Ian Rankin - Doors Open

Christ, first Alice, and now this…

‘Could have fallen in the canal,’ Mike eventually commented.

‘Is that what you think, Mr Mackenzie?’ Ransome’s jaw was jutting. ‘Thing about Mr Allison is, he knows Professor Gissing.’

‘Half of Edinburgh knows Robert Gissing.’ Mike paused. ‘You can’t think that the professor had anything to do with…?’

Ransome responded with a twitch of the mouth. ‘Only bit of good news I’ve got for you, Mr Mackenzie, is that having spoken to you, I don’t think it’s your voice on the tape. But pretty soon now, I’m going to know who made that call.’

‘What call?’

‘Ask your friend Allan.’ Ransome gave a little bow as he moved away. Mike watched him disappear into the building, then made good his escape, breathing hard. Allison was missing: what the hell was that about? Maybe concussion was the truth of it. Poor sod could have ended up in the canal. A tap on the head was all that had been requested and required, but Mike should have been there to make sure.

Maybe Allan was right – maybe the best thing to do was ditch the paintings and phone in a tip-off. Problem was, Hate still had his hands on one of them. Plus the forgeries might be traceable back to Westie, once identified as such. And Mike would need to convince Westie and Gissing to give their paintings back.

You wanted this, Mike, he told himself…

‘Oh, Christ, Gissing!’ Mike slapped at his forehead. Say the secretary had returned. Say she unlocked the door. The detective would find Mike’s note lying there… He slapped himself a couple more times for luck, then noticed that passing students, portfolios tucked under their arms, were staring at him.

‘Performance art,’ he explained, striding towards another of his favourite thinking places: the Meadows.

By six o’clock, the offices of First Caledonian were closed and Allan Cruikshank felt it safe to start answering his home telephone. Checking his messages, he discovered that the half-dozen calls he’d ignored during the course of the day had all been from his secretary, wondering where he was, asking if he was ill, telling him she was cancelling all his meetings. There was nothing from Mike or Robert Gissing, and nothing from the detective. Allan had turned off his mobile phone, and felt little compunction to switch it on again. He had the feeling that the first person he spoke to, he’d end up telling them everything. Had he been a religious man, he might have headed up Leith Walk to the Catholic cathedral, where confessionals doubtless awaited. He’d even considered Margot, but she would scold him and maybe even laugh at his plight, relieved to have rid herself of such an idiotic specimen.

Allan’s stomach had been growling since mid-morning, but he lacked an appetite. He’d sipped eight or nine glasses of tap water, but still felt unquenched. Daytime TV had proved little solace. One chat show aimed at housewives had contained a lengthy discussion about the international trade in stolen art. And at the top of every hour there’d been a news update, which Allan always switched off before the heist could be mentioned. He was shaved and dressed in his work suit, having woken up from a brittle, short-lived sleep determined to go into the office as usual. His resolve had lasted as far as the front door. With his hand ready to turn the lock, he’d frozen. There was a whole terrifying world out there. This flat was his only refuge. Most of the rest of the day he’d stayed by his window, wondering if Ransome or some other authority figure would exit the police station and take the short walk to the tenement, pressing the bell marked CRUIKSHANK. There were no signs of any media interest. Patrol cars came and went. Plainclothes officers ambled outdoors for cigarettes and conversation. With his window open, ears straining, all Allan could ever hear were birds in the trees and the rumble of buses on Leith Walk.

He could take one of those buses and lose himself elsewhere. Or a train south. An aeroplane headed overseas. He had a passport, and a couple of credit cards, only one of them nearing its spending limit. What was stopping him? Did he want to get caught? Ransome’s card was in his wallet, giving off some kind of weak radiation so that he was always aware of it. An eleven-digit phone number was all that stood between him and a kind of atonement. What was he so afraid of? Letting Mike and Robert Gissing down? Or the wrath of Chib Calloway? Seeing himself in the newspapers and the dock? Or slopping out with the other inmates? Seated on his living room floor, his back to the wall, he raised his knees and wrapped his arms around them. His secretary would have left for the evening. There’d be no more phone calls from work. If he could get through the rest of the evening, maybe things would start to look a little brighter. Maybe tomorrow would be better.

Maybe things would turn out all right.

It was nearly eleven that night by the time Chib Calloway got home. He’d decided to have a word with his young team after all. A phone call wouldn’t do it – had to be face to face. You looked someone in the eye, you pretty much knew if they were lying to you. He got the distinct feeling Mike hadn’t been lying. Whoever had snatched the daubs, it hadn’t been him. That still left plenty of suspects, but then the four kids hadn’t seemed like they were lying either.

‘We did just what we were told to, no more, no less,’ Bellboy had stated, acting as the group’s spokesman. Missing half his teeth but still eloquent. Well, compared to his comrades he was.

The rest of the day had been about meetings. There was a lap-dancing club on Lothian Road, lease expiring and current management thinking of shifting their sphere of operations elsewhere. Chib had been asked if he wanted to take the place on as a going concern. Problem was, he got the feeling the best girls would be moving on with their old employers, and it would be tough finding the talent to replace them. Plus there’d have to be a refit, and he’d been quoted seventy-five to a hundred K ‘for a really outstanding job, something to get the VIPs in’. Who was kidding who? You always stuck ‘VIP’ on the windows and the adverts, but your clients were sleazebags and stag groups. Chib had done the clever thing, asked Johnno who the regular doormen were, then given one of them a buzz. As a result of which, he learned that the place had been dying on its feet for the past three months.

‘Wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole, Mr Calloway.’

End of story.

Chib had been waiting for other calls – from Hate; from Edvard. Kept checking his phone, but nothing so far. At day’s end, he had dispensed with the services of Glenn and Johnno, dropping them at one of his own pubs but declining their offer of a ‘swift one’. On the drive home, he’d listened to a bit of Dire Straits, always seemed to make the world a better place. He parked the BMW in the driveway – the garage belonged to the Bentley – and stood for a moment, staring up at the night sky’s orange glow. He’d bought a telescope once from a place on the Royal Mile but hadn’t had much success with it. Light pollution, he’d been told, all the city’s street-lamps… So he’d made the shop take it back with a full refund. Turned out later, they’d given him twenty quid too much, which hadn’t bothered Chib in the least.

Some of his men wondered why he chose to live on a new-build estate when he could have practically any house in Edinburgh. But those four- and five-storey Georgian piles in the New Town, they just didn’t do it for him. Too finicky and formal. Nor did he want rolling acres and stables and all of that, which would have entailed leaving the city behind. He was an Edinburgh boy, born and bred. Not too many could say the same: whole streets filled with English accents, not to mention the students – tens of thousands of them. But this was still Chib’s city, and sometimes he couldn’t help but love it to bits.