Ian Rankin - Doors Open

‘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.

The last thing Chib Calloway ever expected to see squatting on his parked Beamer was a six-foot-three Hell’s Angel in a tailored double-breasted suit. The man wore polished black brogues on his feet and a crisp white shirt with a mauve silk tie. His long brown hair was tied back into a presentable ponytail, and he sported just the single studded earring (though with lobes pierced for plenty more). He had removed any other facial jewellery and was clean-shaven, cheeks glowing. When he raised his head there was a giveaway blue dotted line across his throat – a prison tattoo. As he scratched his hands down his face, Chib noted more tattoos on both sets of knuckles – HATE on the right, HATE on the left. Blue ink again, home-made. The guy sported laughter lines around his eyes, but the eyes themselves glowed with milky-blue malevolence.

Now this is more like it, Chib thought to himself. This I understand… sort of.

It wasn’t the most genteel part of town, nearer Granton than Leith and not yet part of any regeneration scheme. Leith itself had changed. There were more Michelin restaurants there than in the city centre. It made Chib wonder what the Trainspotting tours made of the place. The guy who did those tours, Chib had tried persuading him that he should feature one of Chib’s pool halls. Chib also owned a couple of neighbourhood bars, and had just been into one of them to do the weekly check. He was realistic enough to know that the staff would be skimming, but needed them to know that he knew. That way nobody got too greedy. And if temptation proved too much, leading to takings below the norm, Chib would get out the photos of Donny Devlin and tell the staff, ‘This is what I do to friends who cheat me. So consider what I’ll do to you if that cash doesn’t magic its way back into my till by next week.’

Exiting the bar, happy enough with its turnover, Chib had started gnawing his top lip. The place was run almost too well. The manager had come to Chib from a big pub-grub chain in the south; said he missed Edinburgh and wanted to come home. Overqualified for the job, but never complaining. It was making Chib wonder. Could the guy be a plant, some kind of grass or CID undercover thing? Johnno and Glenn had checked him out as best they could, but that didn’t mean much. They were with Chib now as he crossed the road towards his car, flanking him in the approved manner. Across the street was a park – not much of a park, just playing fields for football, criss-crossed with paths and a few benches where teenagers could gather of an evening to scare their elders. Twenty-odd years ago, that would have been Chib, swigging cheap booze and blasting the ciggies, shouting and cursing, eyes on the lookout for intruders, strangers, victims… Top of the world and wanting the world to acknowledge the fact.

‘Hell’s going on?’

Johnno had been the first to spot the Hell’s Angel. Chib’s car was a 5-Series BMW, solid but not too showy. There was a Bentley GT in the garage back home, never used for business. The stranger had parked himself on the Beamer’s bonnet, sitting there cross-legged in his suit, hands rubbing up and down his cheeks as he watched the three men approach. Though he wore shoes, his ankles were sockless. There were tattoos there, too. Chib clicked his fingers and Glenn reached a hand into the front of his jacket, even though there was nothing there. The stranger couldn’t know that, of course, but he still grinned at the gesture, seeming to dismiss it. His eyes bored into Chib’s.