MacBeth

    “Ten minutes until ‘go live!’” Maggie Campbell strode through the narrow hallway of Ten Downing Street. Scurrying figures piled paperwork into boxes to be taken into the back garden. She picked a speck of lint off Prime Minister MacBeth’s shoulder as he stood at the window, looking across the lawn.

    “I need to make a call,” he replied quietly, eyes fixed on his staff carrying boxes to the rear of the grounds.

    “Make it quick Dougal, they’re baying for blood. Pull yourself together and get ready. Where’s Mary?”

    Macbeth had no idea where his wife was. She’d left overnight as the grim election results rolled in. He’d sat at Central Office into the early hours as the gloomy mood deepened, ministers losing seats, the party suffering its worst defeat in living memory. An increasing number of the faithful drifted away as fear of association with the cursed Prime Minster would taint them.

    “You’re not talking to those three, are you?” Maggie spoke with contempt.

    “Get them on video call.”

    “Only if you tell me you’ve read your resignation speech.”

    MacBeth nodded, “I read it. It’s fine, Maggie. Now get those three for me. I’ll only be a minute.”

    Maggie closed the door behind her as MacBeth stared at the three women on his laptop screen. Elspeth was at home in Stirling, Katrina on holiday in France, Shona in Perth looking after her mother. The women were an unusual choice as political advisors.

    “Where’s Mary?” asked Elspeth, bundled up in a baby pink cardigan.

    “You tell me.”

    “I’ve been awake since I don’t know when watching the results come in,” Katrina wore sunglasses and an extravagantly patterned sundress that showed off her pale, bony shoulders.

“Me too,” MacBeth snapped. “What happened? I followed everything you said to the letter.”

“Dougal, you can’t blame us for the mess you’ve made of everything,” Shona, up all night with her elderly mother and the incoming news, wasn’t in the mood for tantrums.

“You told me when we first met that I was going to rise to power, Banks and Duffy were the risks we had to deal with.” MacBeth’s phone jangled on the desk. He ignored it. The people he needed around him were outside the door waiting for him to pack his bags and go.

Elspeth gave a thin smile, “Dougal, you came to us asking how to become Prime Minister and I clearly remember you and Mary took our advice and made your decisions. All subsequent actions and events came from your own free will, and we’ve watched you and Mary rip this country to shreds as you grasped power.”

MacBeth stared at the woman, with her high cheekbones and faded red hair. He detested her.

“You’re just a cabal of charlatans,” MacBeth mumbled.

“Think what you like, Dougal,” Katrina looked bored, she had somewhere better to be, the beach.

“Has Mary got wise and finally left you?” Shona, dark rings under her eyes, gave a sly smile.

MacBeth rubbed the bridge of his nose, leaning forward with a hiss, “You told me to deal with Angie Banks first to stand a chance of running the country.”

The three women nodded in unison, unsettling MacBeth, them being hundreds upon hundreds of miles apart from each other.

“We told you that Angie Banks was your main competition. You and Mary chose how to tackle her,” Elspeth spoke firmly.

“You can’t tie us to her disappearance,” MacBeth almost shouted. “Whatever happened to Banks had nothing to do with us.”

Katrina let out a huge sigh, “Dougal, Angie Banks inexplicably went missing two weeks before the leadership contest. You know where she is.”

“She was your only competition when Duncan stepped aside,” Shona said stonily. “I’d predict both you and Mary will be held to account over what happened to Angie Banks.”

“Don’t pin this on me,” he couldn’t shake the memory, the message on his encrypted e-mail account at three in the morning.

Banks closed.

The news media went wild with speculation; the current Foreign Secretary, and front-runner for the newly vacated Prime Ministerial role, vanished whilst campaigning, criss-crossing the country to drum up support amongst her fellow MPs.

“It wasn’t meant to go like that. She wouldn’t see sense, that I was clearly the right choice.” He paused, licking his lips, warily looking around the room as he thought he saw someone out of the corner of his eye. “I just wanted someone to, you know…”

“Make her disappear,” finished Elspeth. “We know what you did, you and Mary.”

“You told us to…”

Elspeth interrupted harshly, “We never once told you to kill anyone. Ever.”

“You misinterpreted our guidance,” said Katrina.

“You deliberately chose one path, and one path only.” Shona looked over her shoulder, “I’ll be with you in minute Mammie, just got some nastiness to sort out.”

    “I have to go outside soon to face the media and I need you three to know that I blame you for everything.”

    Elspeth shook her head gently, “Dougal, we’re only advisors, you’re the political animal, or animals if we include Mary and of course we must. Let’s face it, she’s always been the power behind the throne, the only one with backbone.”

    “Rubbish,” spat MacBeth,

    “Then where is she now?” Katrina reached for a pastry, little flaky crumbs tumbling down her summery outfit.

    “I know where she is,” Shona yawned, “I can see her now, having some very detailed conversations with people in authority.”

A noise in the corridor outside grew louder as the clock ticked in the office, only five minutes to go before he faced the world, announcing his resignation as Prime Minister, then the drive of shame to meet the King and step down from office.

Forbes Duffy was behind it, the treacherous bastard. MacBeth’s supporters in the party had ebbed away and the knives were out, everyone getting behind bloody Duffy now. It was Duffy’s fault the election campaign had been such a shambles. All those leaks to the press about those big government contracts given to Mary MacBeth’s friend’s businesses; the press conferences with difficult questions he wasn’t prepared for; the TV debates where he’d been made to look sweaty and nervous and always anxiously looking around him. Maggie said he was being paranoid, but he knew better, oh yes, he knew who was behind it.

“You warned me about Duffy,” MacBeth. “I tried to sort him out too.”

“No,” Elspeth leaned close to her screen, her voice a hard whisper, “You and Mary arranged for him to have a car accident when he was travelling with his family. Only, he survived, didn’t he?”

“And his wife and three children didn’t,” Shona stood up and closed a door, to keep the sound in.

MacBeth banged his desk in fury, spilling a cold and untouched cup of coffee, “How do you know this? How?”

The three women all took deep breaths and smiled.

“Dougal, it’s our gift, and we have one final gift to share with you, don’t we ladies?” Elspeth smiled again, and Katrina, dotted with crumbs, and a yawning Shona, both nodded.

“I don’t want to hear anything else from any of you. Mark me, I’ll have my revenge.”

Elspeth cut in sharply, “Dougal MacBeth, before this day is out, you’ll rue the day your ambition carried you to Ten Downing Street.”

MacBeth stabbed at his screen with his index finger and ended the call, trembling, the only noise his panting breath. He looked out of the window again into the garden. The boxes were piling higher now, some of the guys had to clamber up the makeshift ziggurat to position the last few packages. Something caught his eye, a figure, a woman’s shape. He recognised her, but it was impossible, it couldn’t be. Was she in the garden? No, a reflection in the glass, she was standing behind him. Twisting in his seat he looked frantically about the room and saw no one, heard nothing, all he felt was a cool breeze.

The door clicked open, “Dougal, come on, it’s time,” Maggie Campbell had changed her outfit and was in a suitably mournful plain black dress with matching patent pumps.

“Make sure they set light to that bloody bonfire,” He said, straightening his tie, checking his teeth in the reflection of the knife on his desk he used to open correspondence.

#

MacBeth stood at the lectern, the sight before him a wild scrum of cameras and microphones, journalists and commentators standing at least three deep, each thrusting their arms forward, yelling at him.

“Is this the end, Prime Minister?”

“Where’s your wife, Mr MacBeth?”

“Is there any truth in what Ailsa Banks is alleging?”

Ailsa Banks? Angie’s daughter, what’s she stirring up now? Bloody child is a liability, she should have been drowned at birth. As for Mary, the deceitful harpy, he knew she’d be protecting her own interests, no doubt.

He maintained his best poker face, a smidgin of statesmanship to establish his future credentials on the lecture circuit, a wee glimpse of emotion to elicit some sympathy as a real human being.

He nodded to the journalists, each one a rippling maggot feasting on the corpse of his political career. He’d be back, there was no doubt about it. Forbes Duffy was a chancer, a slimy bugger riding the coat tails of public sympathy because of what happened to his wife and kids. MacBeth saw right through him, oh yes. Duffy would be shown for what he was, just give him time.

He tied to focus, aware of the yawning hunger from the hyaenas before him, and he looked at the short, prepared speech from Maggie. Good old Maggie, a stalwart, a friend, always there for him, keeping him on time and up to speed.

“Good morning,” he began, aware of a ripple of movement at the back of the pack, colleagues and competitors turning to each other, sharing something on their phones.

“I said most of what I wished to say when I saw you all yesterday evening before the results came in. I’d like to add a few things this morning.”

He stopped as the ripple became a wave and almost to a person each journalist began to reach for their own phones and read something that was obviously more important than his resignation speech.

“If I could continue? It has been an enormous privilege to serve this country as Prime Minister…”

“Prime Minister, are you aware of the reports that your wife has confessed to her role in arranging the murder of Angie Banks and the attempted murder of Forbes Duffy?”

The horde erupted, a bellowing howl. MacBeth could barely hear above the rising volume of the throng, so he stepped back to where Maggie Campbell was standing. She too was furtively reading something on her phone.

“Were you responsible for killing Angie Banks, Prime Minister?”

“Did Duffy’s wife and children die because of you, Prime Minister?”

Maggie gripped MacBeth’s elbow and steered him back to the black door, “It’s gone viral, Dougal. It’s out there. You’d better lay low until the Cabinet Secretary gets here. You’ve still got an appointment with the King.”

“And an appointment with Scotland Yard,” he said quietly, walking through the house, through the cowed heads and furtive looks of his staff.

“Wait in there,” Maggie bundled him into the office room overlooking the lawn, the pile of boxes clearly visible. Why hadn’t they started the fire, damn them.

He reached into his pocket and saw he had a number of voicemails, one of which from Mary. Moving to a corner he pressed play and listened, ramming a thumb into the corner of his eye, a headache starting.

“I thought it best to be honest, Dougal. I asked my security escort to drive me to the police station. They’ll confiscate my phone and see I’ve called you, which won’t be a surprise given last night’s disaster. They’ll want to know what I said to you, so I’m going to tell the truth, for once. About Angie Banks, and Duffy’s family. What we did, who we paid, all of it.

“I’m going to save them the trouble of spending years building their case, gathering evidence and witness statements. I’m going to lay it on the line and save some public money which is pretty big of me, don’t you think?

“It’s been a wild ride, hasn’t it? I wish you’d never heard of those three witches, never spoken to them, never taken their advice, and let it all come to this. Then again, maybe it was fate all along?”

The call ended, and through habit he deleted it, knowing full well nothing is ever lost in the virtual world. The next message was from an unknown number.

“Mr MacBeth, it’s Ailsa Banks. I know what you did. I’ve spent years hunting down what happened to Ma, what you and your wife did. I’ve got evidence now, of what loch her body was dumped in, and who you paid to do it. I hope they throw away the key and leave you to rot.”

He couldn’t face the other messages, throwing the phone down on the desk, staring through the window. Who were they? What were they doing? Four or five figures, uniformed police officers, were talking to the staff building the pyre. One of the younger ones made a bolt for it and was tackled to the ground.

MacBeth felt sick, alone, betrayed. There was a rumble overhead, thunder. The sky lit up and the garden was sharply drawn in shadows and light. There was that woman again, standing at his side as he saw his reflection. He lashed out, his hand not connecting with a body of flesh but catching a table lamp.

A knock at the door startled him, “What?”

The door opened and Maggie leaned in, accompanied by Cabinet Secretary, Alistair Grundy. Was someone else there too? He couldn’t make them out.

“Alistair’s here to see you. Do you want me to stay?”

MacBeth shook his head and sat heavily on a chair Mary had paid to be reupholstered in his clan tweed.

“Prime Minister, how are you bearing up?” Grundy oozed calm and competence.

“Just peachy, Alistair. Are the police here?”

Grundy nodded, feeling somewhat out of his depth. He’d seen several Prime Ministers come and go but not quite as dramatically as this. Protocol was being reinvented on the hoof.

“I’ve received a message from the Commissioner of the Met. She’s assigned a guard to escort your drive to the Palace to address the king. From then…”

“Oh, for God’s sake Alistair I know what’s next. What are those bloody flatfoots doing?” He pointed at the growing number of uniformed officers dismantling the heap and returning box after box along the line they’d formed. It was raining now, heavily, and more thunder shook the glass in the windows.

“I gather they’re removing anything associated with your wife’s allegations. They’ll search the entire property. Do I need to be made aware of…”

MacBeth looked around him, desperately. Throughout the moderate sized terraced house, portraits of former Prime Ministers gazed judgementally at the ebb and flow of residents. He wondered if they’d put one of him up, or would he, disgraced, be consigned to the basement?

A sudden flash of lightning lit the room, quickly followed by a tremendously oppressive clap of thunder that shook the house to its foundations. In that instant MacBeth saw the soaked, dripping, mournful figure of Angie Banks standing beside Grundy.

“No!” His hand flew to his face and covered his eyes. She was still there, burned onto his retinas.

“Prime Minister?” Grundy asked, shocked at the man’s erratic outbursts. He’d never had him pegged as a flake; morally reprehensible, yes; devious, undoubtedly; arrogant and paranoid, absolutely; but unhinged and erratic, no.

“Get out, Alistair. Go and grab Maggie and tell her I’m ready to see the King, get the whole bloody charade over and done with. Go!”

Grundy exited and gently pulled the door to. The thunder was still rattling fixtures and fittings as MacBeth reached for the TV remote control. He turned on the BBC News coverage and there he was, on repeat, gaping like a carp at the accusations, shouted down by the free press. The scrolling news banner repeated Mary’s media statement about Banks and Duffy’s family. Some footage showed Forbes Duffy being driven away from his London home with a security detail. He’d be out for MacBeth’s blood, as would Ailsa Banks.

Lightning lit the room again and the power flickered out. Shouts on the other side of the door could be heard calling for electricity. MacBeth sat alone, staring at the black TV screen. But he wasn’t alone, he could sense the presence of someone, something. He gripped the arms of the chair, his fingers scratching at the varnished wood, scanning the room. Nothing. No one.

Three voices spoke in unison, Elspeth, Katrina, and Shona, “When shall we three meet again in thunder, lightning or in rain?”

Impossible. They were hundreds and hundreds of miles away. Angie Banks lay at the bottom of a loch. This was madness.

Maggie banged at the door, “Dougal, open the door. You need to leave now. Stop playing silly buggers.” She’d had enough, what with a blasted power cut on top of everything else. She nodded to the police team to bust the door down when the lights came on and the door clicked open with a gentle swing.

“Dougal?” Maggie stepped in.

“Prime Minister?” Grundy nodded for the officers to go in as he followed.

“Oh shit.” Maggie’s feet nudged a heap on a priceless Persian rug, now stained with fresh blood.

“Don’t touch anything,” bellowed a voice as the room filled with shocked faces, looking at the body of Douglas MacBeth, former Prime Minister, his throat cut from ear to ear with what appeared to be his letter opener, a small double-bladed knife.