‘Not at all. It is indeed your privilege. We don’t want a chief commissioner who arrives first. I always ensure I arrive last, in case anyone should be in any doubt as to who is considered the queen.’
Duncan laughed quietly, and she laid a hand on his arm. ‘You’re laughing, so in my eyes the evening is already a success, but you should try our exquisite champagne, dear Chief Commissioner. I assume your bodyguards won’t . . .’
‘No, they’ll probably be working all night.’
‘All night?’
‘When you publicly threaten Hecate you have to sleep with at least one eye open. I sleep with two pairs open.’
‘Apropos sleeping. Your bodyguards have the adjacent room to your suite with an intervening door, as they requested. The keys are at reception. But I insist your guards at least taste my home-made lemonade, which I promise was not made using the town’s drinking water.’ She signalled to the waiter holding a tray bearing two glasses.
‘We—’ one bodyguard said, clearing his throat.
‘Refusals will be taken personally and as an insult,’ Lady interrupted.
The bodyguards exchanged glances with Duncan, then they each took a glass, drained the contents and put it back on the tray.
‘It’s very magnanimous of you to host this party, ma’am,’ Duncan said.
‘It’s the least I can do after you made my husband head of the Organised Crime Unit.’
‘Husband? I didn’t know you were married.’
She tilted her head. ‘Are you a man to stand on formality, Chief Commissioner?’
‘If by formality you mean rules, I probably am. It’s in the nature of my work. As it in yours, I assume.’
‘A casino stands or falls on everyone knowing that the rules apply in all cases, no exceptions.’
‘I have to confess I’ve never set foot in a casino before, ma’am. I know you have your hostess duties, but might I ask for a tiny guided tour when it suits you?’
‘With pleasure.’ Lady smiled and linked her arm with his. ‘Come on.’
She led Duncan up the stairs to the mezzanine. If his eyes and secret thoughts were drawn to the high split in her dress as she strode ahead, he concealed them well. They stood at the balustrade. It was a quiet evening. Four customers at the roulette table; the blackjack tables were empty; four poker players at the table underneath them. The others at the party had gathered by the bar, which they had almost to themselves. Lady watched Macbeth nervously fidgeting with his glass of water as he stood with Malcolm and Lennox, trying to look as though he was listening.
‘Twelve years ago this was a water-damaged vandalised ruin after the railway administration moved out. As you know we’re the only county in the land to allow casinos.’
‘Thanks to Chief Commissioner Kenneth.’
‘Bless his blackened soul. Our roulette table was built according to the Monte Carlo principle. You can put your bets on identical slots on both sides of the wheel, which is made of mostly mahogany, a little rosewood and ivory.’
‘It is, frankly, very impressive what you’ve created here, Lady.’
‘Thank you, Chief Commissioner, but it has come at a cost.’
‘I understand. Sometimes you wonder what drives us humans.’
‘So tell me what drives you.’
‘Me?’ He deliberated for a second or two. ‘The hope that this town may one day be a good place to live.’
‘Behind that. Behind the fine principles we can so easily articulate. What are your selfish, emotional motives? What is your dark motive, the one that whispers to you at night and haunts you after all the celebratory speeches have been made?’
‘That’s a searching question, Lady.’
‘It’s the only question, my dear Chief Commissioner.’
‘Maybe.’ He rolled his shoulders inside his dinner jacket. ‘And maybe I didn’t need such a strong motivation. I was dealt good cards when I was born into a relatively affluent family where education, ambition and career were a matter of course. My father was unambiguous and plain-spoken about corruption in the public sector. That was probably why he didn’t get very far. I think I just carried on where he left off and learned from the strategic mistakes he made. Politics is the art of the possible, and sometimes you have to use evil to fight evil. I do whatever I have to do. I’m not the saint the press likes to portray me as, ma’am.’
‘Saints achieve little apart from being canonised. I’m more for your school of tactics, Chief Commissioner. That’s always been my way.’
‘I can understand that. And although I don’t know any details of your life, I do know you’ve had a longer and steeper path to tread than me.’
Lady laughed. ‘You’ll find me in the faded files of your archives. I supported myself on the oldest profession in the world for a few years – that’s not exactly a secret. But we all have a past and have – as you put it – done what we had to do. Does the Chief Commissioner gamble? If so, I’d like you to do so on the house tonight.’
‘Thank you for your generosity, Lady, but it would break my rules to accept.’
‘Even as a private individual?’
‘When you become chief commissioner your private life ceases to exist. Besides, I don’t gamble, ma’am. I prefer not to rely on the gods of fate but to merit any winnings I might make.’
‘Nevertheless you got where you are – as you yourself said – because the gods of fate dealt you good cards at birth.’
He smiled. ‘I said prefer. Life’s a game where you either play with the cards you have or throw in your hand.’
‘May I say something, Chief Commissioner? Why are you smiling?’
‘At your question, ma’am. I think you’ll ask anyway.’
‘I just wanted to say that I think you, my dear Duncan, are a thoroughly decent person. You’re a man with spine, and I respect who you are and what you stand for. Not least because you have dared to give an unknown quantity like Macbeth such a prominent position in your management team.’
‘Thank you, ma’am. Macbeth has only himself to thank.’
‘Does the appointment form part of your anti-corruption campaign?’
‘Corruption is like a bedbug. Sometimes you have to demolish the whole house to get rid of the plague. And start building again with non-infected materials. Like Macbeth. He wasn’t part of the establishment, so he isn’t infected.’
‘Like Cawdor.’
‘Like Cawdor, ma’am.’
‘I know what it costs to pare away the infected flesh. I had two disloyal servants in my employ.’ She leaned over the balustrade and nodded towards the roulette table. ‘I still cried when I sacked them. Being tempted by money and wealth is a very common human weakness. And I was too soft-hearted, so instead of crushing the bedbugs under my heel I let them go. And what was my thanks? They used my ideas, the expertise I had given them and probably money they had stolen from here to start a dubious establishment that is not only destroying the reputation of the industry but taking bread from the mouths of the people who created this market, from us. If you chase away bedbugs they come back. No, I’d have done the same as you, Chief Commissioner.’
‘As me, ma’am?’
‘With Cawdor.’
‘I couldn’t let him get away with working with Sweno.’
‘I mean, you did the job properly. All you had on him was the testimony of a Norse Rider who even the most stupid judge and jury know would have been willing to tell the police whatever he needed to keep himself out of prison. Cawdor could have got away.’
‘We had a bit more on him than that, ma’am.’
‘But not enough for a watertight conviction. Cawdor the bedbug could have come back. And then the scandal would have dragged on interminably. A court case with one hell of a shit-storm that could easily have left stains here and there. Not exactly what t
he police need when they’re trying to win back the town’s trust. You have my full support, Chief Commissioner. You have to crush them. One turn of your heel and it’s over.’
Duncan smiled. ‘That’s quite a detailed analysis, but I hope you’re not suggesting I had anything to do with Cawdor’s premature demise, ma’am.’
‘No, God forbid.’ She placed a hand on the chief commissioner’s arm. ‘I’m only saying what Banquo usually says: there are several ways to skin a cat.’
‘Such as?’
‘Hm. Such as ringing a man and telling him that Judgement Day has come. The evidence is so overwhelming he’ll have SWAT at his door in minutes; he’ll be publicly humiliated, stripped of all his honours, his name will be dragged through the gutters to the stocks. He has only a few minutes.’
Duncan studied the poker table beneath. ‘If I had some binoculars,’ he said. ‘I’d be able to see their cards.’
‘You would.’
‘Where did you get your binoculars, ma’am? A gift from birth?’
She laughed. ‘No, I had to buy them. With experience. Dearly bought.’
‘Of course I haven’t said anything, but Cawdor served in the force for many years. Like most of us he was neither a-hundred-per-cent good nor a-hundred-per-cent bad. Perhaps he deserved, perhaps his family deserved, to have had a choice as to which way out he took.’
‘You’re a nobler person than me, Chief Commissioner. I’d have done the same, but exclusively for selfish reasons. Santé.’
They raised glasses and clinked.
‘Talking about binoculars,’ Lady said, nodding towards the others in the bar. ‘I see Inspector Duff and young Caithness have their antennae tuned in.’
‘Oh?’ Duncan arched an eyebrow. ‘They’re standing at opposite ends of the bar, from what I can see.’
‘Exactly. They’re keeping the maximum distance between them. And still checking every fifteen seconds where the other is.’
‘Not much escapes your eye, does it?’
‘I saw something when I asked you what your dark, selfish motive was.’
Duncan laughed. ‘Can you see in the dark too?’
‘My sensitivity to the darkness is inherited, Chief Commissioner. I sleepwalk in the darkest night without hurting myself.’
‘I suppose the motive for the best charitable work can be called selfish, but my simple view is that the end justifies the motive.’
‘So you’d like a statue like the one Kenneth got? Or the love of the people, which he didn’t get?’
Duncan held her gaze, checked the bodyguards behind them were still outside hearing range, then emptied his glass and coughed. ‘For myself I wish to be at peace in my soul, ma’am. The satisfaction of having done my duty. Of having maintained and improved my forefathers’ house, so to speak. I know it’s perverse, so please don’t tell anyone.’
Lady took a deep breath, pushed off from the balustrade and lit up in a big happy smile. ‘But what is your hostess doing? Interrogating her guests when there’s supposed to be a party! Shall we go and meet the others? And then I’ll go down to the cellar and get a bottle that has been waiting for an occasion just like this.’
After enduring Malcolm’s lengthy analysis of the loopholes in the new tax law Duff made an excuse and went to sit at the bar to reward himself with a whisky.
‘Well?’ said a voice behind him. ‘How was your day off with the family?’
‘Fine, thanks,’ he said without turning. Pointed to a bottle for the waiter and showed with two fingers that he wanted a double.
‘And tonight?’ Caithness asked. ‘You still want to stay over at . . . the hotel?’
The code word for her bed. But he could hear the question was not only about tonight but the nights to come. She wanted him to repeat the old refrain: the assurance that he wanted her, he didn’t want to return to his family in Fife. But this all took time, there were many aspects to consider. It was incomprehensible to him that Caithness didn’t know him any better, that she doubted this could be what he really wanted. Perhaps that was why he answered with a certain defiance that he had been offered a bed at the casino.
‘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 brea
st 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.