Macbeth

Now he passed the crime scene, where the bullet-riddled car had been towed away and the blood on the tarmac had been cleaned up. Caithness and her people had worked efficiently and found what evidence there was. And there hadn’t been much for him to do apart from state the obvious: that Banquo had been shot and beheaded. There was no trace of Fleance, but Duff had noticed that the seat belt on the passenger seat had been cut. That could mean anything at all; for the time being all they could do was put out a general missing-person alert for Banquo’s young son. It was a deserted stretch of road, as the bridge was closed, and it was unlikely there had been any witnesses in the vicinity, so after an hour Duff had decided that since he was halfway home he may as well sleep in Fife.

Where he had lain awake thinking to the accompaniment of the grasshoppers’ song outside. He had known. Known but hadn’t understood. It wasn’t that he had suddenly seen the bigger picture; it wasn’t that all the interlocking pieces had suddenly fitted into the jigsaw puzzle. It had been one simple detail. The knife in Caithness’s kitchen. But while he had been brooding the other pieces had emerged and slowly fitted in. Then he had fallen asleep and woken to the children’s ambush at dawn.

Duff drove over the old bridge. It was narrow and modest in comparison with Kenneth Bridge, but solidly built, and many thought it would stand for longer.

The problem was: who should he talk to?

It had to be someone who not only had enough power, influence and dynamism, but also someone he could trust, who wasn’t involved.

He drove down to the garage under HQ as the break in the clouds closed and the sun’s short visit was over.

Lennox looked up from his typewriter as Duff came in. ‘Lunch soon, and you’re yawning as if you’ve just got up.’

‘For the last time, is that thing genuine?’ Duff asked, nodding at the tarnished stick with a lump of rusty metal on the end that Lennox used as a paperweight. Duff slumped down in a chair beside the door.

‘And for the last time—’ Lennox sighed ‘—I inherited it from my grandfather, who had it thrown at his head in the Somme trenches. Fortunately, as you can see, the German forgot to pull the detonator pin. His soldier pals laughed a lot at that story.’

‘Are you saying they laughed a lot in the Somme?’

‘According to my grandfather the worse it got, the more they laughed. He called it the laughter of war.’

‘I still think you’re lying, Lennox. You’re not the type to have a live grenade on your desk.’

Lennox smiled as he went on typing. ‘Grandad kept it in his house all his life. He said it reminded him of the important things — the transience of life, the role of chance, his own mortality and others’ incompetence.’

Duff motioned to the typewriter. ‘Haven’t you got a secretary to take care of that?’

‘I’ve started writing my own letters and leaving the building to post them myself. Yesterday I was told by the Public Prosecutor’s Office that one of my letters appeared to have been opened and resealed before they received it.’

‘I’m not shocked. Thanks for receiving me at such short notice.’

‘Receiving me? That sounds very formal. You didn’t say what this was about on the phone.’

‘No. As I said, I’m not shocked that someone opens letters.’

‘The switchboard. Do you think—’

‘I don’t think anything, Lennox. I agree with you that there’s no point taking risks with the situation as it is now.’

Lennox nodded slowly and tilted his head. ‘And yet, good Duff, that’s precisely why you’ve come here?’

‘Maybe. I have some evidence concerning who killed Duncan.’

Lennox’s chair creaked as he straightened his back. He pushed himself away from the typewriter and rested his elbows on the desk. ‘Close the door.’

Duff stretched out his arm and closed it.

‘What kind of evidence? Tangible?’

‘Funny you should use that word...’ Duff took the letter opener from Lennox’s desk and weighed it in his hand. ‘As you know, at both crime scenes, Duncan’s and the bodyguards’, everything was apparently kosher.’

‘The word apparently is used when something seems fine on the surface but isn’t.’

‘Exactly.’ Inspector Duff placed the knife across his forefinger so that it balanced and formed a cross with his finger. ‘If you stabbed a man in the neck with a dagger to kill him, wouldn’t you hold on to the dagger in case you missed the carotid artery and had to stab again?’

‘I suppose so,’ Lennox said, staring at the letter opener.

‘And if you hit the artery straight away, as we know one dagger did, enormous quantities of blood would shoot out in a couple of brief spurts, the victim’s blood pressure would fall, the heart would stop beating, and the rest would just trickle out.’

‘I follow. I think.’