Macbeth

‘You’re wrong. Macbeth is full of feelings. That’s why he can’t hurt a fly. Or to be accurate, especially not a fly. An aggressive wasp, yes, but a defenceless fly? Never, regardless of how annoying it is.’

‘How can you defend him, Duff? You who have lost—’

‘I’m not defending him. Of course he’s a murderer. All I’m saying is he can’t kill anyone who can’t defend himself. It’s happened only once. And he did it to save me.’

‘Oh yes?’ she said. ‘Are you going to tell me about it?’

He sucked hard on the cigarette. ‘It was when he killed the Norse Rider on the country road out by Forres. A young guy who’d just seen me kill his comrade, who I’d mistaken for Sweno.’

‘So they didn’t pull guns on you?’

Duff shook his head.

‘But then Macbeth’s no better than you,’ Caithness said.

‘Yes, he was. I killed for my own sake. He did it for someone else.’

‘Because that’s what we do in the police. We take care of each other.’

‘No, because he thought he owed it to me.’

Caithness sat up on her elbows. ‘Owed it to you?’

Duff held his cigarette up to the ceiling, pinched one eye shut and aimed above the glow with the other. ‘When Grandad died and I ended up in the orphanage, I was almost too old — I was fourteen. Macbeth and I were the same age, but he’d been there since he was five. Macbeth and I shared a room and became friends straight away. In those days Macbeth stammered. And especially when Saturday night approached, which was when he disappeared from the room in the middle of the night and returned an hour later. He would never tell me where he’d been; it was only when I jokingly threatened to report him to the home’s feared director, Lorreal, that he said he doubted that would do much good.’ Duff pulled hard on the cigarette. ‘Because that was where he’d been.’

‘You mean... the director—’

‘—had been abusing Macbeth for as long as he could remember. I couldn’t believe my ears. Lorreal had done things to him... you can’t imagine anyone would do to another person or find any enjoyment in. The one time Macbeth had stood up against him Lorreal had half-killed him and kept him locked up for two weeks in the so-called correction room in the cellar, a genuine cell. I was so furious I cried. Because I knew every word was true. Macbeth never lies. So I said we had to kill Lorreal. I would help him. And Macbeth agreed.’

‘You planned to kill him?’

‘No,’ Duff said, passing her the cigarette. ‘We didn’t plan so much. We just killed him.’

‘You...’

‘We went to his room one Thursday. Checked at the door that Lorreal was snoring. Went in. Macbeth knew the room inside out. I kept watch inside the door while Macbeth went to the bed and raised a knife. But time passed, and when my eyes had got used to the darkness I saw he was standing there as rigid as a pillar of salt. Then he crumpled and came over to me, whispering that he c-c-couldn’t do it. So I took the knife, went over to Lorreal and thrust it hard into his snoring mouth. Lorreal twitched one more time, then he stopped snoring. There wasn’t much blood. We left straight after.’

‘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.’