Doors Open

33

Dawn was breaking as Allan dropped Mike off outside the apartment block.

‘You absolutely sure about this?’ Allan asked from the driver’s seat. Mike just nodded.

‘Go to the cops or don’t go to the cops… your call, Allan.’

‘You don’t want me to come with you?’ Allan was craning his neck in the direction of the penthouse. ‘In case they’re still there?’

Mike shook his head. ‘But I appreciate the offer.’ Mike hoped he sounded confident. Inside, he was exhausted. ‘Remember – whatever you do, don’t go back home, not until this is finished one way or the other.’

‘So how come you’re going home?’

‘Because I’m the one with the answers.’ Mike reached down into the car so he could shake his friend’s hand. At the same time, he pressed something into it: the card with Ransome’s number. Then he closed the car door and tapped twice on the roof, watching Allan drive off. Chib Calloway’s BMW was gone. That didn’t mean he hadn’t left his goons upstairs, but Mike headed there anyway, taking the lift rather than the stairs. It was only a few hours since he’d been bounding down these same steps, in mortal fear of his life, leaving three men in his flat. One thing he really didn’t want to find was the cooling corpse of Jimmy Allison…

When the lift doors slid open at his floor, he hesitated for a moment. His front door stood gaping, just as he’d left it. Stepping out of the lift and into his hallway, he could see that revenge had been exacted. The paintings that had lined the walls were now strewn across the floor, stomped and gouged beyond repair, as if clawed at by a wild animal. He could well imagine the thwarted gangster, teeth bared, shredding them and jumping on them and feeling so much better afterwards.

‘Wonder what I’ll tell the insurers,’ Mike speculated aloud.

Glass crunched underfoot as he made his way to the living area. No welcoming party, but no sign of a body either. Mike released the breath he’d been holding. Dribbles of blood on the chair where Allison had been sitting, and a small pool of blood soaking into the carpet in Mike’s bedroom – evidence that the curator had been punished further for his attempted escape. He wondered at the man’s fate, but only for a moment. He knew that really he should be thinking about his own destiny, and how far he could influence it. But fatigue washed over him again and he flung himself on to the sofa. There was a patch of water over by the fireplace and the faintest aroma of urine. Calloway again, or perhaps Hate. The smashed TV was probably Hate’s work, too. Allan’s Coultons had gone, but Mike picked up the remains of the Monboddo portrait. Beatrice smiled back at him with what remained of her face. He tried smoothing the tatters of canvas back into place, but chunks of paint flaked off in the process. She looked like a car-crash victim, her face a jigsaw of scars.

‘Sorry,’ he apologised, placing her beside him.

Aside from the TV and the artworks, not much damage had been done. He got up and went into the kitchen, running himself water from the tap. The TV would have made quite a bit of noise, which might have alerted both men to the fact that there were neighbours who could be wakened. He took the filled glass into his computer room, drinking as he went. Stuff had been thrown on to the floor, but it was nothing a bit of tidying couldn’t fix. The keyboard was awash with whisky – the contents of a bottle he’d left on top of the filing cabinet. Okay, so both would need replacing. The cabinet itself, which contained all his bank statements and investment details, remained locked. There was a mangled kitchen knife in the waste-paper bin, which told him someone had tried forcing an entry. The key was in his bedside drawer, meaning no one had bothered to look too hard for it. Desk drawers stood open, contents disturbed or emptied on to the floor. It could all be fixed.

The inventory had given him a little bit of strength. He reckoned if he’d been in charge of ransacking someone’s home, he’d have been more thorough, altogether more professional. This was petty and spiteful and nothing else. Calloway was forgetting the first rule of business – any business.

You couldn’t allow it to become personal.

He found a spare cigarette in a packet in his bedroom and smoked it on the balcony, staring out across the city. Birds were singing, and he thought he could even hear the distant sounds of animals awakening in the city zoo on Corstorphine Hill. When the cigarette was finished, he went back inside and wandered through to the kitchen, opening a cupboard, bringing out a dustpan and brush. His cleaner came in on a Friday but he guessed this was beyond her remit. He swept up some of the glass from the TV screen, but tiredness came crashing down on him once more and he retreated to the sofa. He closed his eyes and thought back to how it had all started – with Gissing’s seemingly casual remark: Repatriation of some of those poor imprisoned works of art… We’d be freedom fighters… Mike mulling over the possibility and then bumping into Chib Calloway again at the National Gallery, the gangster keen to learn about art, or at least about the profits to be made from it. Next thing, Mike was telling Gissing they should do it. He’d intended the target to be one of the city’s institutions – a banking headquarters, or maybe an insurance company – but Gissing himself had other plans…

‘Of course you did,’ Mike said out loud, raising his glass in a reluctant toast to Gissing’s plot.

Of the three of them – Gissing, Allan and Mike – only Mike could have come close to affording the paintings they were planning to steal. So why had he agreed? And not just agreed, but seemed at times to be the chief instigator – why had he done that?

‘Because you played me like a fucking Stradivarius, Professor,’ he told the empty room. Gissing had been only too happy to take a back seat – less suspicious that way. A year ago, he’d planned the exact same heist, but hadn’t had access to accomplices. But then Allan and Mike had come into his orbit, and he had probed at their weaknesses… assessed their potential.

And found them just about perfect.

And all because Mike had been bored. And greedy, of course – he’d coveted the painting of Beatrice… one thing he could never own, no matter how wealthy he became. Then there was Calloway himself, offering glimpses of a very different world. At school Mike had craved an invitation to join Calloway’s gang, its pecking order dependent on heft and ruthlessness rather than brains and guile. His first year at university, he had gone off the rails. He would pick fights in the Student Union bar. At parties he was unpredictable. He probably only won half his battles, and had eventually come to his senses. had begun to conform, to fit in…

‘Jekyll and Hyde,’ he muttered to himself.

One thing still niggled. Had Calloway and Gissing been in cahoots? Mike didn’t think so, which meant that bumping into the gangster at the gallery really had been an accident – almost the only unplanned event of the whole scheme. Bringing Calloway into play had been Mike’s idea, meaning the current mess was down to him. He was sure that was how Gissing would see it…

His head was resting against the back of the sofa, eyes closed. During the slow drive Allan and he had taken around Edinburgh, he had explained some of it to his friend, adding his own best guesses and assumptions to the mix. Allan had had to stop the car once or twice, getting things straight in his head, asking questions, refusing – at least at first – to believe what he was hearing, then slapping the palms of his hands repeatedly against the steering wheel.

‘You’re a rational man, Allan,’ Mike had told him. ‘You know this is the only way it all makes sense.’

He’d then reminded Allan that Edinburgh had nurtured Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and that Doyle’s creation Sherlock Holmes had spoken the truth when he said that once you had eliminated everything else, whatever was left, however improbable it might seem, had to be the truth.

Mike wasn’t sure whether Allan would go to the police. Maybe he, too, would return home, the better to wait out his fate. As for Mike… well, his fate was already here, announcing itself by way of the one creaky floorboard in the hallway.

But then he heard a voice calling his name, forming it as a question and sounding concerned.

‘Laura?’ he called back, getting to his feet. He realised he hadn’t switched on any of the lights, but none of the blinds were closed, meaning he could make her out well enough as she emerged into the room. ‘Just doing a bit of redecorating,’ he explained as she stood open-mouthed, arms by her sides.

‘What happened?’

‘A slight falling-out.’

‘Who with? Godzilla?’

He managed a tired smile. ‘What are you doing here?’

She had walked further into the room, negotiating her way around the shards of glass. ‘I’ve been trying your phone – both your phones. When you didn’t answer, I got scared. Mike, what have you gotten yourself into?’ He didn’t really need to answer. She’d picked up the portrait of Beatrice. ‘I knew it,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Knew it was you behind the heist. How did you do it?’

‘Switched the originals for copies.’ It sounded so simple and straightforward when put like that.

‘Which Gissing then verified?’ She nodded slowly. ‘So he’s in on it, too? But what about the missing paintings?’

He gave a shrug. ‘Nothing to do with me, I’m afraid. See, all the time I thought I was part of a team, I was actually being groomed as the patsy.’ He managed a dry chuckle at his own hubris. ‘Can I offer you a drink?’ He raised his own empty water glass.

‘No.’

‘Don’t mind if I…?’ He made for the kitchen again, Laura following. ‘Actually, I wasn’t the only patsy,’ he went on. ‘I made the mistake of bringing an outsider on board.’

‘Calloway?’ she guessed.

‘And it was decided that he would make the perfect fall guy. He’s a philistine, you see, and that’s what this whole thing was about – us versus them.’

‘So Ransome was right all along… you and that thug were partners?’

‘Allan was in on it, too, and a student at the art college called Westie.’

‘Plus Professor Gissing,’ she added.

Mike drained the glass before answering. ‘Above all of us, yes,’ he said quietly. ‘Professor Robert Gissing. He’s done a runner with all the missing paintings.’

‘I’ve never liked him. And I was never really sure what you saw in him.’

‘I wish to Christ you’d tried warning me.’

She was still holding the Monboddo. ‘And all for this?’

‘All for that,’ he conceded.

‘Why is it so important, Mike?’

‘I think you know the answer.’

‘She looks like me, is that what you’re saying?’ Laura studied what was left of the portrait. ‘You do realise there’s something slightly creepy about that? I mean, you could just have asked me for a date instead.’

‘We had a date, Laura – didn’t work out too well…’

‘You give up too easily.’ She was still studying the painting. ‘Who did this damage?’

‘Hate.’

‘I’m sorry?’

He realised she didn’t know about Hate. ‘He’s a man Calloway owes money to – it’s a long story.’

Neither of them said anything for the best part of a minute. Laura broke the silence.

‘You’re going to go to jail, Mike.’

‘Believe it or not, Laura, jail’s way down my schedule of concerns right now.’

Just as Mike had done before, Laura was trying to push the canvas back into something like its original shape. ‘She was lovely, wasn’t she?’

‘She was.’ Mike agreed. Then he corrected himself: ‘She still is.’

Laura was blinking back tears. Mike wanted to take her in his arms and hold her until the world evaporated around them. He turned round and placed the glass on the draining board, then gripped the edge of the sink with both hands. He could hear her putting down the painting, then her arms were wrapping themselves around him from behind, her head resting against his shoulder.

‘What are you going to do, Mike?’

‘Run away,’ he said, only half joking. ‘With you, if you like.’ What were the alternatives? He could hand the money over to Calloway and Hate, as requested, but they would always have a stranglehold on him, and he doubted he would see an end to the payments until the well was dry. Then there was the curator – when he turned up dead, or merely mangled, the police would have something else to investigate. And with Ransome’s input they’d soon be visiting the penthouse flat with difficult questions for its owner.

‘I’ll call Ransome,’ Laura stated. ‘You must see it’s the only sensible option.’

Mike turned towards her. ‘Sense hasn’t played much part in this so far,’ he said. Her arms stayed loosely around him. Their faces were only an inch or so apart, but there was something moving in the shadows of the living area. Mike looked over Laura’s shoulder.

‘Don’t let us stop you,’ one of Calloway’s henchmen drawled, adding for his partner’s benefit: ‘That’s twenty notes I owe you.’

The other man smiled. ‘Told you, didn’t I? The flat’s worth checking, no matter what the boss says.’ Then, to Mike: ‘You going to give us any trouble, Mackenzie?’

Mike shook his head. Laura had released her grip on him and had swung round to face the two intruders. ‘But she’s not part of this,’ Mike explained. ‘Let her go, and then I’ll come with you, anywhere you like.’

‘Sounds reasonable.’ Glenn and Johnno were in the kitchen now. ‘Mr Calloway should be fronting one of those TV design shows, shouldn’t he?’ Johnno said. ‘Renovations while you wait…’

Both men laughed at this. Their eyes were on Laura rather than Mike. He placed a hand on her arm. ‘Off you go, then,’ he instructed.

‘And leave you with these two animals?’

‘Just go!’ He gave her a little nudge in the back. She glowered at Calloway’s underlings.

‘I happen to be an old friend of DI Ransome’s. Don’t think I won’t run to him if you touch so much as a hair on Mr Mackenzie’s head!’

‘Bad move, Laura,’ Mike muttered.

‘He’s right, missy – means you’ll be coming with us now…’

Mike lunged at the two men, yelling for Laura to run. But Glenn brushed him to the floor while Johnno took Laura’s arm and spun her round, his other hand muffling her cries. Mike was up on one knee when a foot caught him under the chin, launching him backwards to sprawl across the kitchen floor. Glenn knelt on him, and Mike felt his organs want to explode. There was a grin on the face behind the fist, and then the fist itself connected with the side of Mike’s jaw. He had a moment to register that he was spinning towards unconsciousness. He wondered if his boat was waiting for him.

And also if he would ever see Laura again.