‘Your revolver’s pointing at me, Seyton.’
‘Perhaps it is. Because I’m not going to let you stop the kingdom that is coming, Macbeth. You’re not the only one with a calling. I’m going—’
‘I know what you’re going to do, and if you don’t put that revolver away, you’re a dead man. A dead something anyway.’
Seyton laughed. ‘There are things you don’t know about me, Macbeth. Such as you can’t kill me.’
Macbeth looked into the muzzle of the revolver. ‘Do it then, Seyton. Because only you can send me to her. You’re not born of woman, you were made. Made of bad dreams, evil and whatever it is that wants to break and destroy.’
Seyton shook his head and pointed the revolver at Kasi’s head without taking his eyes off Macbeth. At that moment the first ray of sun penetrated the large windows on the mezzanine. Macbeth saw Seyton raise a hand to shade his eyes as the ray hit his face.
Macbeth threw at the sunshine on the tree trunk out there on the other side, at the heart carved into the wood. Knowing it would hit, for lines, veins from his fingertips, went to that heart.
There was a thud. Seyton wobbled and looked down at the handle of the dagger protruding from his chest. Then dropped the revolver and grabbed the dagger as he sank to his knees. Raised his eyes and looked at Macbeth with a fogged gaze.
‘Silver,’ Macbeth said, poking the matchstick between his front teeth again. ‘It’s said to work.’
Seyton fell forward and lay with his head by the boy’s naked feet.
Macbeth placed the white ivory ball on the wooden frame around the rotating roulette wheel and sent it hard in the opposite direction.
‘Keep going!’ Duff shouted to the men beating away with sledgehammers and fire axes at the front of the plinth, where they had already dislodged big lumps of concrete.
And then the plinth cracked, and the locomotive’s plough-shaped cow catcher dropped with an almighty bang. Duff almost fell forward in the driver’s cab, but grabbed a lever and managed to hold on tight. The locomotive’s nose, in front of him, was pointing downwards, but it didn’t move.
‘Come on!’
Still nothing.
‘Come on then, you old woman!’
And Duff felt something through his feet. It had moved. Hadn’t it? Or... He heard a sound like a low lament. Yes, it had moved, for the first time in eighty years Bertha Birnam had moved, and now the wailing of its movable metal parts rose, rose in a crescendo to a scream of protest. Years of rust and the laws of friction and inertia tried to hold on, but gravity was invincible.
‘Keep clear!’ Duff shrieked, tightening the strap of his machine gun and holding the butt of the reserve weapon he had tucked inside his belt.
The steam engine’s wheels turned, wrenched out of their torpor, rolled slowly down the eight-metre length of rail and tipped off the plinth. The front wheels hit the top of the steps and the flagstones broke with a deafening crunch. For a moment it seemed the train would stop there, but then Duff heard the next step crack. And the next. And he knew that nothing could now stop this slowly accelerating massive force.
Duff stared fixedly ahead, but from the corner of his eye he registered that someone had jumped onto the train and was standing beside him.
‘Single to the Inverness, please.’ It was Caithness.
‘Sir!’ It was Olafson.
‘Yes?’ Macbeth’s gaze followed the ivory’s rumbling revolutions.
‘I think it... it’s... coming.’
‘What’s coming?’
‘The... train.’
Macbeth raised his head. ‘The train?’
‘Bertha! She’s coming... here! It’s—’
The rest was drowned. Macbeth got up. From where he was standing in the gaming room he couldn’t see up to the station building, only the sloping square outside the tall window. But he could hear. It sounded like something was being crunched to pieces by a bellowing monster. And it was coming closer.
And then, crossing the square in front of the Inverness, it came into his field of vision.
He gulped.
Bertha was coming.
‘Fire!’
Deputy Chief Commissioner Malcolm stared in disbelief. Because he knew that whatever happened now he was never going to see the like of this again in his lifetime. A steam engine eating stone and making its own track across Workers’ Square. A form of transport their forefathers had built with iron, too heavy and solid to be held back, with ball bearings that didn’t rust or dry out after a mere eighty years of neglect, a locomotive against which a hail of bullets from a Gatling gun produced sparks but was repelled like water as it held its course straight towards Inverness Casino.
‘That is one solid building,’ someone said next to him.
Malcolm shook his head. ‘It’s just a gambling den,’ he said.
‘Hold on tight!’ Duff yelled.
Caithness had sat down on the iron floor with her back to the side of the cab to avoid ricochets from the bullets screaming over their heads. She shouted something, her facial muscles tensed and her eyes closed.
‘What?’ yelled Duff.
‘I love—’
Then they hit the Inverness.
Macbeth enjoyed the sight of Bertha filling the window before she smashed through. He had a feeling the whole building — the floor he was sitting on, the air in the room — everything was pushed back as the train broke through the wall into the room. The noise lay like a coating on his eardrums. The funnel on the steam engine cut through the eastern part of the mezzanine and its cow catcher dug into the floor. The Inverness had braked her, but Bertha was still eating her way forward, metre by metre. She stopped half a metre in front of him, with the funnel against the railing of the west mezzanine and the cow catcher touching the roulette table. For a moment there was total silence. Then came a rattle of crystal. And Macbeth knew what that was. Bertha had sliced the ropes holding the chandelier above him. He made no attempt to move, he didn’t even look up. All he noticed before everything went black was that he was covered in Bohemian glass.
Duff climbed up onto the train with the machine gun in his hands. The low rays of sun shone through the dust filling the air.
‘The Gatling gun in the south-east corner is unmanned!’ Caithness shouted behind him. ‘What about—’
‘Unmanned on the south-west too,’ Duff said. ‘Seyton’s lying by the roulette table with a dagger in him. Looks pretty dead.’
‘Kasi’s here. Looks like he’s unharmed.’
Duff scanned what once had been a gaming room. Coughed because of the dust. Listened. Apart from the frenetic rolling of a roulette ball in the wheel, there was silence. Sunday morning. In a few hours the church bells would peal. He clambered down. Stepped over Seyton’s body to the chandelier. Used the sabre to sweep away the bits of glass from Macbeth’s face.
Macbeth’s eyes were wide open with surprise, like a child’s. The point of the chandelier’s gilt spire had disappeared into his right shoulder. Not much blood ran from the wound, which contracted rhythmically as if sucking from the light fitting.
‘Good morning, Duff.’
‘Good morning, Macbeth.’
‘Heh heh. Do you remember we used to say that every morning when we got up in the orphanage, Duff? You were in the top bunk.’
‘Where are the others? Where’s Olafson?’
‘Clever lad, that Olafson. He knows when the time’s right to scarper. Like you.’
‘Your SWAT men don’t scarper,’ Duff said.
Macbeth sighed. ‘No, you’re right. Would you believe me if I said he’s behind you and will kill you in... erm, two seconds?’