Ian Rankin - Doors Open

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.

‘You’ve got a one-track mind, Ransome.’

‘That’s what makes me such a good copper. So… do you have any names for me?’

‘Names?’

‘Art-lovers who might put a gang together.’

‘This is Edinburgh, Ransome.’

He’d agreed that this much was true. He’d then thrown Robert Gissing’s name into the pot and asked if she could give him any more background.

‘Why?’

‘Just wondering how much of an expert he is.’

‘Expert enough,’ she’d told him, yawning.

‘You didn’t seem so sure earlier…’

‘I’m sure now.’

‘Funny, though, isn’t it – the gallery’s own expert getting himself mugged the night before he’s needed?’

‘What are you getting at, Ransome?’

‘Just keep me posted, will you, Laura?’

He’d hung up, and gone back to sipping his tea – Rooibos, Sandra’s idea. Good for the digestion, apparently…

Standing in the warehouse now, mouth dry and stomach unsettled, he watched the curators. They wore thin white cotton gloves. They all seemed to be wearing them, didn’t matter if they were dressed in suit and tie or blue overalls. The cops meantime wore latex, if they wore anything. Alasdair Noone was there, still fraught after the best part of a day. He looked like he’d got by on about fifteen minutes’ sleep. His museums counterpart, Donald Farmer, was present, too, but altogether calmer. Seemed to Ransome that nothing from the museum overflow had been touched, as intimated by Farmer on TV the previous night. The look on the man’s face had bordered on smug then, and bordered on smug now. There were guards standing on sentry duty inside the loading bay doors, as clear a case as Ransome had ever seen of shutting the stable door – and typical of Hendricks, who had almost certainly ordered it. It would look good if the brass came calling – they liked things busy but controlled. There was, as yet, no sign of Hendricks himself. Ransome doubted he was having a lie-in. Maybe he was in the guardroom, or conducting interviews back at the station. Ransome didn’t take any chances, and made his way quickly into one of the aisles between the high, groaning shelves. Last thing he wanted was his colleague-cum-adversary challenging him as to what the hell he was doing here. Any lie would do, of course, but Ransome doubted Hendricks would swallow any of them.

I’m walking all over your case, he said to himself. And when it’s done and dusted, I’ll be right and you’ll be wrong… and I’ll be the one staring promotion in the face.

The three unlocked vaults were still open, or had been reopened this morning to allow the forensic team further access. There were plenty of paintings left inside. The ones the gang had taken would be allowed home only after their examination was complete. They’d already been declared unharmed and genuine – verifications made by Professor Robert Gissing – but they would still be checked for fingerprints and fibres. The journalist on TV last night had talked of the ‘relief felt by the arts community here in Scotland, and doubtless further afield as well’. Fine, but why abandon the van? Media speculation had been brief – the gang had been disturbed and had panicked. They’d been unloading the paintings, probably transferring them to another vehicle. A member of the public had become suspicious and had called it in. (Ransome had already asked his pal at Hendricks’ station for news of the caller’s identity – seemed no name had been given, and the caller’s number had yet to be traced.) The alarm, of course, had already been raised by the guard at the gatehouse – he’d provided a description of the van along with its licence number. (Stolen a couple of days previously from a street in Broxburn.) The licence plate was fake but the owner, a painter-and-decorator, had ID’d the van, annoyed to find that the tools of his trade had been ditched somewhere along the way.

So: a successful heist, followed by a botched transfer and the abandonment of the treasure. To Hendricks, this all made sense… but not to Ransome. Abandoning the van? Yes, maybe. But why not take at least a few of the paintings? The reckoning was that between six and ten men must have been involved, and only eight paintings recovered, the largest measuring five feet by four, even framed. Why leave them? After all that meticulous planning and the perfect execution… Were these the sorts of men likely to be spooked by a passing motorist or dog-walker? They were toting guns, for Christ’s sake – what could they possibly have had to fear?

The more Ransome thought about it – and he didn’t think he’d managed much more sleep than Alasdair Noone over the past twenty-odd hours – the less sense it made. His conclusions were simple: maybe it was an inside job and maybe not, but there’d been no cause for panic on the part of the thieves.

So here he was, giving up his Sunday morning to examine the scene and possibly ask a few questions and glean a few more facts of his own. He looked into all three unlocked vaults. The paintings were stored in racks, sideways on, with brown cardboard tags, which identified them only by numbers. Another reason for the inside job theory – if the art had been stolen to order, someone had known what they were getting. Who would have access to the numbering system, besides the staff? His pal back at Hendricks’ station hadn’t been able to answer that. The same SOCO Ransome had spoken to at Marine Drive yesterday had just finished running some sort of torch over the floor in one of the vaults.