‘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 . . .
21
Edinburgh was Sunday-morning quiet: the rhythmed tolling of church bells; a warming sun; denizens and visitors alike spreading out their newspapers across café tables. Nice day for a drive, though not many people would have chosen Granton as their destination. Gulls shrieked all along the waterfront, feasting on fast-food leftovers from the previous night. In the near distance, another new development of high-rises was creeping skywards, surrounded by wasteland and gasometers.
Not for the first time, Ransome wondered why the National Gallery of Scotland had sited its overflow warehouse here. He didn’t even know why one was necessary - couldn’t the various paintings and statues have been loaned to needy collections across the land? Surely there had to be room in the likes of Dundee, Aberdeen and Inverness. Wouldn’t Kirkcaldy have welcomed a few sketches or the bust of some historical personage? He could almost see Kirkcaldy through the haze that lay across the becalmed Firth of Forth, yesterday’s rain a memory. There was a fresh guard manning the gates of the warehouse, his colleague having been excused duties, the better to answer police questions.
Questions such as: how much did they pay you? ‘They’ being the robbers. Ransome knew what Hendricks would be thinking: inside job. The gang had known the building’s layout, how many guards there would be and where those guards would be posted. The CCTV cameras had been shut down, only certain vaults targeted. It all smacked of an inside job, and that was how Hendricks and his crew would be treating it.
Ransome suspected he knew better, which was why he’d come to Granton this morning, parking next to a locked-down snack van. The van would be manned on weekdays, meaning the proprietor or his customers might have seen something. Any gang worth its salt would have recced the site. On the late-night TV news there had been speculation about the timing of the robbery. It wasn’t just that it coincided with Doors Open Day - it also took place at a time when the warehouse was playing host to new arrivals from the closed-for-renovation National Museum. Coincidence? The reporter didn’t think so. He’d spoken straight to camera from a vantage point directly in front of the gatehouse. Ransome headed the same way. His ID was checked thoroughly by the liveried guard, his details logged. He walked down towards the loading bay, hands in pockets, scrutinising the ground for anything the forensic team might have missed. Only then did he open the door marked PRIVATE - STAFF ONLY and step inside.
The investigators were looking busy. Museum and gallery curators were commencing a full inventory. Although this was not Ransome’s inquiry, he’d phoned a pal at Hendricks’ station. The pal had given him what info he had. Witnesses reckoned the gang had been inside the building for no longer than twenty minutes, even though ‘it felt like hours’. Twenty minutes was, to Ransome’s mind, slick.
Even so, they’d left having taken only eight paintings. Fair enough, those eight added up to well over a million quid, insurance-wise, but still it didn’t make sense. He knew what Hendricks would be thinking: stolen to order, wealthy and unscrupulous collectors willing to pay for something they couldn’t otherwise have. Experts would be asked for their opinion - like the ones on the TV last night. They’d mentioned the use of art as mafia collateral, discussed cases where famous paintings had been linked to gangland bosses and billionaire aficionados. Some thieves in the past had tried pulling off heists just to show they could.
Once he’d had enough of the TV (having tiptoed downstairs from the bedroom), Ransome had called Laura Stanton again on her mobile. She’d complained she’d been asleep, Ransome realising midnight had come and gone. He’d apologised, then asked if she had company in bed.