Macbeth

‘I couldn’t let him get away with working with Sweno.’

‘I mean, you did the job properly. All you had on him was the testimony of a Norse Rider who even the most stupid judge and jury know would have been willing to tell the police whatever he needed to keep himself out of prison. Cawdor could have got away.’

‘We had a bit more on him than that, ma’am.’

‘But not enough for a watertight conviction. Cawdor the bedbug could have come back. And then the scandal would have dragged on interminably. A court case with one hell of a shit-storm that could easily have left stains here and there. Not exactly what the police need when they’re trying to win back the town’s trust. You have my full support, Chief Commissioner. You have to crush them. One turn of your heel and it’s over.’

Duncan smiled. ‘That’s quite a detailed analysis, but I hope you’re not suggesting I had anything to do with Cawdor’s premature demise, ma’am.’

‘No, God forbid.’ She placed a hand on the chief commissioner’s arm. ‘I’m only saying what Banquo usually says: there are several ways to skin a cat.’

‘Such as?’

‘Hm. Such as ringing a man and telling him that Judgement Day has come. The evidence is so overwhelming he’ll have SWAT at his door in minutes; he’ll be publicly humiliated, stripped of all his honours, his name will be dragged through the gutters to the stocks. He has only a few minutes.’

Duncan studied the poker table beneath. ‘If I had some binoculars,’ he said. ‘I’d be able to see their cards.’

‘You would.’

‘Where did you get your binoculars, ma’am? A gift from birth?’

She laughed. ‘No, I had to buy them. With experience. Dearly bought.’

‘Of course I haven’t said anything, but Cawdor served in the force for many years. Like most of us he was neither a-hundred-per-cent good nor a-hundred-per-cent bad. Perhaps he deserved, perhaps his family deserved, to have had a choice as to which way out he took.’

‘You’re a nobler person than me, Chief Commissioner. I’d have done the same, but exclusively for selfish reasons. Santé.’

They raised glasses and clinked.

‘Talking about binoculars,’ Lady said, nodding towards the others in the bar. ‘I see Inspector Duff and young Caithness have their antennae tuned in.’

‘Oh?’ Duncan arched an eyebrow. ‘They’re standing at opposite ends of the bar, from what I can see.’

‘Exactly. They’re keeping the maximum distance between them. And still checking every fifteen seconds where the other is.’

‘Not much escapes your eye, does it?’

‘I saw something when I asked you what your dark, selfish motive was.’

Duncan laughed. ‘Can you see in the dark too?’

‘My sensitivity to the darkness is inherited, Chief Commissioner. I sleepwalk in the darkest night without hurting myself.’

‘I suppose the motive for the best charitable work can be called selfish, but my simple view is that the end justifies the motive.’

‘So you’d like a statue like the one Kenneth got? Or the love of the people, which he didn’t get?’

Duncan held her gaze, checked the bodyguards behind them were still outside hearing range, then emptied his glass and coughed. ‘For myself I wish to be at peace in my soul, ma’am. The satisfaction of having done my duty. Of having maintained and improved my forefathers’ house, so to speak. I know it’s perverse, so please don’t tell anyone.’

Lady took a deep breath, pushed off from the balustrade and lit up in a big happy smile. ‘But what is your hostess doing? Interrogating her guests when there’s supposed to be a party! Shall we go and meet the others? And then I’ll go down to the cellar and get a bottle that has been waiting for an occasion just like this.’

After enduring Malcolm’s lengthy analysis of the loopholes in the new tax law Duff made an excuse and went to sit at the bar to reward himself with a whisky.

‘Well?’ said a voice behind him. ‘How was your day off with the family?’

‘Fine, thanks,’ he said without turning. Pointed to a bottle for the waiter and showed with two fingers that he wanted a double.

‘And tonight?’ Caithness asked. ‘You still want to stay over at... the hotel?’

The code word for her bed. But he could hear the question was not only about tonight but the nights to come. She wanted him to repeat the old refrain: the assurance that he wanted her, he didn’t want to return to his family in Fife. But this all took time, there were many aspects to consider. It was incomprehensible to him that Caithness didn’t know him any better, that she doubted this could be what he really wanted. Perhaps that was why he answered with a certain defiance that he had been offered a bed at the casino.

‘And do you want that? To stay here?’

Duff sighed. What did women want? Were they all going to tie him up, tether him to the bed head and feed him in the kitchen so that they could milk his wallet and testicles to overwhelm him with more offspring and a guilty conscience?