Macbeth

Waited. Was about to knock again when the door opened. A young man stood there.

‘Who are you?’ she asked.

‘Fleance, son of Banquo.’ The voice was the same as on the phone. He stepped aside. ‘Please come in, Mrs Mittbaum.’

The hotel room was as before.

Malcolm was as before.

But not Duff. He had aged. Not only in the months and years since she had last seen him sitting on the plush-covered hotel bed waiting for her like now, but in the days that had passed since he had left her flat for the last time.

‘You came,’ Duff said.

She nodded.

Malcolm coughed and cleaned his glasses. ‘You don’t seem particularly surprised to see us here, Caithness.’

‘I’m most surprised that I’m here,’ she said. ‘What’s going on?’

‘What are you hoping is going on, Caithness?’

‘I’m hoping we’re going to remove Macbeth.’

Seyton pushed down the lever on the iron door and opened it. Macbeth stepped inside and twisted the switch. The neon tubes blinked twice before casting a cold blue light on the shelves of ammunition boxes and various weapons. On the floor in the square room were a safe and two half-dismantled Gatling guns. Macbeth went over to the safe, twirled the dial and opened it. Pulled out a zebra-striped suitcase. ‘The ammo room was the only place with thick enough walls where we dared to keep it,’ he said. ‘And even then, in a safe.’

‘So it’s a bomb?’

‘Yep,’ said Macbeth, who had crouched down and opened the suitcase. ‘Disguised as a case of gold.’ He lifted out the bars covering the bottom. ‘The bars are actually iron with a gold coating, but the bomb in the space beneath—’ he opened the lid to the false bottom ‘—is genuine enough.’

‘Look at that,’ Seyton said with a low whistle. ‘Your classic IED time bomb.’

‘Ingenious, eh? The gold means no one will be suspicious about the weight. This was designed to blow up the Inverness.’

‘Aha, it’s that case. And why wasn’t the bomb destroyed?’

‘My idea,’ Macbeth said, studying the clockwork machinery. ‘It’s a fantastically intricate piece of work and we had it fully disarmed. I thought we at SWAT might find a use for it one day. And now we have...’ He touched a matchstick-size metal pin. ‘You just have to pull this, and the clock counts down. It looks easy, but it took us almost forty minutes to defuse it, and there are only twenty-five minutes and fifty-five seconds left on the clock, so if I pull this out there’s no way back.’

‘Your discussions with Hecate will have to be quick then.’

‘Oh, it won’t be a long meeting. I’ll say that the gold is proof of my gratitude for what he’s already done and there’ll be more if he helps me to be elected as mayor.’

‘Will he, do you think?’

‘I don’t know, and he’ll be dead ten minutes later anyway. The point is that he mustn’t suspect anything, and he knows that in this town you don’t get anything for nothing. I’ll ask him to think about it, look at my watch, say I have a meeting with a management group — which is true — and go.’

‘Sorry...’ They turned to the door. It was Ricardo. ‘Telephone.’

‘Tell them I’ll ring back,’ Seyton said.

‘Not for you, for the chief commissioner.’

Macbeth heard the almost imperceptible coldness in the voice. He had felt it when he came to SWAT before. How the men had dutifully mumbled a greeting but had looked away seemingly busy with other things.

‘For me?’

‘Your receptionist has put it through. She says it’s the mayor.’

‘Show me the way.’

He followed the SWAT veteran. Something about Ricardo’s narrow, aristocratic face, the shiny blackness of his skin and the suppleness of his majestic gait had always made Macbeth think the officer must be descended from a lion-hunting tribe. What was it called again? A loyal man of honour. Macbeth knew Ricardo would be willing to follow his brothers to the death if necessary. A man worth his weight in gold. Genuine gold.

‘Anything wrong, Ricardo?’

‘Sir?’

‘You seem quiet today. Anything I should know?’

‘We’re a bit worried about Angus, that’s all.’

‘I heard he’d been off colour. This job isn’t for everyone.’

‘My worry is he hasn’t appeared for work, and no one knows where he is.’

‘He’ll turn up soon enough. He probably needed some time out for a think. But, yes, I can see you’re concerned he might have done something drastic.’

‘Something drastic has happened to...’ Ricardo stopped by the open office door. Inside a telephone receiver lay on a desk. ‘I don’t think Angus has done anything.’

Macbeth stopped and looked at him. ‘So what do you think?’

Their eyes met. And Macbeth saw nothing of the admiration and happiness directed at him that he was used to from his men in SWAT. Ricardo lowered his eyes. ‘I don’t know, sir.’

Macbeth closed the office door behind him and took the phone.

‘Yes, Tourtell?’

‘I lied about being the mayor so I’d be put through. The way you lied. You promised me no one would die.’

Macbeth thought it was strange how fear trumped arrogance. There wasn’t a trace left of the latter in Walt Kite’s voice.

‘You must have misunderstood,’ Macbeth said. ‘I meant no one in your family would die.’

‘You—’