Macbeth

Lennox stared through the rain pouring down the windscreen. The refracted light made the red traffic lights blur and distort. God, how he longed to get these hours, this shift, this night over and done with. God, how he longed to relax in his sitting room, pour himself a glass of whisky and inject some brew. He wasn’t addicted. Not to the extent that it was a problem anyway. He was a user, not a misuser; he was in control, not the dope. One of the lucky few who could take drugs and still function in a demanding job as well as be a father and a husband. Yes, dope did actually help him to function. Without the breaks at work he wasn’t sure he would have managed. Balancing everything, watching his step. Making compromises where he had to, eating shit with a smile, not rocking the boat, understanding who was in charge, bending with the wind. But one day it would probably be his turn to take charge. And if it wasn’t, other things were more important. His family — that was who he was working for. So that he and Sheila could have a spacious house in a safe neighbourhood in the west of town, send their three lovely kids to a good school with healthy values, take a well-deserved Mediterranean holiday once a year, cover the health insurance, dentist and all that kind of thing. God, how he loved his family. Sometimes he would put down the newspaper and just look at them sitting in the lounge, all of them busy, and then he would think, This is a gift I never thought I would have the good fortune to receive. The love of others. He, the one they called Albert Albino, was beaten up in every school break until he got a doctor’s note saying he couldn’t tolerate daylight and had to stay in the classroom alone during breaks. White, small and delicate he may have been, but he had a big mouth on him. That was how he had got Sheila — he talked loudly and volubly for both of them. And even more when he had tried cocaine for the first time. It was coke that had made him a better version of himself, energetic, dogged and unafraid. At least for a while. Later it had become a necessity so that he wouldn’t become a bad version of himself. Then he had changed drug in the hope that there was another way other than the dead-end street that cocaine was. Maximum one shot a day. No more. Some needed five. The dysfunctional. He was a long way from that. His father was wrong, he did have a spine. He had control.

‘Everything under control?’

Lennox started. ‘Eh?’

‘Your list,’ Seyton said from the back seat. ‘What’s left?’

Lennox yawned. ‘HQ. That’s the last stop.’

‘Police HQ’s massive.’

‘Yes, but according to the caretaker Duff has only three keys. One for Narco and one for Homicide.’

‘And the third?’

‘The Forensics garage. But I hardly think he’d want to catch pneumonia in the cellar if he can hide under a table in a warm dry office.’

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.