Ian Rankin: A Good Hanging and other stories

‘And you will need your Scottish stoicism.’

‘Save it for the half-time entertainment, eh?’ said Rebus, but with good enough humour. ‘The sooner we get this wrapped up, the more time we’ll have left for sightseeing.’

Cluzeau seemed about to argue, but Rebus held up a hand. ‘Believe me,’ he said, ‘you’ll want to see these sights. Only the locals know the very best pubs in Edinburgh.’

Holmes went to investigate the skip and Rebus spoke in whispers with Lesley Jameson - when he wasn’t fending off demands from the detainees. What had seemed to most of them something unusual and thrilling at first, a story to be repeated across the dining-table, had now become merely tiresome. Though they had asked to make phone calls, Rebus couldn’t help overhearing some of those conversations. They weren’t warning of a late arrival or cancelling an appointment : they were spreading the news.

‘Look, Inspector, I’m really tired of being kept here.’

Rebus turned from Lesley Jameson to the talker. His voice lacked emotion. ‘You’re not being kept here.’

‘What?’

‘Who said you were? Only Ms Davies as I understand. You’re free to leave whenever you want.’

There was hesitation at this. To leave and taste freedom again? Or to stay, so as not to miss anything? Muttered dialogues took place and eventually one or two of the guests did leave. They simply walked out, closing the door behind them.

‘Does that mean we can go?’

Rebus nodded. Another woman left, then another, then a couple.

‘I hope you’re not thinking of kicking me out,’ Lesley Jameson warned. She wanted desperately to be a journalist, and to do it the hard way, sans nepotism. Rebus shook his head.

‘Just keep talking,’ he said.

Cluzeau was in conversation with Serena Davies. When Rebus approached them, she was studying the Frenchman’s strong-looking hands. Rebus waved his own nail-bitten paw around the gallery.

‘Do you,’ he asked, ‘have any trouble getting people to pose for all these paintings?’

She shook her head. ‘No, not really. It’s funny you should ask, Monsieur Cluzeau was just saying—’

‘Yes, I’ll bet he was. But Monsieur Cluzeau—’ testing the words, not finding them risible any more, ‘has a wife and family.’

Serena Davies laughed; a deep growl which seemed to run all the way up and down the Frenchman’s spine. At last, she let go his hand. ‘I thought we were talking about modelling, Inspector.’

‘We were,’ said Rebus drily, ‘but I’m not sure Mrs Cluzeau would see it like that...’

‘Inspector...?’ It was Maureen Beck. ‘Everyone seems to be leaving. Do I take it we’re free to go?’

Rebus was suddenly businesslike. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’d like you to stay behind a little longer.’ He glanced towards the group - Ginny Elyot, Moira Fowler, Margaret Grieve — ‘all of you, please. This won’t take long.’

‘That’s what my husband says,’ commented Moira Fowler, raising a glass of water to her lips. She placed a tablet on her tongue and washed it down.

Rebus looked to Lesley Jameson, then winked. ‘Fasten your seatbelt,’ he told her. ‘It’s going to be a bumpy ride.’

The gallery was now fast emptying and Holmes, having battled against the tide on the stairwell, entered the room on unsteady legs, his eyes seeking out Rebus.

‘Jeez!’ he cried. ‘I thought you’d decided to bugger off after all. What’s up? Where’s everyone going?’

‘Anything in the skip?’ But Holmes shrugged: nothing. ‘I’ve sent everyone home,’ Rebus explained.

‘Everyone except us,’ Maureen Beck said sniffily.

‘Well,’ said Rebus, facing the four women, ‘that’s because nobody but you knows anything about the statue.’

The women themselves said nothing at this, but Cluzeau gave a small gasp - perhaps to save them the trouble. Serena Davies, however, had replaced her growl with a lump of ice.

‘You mean one of them stole my work?’

Rebus shook his head. ‘No, that’s not what I mean. One person couldn’t have done it. There had to be an accomplice.’ He nodded towards Moira Fowler. ‘ M s Fowler, why don’t you take DC Holmes down to your car? He can carry the statue back upstairs.’

‘Moira!’ Another change of tone, this time from ice to fire. For a second, Rebus thought Serena Davies might be about to make a lunge at the thief. Perhaps Moira Fowler thought so too, for she moved without further prompting towards the door.

‘Okay,’ she said, ‘if you like.’

Holmes watched her pass him on her way to the stairwell.

‘Go on then, Brian,’ ordered Rebus. Holmes seemed undecided. He knew he was going to miss the story. What’s more, he didn’t fancy lugging the bloody thing up a flight of stairs.

‘Vite!’ cried Rebus, another word of French suddenly coming back to him. Holmes moved on tired legs towards the door. Up the stairs, down the stairs, up the stairs. It would, he couldn’t help thinking, make good training for the Scottish pack.

Serena Davies had put her hand to her brow. Clank-a-clank-clank went the bracelets. ‘I can’t believe it of Moira. Such treachery.’

‘Hah!’ This from Ginny Elyot, her eyes burning. ‘Treachery? You’re a good one to speak. Getting Jim to “model” for you. Neither of you telling her about it. What the hell do you think she thought when she found out?’

Jim being, as Rebus knew from Lesley, Moira Fowler’s husband. He kept his eyes on Ginny.

‘And you, too, M s Elyot. How did you feel when you found out about... David, is it?’

She nodded. Her hand went towards her hair again, but she caught herself, and gripped one hand in the other. ‘Yes, David,’ she said quietly. ‘That statue’s got David’s eyes, his hair.’ She wasn’t looking at Rebus. He didn’t feel she was even replying to his question.

She was remembering.

‘And Gerry’s nose and jawline. I’d recognise them anywhere.’ This from Margaret Grieve, she of the significant other. ‘But Gerry can’t keep secrets, not from me.’

Maureen Beck, who had been nodding throughout, never taking her moist eyes off the artist, was next. Her husband too, Robert, the architect, had modelled for Serena Davies. On the quiet, of course. It had to be on the quiet: no knowing what passions might be aroused otherwise. Even in a city like Edinburgh, even in women as seemingly self-possessed and cool-headed as these. Perhaps it had all been very innocent. Perhaps.

‘He’s got Robert’s figure,’ Maureen Beck was saying. ‘Down to the scar on his chest from that riding accident.’

A crime of passion, just as Cluzeau had predicted. And after Rebus telling him that there was no such thing as passion in the city. But there was; and there were secrets too. Locked within these paintings, fine so long as they were abstract, so long as they weren’t modelled from life. But for all that ‘Monstrous Trumpet’ was, in Serena Davies’ words, a ‘composite’, its creation still cut deep. For each of the four women, there was something recognisable there, something modelled from life, from husband or lover. Something which burned and humiliated.

Unable to stand the thought of public display, of visitors walking into the gallery and saying ‘Good God, doesn’t that statue look like...?’ Unable to face the thought of this, and of the ridicule (the detailed penis, the tongue, and that sticking-plaster) they had come together with a plan. A clumsy, almost unworkable plan, but the only plan they had.

The statue had gone into Margaret Grieve’s roomy bag, at which point Ginny Elyot had raised the alarm - hysterically so, attracting all the guests towards that one room, unaware as they pressed forwards that they were passing Margaret Grieve discreetly moving the other way. The bag had been passed to Maureen Beck, who had then slipped upstairs to the toilet. She had opened the window and dropped the statue down into the skip, from where Moira Fowler had retrieved it, carrying it out to her own car. Beck had returned, to find Serena Davies stopping people from leaving; a minute or two later, Moira Fowler had arrived.