Macbeth

‘You fatuous idiot!’ Macbeth screamed. ‘You’re fooling yourself. You believe you’re thinking the thoughts you want to think, you believe you’re the person you want to be, but your brain’s desperately searching right now for a pretext to kill me as I lie here defenceless, and that’s precisely why something in you resists. But your hatred is like that train: it can’t be stopped once it has got going.’

‘You’re mistaken, Macbeth. We can change.’

‘Oh yes? Then taste this dagger, free man.’ Macbeth’s hand reached inside his jacket.

Duff reacted instinctively, folded both hands round the handle of the sabre and thrust.

He was surprised by how easily the blade sliced through Macbeth’s chest. And when it met the floor beneath, he felt a tremble spread from Macbeth’s body to the sabre and himself. A long sigh issued from Macbeth’s lips, and a fine spray of pink blood came from his mouth and settled on Duff’s hands like warm rain. He looked down into Macbeth’s eyes, not knowing what he was after, only that he didn’t find it. All he saw was a light extinguishing as the pupils grew and slowly ousted the irises.

Duff let go of the sabre and stepped back two paces.

Stood there in silence.

Sunday morning.

Heard voices approaching from Workers’ Square.

He didn’t want to. But he knew he would have to. So he did. Pulled Macbeth’s jacket open.

Macbeth’s left hand lay flat on his chest. There was nothing there, no shoulder holster, no dagger, only a white shirt gradually turning red.

A pecking sound. Duff turned. It came from the roulette table. He got to his feet. On the felt a chip lay on red, under the heart, another on black. But the sound came from the wheel, which was still spinning but more and more slowly. The white ball danced between the numbers. Then it came to rest, finally trapped.

In the one green slot, which means the house takes all.

None of the players wins.

43

Church bells pealed in the distance. The one-eyed boy stood in the waiting room at the central station looking out into the daylight. It was a strange sight. From the waiting room Bertha had always blocked the view of the Inverness, but now the old steam engine skewered the facade of the casino. Even in the sharp sunlight he could see the rotating blue lights of the police cars and the flashes of the press photographers. People had flocked to Workers’ Square, and occasionally there was a glimpse of light behind the windows in the Inverness too. That would be the SOC team taking pictures of the dead.

The boy turned and went down the corridor. As he approached the stairs down to the toilet he heard something. A low continuous howl, as if from a dog. He had heard it before, a penniless junkie who hadn’t had his fix. He peered over the railing and saw pale clothes shining in the fetid darkness below. He was about to go on when he heard a cry, like a scream: ‘Wait! Don’t go! I’ve got money!’

‘Sorry, Grandad. I haven’t got any dope and you haven’t got any money. Have a not very nice day.’

‘But I’ve got your eye!’ The boy stopped in his tracks. Went back to the railing. Stared down. That voice. Could it really be...? He went over to the stairs, looked around. There was no one else there. Then he descended into the cold damp darkness. The stench got worse with every step.

The man was lying across the threshold of the men’s toilet. Wearing what had perhaps once been a white linen suit. Now it was the ragged remains soaked in blood. Just like the man himself. Ragged, blood-soaked remains. A triangular shard of glass protruded from his forehead under a dark fringe. And there was the stick with the gilt handle. It damn well was him! The man he had been searching for all these years. Hecate. The boy’s eye gradually got used to the darkness and he saw the gaping wound, a tear across stomach and chest. It was pumping out blood, but not so much, as though he was running dry. Between each new surge of blood he could see the slimy pale-pink intestines inside.

‘Bring my suffering to an end,’ the old man rasped. ‘Then take the money I have in my inside pocket.’

The boy eyed the man. The man from all his dreams, his fantasies. Tears of pain ran down the old man’s soft cheeks. If the boy wanted, he could take out the short flick knife that he used to chop powder, the one with the narrow blade that had once removed an eye. He could stick it into the old man. It would be poetic justice.

‘Has your stomach sprung a leak?’ the boy asked, reaching inside the man’s jacket. ‘Is there acid in the wound?’ He examined the contents of the wallet.

‘Hurry!’ the old man sobbed.

‘Macbeth’s dead,’ the boy said, quickly counting the notes. ‘Do you think that makes the world a better place?’

‘What?’

‘Do you think Macbeth’s successors will be any better, fairer or more compassionate? Is there any reason to think they will be?’

‘Shut up, boy, and get it over with. Use the stick if you want.’