Macbeth

  ‘Yes, Olafson!’ Seyton shouted back. ‘We’re men, not cissies!’

  ‘But . . . what then? We’ll have nothing to negotiate with.’

  ‘Does that sound familiar, Olafson?’ More laughter from the south-east.

  ‘We have nothing to fear,’ Macbeth said.

  ‘What’s that, sir?’

  ‘No man born can harm me. Hecate promised me I’ll be chief commissioner until Bertha comes to get me. You can say a lot about Hecate, but he keeps his word. Relax. Tourtell will give in.’ Macbeth looked at Kasi, who sat quietly with his back to the pole, staring into the distance. ‘What can you see, Seyton?’

  ‘People have gathered up by Bertha. They look like police officers and civilians. A few automatic weapons, some rifles and handguns. Shouldn’t be much of a problem if they attack with those.’

  ‘Can you see any grey coats?’

  ‘Grey coats? No.’

  ‘And your sector, Olafson?’

  ‘None here either, sir.’

  But Macbeth knew that they were there. Watching over him.

  ‘Have you heard of Tithonos, Seyton?’

  ‘Nope. Who’s he?’

  ‘A Greek. Lady told me about him. I looked him up. Eos was this goddess of the dawn and she stole a young lover, a pretty ordinary guy called Tithonos. Made sure the boss himself, Zeus, gave the guy eternal life, like her. The guy didn’t ask for it, he just had it forced on him. But the goddess had forgotten to ask for eternal youth for the guy. Do you understand?’

  ‘Maybe, but I don’t understand where you’re going with this, sir.’

  ‘Everything disappears, everyone else dies, but there’s Tithonos rotting away in his old age and loneliness. He hasn’t been given anything, the opposite in fact – he’s in prison, his eternal life is a bloody curse.’

  Macbeth got up so quickly he felt giddy. This was just gloom and a hangover from the dope talking. He had a town lying at his feet, and soon it would be irrevocably his, only his, and he could have his every slightest wish fulfilled. Then all he would need to think about were desires and pleasures. Desires and pleasures.

  Duff ran a finger over the crack in the base in front of Bertha’s nose. Heard Malcolm’s voice: ‘Sorry, let me through!’

  He looked up and saw Malcolm forcing his way through the crowd up to the top of the steps.

  ‘Did you hear that too?’ he asked, out of breath.

  ‘Yes,’ Caithness said. ‘I thought the roof was going to come down. Felt like an underground test explosion.’

  ‘Or an earthquake,’ Duff said, pointing to the crack.

  ‘Looks like a bigger turnout than I’d planned,’ Malcolm said, scanning the people who had gathered at the foot of the steps behind the barricade of police cars and a big red fire engine. ‘Are all these people firemen and police officers?’

  ‘No,’ said a man coming up the steps. Malcolm examined his black uniform.

  ‘Naval captain?’

  ‘Pilot,’ said the little man. ‘Fred Ziegler.’

  ‘What’s a pilot doing here?’

  ‘I heard Kite on the radio last night, rang around and heard rumours about what was going to happen here. Tell me what I can do.’

  ‘Have you got a weapon?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can you shoot?’

  ‘I was in the marines for ten years.’

  ‘Good. Go to the man in the police uniform down there and he’ll give you a rifle.’

  ‘Thank you.’ The pilot put three fingers to his white cap and left.

  ‘What does Tourtell say?’ Duff asked.

  ‘Capitol has been informed about the hostage,’ Malcolm said. ‘But they can’t help us until an arrest warrant has been issued this afternoon.’

  ‘Jesus, there are people’s lives at risk here.’

  ‘One life. That doesn’t qualify for federal intervention unless our chief commissioner requests it.’

  ‘Bloody politics! And where’s Tourtell now?’ Duff stared to the east. At the edge of the mountain the pale blue sky was getting redder and redder.

  ‘He went to the radio studio,’ Caithness said.

  ‘He’s going to declare a state of emergency,’ Malcolm said. ‘We have to attack Macbeth now while we can still act under the mayor’s orders. As soon as a state of emergency’s declared we’ll be lawless revolutionaries and none of these people will be with us.’ He nodded towards the crowd.

  ‘Macbeth has barricaded himself in,’ Caithness said. ‘People’s lives will be lost.’

  ‘Yes.’ Malcolm put the megaphone to his mouth. ‘My good men and women! Take up your positions!’

  The crowd ran to the barricade at the foot of the steps. Rested their weapons on car roofs, took cover behind the SWAT armoured car and the fire engine and aimed at the Inverness.

  Malcolm pointed the megaphone in the same direction. ‘Macbeth! This is Deputy Chief Commissioner Malcolm speaking. You know, and we know, you’re in a hopeless situation. All you can achieve is to defer the inevitable. So release the hostage and give yourself up. I’ll give you one, I repeat, one minute.’

  ‘What did he say?’ Seyton shouted.

  ‘He’s giving me a minute,’ Macbeth said. ‘Can you see him?’

  ‘Yes, he’s standing at the top of the steps.’

  ‘Olafson, take your rifle and shut Malcolm up.’

  ‘Do you mean—’

  ‘Yes, I mean exactly that.’

  ‘All hail Macbeth!’ Seyton laughed.

  ‘Listen,’ Macbeth said.

  Duff alternated between looking at the mountain, his watch and the men around him. His elbows and shoulders twitched with nerves. They were shifting position because of his knees and calves, which had started to shake. Apart from the six SWAT volunteers and some of the other policemen, the crowd was made up of people with ordinary jobs in accounting offices and fire stations, who had never fired a shot in anger. Or been shot at. And yet they had come here. They were willing, despite their inadequacy, to sacrifice everything. He counted down the final three seconds.

  Nothing happened.

  Duff exchanged glances with Malcolm and shrugged.

  Malcolm sighed and lifted the megaphone to his mouth.

  Duff hardly heard the bang.

  Malcolm staggered back, and the megaphone fell to the ground with a clang.

  Duff and Fleance reacted at once, throwing themselves over Malcolm and covering him as he fell to the ground. Duff felt for blood and a pulse.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Malcolm groaned. ‘I’m fine. Up you get. He hit the megaphone. That was all.’

  ‘When you said shut him up, I thought you meant permanently,’ Seyton shouted. ‘Now they’ll think we’re weak, sir.’

  ‘Wrong,’ Macbeth said. ‘Now they know we mean business, but we’re sane. If we’d killed Malcolm we’d have given them an excuse to attack us with the fury of righteousness. Now they’ll still hesitate.’

  ‘I think they’re going to attack anyway,’ Olafson said. ‘Look, there’s our armoured car. It’s coming towards us.’

  ‘Well, that’s different. A chief commissioner is allowed to defend himself. Seyton?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Let the Gatling girls speak.’

  Duff peeped from behind Bertha and followed the lumpen armoured car – known as a Sonderwagen – as it made its way across the square towards the Inverness. Thick, heavy diesel smoke drifted up from the vehicle’s exhaust. German engineering, steel plates and bulletproof glass. Ricardo’s plan followed usual tactics. The six SWAT volunteers would drive up to the entrance in the Sonderwagen, dismount to fire tear-gas canisters through the windows, then break down the doors and storm the building wearing gas masks. The critical point was when they emerged from the armoured car to fire the tear gas. This wou
ld take only seconds, but in those seconds they needed covering fire from the others.

  Malcolm’s walkie-talkie crackled, and they heard Ricardo’s voice.

  ‘Covering fire in three . . . two . . . one . . .’

  ‘Fire!’ Malcolm roared.

  It sounded like a drum roll as the weapons fired from the barricade. From an all-too-small drum, Duff thought. And the sound was drowned by a rising howl from the other side.

  ‘Holy Jesus,’ Caithness whispered.

  At first it resembled a shower of rain whipping up dust from the cobbles in front of the Sonderwagen. Then with a cackle it hit the vehicle’s grille, its armour, the windscreen and the roof. The vehicle seemed to sag at the knees and sink.

  ‘The tyres,’ Fleance said.

  The vehicle kept moving, but more slowly, as though it were driving into a hurricane.

  ‘It’s fine. It’s an armoured car,’ Malcolm said.

  The vehicle advanced more and more slowly. And stopped. The side mirrors and bumper fell off.

  ‘It was an armoured car,’ Duff said.

  ‘Ricardo?’ Malcolm called on the walkie-talkie. ‘Ricardo? Withdraw!’

  No answer.

  Now the vehicle seemed to be dancing.

  Then the barrage stopped. Silence fell over the square, broken only by a seagull’s lament as it flew over. Smoke, like red vapour, rose from the armoured car.

  ‘Ricardo! Come in, Ricardo!’

  Still no answer. Duff stared at the vehicle, at the wreck. There were no signs of life. And now he knew how it had been. That afternoon in Fife.

  ‘Ricardo!’

  ‘They’re dead,’ Duff said. ‘They’re all dead.’

  Malcolm sent him a sidelong glance.

  Duff ran a hand over his face. ‘What’s the next move?’

  ‘I don’t know, Duff. That was the move.’

  ‘The fire engine,’ Fleance said.

  The others looked at the young man.

  He shrank beneath their collective gaze and for a moment seemed to stagger under the weight of it. But he straightened up and said with a slight quiver of his vocal cords, ‘We have to use the fire engine.’

  ‘It’s no good,’ Malcolm objected.

  ‘No, but if we drive it round to the back, to Thrift Street.’ Fleance paused to swallow before continuing. ‘You saw they hit the armoured car with both machine guns, and that must mean they’re not covering their rear.’

  ‘Because they know we can’t get in there,’ Duff said. ‘There are no doors and no windows, there’s only brick, which you’d need a pneumatic drill or heavy artillery to go through.’

  ‘Not through,’ Fleance said. His voice was firmer now.

  ‘Round?’ Duff queried.

  Fleance pointed a finger to the sky.

  ‘Of course!’ Caithness said. ‘The fire engine.’

  ‘Spit it out. What’s so obvious?’ growled Malcolm, snatching a glance at the mountain.

  ‘The ladder,’ Duff said. ‘The roof.’

  ‘They’re moving the fire engine,’ Seyton shouted.

  ‘Why?’ Macbeth yawned. The boy was sitting on the floor with his legs crossed and eyes closed. Calm and silent, he seemed to have reconciled himself to his fate and was just waiting for the end. Like Macbeth.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What about you, Olafson?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir.’

  ‘All right,’ Macbeth shouted. He had taken out the silver dagger and whittled a match to a point. He poked it between his front teeth. Left the dagger on the felt. Picked up two chips and began to flip them between the fingers of each hand. He had learned how to do this at the circus. It was an exercise to balance the difference between the motor functions of his left and right hands. He sucked the matchstick, flipped the chips and examined what he was feeling. Nothing. He tried to work out what he was thinking. He wasn’t thinking about Banquo and he wasn’t thinking about Lady. He was just thinking that he didn’t feel anything. And he thought one more thing: Why? Why . . . ?

  He thought about that for a while . . .

  Then he closed his eyes and began to count down from ten.

  ‘This is not like a ladder against a house. It’s going to sway more the higher we go,’ said the man in the harbour pilot’s uniform to Fleance and the two other volunteers. ‘But make only one movement at a time, one hand, then one foot. Nothing to be afraid of.’

  The pilot yawned loudly and smiled quickly before grasping the ladder and starting to climb.

  Fleance watched the little man, wishing he was equally unafraid. Thrift Street was empty apart from the fire engine with its fifteen-metre ladder pointing up the windowless wall.

  Fleance followed the pilot, and strangely enough the fear diminished with every step. The worst was over, after all. He had spoken. And they had listened. Nodded and said they understood. Then they had got into the fire engine and driven east from the station in a great arc through the Sunday-still streets, arriving at the rear of the Inverness unseen.

  Fleance looked up and saw the harbour pilot signalling from the roof that the way was clear.

  They had gone through the drawings of the Inverness so thoroughly last night that Fleance knew exactly where everything was. The flat roof led to a door, and inside it there was a narrow ladder down to a boiler room with a door leading to the top corridor in the hotel. There they would split up, two men would take the northern staircase, two the southern. Both led down to the mezzanine. In a few minutes they would start shooting from the station and keep the machine-gunners’ attention focused on Workers’ Square, drowning out any sounds made by Fleance and the three others, who would sneak up from behind and eliminate the machine-gunners. The three volunteers had synchronised their watches with Fleance’s without a word of protest that they were being led by a police cadet. The cadet seemed to know the odd thing about such actions. What was it his dad had said? And if you’ve got better judgement you should lead, it’s your damned duty to the community.

  Fleance heard them open fire from the station.

  ‘Follow me.’

  They approached the roof door, pulled. Locked. As expected. He nodded to one of the policemen, a guy from the Traffic Unit, who rammed a crowbar into the crack between the door and its frame and pushed hard. The lock broke at the first attempt.

  It was dark inside, but Fleance felt the heat coming from the boiler room beneath. The other policeman, a white-haired guy from the Fraud Unit, wanted to go first, but Fleance held him back. ‘Follow me,’ he whispered and stepped in over the high metal threshold. In vain he tried to distinguish shapes in the darkness and had to lower his machine gun as he groped for the railing of the ladder. The metal ladder sang as he took his first tentative step and then found the next rung. He froze, dazzled by a light. A torch had been switched on below him and shone at his face.

  ‘Bang,’ said a voice from behind the torch. ‘You’re dead.’

  Fleance knew he was standing in the line of fire of the three behind him. And he knew he wouldn’t have time to fire his machine gun. Because he knew whose the voice was.

  ‘How did you know . . . ?’

  ‘I wondered to myself, Why oh why would you move a fire engine when there’s no fire alarm to be heard?’ The voice in the darkness became a low chuckle. ‘Still wearing my shoes, I see.’ Uncle Mac sounded drunk. ‘Listen, Fleance, you can save lives today. Your own and those of the other three mutineers with you. Back out now and get behind the barricade. You’ll have a better chance of getting me from there.’

  Fleance ran his tongue around his mouth searching for moisture. ‘You killed Dad.’

  ‘Maybe,’ the voice slurred. ‘Or perhaps it was the circumstances. Or perhaps it was Banquo’s ambitions for his family. But probably –’ in the pause came the sound of a deep sigh ‘
– it was me. Go now, Fleance.’

  Fluttering through Fleance’s brain were all those pretend-fights he’d had with Uncle Mac at home on the sitting-room floor, when he had let Fleance get the upper hand, only to whisk him round at the last minute and pin him flat on the floor. This wasn’t due to his uncle’s strength, but his speed and precision. But how drunk was Uncle Mac now? And how much better coordinated was Fleance? Perhaps he had a chance after all? If he was quick, perhaps he could get a shot in. Save Kasi. Save the town. Avenge—

  ‘Don’t do it, Fleance.’

  But it was too late. Fleance had already grabbed his machine gun, and the sound of a brief volley hammered against the eardrums of all five men in the cramped boiler room.

  ‘Agh!’ Fleance yelled.

  Then he fell from the ladder.

  He didn’t feel himself hit the floor, felt nothing until he opened his eyes again. And then he saw nothing, although there was a hand against his cheek and a voice close to his ear.

  ‘I told you not to.’

  ‘Wh . . . where are they?’

  ‘They left as instructed. Sleep now, Fleance.’

  ‘But . . .’ He knew he had been shot. A leak. He coughed, and his mouth filled.

  ‘Sleep. Say hello to your dad when you arrive and tell him I’m right behind you.’

  Fleance opened his mouth, but all that came out was blood. He felt Macbeth’s fingers on his eyelids, gentle, careful. Closing them. Fleance sucked in air as if for a dive. As he had done when he fell from the bridge into the river, into the black water, to his grave.

  ‘No,’ Duff said when he saw the fire engine driving towards them. ‘No!’

  He and Malcolm ran to meet the vehicle, and when it stopped they tore open the doors on each side. The driver, two police officers and the harbour pilot tumbled out.

  ‘Macbeth was waiting for us,’ groaned the pilot, still breathless. ‘He shot Fleance.’

  ‘No, no, no!’ Duff leaned back and squeezed his eyes shut.

  Someone laid a hand on his neck. A familiar hand. Caithness’s.

  Two men in black SWAT uniforms ran over and halted in front of Malcolm. ‘Hansen and Edmunton, sir. We heard about this and came as soon as we could. And there are more coming.’