Macbeth

‘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.’