Doors Open

20

‘Not too many snooker halls left,’ Calloway was telling Mike Mackenzie. ‘I mean proper ones, full-sized slate tables. Know how much they weigh? You need to check that your floor can stand up to them.’ The gangster was switching on some of the lights in the cavernous yet musty-smelling room. Mike could make out six tables, but none of them in the best of health. Two were covered with gashed and stained dust sheets while the remaining four had suffered nicks, rips and rudimentary repairs to their green baize. A game seemed to have been abandoned on one of them, Mike rolling the pink ball towards the centre pocket.

‘Why’s this one shut on a Saturday evening?’ he asked.

‘Overheads,’ Chib explained. ‘Costs me more to run than I get back. I could always put pool tables in instead, maybe a few slot machines…’ He wrinkled his pugnacious face. ‘But I’ll probably end up selling it. Some developer can turn it into apartments or one of those huge super-pubs.’

‘Why not do it yourself?’

‘With my reputation?’ Chib gave a cold chuckle. ‘What do you reckon the chances are of me getting planning permission, never mind a licence?’

‘You could bribe a few councillors.’

Chib had picked up a cue, but found it wanting. It rattled when he replaced it in the rack. ‘Maybe a few years back, Mike. Things have changed.’

‘Or set up a front company, so no one knows you’re the one in charge…’

Chib gave another chuckle, warmer this time. ‘Listen to yourself, Michael – maybe we should swap places, eh? You seem to be thinking more like a criminal every day.’

‘Maybe that’s because I am a criminal.’

‘So you are,’ Chib agreed with a slow nod. ‘And how does it feel?’

Mike shrugged. ‘Ask me again further down the line.’

Chib had made a circuit of the table. He now gestured towards the package under Mike’s arm. Mike laid it flat on the dusty green baize and carefully undid the brown paper. He had wrapped it himself, hoping to make it look less like one of the works recovered from Marine Drive, just in case he was pulled over and asked to open his boot. Chib had sent two more texts before Mike had decided to get their transaction out of the way, leaving Allan in the penthouse awaiting Gissing’s return.

‘An extremely good example,’ he told the gangster, ‘of late-period Utterson.’

‘I’d still rather have had something by Jack the Vee.’ But Chib took his time studying the painting, running a finger along the edges of the canvas. ‘Not very big, is it? They look bigger when they’re framed.’

‘They do,’ Mike agreed. ‘Speaking of which…’

‘I know, I know – I can’t go taking it into a shop, tell them I want a nice new surround for it. And I can’t put it up anywhere it might be noticed.’ He affected a disappointed sigh. ‘Hardly worth the effort.’ Then he smiled and looked at Mike, eyes twinkling. ‘My youngsters were okay? Did as they were told?’

‘They were great.’

‘The shooters?’

‘Worked a treat. We handed them all back afterwards.’

‘I know.’ Chib paused for a moment, folding his arms. ‘Had half a mind you might hang on to yours – seemed to be forming quite an attachment to it. I’ve still got it if you want it.’

‘Tempting,’ Mike confessed. ‘But better all round if they just disappear.’

‘Agreed. So nobody got hurt, eh?’

‘It was a piece of cake.’ Mike found himself laughing as he ran a hand through his hair. ‘If I could do it again, I’d grab twice as much.’

‘Getting a taste, eh, Mikey?’

‘We couldn’t have done it without you.’

Chib picked up his Utterson and pretended to study it. ‘I still say you could just have swapped the paintings – no need for the stunt with the van.’

‘How would it have looked if we’d gone into that warehouse and come out again without anything being missing? This way, they think they’ve got back what was taken and that means they’ll be relieved rather than suspicious.’

‘Thinking more like a criminal every day,’ Chib repeated. ‘So what happens now?’

‘They’ve got the professor at the scene. He’ll be in the process of verifying that the recovered paintings are the originals.’

‘And they’ll take his word for it, just like that?’

‘They’ve no reason to doubt him. Besides which, he’s the only expert they’ve got.’

‘If I’d known how gullible these sods were, I’d have done something like this long ago.’

‘You didn’t know someone like Westie, though – the plan depended on him, and it was the prof’s idea to bring him in.’

‘Will Gissing’s nerve hold, do you think?’ Chib placed the painting back on the green baize.

‘He’ll be fine.’

Chib seemed to ponder this. ‘You did well, Mike. Makes me wish we’d teamed up years back.’

‘The actual plan was Gissing’s, remember.’

Chib ignored this. ‘What about your other mate?’

‘Allan?’ Mike watched Chib nod. ‘Allan’s fine.’

‘Sure about that? See, the thing is this – we’re connected now, aren’t we? And out of the whole lot of us, the only one I trust is me.’ He stabbed a finger towards himself and then Mike. ‘I need to be sure none of you lot will start blabbing if the cops come asking.’

‘Won’t happen,’ Mike stated.

‘I don’t even know this Westie, but in my experience students are always bad news.’

‘Thing is, he doesn’t know anything about you.’

‘So where does he think the shooters and my lads came from? Out of thin fucking air?’

‘He doesn’t seem to be the inquisitive sort.’ Mike decided that Chib need not know about Alice. ‘You don’t…’

‘What?’

‘The Utterson – I just thought you’d be more excited.’

There was a sound at the door. A thin smile spread across Chib Calloway’s face. ‘Now I’m excited,’ he said. Then he sniffed and rubbed his nose. ‘Seeing how you’ve developed a taste, Mike, I thought you should be part of this.’

Mike started to get a bad feeling. ‘Part of what?’

But Chib was ignoring him and heading for the door. He unlocked it and in stepped a very tall ponytailed and tattooed man, incongruous in a powder-blue suit and shoes with no socks. Chib led this new arrival over to the table, where Mike was pulling his shoulders back, trying for a bit more height and heft.

‘This is Mr Hate,’ Chib was saying by way of introduction. ‘Hate, I’d like you to meet the friend I was telling you about – you could even call him an associate of mine – Mike Mackenzie.’

The way Chib said his name told Mike something was going on. The man called Hate meantime ignored him altogether, giving Mike the chance to study him more closely. There was a dotted line across his throat, and when he rested his meaty hands against the edge of the snooker table, Mike saw that the word HATE had been tattooed along both sets of knuckles.

‘This is the collateral?’ Hate was saying, ignoring any niceties.

‘This is it,’ Chib agreed.

‘And I am supposed to believe it is worth how much?’ The accent was Scandinavian, but Mike couldn’t place it more exactly.

‘Mike here is the expert in that department,’ Chib was saying. Mike’s eyes bored into his, but Chib was far from being fazed.

‘It is a piece of shit,’ the giant concluded.

‘A piece of shit worth around two hundred K on the open market,’ Mike stated.

Hate gave a snort and picked up the Utterson – none too gently. Mike feared the stretcher might snap. The big man turned it over, examining it.

Collateral, Mike was thinking. He’d suspected as much, and this had to be the ‘Viking’ Johnno had mentioned that day in the car. Calloway had no interest in the painting. Not really. Instead, he was about to hand it over to this monster, a monster who now had Mike’s name and would forever link him to the painting. If it turned out not to be worth the figure quoted, would things turn nasty? He knew now that this was why Chib had made sure Hate knew his name… why the gangster had wanted Mike here when the deal went down. We’re connected now. Hadn’t Chib said so himself? And if flak was coming, Chib wanted Mike as his human shield.

Mike Mackenzie, what the hell have you got yourself into?

Hate meantime was sniffing the surface of the painting – actually sniffing it!

‘Doesn’t smell so old,’ he commented.

‘None of that,’ Chib chided him with a wag of the finger. ‘You think I’d try to pull a cheap stunt? Get someone to verify it if you don’t believe me – Mike here knows someone at the College of Art.

Christ, now he’s trying to drop the professor in it, too!

Mike held up a warning hand. ‘The painting is stolen – I’m sure you know that already. Watch tonight’s news if you need persuading. But the only way anyone – anyone – will find out is if it starts to be seen by people.’

‘So I am supposed to trust you?’ Hate’s eyes were milky blue, the pupils tiny shards of darkness.

‘You could go online,’ Mike found himself suggesting. ‘Check other works by the artist – he’s pretty famous. Find out what they’ve been fetching recently at auction. Samuel Utterson – there’ve been exhibitions, books about him…’

Hate looked from one man to the other. ‘Two hundred thousand pounds,’ he intoned slowly.

‘Don’t go getting any ideas,’ Chib said, wagging his finger again and forcing out a short laugh. ‘It’s just temporary security – the cash is coming.’

Hate fixed him with a gaze. ‘You’ve still got your men out looking for me, haven’t you? Otherwise you’d be a fool. But they won’t find me, Mr Calloway. And if they did, they’d soon wish they hadn’t.’

‘Understood,’ Chib said.

Hate turned his attention back to the painting he was still grasping, and Mike feared he was about to punch a hole through it. But he placed it back on the table instead – actually with a reasonable attempt at gentleness, which told Mike the man was at least halfway convinced – and started to wrap the brown paper around it.

‘So we’re cool?’ Chib asked. It was only because of the relief evident in his voice that Mike realised how nervous the gangster had been ever since Hate’s arrival.

‘That is something I will need to ask my client.’ Hate was tucking the package beneath his arm.

‘No way I can let you walk out of here if we don’t have an understanding. ’ Chib’s relief, it seemed to Mike, had quickly turned to bravado.

Hate just stared him out. ‘Then you’ll have to stop me,’ he offered, heading for the door. Chib looked around him, his eyes alighting on the rack of snooker cues. But when he glanced in Mike’s direction, Mike gave a shake of the head before calling out a question towards the giant’s back.

‘Why English?’

The man stopped and half turned his head.

‘Your tattoos – the word “Hate”,’ Mike explained. ‘Why English?’

The only reply was a shrug of the shoulders before the door was yanked open and slammed shut again. Mike waited for the echo to die, then nodded towards the snooker cues.

‘Maybe if they’d been nine-millimetre.’

‘I wouldn’t trust a nine-mil to stop that fucker.’ Chib rubbed a hand down his face.

‘In your line of work, you do meet the most congenial people.’

‘Not much worse than the ones you meet in any other business.’

‘That may be true,’ Mike conceded, and both men laughed, releasing the tension in the room. ‘By the way,’ Mike added, ‘whatever it is – I don’t want to know.’

‘Clever sod like you, Mike, my guess is you’ve already worked it out. I owe some money on a deal – the Utterson buys me time.’

‘I know it happens with the mafia and Old Masters.’

‘Well, now it happens in Edinburgh, too. You want a drink?’ There was a bar area in one corner. Chib unlocked one of the cupboards and pulled out a half-empty bottle of whisky and two tumblers. Mike brushed dust from a stool with the palm of his hand before sitting down.

‘In a funny way,’ he offered, ‘it actually makes sense.’

Chib drained his glass and exhaled. ‘What does?’

‘If the painting’s not in your hands, the police haven’t a chance of finding it in your possession.’

‘That’s true – maybe they’ll try running Hate in instead.’ Chib gave a snort and poured himself another. ‘Sure you don’t want to swap professions?’

‘I don’t have a profession.’

‘That’s right – you’re a man of leisure. Unless you fancy “gentleman thief” on your passport instead.’

‘This was strictly a one-shot deal, Chib.’ Mike’s mobile was vibrating. He lifted it from his pocket and checked the screen – it was Robert Gissing.

‘The prof,’ he explained to Chib, answering the call. ‘How did it go, Robert?’

‘I’m only just finishing up.’ Gissing was keeping his voice low – obviously there were people in the vicinity.

‘Remember,’ Mike said, ‘when you order a cab, make sure you give your home address as the destination – just in case anyone’s listening. Once you’re on your way, you can tell the driver you’re headed to mine instead.’

‘I’m not a fool, Mike!’

‘What’s wrong?’ Mike had sensed something in the professor’s voice. The whisky froze halfway to Chib Calloway’s mouth.

‘Are you with our friend?’ Gissing was asking.

‘As arranged. He’s happy with the goods.’

‘Never mind that – I’m sending you a snap. Bloody amazing things, these camera phones. I think I got it without him knowing.’

‘Got what?’ Mike asked, eyes narrowing.

‘The photo – your phone does accept photos?’

‘What’s this all about, Robert?’

‘I just want to know if we’ve got a problem.’ Chib was by Mike’s side now, listening in. He smelled faintly of sweat beneath the aftershave and the whisky. ‘I didn’t like the way he was looking at me,’ Gissing was saying. ‘Get back to me in five.’

The call ended. Mike stared at his phone’s blank screen.

‘Is that meant to be a dig at me?’ Chib asked.

‘What?’

‘“I didn’t like the way he…”’

‘Hell, no. It’s just that he has something he wants us to see.’

‘Don’t tell me the paint’s still wet on your student pal’s efforts.’

Mike’s phone trilled: a photo was coming through. Chib peered at the screen as Mike held it in the space between them. The professor had a quality mobile – he’d used it to take pictures for a recent photography exhibition at the college. Highest possible resolution… zoom… the works. Mike’s own phone was the latest model, too, with a nice big screen. The photo itself appeared in three horizontal chunks of download. It showed the profile of a man, taken from the waist up. He’d been shot from some distance and using the full extent of the zoom, meaning the picture was slightly blurred. All the same, Chib let out a hiss of air.

‘That’s Ransome,’ he growled. ‘He’s CID, been chasing me all across town since way back.’

‘Is he the one you thought was following you the day we went to Arthur’s Seat?’ Mike watched Chib Calloway nod slowly. ‘Well, he’s now showing an unhealthy interest in Professor Gissing.’ Mike gnawed at his bottom lip for the best part of a minute, while Chib explained that Ransome had tailed him on and off for a while… reason he always took evasive action when driving anywhere in the city… thought by now maybe the detective had given up the fight, been a while since Chib had clocked him… but then again…

‘I knew he was trying to tail me that day we bumped into one another at the gallery.’

‘So he might have seen us there?’ Mike asked, not really expecting an answer. ‘That’s more than a little worrying.’ He stared at Ransome’s picture for a while longer, then called Gissing back.

‘Houston,’ he began by saying, ‘we do indeed have a problem.’

The man who called himself Hate had brought a laptop with him on his trip to Scotland. In fact, he never travelled anywhere without it, though he was careful to keep nothing on its hard drive that the police of any country he visited might find interesting. With the painting by Samuel Utterson – the possibly worthless painting – stowed in the rental car’s boot, he fired up the laptop and got to work, accessing the internet and running a search on the artist. If he failed to be convinced, he might visit a bookshop or library, seeking further information. The man back in the snooker hall – Mackenzie, if that was his real name – had warned that the painting was stolen. Well, that wasn’t Hate’s problem, was it? His problems only started if it turned out to be worth less than Calloway owed. Hate needed to know, and that might well mean asking someone. In fact, it would mean showing them the painting… which could bring further potential problems.

Hate had already texted his client with news that he had taken receipt of the Utterson. Like him, they’d never heard of the artist. Again, not an insurmountable problem – money was money. A search of the BBC’s regional news site showed that a warehouse belonging to the National Galleries of Scotland had been broken into earlier that day. But ‘a number of paintings’ had been recovered afterwards. It was not known if anything was still missing. Hate tugged at his ear lobe as he considered his options. He could feel the little hole where one of his earrings usually rested. When off duty, he preferred denims and a T-shirt, but knew that the suit unnerved people – or rather, the combination of the suit and the man inside it unnerved people. Hate couldn’t wait to get home. He disliked Edinburgh. It was all surface, a kind of street con – showing visitors one thing while easing the cash from their wallets without being noticed. All the same, at least the galleries and museums were free of charge. Hate had visited a number of them, looking at paintings. He’d hoped the exercise might pay off, hoped it would help him spot a fake. But all that seemed to happen was, members of staff followed him round, as if they couldn’t quite believe what they were seeing. Perhaps they were expecting him to take a knife or razor to one of their precious canvases. Calloway, the first time he’d mentioned the possibility of collateral to Hate, hadn’t said where the painting would come from. Hadn’t mentioned an artist’s name. Hate didn’t recall Utterson from any of the galleries he’d visited, but he knew now from the internet that the man was collectable. Sotheby’s, Christie’s, Bonham’s – they had all sold examples of his work in the past couple of years. The highest price paid at auction had been three hundred thousand pounds, so maybe the man called Mackenzie hadn’t been exaggerating. On a whim, Hate decided to run a search on Mackenzie’s name, too.

And found almost as many hits as for Samuel Utterson himself.

One of which took Hate to a magazine’s website and photos of Mackenzie’s penthouse apartment. There looked to be some nice paintings on the walls. And it was the same guy, no doubt about it – there was a small photo of him – a man of wealth and taste, as Hate’s favourite song might have put it. Hate tugged on his ear lobe again. He was going to have to rethink his opinion of Charles ‘Chib’ Calloway. The man might be a boor, an oaf, an ugly, low-life specimen.

But he had a good class of associate.

Laura was at a dinner party in Heriot Row. The host had just sold two paintings at Laura’s auction, but neither had achieved the top end of estimate. As a result, Laura had been expecting to have her ear bent, but thankfully all anyone could talk about was the heist – its audacity, its stupidity, and how close a call it had been. She had thought about asking Mike Mackenzie to be her date for the evening, but had been unable to summon up quite enough courage. As a result, the host and hostess had placed her next to a lawyer whose divorce, as it turned out, was still a fresh and painful wound, to be anaesthetised only with alcohol. The call on her mobile had come as blessed relief towards the end of the pudding course. She’d mumbled an apology for not having had the foresight to turn the thing off, then had plucked it from her shoulder bag, stared at the screen, and told the room that she had to take it. Walking briskly into the hallway, she’d expelled breath noisily before holding the phone to her ear.

‘What can I do for you, Ransome?’

‘Not interrupting anything, I hope?’

‘Actually you are – a dinner party.’

‘I’m hurt I didn’t make the guest list…’

‘I’m not hosting.’

‘I could still have chaperoned…’

She let out another sigh for his benefit. ‘Is it anything important, Ransome?’

‘Just wanted to pick your brains. It’s to do with the Granton warehouse. I’m guessing you’ll have heard.’

Laura raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re working on that?’ She had to step aside as one of the liveried waitresses – hired for the evening from an agency – wheeled a cheese trolley towards the dining room.

‘I’m not alone,’ Ransome was saying. ‘Your friend Professor Gissing is lending a hand, too.’

‘He’s hardly my friend…’

‘But he is some sort of authority?’

‘Depends on the period.’ Laura saw the hostess’s head peer around the doorway and nodded to let her know she was nearly finished. ‘I’ve got to go, Ransome.’

‘Could we meet later for a drink?’

‘Not tonight.’

‘Other plans, eh? Who’s the lucky man?’

‘Bye, Ransome,’ Laura replied, ending the call. She entered the room again and made another apology. The lawyer got up to help her into her chair.

‘Nothing untoward?’ he asked solicitously, face reddened with drink.

‘No,’ she reassured him. Who the hell said ‘untoward’ these days? Well, Robert Gissing almost certainly did. She wondered about Ransome’s call. Was Gissing really the best qualified man for the job of checking the paintings? She doubted it. She remembered the last time she’d seen him, in the doorway during her auction. Mike had made his way towards him and the two men had then left, Allan Cruikshank following soon after. It was Allan who’d introduced her to Mike, the evening of the Monboddo retrospective opening party. She seemed to remember he’d introduced Mike to Gissing that night, too. She’d been talking to Mike, enjoying his company. And, by his body language, he’d seemed to be enjoying hers. But then Allan had brought the professor over, and Gissing had begun the job of monopolising the conversation, droning on about ‘the importance of taste and discrimination’. Eventually, Laura had moved to another part of the gallery, connecting with other people she knew, but still feeling Mike’s eyes on her from time to time.

You’re only a couple of months out of a two-year relationship, she’d told herself. Don’t you dare give in to the rebound…

‘A piece of brie, Laura?’ the hostess was asking, knife hovering over the cheese trolley. ‘And quince or grapes with that?’

‘I’m fine, thanks,’ Laura said, aware that the lawyer’s eyes were lingering on the swell of her chest as he poured her more wine.

‘You used to have a Monboddo, didn’t you?’ another guest was asking the host.

‘Sold it a decade back,’ she was informed. ‘School fees…’ The host gave a shrug of the shoulders.

‘The raiders tried to get away with a Monboddo,’ the guest explained to the table. ‘Portrait of the artist’s wife.’ She turned to Laura. ‘Do you know the one I mean?’

Laura nodded. She knew it all right, and remembered the last time she’d seen it.

And who’d seemed most interested in it…

That night, Westie and Alice ate at their favourite Chinese restaurant, then headed for a couple of bars and a nightclub, where they could dance off some of their excitement. The DeRasse abstract had been given pride of place in Westie’s studio, on an easel recently vacated by one of the fakes. Westie had even proposed a wild notion to Alice – he would display the DeRasse as part of his portfolio at the art college, passing it off as one of his copies.

‘And Gissing will see it and kick your arse to Iceland and back,’ Alice had shrieked, laughing along with him.

Dancing, dancing, dancing into Sunday.

While Ransome lay awake in bed, staring at the ceiling, careful not to disturb his wife by moving about too much, even though his nerves were jangling, his heart pounding. The late supper of spiced vegetable couscous lay like a slab in his stomach.

Allan was awake, too. His eyes were still sore from the lenses, his scalp itchy despite a shower and half a bottle of shampoo. He stood by the window in his darkened living room, staring out across a patch of grass towards Gayfield Square police station. A couple of TV crews had come and gone, the reporters illuminated as they said their pieces to camera. Every time a patrol car arrived, Allan expected to see somebody he knew – Westie or Mike or the professor – being led from it in handcuffs. He wanted to tell someone – Margot, maybe, or one of the kids. Or just pick up the telephone, press buttons at random, and blurt it all out to the first stranger who answered.

But instead he kept vigil by the window.

Robert Gissing had a busy night ahead, but took time to inspect his paintings. Nice additions to his little collection. He’d been driven home by Allan, and hadn’t said much during the journey. The detective, DI Ransome, worried him. Michael, however, had warned him to say nothing to Allan, confirming Gissing’s fears. If anyone were to unravel, it would be Allan Cruikshank.

And it might happen at any moment – hence the busy night ahead. Not that Gissing minded. Sleep could be left till later. Afterwards, he would have nothing but time. He even spoke the words out loud – ‘Nothing but time.’ And smiled to himself, knowing this to be anything but the truth…