Doors Open

8

The four of them sat at individual desks in Robert Gissing’s room. He still gave occasional tutorials, hence the chairs with writing surfaces attached. His secretary had left for the day – at Gissing’s request. Mike and Allan had eventually introduced themselves to Westie by their first names, having decided that it would be too cumbersome to use aliases. After all, it wasn’t as though Gissing could use one, and if Westie went to the police with the professor’s name, it wouldn’t take a Columbo or a Frost to connect Mike and Allan with him.

Mike wasn’t sure why Allan had said so little back in Westie’s flat – cold feet, perhaps, or maybe it was because Mike had already stated his intention to bankroll the operation. Stood to reason they’d need funds, and Mike was the one with cash to spare. For a start, he was sure Westie would need paying – payment for his silence, as well as his expertise.

At this stage, of course, it was still a game they were playing. Making the copies didn’t mean they had to take the scheme any further. Allan had seemed to accept this, but maybe also thought that Mike, being willing to pay for the privilege, should be the one to do the talking.

‘Whatever I end up forking out, I might still be getting a masterpiece on the cheap,’ Mike had assured him.

‘Not that we’re doing this for the money,’ Gissing had growled.

The professor’s room was chaotic. He had already cleared some of his bookshelves into boxes in preparation for retirement. There was a stack of mail on his desk, along with a computer and an old golfball-style typewriter. More books were heaped either side of the desk, and piles of art magazines were threatening to topple. The walls were cluttered with prints by Giotto, Rubens, Goya and Brueghel the Elder – these were the ones Mike recognised. There was a dusty CD player on one shelf and half a dozen classical titles. Von Karajan seemed to be the conductor of choice.

The blinds had been closed, leaving the room in semi-darkness. A screen had been pulled down from the ceiling immediately in front of the bookcases, so that Gissing could show them a wide selection of slides from the collection of the National Galleries, everything from Old Masters to Cubism and beyond. On the way over, Mike had explained a little more of the plan to Westie, who had slapped his knees, laughing with glee. Maybe it was just the dope kicking in.

‘If I can help, count me in,’ he’d said between gulps of air.

‘Don’t be too hasty,’ Mike had cautioned. ‘You need to think things through.’

‘After which, if you still want in,’ Gissing had added, ‘you’ll have to start taking it a bit more seriously.’

Now, as they looked at the slides, Westie slurped cola from a vending machine can. He sat forward in his chair, both knees pumping.

‘I could do that,’ was his refrain as the slides came and went.

Gissing, Allan and Mike had already pored over the slides, all of them showing items held in the overflow warehouse. Where possible, Gissing had found reproductions on paper to accompany them. These sat on the various desks, but Mike and Allan felt no need to study them further – they had already chosen a couple of favourites apiece, as had Gissing himself. But they needed to be confident that the young artist would cope with the different styles and periods.

‘Now, how would you begin here?’ Gissing asked, not for the first time. Westie’s mouth twitched and he began drawing shapes in the air as he explained.

‘Monboddo’s actually pretty straightforward if you’ve studied the Scottish Colourists – nice big flat brush, laying the oil on in thick swirls. He’ll go over one colour with another, and then another after that so you’re left with hints of what was there before. Bit like pouring cream on to coffee where you can still glimpse the black through the white. He’s after harmony rather than contrast.’

‘That sounds like a quote,’ Gissing commented.

Westie nodded. ‘It’s George Leslie Hunter – from your lecture on Bergson.’

‘Would you need special brushes, then?’ Mike interrupted.

‘Depends how thorough you want me to be.’

‘You need to defeat the naked eye, the gifted amateur…’

‘But not the forensic specialist?’ Westie checked.

‘That’s not an immediate concern,’ Gissing reassured him.

‘It would be nice if we had access to the right papers and ages of canvas… brand new canvas looks just that – brand new.’

‘But you have ways…?’

Westie gave a grin and a wink at Mike’s question. ‘Look, if an expert comes along, they’ll spot the difference in a few minutes. Even an exact copy isn’t an exact copy.’

‘A point well made,’ Gissing muttered, rubbing a hand over his forehead.

‘Yet some forgers get away with it for years,’ Mike offered.

Westie shrugged his agreement. ‘But these days, with carbon dating and Christ alone knows what else waiting in the wings… don’t tell me you’ve not watched an episode of CSI?’

‘The thing we need to keep reminding ourselves, gentlemen,’ Gissing said, removing the hand from his forehead, ‘is that nothing is going to be missing, meaning there’s no reason for any of these boffins to become involved.’

Westie chuckled, not for the first time. ‘Got to say it again, Professor – it’s mad but brilliant.’

Mike was forced to agree: walk into the warehouse on Doors Open Day and replace the real paintings with Westie’s carefully crafted copies. It sounded simple, but he knew it would be anything but. There was a lot of planning still ahead of them…

And plenty of time to pull out.

‘We’re like the A-Team for unloved artworks,’ Westie was saying. He had calmed a little – only one knee was pumping as he drained the can of cola – but was no longer concentrating on the slideshow. He turned in his chair to face Mike. ‘Look, none of this is really going to happen, right? It’s like Radiohead might say – a nice dream. No disrespect, but you three are what I’d call establishment guys of a certain age and cut. You’re suits and ties and corduroy, nights at the theatre and supper afterwards.’ He leaned back in his chair and crossed one busy leg over the other, concentrating on the wagging motion of a paint-spattered trainer. ‘You’re not master criminal material, and no way can you pull off something like this without a bit more firepower.’

Secretly, Mike had been thinking the selfsame thing, but he didn’t let it show. ‘That’s our problem, not yours,’ he said instead. Westie nodded slowly.

‘But here’s your other problem… I want in.’

‘In?’ Allan echoed, his first contribution for some considerable time. Westie switched his attention to him.

‘I don’t just want to be the grafter who churns out a few copies for you. I’m on the team. You want six paintings, why not make it seven?’ He folded his arms as if it was a done deal.

‘You understand,’ Mike asked slowly, ‘that if you take a painting, you’re as deep in this as any of the rest of us – you’re not just a paid employee any longer?’

‘Understood.’

‘And we’re not selling the paintings on – they can never, ever hit the open market?’ Westie was still nodding. ‘And if it ever got out that we’d…’

‘I’m not going to grass you up – isn’t that actually another incentive? With me on board, I’ve got as much to lose as anyone.’ Westie opened his arms to reinforce the point. ‘I totally agree with the whole crazed concept. It’s just that I want to be more than a brush for hire.’

‘In return for which, we hand you a painting?’ Mike asked.

‘I’ll earn my painting, Mikey-boy. I’ll also earn all that cash you’re going to pay me.’

‘We’ve not talked sums yet,’ Allan ventured, ever the banker.

Westie pursed his lips and leaned forward again in his chair. ‘I’m not greedy,’ he stated. ‘I only want enough to see a friend of mine through film school…’

When Westie left, there was silence in Gissing’s office for a couple of minutes. The professor kept the slideshow coming, seemingly for his own amusement, while Mike stared at the torn page from the catalogue showing Monboddo’s portrait of his wife. Allan Cruikshank was the first to speak.

‘All getting a bit serious, isn’t it?’

‘Something we’d do well to remember,’ Gissing muttered. He switched off the projector and got up to open the blinds. ‘Worst-case scenario we’d all go to prison, lives and reputations in tatters.’

‘For the sake of a few paintings,’ Allan said quietly.

‘You getting cold feet, Allan?’ Mike asked him.

Allan thought for a moment before shaking his head. He’d removed his spectacles and was polishing them with a handkerchief.

‘We need to be sure in our own minds,’ Gissing added, ‘why we’re prepared to go through with it.’

‘That’s easy,’ Allan said, replacing his glasses. ‘I want something at home my employers could never have.’

‘Or your ex-wife’s boyfriend, come to that,’ Mike teased.

Gissing gave an indulgent smile. ‘When I retire to Spain, my two go with me. I could be happy all day just staring at them…’

Mike studied his two friends but said nothing himself. He didn’t think they’d want to hear him say he was just bored to high heaven and looking to be challenged for the first time in a long time. And then, of course, there was Monboddo’s wife to consider…

‘Young Westie had a point,’ he said at last. ‘Even with four of us, it’s going to be far from easy.’ He looked at Gissing. ‘Have you had a chance to draw up the plan?’

Gissing nodded and reached into his desk drawer. The three men stood over the sheet of paper, holding its corners flat against the table as Gissing unrolled it. As a professor and a noted art historian, Gissing had visited the warehouse dozens of times in the past. Problem was, this made him a known face – dangerous for him to be part of any actual heist. On the other hand, he had drawn a beautifully rendered plan of the site, complete with guardroom, security cameras and panic buttons.

‘You did this from memory?’ Mike asked, duly impressed.

‘And in such a short time,’ Allan added.

‘I told you, I’ve been mulling this over for quite a while. But be warned – they may have made some changes to the layout since my last visit.’

‘But the measurements are accurate?’ Mike was studying the route from the loading bay to the guardroom. Gissing had marked it with a thick red dotted line.

‘Fairly accurate, I’d say.’

‘And you’ll do another recce before we hit the place?’ Allan added.

Gissing nodded. ‘After which, I’ll be useful to you only as the getaway driver.’

‘Better watch a few episodes of Top Gear, then,’ Mike said with a smile.

‘Prof,’ Allan asked, ‘you’ve been to Doors Open Day before, right?’

Gissing started running his finger along a line marked in blue. It started at the main gate to the compound and continued through a door into the warehouse itself. ‘This is the route I’m hoping they’ll take – can’t really see any alternative. The tour is limited to a dozen visitors every hour, on the hour. Tour itself only takes about forty minutes, leaving them twenty to prepare for the next lot of arrivals. Names are on a list at the gatehouse. One guard stays there, the other three are inside, usually drinking tea in the guardroom and watching their CCTV screens. Staff from the Museums and Galleries Department conduct the actual tour.’

‘And they don’t do background checks on visitors?’

Gissing shook his head. ‘Not last year, at any rate.’

‘So fake names won’t be rumbled?’ Mike persisted.

Gissing just shrugged. ‘They ask for a contact phone number, but in my experience there’s never any contacting.’

Mike’s eyes caught Allan’s and he knew what his friend was thinking – we need more bodies. Mike was thinking much the same thing. The problem was…

Whose?

At the end of the meeting, Allan hopped into a cab, heading back to the office, his phone already pressed to his ear. Mike preferred to walk. Standing with Allan on the pavement outside the art college, he had touched him lightly on the forearm.

‘Sure you’re ready to go through with this?’

‘Are any of us?’ Allan asked in return. ‘I like all the Ocean’s 11 stuff – the prof’s detailed plan of attack. It makes me think we really could pull this off… if we wanted to.’

‘Do we want to?’

‘You seem keen enough.’ Allan studied Mike, then gave a twitch of the mouth. ‘Not sure about Westie, though. How far can we trust him?’

Mike nodded his agreement. ‘We’ll keep an eye on him.’

‘Christ, listen to you.’ Allan was laughing. ‘You sound more Reservoir Dogs than George Clooney.’

Mike offered a smile. ‘It could work, though, couldn’t it?’

Allan thought this over for a moment. ‘Only if we can get the guards scared and keep them scared. We have to convince them we really are the mean team… think we can manage that?’

‘I’ll practise my snarling.’

‘And how will they see it, behind the mask you’d be wearing?’

‘Good point,’ Mike conceded. ‘There’s a lot we need to think about.’

‘There is,’ Allan agreed, stretching out an arm to wave down an approaching cab. ‘The prof’s done the groundwork and you’re fronting the cash…’ Allan stared at Mike. ‘Not exactly sure what the pair of you think I can offer.’ He pulled open the cab’s back door.

‘You’re our details guy, Allan. Stuff like the masks – just keep mulling over all the potential flaws and glitches and you’ll be earning your stripes.’

Allan gave a mock salute as he closed the door behind him.

Mike watched the cab pull away, then crossed the road and headed down Chalmers Street, towards The Meadows. This had all been farmland once, but was now playing fields, edged with trees. Cyclists were out in force – students, he assumed, on their way to and from lectures. There were a few geriatric joggers, too, and he wondered if he should make an attempt to get fit. Would it help cow the guards if he added some muscle to his upper body? Probably not. Not as much, certainly, as a big fat handgun. Or maybe a machete of some kind, or a hatchet. There would be shops in the city where such items could be bought. Not real guns, of course, but replicas. Some of the tourist shops sold claymores and even Japanese-style swords. Passing a couple of dog-walkers, he had a little smile to himself. Probably no one in the history of The Meadows had ever been thinking such thoughts as these.

‘You’re a regular little gangster, Mike,’ he told himself. But he knew he wasn’t. All the same…

He knew a man who was.

Alice Rule was late getting home from the cinema. She was trying to set up a Sunday-evening film club and had been finalising the mailshot. European arthouse of the 1950s and ‘60s; she knew there was an audience for it, just wasn’t sure she could attract enough of them. On Sunday afternoons the cinema ran a quiz in the bar. That was popular, and she wanted to capitalise on it, wanted to see those people stick around for a meal and an actual film. She’d run a short season of Hitchcock’s early work, the stuff he’d done in Britain. It had broken even, and she’d handed out questionnaires on the door, asking for suggestions. French New Wave… Antonioni… Alexander Mackendrick… Hong Kong cinema… Plenty for her to think about.

As she climbed the stairs to her top-floor flat, she wondered what sort of day Westie had had. He’d said he would be sourcing picture frames, plus putting the finishing touches to some of his portfolio. She just hoped he hadn’t been sitting on the sofa rolling spliffs all day. It would be nice, she thought, to walk into the flat and smell supper cooking, but she knew better than to expect anything like that. Eggs on toast was the sum total of Westie’s painfully proletarian style; or meals out, meals she ended up paying for.

As she unlocked the door and stepped into the hall, she caught no aroma of fresh paint, never mind fresh cooking. Westie’s coat, however, was in a heap next to his shoes, evidence that he had been out somewhere. As she walked into the living room (refusing, even after all these months, to bow to pressure and call it ‘the studio’), glancing around in vain for signs of frames purchased, there was a loud popping sound, followed by a spume of foam from the neck of the champagne bottle Westie was holding.

‘And what exactly are we celebrating?’ Alice asked, aware that it would have been her salary paying for the bubbly. She had shrugged herself out of her jacket and was placing her shoulder bag on the floor. Westie was pouring the champagne into two wine glasses. It didn’t look as if they’d been rinsed too thoroughly from the previous night.

‘Some men came to see me,’ he explained, handing her a filled glass.

‘Men?’

‘Businessmen.’ Westie clinked glasses and took a huge gulp, swallowing and stifling a belch. ‘They want a few of my originals for their offices.’ He started to do a little dance, and Alice, her drink untouched, wondered just how much he’d been smoking.

‘Their offices?’ she echoed.

‘That’s right.’

‘What company? How did they hear about you?’

Westie proffered a huge wink, which told her he’d already had a few drinks to go with the dope. ‘It’s all very hush-hush,’ he confided in a stage whisper.

‘Hush-hush?’

‘They’re offering enough money for you to do that film course.’ Westie nodded slowly, making sure she knew he wasn’t joking.

‘You mean thousands?’ Alice couldn’t manage to keep the disbelief out of her voice. ‘For some of your paintings? What’s the catch, Westie?’

He looked crestfallen. ‘Why should there be a catch? They’re canny investors, Alice, the kind who like to ride a wave just before it explodes on to the shore.’ To paint this picture more fully, he started making sounds approximating to just such an event. Then he tapped Alice’s glass, encouraging her to drink. ‘I need to get started, though. It’s a big job – seven paintings.’

‘From scratch?’

‘They’re not buying off the peg, Alice. It’s a commission.’

Alice was looking for somewhere to sit, but not one single surface appealed. ‘Your portfolio,’ she argued. ‘You need to finish your degree show…’

But Westie was shaking his head. ‘Don’t you worry about that – it’s all in hand.’ And he had a little chuckle to himself.

‘Are you sure about this?’ Alice asked. She experimented with a small sip of the champagne. It was chilled to perfection and sharp-tasting – the real thing.

Westie held his glass out towards her, and this time she did the clinking. All very hush-hush… She had to smile at that. Westie was terrible at keeping secrets. He would always blurt out the identity of her birthday and Christmas gifts before she had a chance to unwrap them. When he’d snogged a girl at a party once, a party Alice had missed because of work, he’d admitted everything to her over breakfast the next morning. She didn’t think he could lie to her, even if his life depended on it. She doubted she’d have any trouble finding out what the story really was.

Especially when she was so intrigued.