Ю Несбё - Macbeth

‘My God.’ Caithness was curled up in the fetal position. ‘What happened afterwards?’

‘Not much. There were two hundred young suspects to choose from. No one noticed that Macbeth was stammering more than before. And when he did a runner a couple of weeks later, no one connected that with the murder. Kids ran away all the time.’

‘And then you and Macbeth met up again?’

‘I saw him a couple of times down by the central station. I wanted to talk to him, but he legged it. You know, like a bankruptee from a creditor. Then we met several years later at police college. By then he was clean and had completely stopped stammering — he was a very different boy. The boy I wanted to be.’

‘Because he was a clean-living kind-hearted man without a murder on his conscience like you?’

‘Macbeth has never seen being able to murder in cold blood as a virtue but a weakness. In all his time at SWAT he killed only if he, or any of his men, was attacked.’

‘And all these murders?’

‘He ordered others to carry them out for him.’

‘Killing women and children. I think he’s become a different man from the one you knew, Duff.’

‘People don’t change.’

‘ You ’ve changed.’

‘Have I really?’

‘If not, you wouldn’t be here. Fighting this fight. Spoken as you have about Macbeth. You’re a total egoist. Ready to ride roughshod over everything and everyone who’s in your way. Your colleagues, your family. Me.’

‘I can only remember really wanting to change once, and that was when I wanted to be like Macbeth. And when I realised that was impossible I had to become something better. Someone who could take what he wanted, even if it had less value for me than for who it belonged to, the way Hecate took that boy’s eye. Do you know when I fell in love with Meredith?’

Caithness shook her head.

‘When all four of us were sitting there — Macbeth, me, Meredith and her girlfriend — and I saw the way Macbeth was looking at Meredith.’

‘Tell me this isn’t true, Duff.’

‘I regret to say it is.’

‘You’re a petty man, Duff.’

‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you. So when you say I’m fighting this fight for others, I don’t know if it’s true or I only want to take something away from Macbeth that I know he wants.’

‘But he doesn’t want it, Duff. The town, power, wealth — he couldn’t care less about them. He wants only her love.’

‘Lady.’

‘Everything’s about Lady. Haven’t you realised?’

Duff blew a deformed smoke ring up to the ceiling. ‘Macbeth’s driven by love while I’m driven by envy and hatred. Where he has shown mercy, I’ve killed. And tomorrow I’m going to kill the person who was once my best friend — ambush him — and mercy and love will have lost again.’

‘That’s just cynicism and your self-loathing talking, Duff.’

‘Hm.’ He stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray on the bedside table. ‘You forgot self-pity.’

‘Yes, I did. And self-pity.’

‘I’ve been an arrogant egoist all my life. I can’t understand how you could have loved me.’

‘Some women have a weakness for men they think can save them, others for men they think they can save.’

‘Amen,’ Duff said, getting up. ‘You women don’t understand that we men don’t change. Not when we discover love, not when we realise we’re going to die. Never.’

‘Some use false arrogance to cover up their lack of confidence, but your arrogance is genuine, Duff. It’s down to total confidence.’

Duff smiled and pulled on his wet trousers. ‘Try to sleep now. We have to have our wits about us tomorrow.’

After he had left, Caithness got up, pulled the curtain to one side and looked down at the street. The swish of tyres through pools of water. Faded adverts for Joey’s Hamburger Bar, Peking Dry-Cleaners and the Tandrella Bingo Hall. A cigarette glowing for a second in an alleyway.

In a few hours day would break.

She wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep now.

Saturday arrived with more rain. The front pages of both the town’s newspapers carried Tourtell’s announcement and the explosion on top of the Obelisk. The Times commented in its leader that Macbeth’s radio interview had to be understood as him not categorically rejecting standing for mayor. And said Tourtell wasn’t available for comment as he was at his son’s mother’s bedside in St Jordi’s Hospital. Late that morning the rain cleared.

‘You’re home early,’ Sheila said, wiping her hands on her apron in the hall and looking at her husband with a little concern.

‘I couldn’t find anything to do. I think I was the only person at work,’ Lennox said, putting his bag by the chest of drawers, taking a clothes hanger from the wardrobe and hanging up his coat. Two years had passed since the town council had adopted the five-day week for the public sector, but at police HQ it was an unspoken rule that if you wanted to get on you had to show your face on Saturdays as well.

Lennox kissed his wife lightly on the cheek, noticed a new, unfamiliar perfume and a hitherto un-thought notion fluttered through his brain: what if he had caught her in bed with another man? He rejected this at once. First because she wasn’t the type. Second because she wasn’t attractive enough — after all there was a reason why she had ended up with a diminutive albino. The third and strongest reason for rejecting the notion was, however, simple: it was too hard to bear.

‘Is there anything wrong?’ she asked and followed him into the sitting room.

‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘I’m just tired. Where are the kids?’

‘In the garden,’ she said. ‘Finally some decent weather.’

He stood by the big window. Watching his children as they romped around screaming and laughing and playing a game the point of which he couldn’t work out. Escaping, it seemed. Good skill to learn. He looked up at the sky. Decent? A little break before the piss came hammering down again. He slumped into an armchair. How long could he carry on like this?

‘Lunch won’t be ready for an hour,’ she said.

‘That’s fine, love.’ He looked at her. He genuinely liked her, but had he ever been in love with her? He couldn’t remember and perhaps it wasn’t that important. She hadn’t said a word one way or the other, but he was fairly sure she hadn’t been in love with him either. Generally Sheila didn’t say much. Perhaps that was why she had given in to his persuasion and in the end said yes to being his girlfriend and eventually his wife. She had found someone who could talk for them both.

‘Sure there’s nothing wrong?’

‘Absolutely sure, sweetheart. That smells good. What is it?’

‘Erm, cod,’ she said, her frown framing a question.

He was going to explain that he meant her perfume, not the lunch she had barely started, but she went to the kitchen and he swung his chair round to face the garden. His elder daughter saw him, beamed and shouted something to the other two. He waved to them. How could two such unattractive people have such beautiful children? And that was when the notion struck him again: If they really were his .

Infidelity and treachery.

Now his son was calling to him — what, he couldn’t hear — but when he saw he had caught his father’s attention he did a cartwheel on the grass. Lennox applauded with his hands raised high in the air, and now all three of them were doing cartwheels. Impress their daddy, impress the daddy they still admired, the daddy they thought was worth emulating. Shouting, laughter and frolics. Lennox thought of the silence out in Fife, the sunshine, the curtains fluttering in a window that had been shot to pieces, the gentle breeze whistling a barely audible doleful note through one of the holes in the wall. All the unbearable thoughts. There were so many ways to lose those you loved. What if one day they found out, realised, what kind of person their husband or father really was? Would the wind sing the same lament then?