Ю Несбё - Macbeth

He pushed open the door as he heard a pling signalling that the lift had arrived. Held his breath and the door as he waited.

Voices. High-pitched, boys’ voices.

‘I don’t quite understand what—’

‘Mr Hand isn’t coming. We’ve just been told to delay the man in there for half an hour. Hope he likes champagne.’

The sound of trolley wheels.

Macbeth closed the door behind him and ran down the stairs.

On every floor there was a number.

He stopped at seventeen.

Lady nodded. Breathed. ‘But you’re going to kill him another day?’

‘That depends. Did you put apple juice in?’

‘No. Depends on what?’

‘If this is just temporary confusion. You both seem to have stopped using my products, and that’s perhaps best for all parties.’

‘You won’t kill him because you need him as chief commissioner. And now you’ve exposed Macbeth’s plans once, you reckon he’s learned his lesson. A dog isn’t trained until it’s been disobedient and has received its punishment.’

The old man turned to the man-woman. ‘Do you now see what I mean when I say she’s the smart one of the two?’

‘So what do you want from me, Mr Hand?’

‘Ginger? No, the recipe’s a secret you said, so your answer won’t be reliable. I just wanted to make you aware of the choice you have. Obey and I’ll protect Macbeth against anything that can harm him. He’ll be your Tithonos. Disobey and I’ll kill both of you the way you do with dogs which turn out to be untrainable. Look around, Lady. Look at all you stand to lose. You have everything you’ve ever dreamed of. So you don’t have to dream any more. As for recipes, if your dreams are too big they’re a recipe for disaster.’ The old man knocked back the rest of the drink and put the glass on the table. ‘Pepper. That’s one of the two ingredients.’

‘Blood,’ Lady said.

‘Really?’ He laid his hands on the walking stick and levered himself into a standing position. ‘Human blood?’

Lady shrugged. ‘Is that so important? You believe it is, and you seemed to like the recipe.’

The old man laughed. ‘You and I could be very good friends if circumstances were different, Lady.’

‘In another life,’ she said.

‘In another life, my little Lily.’ He banged his stick twice on the floor. ‘Stay where you are. We’ll find our way out.’

Lady retained her smile until he was out of sight. Then she gasped for breath, felt the room whirling, had to hold on to the chair arm. Lily . He knew. How could he know?

Seventeenth floor.

Macbeth looked at his watch. One minute left. So why had he stopped? They must be carrying the trolley up the steps. They would be there when the bomb went off. So what? They were Hecate’s boys. They had to be part of the whole set-up, so what was the problem? No one in this town was innocent. So why had this something come into his mind right now? Was it something from a speech? Written by Lady, given by him? Or was it from even longer ago, an oath they had sworn when they graduated from police college? Or before that too, something Banquo had said to him? Something, there was something, but he couldn’t remember what. Just that...

Shit, shit, shit!

Fifty seconds.

Macbeth ran.

Up the stairs.

‘Come with me!’ Macbeth screamed.

The two young boys stared at the man who had suddenly appeared in the doorway to the penthouse suite. One of them was holding a bottle of champagne and had started loosening the wire from the cork.

‘Now!’ Macbeth shouted.

‘Sir, we—’

‘You’ve got thirty seconds if you don’t want to die!’

‘Calm down, sir.’

Macbeth grabbed the champagne cooler and hurled it at the window. The ice cubes bounced and ricocheted with a crackle across the parquet floor. He lowered his voice in the following silence: ‘A bomb will go off inside here in twenty-five seconds.’

Then he turned and set off at a run. Down the stairs. With the clatter of footsteps in his ears. Sprinted past the lift. Held the door to the stairs open for the two boys.

‘Run! Run!’

Closed the door behind them and charged after them.

Fifteen seconds. Macbeth had no idea how big the blast would be, but if the bomb had been made to destroy a building as solid as the Inverness they would need to get as far away as possible. Sixteenth floor. He noticed a headache coming on as though he could already feel the pressure of the explosion on his eardrums, eyeballs, inside his mouth. Fourteenth. He checked his watch. It was fifteen seconds over.

Eleventh floor. Still nothing. The countdown mechanism might not have been quite accurate or a deliberate delay had been built in. The two boys in front of him began to slow down. Macbeth yelled and they speeded up again.

On the eighth floor they burst through the fire escape door into a corridor, but Macbeth continued downwards, using the main stairs. The lift was a death trap. When he reached the ground floor the bomb was almost three minutes overdue.

He walked into reception. The same members of staff were there, hovering over the counter as though nothing had happened, unaware of him. He went out into the rain. Looked up. Stood like that until his neck hurt. Then he started across the deserted square towards Seyton and the waiting car. What the hell had happened? Or rather, what hadn’t happened? Had the bomb got damp in the police HQ basement? Had someone managed to stop the countdown after he left the penthouse suite? Or had it detonated, but with much less power than SWAT’s bomb expert had given him to believe? And what now? He pulled up. What if Hecate or his people went to the suite and discovered he had left a bomb there? He had to go back and fetch the suitcase.

Macbeth turned. Took two paces. Saw his shadow outlined on the cobbles and heard a dull boom like thunder. For a moment he thought it was hail. White granules hit him on the face and hands, pitter-pattered on the cobbles around him and danced on the parked cars. A shower head smacked to the ground a few metres from him. He glanced upwards, then was sent flying as he heard something crash beside him. Macbeth raised his arms to protect himself, but the man who had tackled him had already got up, brushed down his grey coat and run off. Macbeth saw a smashed brown fridge where he had been standing a second ago.

He rested his head on the cool cobbles.

Flames rose from the top of the Obelisk, and black smoke billowed into the sky. Something bounced over the cobbles towards him and came to rest beside his head. He picked it up. It was still wrapped in its wire cage.

‘What the hell happened?’ Seyton said as Macbeth got in the car.

‘Tourtell,’ Macbeth said. ‘He warned Hecate. Drive.’

‘Tourtell?’ Seyton said, pulling away from the pavement as the wipers swept small fragments of white glass from the windscreen.

‘Tourtell’s the only person who knew about our plan, and he must have informed Hecate hoping that he would kill me instead.’

‘And Hecate didn’t try to kill you?’

‘No. Quite the contrary. He saved me.’

‘How come?’

‘He needs his puppets.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing, Seyton. Drive to the Inverness.’

Macbeth scanned the pavement, scanned the people gawping up. He searched for grey coats. How many were there? Did they all wear grey coats or only some of them? Were they always there? He closed his eyes. Immortal. As immortal as a wooden puppet. The pressure inside his head rose. And a strange thought whirled past. Hecate’s promise to make him invulnerable was not a blessing but a curse. He could feel the wire on his skin as he rolled the cork from the champagne bottle between his fingers and heard the first police siren.