Macbeth

‘His problem is the unsolved police murders. If you don’t fix things smartish you’re soon out on your arse.’

‘Maybe. Kite said on the radio today that Macbeth’s a catastrophe.’ He repeated ‘catastrophe’ exaggerating the rolled ‘r’, and the driver laughed. And gave a shudder when he saw the tattoo on the forehead of the prisoner who came out.

‘Livestock transport,’ he mumbled as the warder pushed the prisoner in the direction they were going.

Duff popped into his office, stuffed the parcel for Ewan in his jacket and hurried out. At Forensics on the second floor he was told that Caithness was in the darkroom in the garage. He took the lift down and let himself in. At some point when Caithness was sharing a flat with a girlfriend Duff had persuaded the caretaker that as head of Narco it would be useful if he had a key to the garage where Forensics had a firing range for ballistic analysis, a chemistry room, a darkroom to develop crime scene photographs, plus an open area inside the garage door facing the street where they could keep larger objects, such as cars, that had to be examined for evidence. After work hardly anyone did overtime in the cold damp basement; they went up to the offices on the second floor. For a year Duff and Caithness had had a regular rendezvous after work in the basement, as well as their weekly lunchtime meeting in Room 323 under the name of Mittbaum at the Grand Hotel. After Caithness had acquired her attic flat, strangely enough, Duff had missed these rushed trysts.

And opening the door and feeling the raw air hit him, he thought they must have been very much in love. In the middle of the garage stood Banquo’s bullet-ridden Volvo. It was covered with a tarpaulin, presumably because the door on the passenger side had been torn off and they wanted to protect possible evidence in the car from the rats that roamed the basement at night. Duff stopped outside the darkroom and took a deep breath. The decision was made. Now it was just the deed that needed doing. The deed. He pressed down the door handle and went into the darkness. Closed the door after him. Stood inhaling the ammonia smell from the fixer liquid, waiting for his pupils to expand.

‘Duff?’ he heard from the darkness. The same friendly, slightly tentative voice that had woken him in the meeting room yesterday morning. The same friendly, slightly tentative voice that had woken him on so many mornings in her attic flat. The friendly, tentative voice he wouldn’t hear any more, not in the same way, not there.

‘Caithness, we can’t—’

‘Roy,’ she said, ‘can you leave us alone for a while?’

Duff’s eyes got used to the darkness in time for him to see the forensic photographer leave.

‘Have you seen these?’ asked Caithness, pointing a red light at the three recent dripping exposures hanging on a line.

One showed Banquo’s car. The second, Banquo’s headless body on the tarmac outside the car. The third was a close-up of the skin of Banquo’s neck where it had been severed. She pointed to the last one. ‘We think it was cut by a large blade, like the sabre you said Sweno has.’

‘I see,’ Duff said, staring at the picture.

‘We found traces of other blood on the spine. Isn’t that interesting?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Sweno, or whoever it is, clearly hasn’t been very particular about washing his sabre, so as the sabre cut through the spine here—’ she pointed ‘—it scraped old dried blood off the blade. If we can determine which blood group it is, it might help us in other murder cases.’

Duff’s stomach was on the point of turning, and he clutched the bench.

‘Still feeling ill?’ Caithness asked.

Duff took some deep breaths. ‘Yes. No. I just had to get away. We have to talk.’

‘What about?’ He could hear in her voice she already knew. She had probably already known when he burst in; talking about the photos had been a kind of panic reaction.

‘About meeting,’ he said. ‘It won’t work any longer.’

He tried to see her face, but it was too dark.

‘Is that all we’ve done?’ she said. Her voice was tearful. ‘Meet?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, you’re right of course — it was more than meeting. And all the more reason for it to stop.’

‘You want to stop, dump me, here, at work?’

‘Caithness—’

Her bitter laugh interrupted him. ‘Well, that’s very fitting. A relationship that has taken place in a dark room is concluded in a darkroom.’

‘I’m sorry. It’s out of consideration for—’

‘You. You, Duff. Not the children, not the family, but you. You’re the most selfish person I’ve ever met, so don’t try to tell me it’s out of consideration for anyone else but you.’

‘As you like. It’s out of consideration for me.’

‘And out of which consideration are you dumping me, Duff? Is there an even younger, even more naive girl out there, who you know won’t nag you to commit, to sacrifice something? Not yet anyway.’