war. He hides in a bomb crater because he believes two bombs can’t hit exactly the same place.’

‘What the hell...?’

‘He’s back in his house in Fife. Come on!’

The rat darted out of its hiding place after the light in the garage had gone off, it had heard the door slam and the steps fade away. It padded over the damp brick floor to the car in the middle. There was blood on the driver’s seat, which attracted it. Sweet, nutritious and days old. It just had to get through the tarpaulin spread over the car. The rat had almost got through before when it was disturbed. But now it gnawed through the last part and was inside. It ran across the floor on the passenger side, past the gear stick and down onto the rubber mat on the driver’s side. Over a pair of leather shoes. Recoiled when one leather shoe creaked and rose. It reared up onto its legs and hissed. The lovely bloodstained driver’s seat was occupied.

Duff heard the rustle of the fleeing rat. Then he loosened his tensed grip on the wheel. He could feel his heart wasn’t pounding any more, only beating. It had been hammering so hard while Seyton and his men were in the garage he was sure they must have heard. He looked at his watch. Still five hours to daybreak. He tried to shift position, but his trousers were stuck to the blood on the seat. Banquo’s blood. It glued him to this place. But he had to get away. Move on.

But where? And how?

When he fled his idea had been that it would be easier to drive to town and disappear in the crowds there than escape along a country road. He had abandoned his car in a street not far from the Obelisk and gone into the casino, which was the only place besides the Inverness he knew stayed open all night. He couldn’t rent a room of course; overnight accommodation would be the first place Macbeth would check. But he could sit among the great swathe of one-armed bandits, as lonely and undisturbed as the person on the nearest machine, feeding it with coins and slowly allowing himself to be robbed. And he had done that while thinking — trying to think — about how he could escape and staring at the images of the odds spinning round in the three small windows. A heart. A dagger. A crown. After a few hours he went to the bar for a beer to see if that could brighten his mood and saw on the muted TV above the barman the press conference at police HQ, and suddenly a familiar face appeared on the screen, with a white scar running diagonally across it like a traffic sign. A close-up of himself, with the word WANTED written over it. Duff made for the exit with his collar turned up and head bent. And the cold night air cleared his brain enough for him to remember their old love nest, the garage, which was his best overnight option.