Duff eyed Macbeth for a moment. Then he whirled round. Up where the mezzanine was cut in two, he saw two figures against the morning sun shining in through the hole in the east wall. One was a medieval suit of armour. The second, Olafson, kneeling with his rifle resting on the balustrade. Fifteen metres. Olafson could hit a penny from there.
A shot rang out.
Duff knew he was dead.
So why was he still standing?
The echo of the shot resounded through the room.
Macbeth saw Olafson fall against the suit of armour, which toppled back, fell through the gap in the mezzanine and clattered to the gaming-room floor. On the mezzanine Olafson lay with his face pressed to the railing. His cheek was pushed over one eye, the other was closed, as though he had fallen asleep over his Remington 700 rifle.
‘Fleance!’ Caithness shouted.
Duff turned to the northern end of the mezzanine.
And there, up where the stairs came down from the upper floors, stood Fleance. His shirt was drenched with blood, he was swaying and clinging to a still-smoking gun.
‘Caithness, get Kasi and Fleance out,’ Duff said. ‘Now.’
Duff slumped into the chair beside the roulette table. The ball in the wheel was slowing; the sound had changed.
‘What happens now?’ Macbeth groaned.
‘We wait here until the others come. They’ll patch you up at the hospital. Custody. Federal case. They’ll be talking about you for years, Macbeth.’
‘Still think you’ve got the top bunk, do you, Duff?’
Crystal rattled. Duff looked up. Macbeth had raised his left hand.
‘You know I have the speed of a fly. Before you’ve let go of that sabre and reached for your gun you’ll have a dagger in your chest. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Possibly,’ Duff said. Instead of feeling fear he felt just an immense weariness creeping over him. ‘And you’ll still lose, as always.’
Macbeth laughed. ‘And why’s that?’
‘It’s just one of those self-fulfilling things. You’ve always known, all your life, you’re doomed to lose in the end. That certainty is and always has been you, Macbeth.’
‘Oh yes? Haven’t you heard? No man born of woman can kill me. That’s Hecate’s promise, and he’s shown several times that he keeps his promises. So do you know what? I can just get up from here and go.’ He tried to lever himself up into a sitting position, but the weight of the chandelier pressed down on him.
‘Hecate forgot to take me into account when he made you that promise,’ Duff said, keeping an eye on Macbeth’s left hand. ‘I can kill you, so just lie still.’
‘Are you hard of hearing, Duff? I said—’
‘But I wasn’t born of woman,’ Duff wheezed.
‘You weren’t?’
‘No. I was cut out of my mother, not born.’ Duff leaned forward and ran his forefinger down the scar over his face.
Macbeth was blinking with his child-eyes. ‘You... you weren’t born when Sweno killed her?’
‘She was pregnant with me. I was told she was trying to stop the bleeding at the house of an officer when Sweno swung this—’ Duff raised the sabre ‘—and cut open her stomach.’
‘And your face.’
Duff nodded slowly. ‘You won’t get away from me, Macbeth. You’ve lost.’
‘Loss after loss. We start off having everything and then we lose everything. I thought it was the only thing that was certain, the amnesty of death. But not even that is guaranteed. Only you can give me death and send me to where I can be reunited with my beloved, Duff. Be my saviour.’
‘No. You’re under arrest and will rot alone in a prison.’
Macbeth chuckled. ‘I can’t, and you can’t stop yourself. You couldn’t stop yourself trying to kill me in the alley and you can’t now. We are as we are, Duff. Free will is an illusion. So do what you have to do. Do what you are. Or shall I help you and say their names? Meredith, Emily and—’
‘Ewan,’ Duff said. ‘You’re the one who can’t change from the person you’ve always wanted to be, Macbeth. That’s how I knew there was still hope for Kasi even though the sun had risen over the mountain. You’ve never been able to kill a defenceless man. And even if you’re remembered as more brutal than Sweno, more corrupt than Kenneth, it is your good qualities that have brought you down, your lack of brutality.’
‘I was always the reverse of you, Duff. And hence your mirror image. So kill me now.’
‘Why the hurry? The place awaiting the likes of you is hell.’
‘So let me go.’
‘If you ask for your sins to be forgiven, maybe you’ll escape.’
‘I’ve sold that chance, Duff. And happily, because I’m looking forward to meeting my beloved again, even if it’s to burn together for all eternity.’
‘Well, you’ll get a fair trial and your sentence will be neither too severe nor too mild. It will be the first proof that this town can be civilised. It can become whole again.’
‘You fatuous idiot!’ Macbeth screamed. ‘You’re fooling yourself. You believe you’re thinking the thoughts you want to think, you believe you’re the person you want to be, but your brain’s desperately searching right now for a pretext to kill me as I lie here defenceless, and that’s precisely why something in you resists. But your hatred is like that train: it can’t be stopped once it has got going.’
‘You’re mistaken, Macbeth. We can change.’
‘Oh yes? Then taste this dagger, free man.’ Macbeth’s hand reached inside his jacket.
Duff reacted instinctively, folded both hands round the handle of the sabre and thrust.
He was surprised by how easily the blade sliced through Macbeth’s chest. And when it met the floor beneath, he felt a tremble spread from Macbeth’s body to the sabre and himself. A long sigh issued from Macbeth’s lips, and a fine spray of pink blood came from his mouth and settled on Duff’s hands like warm rain. He looked down into Macbeth’s eyes, not knowing what he was after, only that he didn’t find it. All he saw was a light extinguishing as the pupils grew and slowly ousted the irises.
Duff let go of the sabre and stepped back two paces.
Stood there in silence.
Sunday morning.
Heard voices approaching from Workers’ Square.
He didn’t want to. But he knew he would have to. So he did. Pulled Macbeth’s jacket open.
Macbeth’s left hand lay flat on his chest. There was nothing there, no shoulder holster, no dagger, only a white shirt gradually turning red.
A pecking sound. Duff turned. It came from the roulette table. He got to his feet. On the felt a chip lay on red, under the heart, another on black. But the sound came from the wheel, which was still spinning but more and more slowly. The white ball danced between the numbers. Then it came to rest, finally trapped.
In the one green slot, which means the house takes all.
None of the players wins.
43
Church bells pealed in the distance. The one-eyed boy stood in the waiting room at the central station looking out into the daylight. It was a strange sight. From the waiting room Bertha had always blocked the view of the Inverness, but now the old steam engine skewered the facade of the casino. Even in the sharp sunlight he could see the rotating blue lights of the police cars and the flashes of the press photographers. People had flocked to Workers’ Square, and occasionally there was a glimpse of light behind the windows in the Inverness too. That would be the SOC team taking pictures of the dead.
The boy turned and went down the corridor. As he approached the stairs down to the toilet he heard something. A low continuous howl, as if from a dog. He had heard it before, a penniless junkie who hadn’t had his fix. He peered over the railing and saw pale clothes shining in the fetid darkness below. He was about to go on when he heard a cry, like a scream: ‘Wait! Don’t go! I’ve got money!’