The Blood Tree (31 page)

The area around the stage was packed. There was a ring of seats at the front and behind it a great throng of people had gathered. A lot of them were in medieval costume: leather jerkins and tights for the men, low-cut dresses and frilly blouses for the women. In Glasgow even the cult members were as chic as it comes.

We took our seats in the fourth row, Hyslop making sure she sat between Haggs and me. I wasn't complaining. She looked around surreptitiously, locating her colleagues. I stuck to examining the stage. Apart from the ubiquitous “Die for the Experience, Live Forever!” banner, there was a line of shields with what I recognised to be the coats of arms of Scottish cities. Glasgow's tree and fish were to the fore. Edinburgh's emblem was there too – not the Council's maroon heart but the original heraldic castle. I wondered what the guardians back home would think about Macbeth's ideas. Not much, I was sure. But ordinary Edinburgh citizens might be persuaded to give reunification a chance – many of them had forgotten the disasters brought about by the Scottish Parliament after the millennium.

Then, without any warning, the lights were killed. The audience shrieked for a few seconds but soon settled down to watch the spectacle. Except there wasn't one. Darkness and silence reigned. All you could hear was the steady tolling of a bell in the distance and the croak of the ubiquitous raven. Where the hell had the witches got to?

It turned out they weren't on yet. The first change the new Macbeth had made to the play was to start it with himself, not the three old bags. It was his cult so I suppose he could do what he wanted. There was a roll of thunder that sounded pretty fake, then a spotlight picked out the king standing centre-stage. He was in full regal garb from crown to calf boots, his legs apart and his claymore planted in front of them. His hands were resting on the haft, which almost reached to his neck.

“Friends, welcome!” he cried. “I pray your indulgence for a few short minutes.”

We were in for a message from the management.

“I have looked into the seeds of time,” the king continued. “I have seen which grain will grow and which will not. I shall give a happy prologue to the imperial theme.”

It was a long time since I'd read the play, but I could tell that we were now in Glasgow, city of paraphrase. If he went on like this, he'd soon use up all the juicy bits.

“Our movement is under way,” he went on, “our cult is growing. But we are more than that. We are Scotland's destiny made manifest. Politics are not enough for us, neither is religion. We are a historical imperative, an unstoppable force. Scotland will be one again!”

To my amazement, there was a huge burst of cheering and applause. Jesus, what were people playing at? Surely they didn't go along with this lunacy. As the rant continued, the ovations increased in magnitude. At least the king had given up mangling the play. Now he was on about how he would drive out the marauders from the glens and the inadequate rulers from the cities.

“Getting a bit close to the bone, isn't he?” I said to Hyslop. “Does Duart like this kind of thing?”

She had her eyes fixed on the king, her grey eyes glinting. “Duart doesn't like attacks on the system at all. That's one reason the Cult Squad's been on Macbeth's back recently.”

“I'm sure Glasgow's democratic institutions are strong enough to take criticism,” I said with an ironic smile.

She turned her steely eyes on me. “People are being murdered, Quint. People are going missing. The state's entitled to take action.” She shook her head. “I suppose your dictators in Edinburgh would just sit back and let the killers get on with it?”

The king ended his address with a flourish and the crowd exploded again.

“Why are you so sure there's more than one murderer?” I asked as the lights were dimmed. “And why should there be a connection with this cult?”

She pursed her lips. “I was making a general point.” She turned to the front again. “I don't know how many people are behind these killings, but I'm pretty sure that bastard in the crown knows something about them. Why was the handbill in that dead boy's pocket?”

“It isn't much to go on,” I said, wondering if she was telling me the whole story.

There were more rolls of thunder and the raven was croaking like there was no tomorrow. Show time. The witches had finally made it. In the dull red glow from the fire under the cauldron they started capering and prancing, making the most of the bard's great first scene. I sat back in the back-wrenching chair to enjoy the production.

They hadn't changed the structure much – just the whole point of the play. Macbeth was no longer a tragic figure racked by ambition, fate, the defects in his character and a manic spouse. Now he was made out to be a virtuous general with his country's rather than his personal destiny at heart. So out went the scenes leading up to the murder of Duncan and in came a fantasy about the old king's duplicitous nature. Out went everything about Banquo's suspicions and his family's eventual accession to the throne and in came a sub-plot showing him to be Duncan's assassin. And out went anything critical of Macbeth – now he was brave and generous throughout. It reminded me of a dire movie I saw when I was a kid, William Wallace played by a wanker spouting an American accent till he was blue in the face and making up history as he went along.

But there were two scenes that made me sit up. The first was in the fourth act, when the witches conjure up apparitions to show Macbeth what lies in the future for him and Scotland. They started with a paraphrase. In the text, before the king arrives one of the hags says “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes”. Except this witch said “something wondrous”. That was just the beginning.

This scene was always one of my favourites; anything to do with evil spirits and ghostly manifestations appealed to me when I was a kid and didn't know any better. The present Macbeth and his script editors had torn it to shreds. They'd left the apparition of the bloody child – a real infant, wailing piteously and covered in what I hoped was tomato ketchup, was carried on to show that “none of woman born” would harm the king. And they'd left unaltered the child who comes on holding a tree and gives a speech about Birnam Wood and Dunsinane. But they'd replaced the line of eight kings, supposed to be followed by Banquo's ghost, with a line of eight royal figures wearing masks in the likeness of the cult leader. Talk about self-worship. It went down well with the crowd though.

The noise almost made me take my eye off the stage at the moment when the bogeyman made his entrance. Christ knows who he was meant to be – he had his usual torn face and greasy hair on – but he kneeled before his liege and presented him with an even larger crown. Then he spoke. That shut everyone up instantaneously. His voice was terrifying – breathless and cracked like that of a singer who'd taken too many performance-buggering drugs.

“Accept the crown of Scotland,” he was saying, “accept the crown and lead us into a glorious future. Your people are calling.” Then the monster turned to the crowd and swept his burning eyes over us, daring us not to shout out our approval. I almost joined in with the rest of them, but I managed to restrain myself. Instead I stared back at the freak and tried to catch his eye – unsuccessfully, which was probably just as well.

“What is it?” Hel Hyslop said, nudging me. “You were looking at that guy this morning too. Do you know him?”

I feigned ignorance. “Of course not. I'm just fascinated. This is the first time I've seen a production of Shakespeare given by the clinically insane.”

She stared at me then got back to the action. I began to wonder if it was time to let her in on what I knew about the man in the scarred mask.

The other scene that made my eyes open wide was in the last act. I should have spotted the link earlier, but I'd been distracted by disparate thoughts flashing through my mind like the NATO smart-but-incompetent bombs that led to the break-up of the European Union when I was young. Eventually the names Birnam and Dunsinane got through to me. Malcolm and Macduff were directing Macbeth's downfall – not that it would come to fruition in this version of the play – and soldiers were running around the stage with branches in their hands. Some of the bits of vegetation obscured their faces as they moved, the leaves reddened by fake blood. Suddenly it was impossible not to think of the two Edinburgh murder victims and the latest one in Glasgow – they all had branches in their hands, branches which concealed their mutilated faces.

What had Macbeth and his cult been up to?

I was still in a daze when the play ended with Macbeth strutting around the stage with the traitor Malcolm's head in his hands. I didn't even notice that Haggs had disappeared from the seat to my left until the inspector raised her wrist microphone to her lips.

“Move in,” she said in a low voice. “As soon as the king takes his last bow.”

His last bow? At this rate we'd be here all night. I looked around and tried to spot Hyslop's people in the mass of cheering spectators. It was hopeless. Most of the audience had taken to standing on their seats. I did the same.

Macbeth was inclining his head regally rather than bowing, probably worried that his heavy crown would drop off. I made out Tam Haggs underneath the stage at the left. I could also see the bogeyman. He was on the other side, hands resting on his sword and eyes staring out into the night above the crowd. Then he turned slightly and looked straight at me. I felt my heart stop and my armpits go sodden. It was like being eyed up by a hungry Moray eel – one that had fought and won numerous battles with squid and groupers. I had to return the cold stare though, I couldn't break the power of his gaze.

“Go! Go! Go!” Hel said into her mike.

I glanced to my right when I heard her voice and when I looked back at the stage the masked man had done just that – he was definitely and indubitably gone.

“What?” I gasped.

Hel looked at me. “What?” she repeated.

“Oh . . . forget it.” I jumped down and started forcing my way through the crowd.

There was a series of gunshots, quickly followed by screaming and a general stampede. That made progress towards the stage almost impossible. When I finally got there, I found Tam Haggs with his boot on a motionless Macbeth, pistol in hand.

“Christ, you haven't killed him, have you?” I asked.

“Course not, you arsehole,” he said. “Just a bit of crowd control.”

I looked back at the empty seats. “And very good it was, Tam. What happened to the king?”

He dragged his prisoner upright. “Wouldn't stand still so I landed one on him,” he said.

“That makes a change. Been practising since you missed me?”

Hel Hyslop pushed through the mass of plainclothes police personnel and captive cult members. “We've got the other ringleaders,” she said, inclining her head towards a sour-looking Lady Macbeth and a Banquo who was clutching his midriff.

“I hope you're right,” I said, trying to find any sign of the man I most wanted to have a heart-to-heart with.

Unfortunately he'd made a very convincing exit.

It wasn't long before the space in front of the stage filled with people in cod medieval costumes. Police officers quickly relieved them of anything akin to offensive weapons, which included the branches carried by soldiers as well as the witches' skinning knives. Although there were a lot of cult followers, they were outnumbered and outgunned by the plainclothed police so they behaved themselves. A few eyed their captured king and queen and grumbled, but none made any attempt to rescue them. It looked like they were fair-weather faithful.

Hel Hyslop was on the stage with a programme in her hand. “There are twenty-seven names on the cast list,” she said to the Cult Squad leader. “How many of them have we got?”

He looked at his own list. “Twenty-four, I reckon. Three missing.”

I bit my lip. I had a feeling sure those three comprised the bogeyman and his two side-kicks – the trio whose footprints we'd found in the archive and at the Edinburgh murder scenes.

“Not bad,” Hel said. “We'll probably pick the others up in the sweep you've organised. We're assuming the cult leaders were all in the play, are we?”

The other inspector shook his head. “Not assuming. We
know
they were all acting. Macbeth here always insists his confidants appear in the play.” He jabbed his elbow into the king's ribs. “Probably wants to keep them in line.”

Macbeth straightened himself up and gave the police officers a superior look. “Everything we believe is contained in the play,” he declaimed. “We do not act. We affirm our faith every time we appear on stage.”

Close up, the cult leader was less of a heroic figure. His raven hair was obviously dyed and his face was heavily lined – he was older than he wanted his followers to realise. There was definitely something about the thin face that was familiar, but I still couldn't place it. Lady Macbeth was something else. She was even more terrifying when you got near to her. Her cheekbones seemed to be on the point of pushing through the unnaturally pale skin of her face and her eyes were a dull, ghostly green. She was keeping them off us – apparently we were not worthy of her consideration.

“Right,” Hyslop said. “Transfer the performers to headquarters. The followers you can keep here under guard for the time being.”

The Cult Squad supremo nodded and turned to his second-in-command.

Hel's mobile rang. She answered and listened for a few seconds. “Really?” she said, her lips forming into an unusually broad smile. “That is interesting. I'm on my way.”

“We're on our way,” I corrected. There was no way I was going to miss something that made her so happy. “What is it?”

She headed to the wings. “Tam's found something that'll do for these bastards,” she said over her shoulder.