‘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?
‘No,’ he said, looking at Macbeth. Considering he was the focus of the party, he seemed strangely burdened and ill at ease. Had the responsibility and gravity of his new post already intimidated the happy, carefree boy in him? Well, now it was too late, both for Macbeth and for himself. ‘If you go first I’ll wait a suitable length of time and follow you.’
He noticed her hesitate behind him. He met her eyes in the mirror behind the shelves of bottles. Saw she was about to touch him. Sent her an admonitory glance. She desisted. And left. Jesus.
Duff knocked back his drink. Got up to go over to Macbeth, who was leaning on the end of the bar. Time to congratulate him properly. But right at that moment Duncan came between them; people flocked around him, and Macbeth was lost in the melee. And when Duff saw him again, Macbeth was on his way out, rushing after Lady’s skirt tails, which he saw leaving the room.
Macbeth caught Lady up as she was unlocking the wine cellar.
‘I can’t do it,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘I can’t kill my own chief commissioner.’
She looked at him.
She grabbed the lapels of his jacket, pulled him inside and closed the door. ‘Don’t fail me now, Macbeth. Duncan and his guards are set up in their rooms. Everything’s ready. You’ve got the master key, haven’t you?’
Macbeth took the key from his pocket and held it up for her. ‘Take it. I can’t do this.’
‘Can’t or won’t?’
‘Both. I won’t do it to because I can’t find the will for such villainy. It’s wrong. Duncan’s a good chief commissioner, and I can’t do anything better than him. So what’s the point, apart from feeding my ambition?’
‘Our ambition! Because after hunger, cold, fear and lust there is nothing more than ambition, Macbeth. Because honour is the key to respect. And that is the master key. Use it!’ She was still holding his lapels, and her mouth was so close to his he could taste the fury in her breath.
‘Darling—’ he began.
‘No! If you think Duncan is such an honourable man listen to how he killed Cawdor to spare himself the embarrassing revelations that might have leaked out if Cawdor had lived.’
‘That’s not true!’
‘Ask him yourself.’
‘You’re only saying that to... to...’
‘To steel your will,’ she said. She let go and instead pressed her palms against the lapels as if to feel his heartbeat. ‘Just think that you’re going to kill a murderer, the way you killed the Norse Rider, then it’ll be easy.’
‘I don’t want it to be easy.’
‘If it’s your morals that are getting the better of you, then just remember you’re bound by the promise you made me last night, Macbeth. Or are you telling me that what I saw and interpreted as courage when you killed Ernest Collum was just a young man’s recklessness because it wasn’t your life at stake but my croupier’s? While now, when you have to risk something yourself, you flee like a cowardly hyena.’
Her words were unreasonable but still hit home. ‘You know that’s not how it is,’ he said in desperation.
‘So how can’t you keep the promise you made to me, Macbeth?’
He gulped. Searched feverishly for words. ‘I... Can you say you keep all your promises?’
‘Me? Me?’ She emitted a piercing laugh of astonishment. ‘To keep a promise to myself I wrenched my suckling child from my breast and smashed its head against a wall. So how could I break a promise to you, my only beloved?’
Macbeth stood looking at her. He was inhaling her breath now, her poisonous breath. He felt it weakening him second by second. ‘But you don’t realise, do you, that if this fails Duncan will cut your head off too?’
‘It won’t fail. Listen. I’m going to give Duncan a glass of this burgundy, and I’ll insist that his bodyguards at least taste it. They won’t notice anything, but they might become a little muddled later in the evening. And sleep like logs when they go to bed...’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Shh! You’ll be using your daggers so there’s no chance of them waking. Afterwards smear the blood on the blades all over the guards and leave the daggers in their beds. And later when you wake them—’
‘I remember our plan. But it has weaknesses, and—’
‘It’s your plan, my love.’ She grasped his chin with one hand and bit the lobe of his ear hard. ‘And it’s perfect. Everyone will realise the guards have been bought by Hecate; they were just too drunk to hide the traces of their crime.’
Macbeth closed his eyes. ‘You can only give birth to boys, can’t you?’
Lady gave a low chuckle. Kissed him on the neck.
Macbeth held her shoulders and pushed her away. ‘You’ll be the death of me, Lady, do you know that?’
She smiled. ‘And you know everywhere you go, I go.’
8
The dinner was held in the casino restaurant. Duff was placed next to the hostess, who had Duncan on her other side. Macbeth sat opposite them with Caithness as his neighbour. Duff noticed that neither Caithness nor Macbeth spoke or ate much, but the atmosphere was still good and the table so wide it was hard to have a conversation across it. Lady chatted and seemed to be enjoying herself with Duncan, while Duff listened to Malcolm and concentrated on not yawning.
‘Caithness looks beautiful tonight, doesn’t she?’
Duff turned. It was Lady. She smiled at him, her large blue eyes innocent beneath fiery red hair.
‘Yes, nearly as beautiful as you, ma’am,’ Duff said but could hear his words lacked the spark that could have brought them to life.
‘She’s not only beautiful,’ Lady said. ‘I suppose, as a woman in the police, she must have sacrificed a lot to get where she is. Having a family, for example. I can see she’s sacrificed having a family. Can’t you too, Duff?’
Grey eyes. They were grey, not blue.
‘All women who want to get on have to sacrifice something, I suppose,’ Duff said, lifting his wine glass and discovering it was empty again. ‘Family isn’t the be-all and end-all for everyone. Don’t you agree, ma’am?’
Lady shrugged. ‘We humans are practical. If decisions we made once can’t be changed, we do our best to defend them so that our errors won’t haunt and torment us too much. I think that’s the recipe for a happy life.’
‘So you’re afraid you’d be haunted if you saw your decisions in a true light?’
‘If a woman is to get what she wants, she has to think and act like a man and not consider the family. Her own or others’.’
Duff recoiled. He tried to catch her eye, but she had leaned forward to fill the glasses of the guests around her. And the next moment Duncan tapped his glass, stood up and coughed.
Duff watched Macbeth during the inspired thank-you speech, which paid homage not only to the hostess’s dinner and the host’s promotion but to the mission they had all signed up to: to make the town a place where it was possible to live. And he rounded off by saying that after a long week they deserved the rest the merciful Lord had granted them and they would be wise to use it because there was a good chance the chief commissioner wasn’t going to be such a merciful god in the weeks to come.