Ian Rankin - Doors Open

‘How would it have looked if we’d gone into that warehouse and come out again without anything being missing? This way, they think they’ve got back what was taken and that means they’ll be relieved rather than suspicious.’

‘Thinking more like a criminal every day,’ Chib repeated. ‘So what happens now?’

‘They’ve got the professor at the scene. He’ll be in the process of verifying that the recovered paintings are the originals.’

‘And they’ll take his word for it, just like that?’

‘They’ve no reason to doubt him. Besides which, he’s the only expert they’ve got.’

‘If I’d known how gullible these sods were, I’d have done something like this long ago.’

‘You didn’t know someone like Westie, though – the plan depended on him, and it was the prof’s idea to bring him in.’

‘Will Gissing’s nerve hold, do you think?’ Chib placed the painting back on the green baize.

‘He’ll be fine.’

Chib seemed to ponder this. ‘You did well, Mike. Makes me wish we’d teamed up years back.’

‘The actual plan was Gissing’s, remember.’

Chib ignored this. ‘What about your other mate?’

‘Allan?’ Mike watched Chib nod. ‘Allan’s fine.’

‘Sure about that? See, the thing is this – we’re connected now, aren’t we? And out of the whole lot of us, the only one I trust is me.’ He stabbed a finger towards himself and then Mike. ‘I need to be sure none of you lot will start blabbing if the cops come asking.’

‘Won’t happen,’ Mike stated.

‘I don’t even know this Westie, but in my experience students are always bad news.’

‘Thing is, he doesn’t know anything about you.’

‘So where does he think the shooters and my lads came from? Out of thin fucking air?’

‘He doesn’t seem to be the inquisitive sort.’ Mike decided that Chib need not know about Alice. ‘You don’t…’

‘What?’

‘The Utterson – I just thought you’d be more excited.’

There was a sound at the door. A thin smile spread across Chib Calloway’s face. ‘Now I’m excited,’ he said. Then he sniffed and rubbed his nose. ‘Seeing how you’ve developed a taste, Mike, I thought you should be part of this.’

Mike started to get a bad feeling. ‘Part of what?’

But Chib was ignoring him and heading for the door. He unlocked it and in stepped a very tall ponytailed and tattooed man, incongruous in a powder-blue suit and shoes with no socks. Chib led this new arrival over to the table, where Mike was pulling his shoulders back, trying for a bit more height and heft.

‘This is Mr Hate,’ Chib was saying by way of introduction. ‘Hate, I’d like you to meet the friend I was telling you about – you could even call him an associate of mine – Mike Mackenzie.’

The way Chib said his name told Mike something was going on. The man called Hate meantime ignored him altogether, giving Mike the chance to study him more closely. There was a dotted line across his throat, and when he rested his meaty hands against the edge of the snooker table, Mike saw that the word HATE had been tattooed along both sets of knuckles.

‘This is the collateral?’ Hate was saying, ignoring any niceties.

‘This is it,’ Chib agreed.

‘And I am supposed to believe it is worth how much?’ The accent was Scandinavian, but Mike couldn’t place it more exactly.

‘Mike here is the expert in that department,’ Chib was saying. Mike’s eyes bored into his, but Chib was far from being fazed.

‘It is a piece of shit,’ the giant concluded.

‘A piece of shit worth around two hundred K on the open market,’ Mike stated.

Hate gave a snort and picked up the Utterson – none too gently. Mike feared the stretcher might snap. The big man turned it over, examining it.

Collateral, Mike was thinking. He’d suspected as much, and this had to be the ‘Viking’ Johnno had mentioned that day in the car. Calloway had no interest in the painting. Not really. Instead, he was about to hand it over to this monster, a monster who now had Mike’s name and would forever link him to the painting. If it turned out not to be worth the figure quoted, would things turn nasty? He knew now that this was why Chib had made sure Hate knew his name… why the gangster had wanted Mike here when the deal went down. We’re connected now. Hadn’t Chib said so himself? And if flak was coming, Chib wanted Mike as his human shield.

Mike Mackenzie, what the hell have you got yourself into?

Hate meantime was sniffing the surface of the painting – actually sniffing it!

‘Doesn’t smell so old,’ he commented.

‘None of that,’ Chib chided him with a wag of the finger. ‘You think I’d try to pull a cheap stunt? Get someone to verify it if you don’t believe me – Mike here knows someone at the College of Art.

Christ, now he’s trying to drop the professor in it, too!

Mike held up a warning hand. ‘The painting is stolen – I’m sure you know that already. Watch tonight’s news if you need persuading. But the only way anyone – anyone – will find out is if it starts to be seen by people.’

‘So I am supposed to trust you?’ Hate’s eyes were milky blue, the pupils tiny shards of darkness.

‘You could go online,’ Mike found himself suggesting. ‘Check other works by the artist – he’s pretty famous. Find out what they’ve been fetching recently at auction. Samuel Utterson – there’ve been exhibitions, books about him…’

Hate looked from one man to the other. ‘Two hundred thousand pounds,’ he intoned slowly.

‘Don’t go getting any ideas,’ Chib said, wagging his finger again and forcing out a short laugh. ‘It’s just temporary security – the cash is coming.’

Hate fixed him with a gaze. ‘You’ve still got your men out looking for me, haven’t you? Otherwise you’d be a fool. But they won’t find me, Mr Calloway. And if they did, they’d soon wish they hadn’t.’

‘Understood,’ Chib said.

Hate turned his attention back to the painting he was still grasping, and Mike feared he was about to punch a hole through it. But he placed it back on the table instead – actually with a reasonable attempt at gentleness, which told Mike the man was at least halfway convinced – and started to wrap the brown paper around it.

‘So we’re cool?’ Chib asked. It was only because of the relief evident in his voice that Mike realised how nervous the gangster had been ever since Hate’s arrival.

‘That is something I will need to ask my client.’ Hate was tucking the package beneath his arm.

‘No way I can let you walk out of here if we don’t have an understanding. ’ Chib’s relief, it seemed to Mike, had quickly turned to bravado.

Hate just stared him out. ‘Then you’ll have to stop me,’ he offered, heading for the door. Chib looked around him, his eyes alighting on the rack of snooker cues. But when he glanced in Mike’s direction, Mike gave a shake of the head before calling out a question towards the giant’s back.

‘Why English?’

The man stopped and half turned his head.

‘Your tattoos – the word “Hate”,’ Mike explained. ‘Why English?’

The only reply was a shrug of the shoulders before the door was yanked open and slammed shut again. Mike waited for the echo to die, then nodded towards the snooker cues.

‘Maybe if they’d been nine-millimetre.’

‘I wouldn’t trust a nine-mil to stop that fucker.’ Chib rubbed a hand down his face.

‘In your line of work, you do meet the most congenial people.’

‘Not much worse than the ones you meet in any other business.’

‘That may be true,’ Mike conceded, and both men laughed, releasing the tension in the room. ‘By the way,’ Mike added, ‘whatever it is – I don’t want to know.’