Macbeth

‘Fuck!’ Sean shouted, took a step back and reached for his belt. He had realised what the hole in the visor was and that he wasn’t going to see his best pal again. Sean pulled out his gun, released the safety catch and was about to point it at the man still struggling with the AK-47 when something struck him in the shoulder. He automatically swung the gun in the direction from which the blow had come. But there was no one there. Only the guy in the Norse Rider jacket standing over by the door. At that moment his hand seemed to wither and Sean dropped his gun to the floor.

‘Not a peep,’ a voice said behind him.

Sean turned again.

The AK was pointing at him, and in the reflection of the holed visor he saw a dagger sticking out of his shoulder.

Duff put the barrel of the AK to the tattoo on the guy’s forehead. Looked into his gawping, ugly features. His finger squeezed the trigger, just a fraction... He heard the hiss of his own breathing inside the helmet and his heart pounding beneath the somewhat too tight leather jacket.

‘Duff,’ Macbeth said from the club-room doorway. ‘Easy now.’

Duff squeezed the trigger a fraction more.

‘Stop that,’ Macbeth said. ‘It’s our turn to use a hostage.’

Duff let go of the trigger.

The man’s face was as white as a sheet. From fear or loss of blood. Both probably. His voice shook. ‘We don’t save—’

Duff hit him across the tattoo with the gun barrel. Leaving a stripe that for a moment shone white like a copy of Duff’s own trademark. Then it filled with blood.

‘You shut up, son, and everything’ll be fine,’ said Macbeth, who had joined them. He grabbed the young man’s long hair, pulled his head back and put the blade of his second dagger to his throat. Pushed him forward to the club-room door. ‘Ready?’

‘Remember Sweno’s mine,’ Duff said, making sure the curved magazine sat properly in the weapon, and strode after Macbeth and the Norse Rider.

Macbeth kicked open the door and went in with the hostage in front and Duff hard on his heels. Grinning and loud-mouthed, the Norse Riders were sitting at a long table in the large, open but already smoke-filled club-room. All of them with their backs to the wall facing the three doors that led from the room. Probably a club rule. Duff estimated there were twenty of them. The music was on loud. The Stones. ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’.

‘Police!’ Duff shouted. ‘No one move or my colleague will cut the throat of this fine young man.’

Time seemed to come to an abrupt halt, and Duff saw the man at the end of the table raise his head as if in slow motion. A ruddy porcine face with visible nostrils and plaits so tight they pulled the eyes into two narrow hate-filled straight lines. From the corner of his mouth hung a long thin cigarillo. Sweno.

‘We don’t save hostages,’ he said.

The young man lost consciousness and fell.

In the next two seconds everything in the room froze and all you could hear was the Rolling Stones.

Until Sweno took a drag of his cigarillo. ‘Take them,’ he said.

Duff registered at least three of the Norse Riders react at the same time and pulled the trigger of his AK-47. Held it there. Spraying chunks of lead with a diameter of 7.62 millimetres, which smashed bottles, raked the table, lashed the wall, carved flesh and stopped Mick Jagger between two gasses. Beside him Macbeth had reached for the two Glocks he had removed from the Norse Rider bodies on the quay. Along with their jackets, helmets and bikes. In Duff’s hands, his gun felt warm and soft like a woman. Darkness fell gradually as lamps were shot to pieces. And when Duff finally let go of the trigger, dust and feathers hovered in the air, and one lamp swung to and fro from the ceiling sending shadows scurrying up the walls like fleeing ghosts.

3

‘I looked around, and in the semi-darkness Norse Rider guys were strewn across the floor face down,’ Macbeth said. ‘Blood, broken glass and empty shell cases.’

‘Jesus!’ Angus shouted with a slur over the lively babble at the Bricklayers Arms, the SWAT’s local behind the central station. The glazed blue eyes looked at Macbeth with what seemed to be adoration. ‘You just swept them off the face of the earth! Holy Jesus! Cheers!’

‘Now, now, careful with your language, you priest-in-waiting,’ Macbeth said, but when many of the eighteen SWAT officers in attendance raised their beer mugs to him, he eventually smiled, shaking his head, and then raised his glass too. Took a long draught and looked at Olafson, who was holding a heavy Bricklayers Arms pint mug in his left hand.

‘Does it hurt, Olafson?’

‘It’s all the better for knowing that one of them has a sore shoulder as well,’ Olafson lisped and shyly straightened the sling when the others burst into loud laughter.

‘The ones who actually got things rolling were Banquo and Olafson here,’ Macbeth said. ‘I was just holding the light like some bloody photographer’s assistant for these two artists.’