He stood staring at them.
Then down at himself. At his sweater and trousers covered with tiny dots of sunshine. He felt his heart skip a beat. Ran a finger over a sheet. It found a hole at once. And another. He stopped breathing.
Pulled the sheet at the back to the side.
The kitchen window was gone. The wall was holed so badly it looked more like a hole than a wall. He looked in through where the window had been. The pot on the hotplate looked like a sieve. The stove and the floor around were covered with a steaming yellowish-green broth.
He wanted to go inside. He had to go inside. But he couldn’t; it was as if his feet were frozen to the veranda floor and his willpower was deactivated.
But there’s no one in the kitchen, he told himself. Empty. Perhaps the rest of the house was empty too. Destroyed but empty. Perhaps they had escaped to the cabin. Perhaps. Perhaps he hadn’t lost everything.
He forced himself to pass through the opening where the door had been. He went into the children’s rooms. First Emily’s, then Ewan’s. Checked the cupboards raked with machine gun fire and under the beds. No one. Nor in the guest room. He went towards the last room, his and Meredith’s bedroom, with the broad soft double bed where on Sunday mornings they made room for all four of them, lay on their sides, tickled bare toes to the children’s loud shrieks, gently scratched each other’s backs, talked about all sorts of weird and wonderful things and fought to decide who should get up first.
The bedroom door hadn’t been shot away, but the gaps between the bullet holes were the same as elsewhere in the house. Duff took a deep breath.
Perhaps not all was lost yet.
He gripped the handle. Opened the door.
Of course he knew he had been lying to himself. He had become good at it: the more he had practised self-deception the easier it had been to see what he wanted to see. But in the last few days the scales had fallen from his eyes and now he was there and couldn’t not see what lay before his eyes. The feathers from the mattress were everywhere, as though snow had been falling. Perhaps that was why everything seemed so peaceful. Meredith looked as if she had tried to keep Ewan and Emily warm as they sat on the floor in the far corner with her arms around them. Red feathers were stuck to the walls around them.
Duff’s breathing came in gasps. And then came a sob. One single, bitter, raging sob.
Everything was lost.
Absolutely everything was lost.
22
Duff remained standing in the doorway. Saw the blanket on the bed. He knew it wouldn’t help if he waded into the feathers; all he would do was contaminate the crime scene and potentially destroy the evidence. But he had to cover them up. Cover them up for a last time, they couldn’t stay like that. He stepped inside, then stopped.
He had heard a sound. A shout.
He backed out and strode into the sitting room, over to the smashed window facing south-east, towards the lake. There was the cry again. So far away he couldn’t see who was shouting, but sound carried well out there in the afternoon. The voice sounded angry. It had repeated the same word, but Duff couldn’t make out what it was. He pulled out the remains of a chest drawer, took out the binoculars kept there, focused on the cabin. One lens of the binoculars was pierced, but the other was good enough for him to see a fair-haired man hurrying towards the house on the narrow road. Behind him, in front of the cabin, stood a lorry, on the back of which was a man whose face he recognised. Seyton. He was standing between what looked like two enormous meat-mincers on stands. Duff remembered Macbeth’s words. Stay in bed for two days at least... an order. Macbeth had known. Known that Duff was about to reveal that he had killed Duncan. Lennox. Lennox, the traitor. There was no judge from Capitol coming to town tomorrow.
Duff saw Seyton’s mouth moving before the sound reached him. The same furious word: ‘Angus!’
Duff moved back from the window so that the glass in the binoculars wouldn’t reflect the sun and give him away. He had to escape.
As darkness fell over the town, news of the massacre at the Norse Riders’ club house was already spreading. And at nine o’clock most of the town’s journalists, TV and radio crews were gathered in Scone Hall. Macbeth stood in the wings listening to Lennox welcome them to the press conference.
‘We would ask you not to use flash until the chief commissioner has finished, and please ask questions by raising a hand and speaking. And now here is this proud town’s chief commissioner, Macbeth.’
This introduction — and possibly the rumours of the victory over the Norse Riders in the battle at the club house — were cause enough for a couple of the less experienced journalists to clap when Macbeth appeared on the podium, but the thin applause died under the eloquent gazes of the more seasoned members of the audience.
Macbeth walked up to the lectern. No, he took the lectern by force, that was how it felt. It was strange that this — speaking to an audience — was what he had feared most; now he didn’t just like it, he longed for it, he needed it. He coughed, looked down at his papers. Then he started.
‘Today the police carried out two armed operations against those behind the recent murders of our officers, among them Chief Commissioner Duncan. I’m pleased to say that the first operation, given the circumstances, was one-hundred-per-cent successful. The criminal gang known as the Norse Riders has ceased to exist.’ A single hurrah from the audience broke the silence. ‘This was a planned action based on new information that emerged after the release of some Norse Rider members. The circumstances were that the Norse Riders fired shots at SWAT, and we had no choice but to hit back hard.’
A shout from the back of the halclass="underline" ‘Is Sweno among the dead?’
‘Yes,’ said Macbeth. ‘He is indeed one of the bodies that cannot be identified because of the comprehensive nature of his injuries, but I think you all recognise this...’ Macbeth held up a shiny sabre. More hurrahs, and now some of the more experienced journalists joined in the spontaneous applause. ‘And with it an era is over. Fortunately.’
‘There are rumours that women and children are among the dead.’
‘Yes and no,’ Macbeth said. ‘Adult women who had chosen to associate with the club, yes. Many of them have what we might call a sullied record and none of them did anything to stop the Norse Riders firing at us. As for children, that’s just nonsense. There were no innocent victims here.’
‘You mentioned a second operation. What was that?’
‘It took place out of town, in Fife, straight after the first, in a relatively deserted area, so you may not have heard about it, but this was an attempt to arrest someone we now know had been working with the Norse Riders for some time. It is of course regrettable that such an officer could be found within our ranks, but it also proves that Chief Commissioner Duncan was not infallible when he handed the Narcotics Unit and later the Homicide Unit to this man, Inspector Duff. And we’re not infallible either. We considered his family and assumed he would do the same and give himself up. So when we arrived, Police Officer Seyton, the head of SWAT, went towards the house and asked Duff to come out alone and give himself up. Duff responded by shooting at Seyton.’
He nodded towards Seyton, who was standing under the light by the door at the front of the hall so that everyone could see him with his arm in a sling.
‘Luck would have it that the shot wasn’t fatal. Police Officer Seyton soon received medical attention and there’s every chance that he’ll escape permanent injury. However, despite the seriousness of his injury, Police Officer Seyton led the attack. Unfortunately, Duff, in his desperation and cowardice, chose to use his family as a shield, with the tragic result that they paid with their lives, while Duff managed to escape from the back of the house and make a getaway in his car. He’s a wanted man, and we have commenced a search. I promise to you here and now that we will find and punish Duff. Incidentally, let me use this opportunity to announce that we’ll soon be able to address Police Officer Seyton as Inspector Seyton.’