‘So . . . this one we’re standing beside . . .’ Calloway took a step back. ‘Guy on a horse, so far as I can see. Not a bad likeness.’ He stuffed his hands in his pockets. ‘How much would it fetch?’
‘Unlikely it would ever come to auction.’ Mike gave a shrug. ‘Couple of million?’ he guessed.
‘Hell’s teeth.’ Calloway moved along to the next painting. ‘And this one here?’
‘Well, that’s a Rembrandt . . . tens of millions.’
‘Tens!’
Mike looked around. A couple of the liveried custodians were beginning to take an interest. He gave them his most winning smile and started to move away in the opposite direction, Calloway catching him up only after a few more seconds of staring at the Rembrandt self-portrait.
‘It’s not really about the money, though, is it?’ Mike heard himself say, even though he knew only a part of him really believed that.
‘Isn’t it?’
‘What would you rather look at - a work of art, or a framed selection of banknotes?’
Calloway had retrieved one of his hands from its pocket, and he was now rubbing the underside of his chin. ‘I’ll tell you what, Mike - ten million in cash wouldn’t be on the wall long enough to find out.’
They shared a laugh and Calloway ran his free hand across the top of his head. Mike began to wonder about the other hand - the one in the pocket. Was it holding a gun? A knife? Had Calloway come in here with something other than browsing in mind?
‘So what is it all about then,’ the gangster was asking, ‘if not the money?’
‘Money plays a big part,’ Mike was forced to admit. He glanced at his watch. ‘Look, there’s a café downstairs . . . do you fancy a quick coffee?’
‘I’ve had a stomachful,’ Calloway said with a shake of the head. ‘Might manage a cup of tea, though.’
‘My treat, Mr Calloway.’
‘Call me Chib.’
So they headed down the winding staircase, Calloway enquiring about prices, Mike explaining that he’d only been interested in art for a year or two and wasn’t exactly an expert. One thing he didn’t want Calloway to know was that he had a collection of his own, a collection some would doubtless term ‘extensive’. But as they queued at the service counter, Calloway asked him what he did for a living.
‘Software design,’ Mike said, deciding that he would elaborate as little as possible.
‘Cut-throat business, is it?’
‘It’s high pressure, if that’s what you mean.’
Calloway gave a twitch of the mouth, then got into a discussion with the girl behind the counter about which of the many teas on offer - Lapsang, green, gunpowder or orange pekoe - tasted most like actual tea. After which, they took their table, with its views on to Princes Street Gardens and the Scott Monument.
‘Ever been to the top of the Monument?’ Mike asked.
‘Mum took me up there when I was a kid. Scared me stupid. That’s probably why, a few years back, I dragged Donny Devlin up there and threatened to sling him off - owed me money, you see.’ Calloway had his nose in the teapot. ‘Smells a bit weird, this.’ But he poured some all the same, while Mike stirred his own cappuccino, wondering how to respond to such a warped confession. The gangster didn’t seem to realise that he’d said anything at all out of the ordinary. The memory of his mother had segued seamlessly into a momentary depiction of horror. Mike couldn’t tell if Calloway had set out to shock him; maybe it wasn’t even true - the Scott Monument was a stupidly public place for such a scene. Allan Cruikshank had hinted that Calloway had engineered the First Caly heist. Difficult now to envisage him as a criminal mastermind . . .
‘Anyone ever tried breaking into this place?’ Calloway asked at last, studying his surroundings.
‘Not that I know of.’
Calloway wrinkled his nose. ‘Paintings are too bloody big anyway - where would you stash them?’
‘A warehouse, maybe?’ Mike suggested. ‘Art gets stolen all the time - a couple of men in workmen’s uniforms walked out of the Burrell collection with a tapestry a few years back.’
‘Really?’ This seemed to tickle the gangster. Mike cleared his throat.
‘We were at the same school, you and me - same year, actually.’
‘Is that a fact? Can’t say I remember you.’
‘I was never on your radar, but I recall that you more or less ran the place, even told the teachers what they could and couldn’t do.’
Calloway shook his head, but seemed flattered nonetheless. ‘I’m sure you’re exaggerating. Mind you, I was a tearaway back then.’ He eyes lost focus, and Mike knew he was thinking back to those days. ‘A solitary O-Grade, I ended up with - metalwork or something.’
‘One project, we made screwdrivers,’ Mike reminded him. ‘You put yours to good use . . .’
‘Persuading the nippers to hand over their cash,’ Chib agreed. ‘You’ve got a good memory. So how did you get into computers?’
‘I stayed on for Highers, then college after that.’
‘Our paths diverged,’ Chib said, nodding to himself. Then he stretched his arms out. ‘Yet here we are, meeting up after all these years, proper grown-ups and no damage done.’
‘Speaking of damage . . . what happened to Donny Devlin?’
Chip’s eyes narrowed. ‘What’s it to you?’
‘Nothing at all . . . just curious.’
Chib pondered for a moment before replying. ‘He got out of the city. Paid me back first, mind. D’you keep up with anyone from the old days?’
‘Nobody,’ Mike admitted. ‘Took a look at Friends Reunited once, but there wasn’t anyone I particularly missed.’
‘Sounds like you were a loner.’
‘I spent a lot of time in the library.’
‘Might explain why I don’t remember you - I only went there the one time, took out The Godfather.’
‘Was that for recreational purposes or for training?’
Chib’s face darkened again, but only for a second. Then he burst out laughing, acknowledging the joke.
And so the conversation continued - fluidly; light-heartedly - neither man aware of the figure who twice passed by the window.
The figure of Detective Inspector Ransome.
5
Mike was standing at the very back of the saleroom, just inside the doorway. Laura Stanton had taken her place at the lectern and was checking that her microphone was working. She was flanked by plasma screens on which images of the lots would be shown, while the genuine articles were placed on an easel or pointed to (if they happened to be hanging on one of the walls) by a team of well-rehearsed staff. Mike could tell that Laura was nervous. This was, after all, only her second sale, and so far her performance had been judged ‘solid’ at best. No real treasures had been unearthed, no records smashed. As Allan Cruikshank had observed, the art market could go that way for months or even years at a stretch. This was Edinburgh, after all - not London or New York. The focus was on Scottish works.
‘You’re not going to be offered a Freud or a Bacon,’ Allan had said. Mike could see him now, seated two rows from the back, not in the market to buy anything, just keen for a final glance at each painting before it vanished into private hands or some corporate portfolio. From where Mike stood, he could take in the whole room. There was whispered anticipation. Catalogues were browsed one last time. Staff from the auction house were seated at their telephones, ready to hook up with distant bidders. It intrigued Mike: who were those people on the other end of the line? Were they Hong Kong-based financiers? Manhattan Celts with a penchant for Highland scenes of kilted shepherds? Rock stars or movie actors? He imagined them being given manicures or massages as they yelled their bids into the receiver, or pushing weights in their home gym, or seated aboard private jets. Somehow he always imagined them as being more glamorous than anyone who actually took the trouble to attend an auction. He’d asked Laura once for some gen on the telephone bidders but she’d just tapped the side of
her nose, letting him know there were secrets she couldn’t share.
He knew probably half the people on view: dealers for the most part, who would then try to sell the paintings on. Plus the curious, dressed drably as though they’d only stumbled indoors for want of anything better to do with their time. Maybe some of them had a couple of paintings tucked away at home, a legacy from some long-dead aunt, and now wondered how much the artist was fetching. There were two or three people like Mike himself - genuine collectors who could afford pretty well anything that might come up. There were also a few faces new to him. And seated right at the front - in Newcomers’ Row - but with no paddle (and therefore only satisfying his curiosity), Chib Calloway. Mike had spotted him the moment he’d walked into the room, but had managed (so far) to go unnoticed. He realised that the two men leaning against the wall to Calloway’s left were the same ones from a week ago in the Shining Star. When Mike had bumped into Calloway in the National Gallery, the gangster hadn’t seemed to need his henchmen. Mike wondered what had changed. Maybe it was because he wanted to be noticed, wanted the people around him to know he was the sort of man who could boast protection. A very public show of his importance.
The gavel came down to signal that the auction was underway. The first five lots came and went in a blur, fetching the bottom end of estimate. A figure filled the doorway and Mike gave a nod of greeting. With retirement looming, Robert Gissing seemed to have more time on his hands for previews and auctions. He was giving the room an all-encompassing, beetle-browed glower. While Allan might regret the whisking away of so many paintings, Gissing had been known to rise to a state of apoplexy in salerooms, storming out, his voice booming down the corridor: Works of genuine genius! Sold into servitude and wrenched from the gaze of the deserving! Mike hoped he wasn’t going to cause a scene today - Laura had quite enough on her plate as it was. He noted that Gissing, too, had failed to collect a bidding paddle, and began to wonder just how many people in the room were interested in actually buying something. The next two lots failed to reach their reserve, adding to Mike’s fears. He knew that some of the dealers would get together beforehand to express their individual interests, making pacts to ensure they didn’t get into bidding wars. This tended to keep prices down unless there were collectors in the room or on the ends of those telephones.
Mike thought he could see the blood rising up Laura’s neck, colouring her cheeks. She gave a little cough and paused between lots, taking a few sips of water and scanning the room for signs of interest. There was little enough atmosphere, and oxygen seemed to have been sucked from the place. Mike could smell the dust from antiquated picture frames, mixed with tweed and floor polish. He tried to guess at the secret life of each painting, at the journey they had made from imagination to sketchbook, sketchbook to easel. Finished, framed, displayed and sold. Passing from owner to owner, handed down as an heirloom, perhaps, or dismissed as worthless until rescued from a junk shop and restored to glory. Whenever he bought a painting, he made sure to spend time examining its rear end for clues - chalked measurements calculated by the artist on the frame; a label from the gallery where the first sale had been made. He would check the catalogues, tracing the line of ownership. His latest purchase, the Monboddo still life, had been painted during a trip to the French Riviera and brought back to Britain, shown as part of a group exhibition in a townhouse in Mayfair, but only sold a few months later by a small gallery in Glasgow. That first purchaser had been the scion of a tobacco family. Much of this information had come from Robert Gissing, who had written more than one monograph on Monboddo. Daring a glance in Gissing’s direction, Mike saw that the arms were folded, the face stern.
But something was happening at the front of the saleroom. Calloway had raised a hand to make a bid on something, and Laura was asking if he had a paddle.
‘Do I look like I’m in a canoe?’ Calloway responded, bringing laughter from those around him. Laura apologised that she could accept bids only from those who had registered at the reception desk, and explained that there was still time if the gentleman wanted to . . .
‘Never mind,’ Calloway said, waving the offer away.
This seemed to relax the room, and things perked up even more with the next lot. One of the Matthewsons: sheep in a snowdrift, late nineteenth century. Laura had mentioned at the preview that there was interest in it, and now two telephone bidders were going head to head, focusing the attention of the room on the members of staff who held the receivers. The price kept cranking up and up until it was double the top estimate. The gavel eventually came down at eighty-five thousand, which would do no harm at all to Laura’s bottom line. This seemed to give her a renewed confidence and she made a well-received joke, which in turn brought a little more life to the room as well as a delayed guffaw from Chib Calloway. Mike flicked through the next few pages of the catalogue and saw nothing tempting. He squeezed past the crush of dealers next to him and shook hands with Gissing.
‘Isn’t that,’ Gissing muttered with a nod towards the front of the room, ‘the rogue we had the run-in with at the wine bar?’
‘You can’t always judge a book by its cover, Robert,’ Mike whispered into the professor’s ear. ‘Any chance of a word later?’
‘Why not now,’ Gissing shot back, ‘before my blood pressure gets the better of me . . .’
At the far end of the hallway were some stairs leading upwards to floors where antique furnishings, books and jewellery were displayed. Mike stopped at the foot of the staircase.
‘Well?’ Gissing prompted.
‘Enjoying the sale?’
‘As little as usual.’
Mike nodded slowly, but couldn’t think how to start the real conversation. Gissing smiled indulgently.
‘It’s been preying on your mind, Michael,’ he drawled. ‘What I said to you that night in the wine bar. I could see that you understood straight away, understood the absolute validity of what I was proposing.’
‘Not a serious proposal, though, surely. I mean, you can’t just go around stealing art. For a start, First Caly wouldn’t be too thrilled at the idea . . . And what would Allan say?’
‘Maybe we should ask him.’ Gissing sounded serious.
‘Look,’ Mike argued, ‘I agree it’s a nice thought - I like the idea of planning some sort of . . . heist.’ Gissing, listening intently, had folded his arms again.
‘It’s been preying on my mind, too,’ he said eventually. ‘For some considerable time - as you say, a nice little exercise for the grey cells. It occurred to me early on that First Caly wouldn’t do, their security’s too good. But what if there were a way to emancipate a certain number of paintings without them even being noted as missing?’
‘From a bank vault?’
Gissing shook his head. ‘Nothing so onerous.’ He patted his distended stomach. ‘Do I look like I could break into a bank?’
Mike gave a little laugh. ‘This is all hypothetical, right?’
‘If you say so.’
‘Okay, then enlighten me - where are we stealing these paintings from?’
Gissing paused a moment, running his tongue along his bottom lip. ‘The National Gallery,’ he said at last.
Mike stared at him for a few seconds, then gave a snort. ‘Yeah, right, absolutely.’ He was remembering his encounter with Calloway: Anyone ever tried breaking into this place?
‘No need for sarcasm, Michael,’ Gissing was saying.
‘So we just waltz in and then out again, and no one’s any the wiser?’
‘That’s pretty much the size of it. I can explain over a drink, if you’re interested.’
The two men stared one another out. Mike was the first to blink. ‘You’ve been mulling this over for how long?’
‘Probably a year or more. I’d like to take something with me when I retire, Mike. Something no one else in the world has got.’
‘Rembrandt? Titian? El Greco . . . ?’
Gissing just shrugged. Mike saw Allan emerging from
the saleroom and waved him over.
‘Maybe that Bossun you bought wasn’t such a bad punt,’ Allan informed him with a sigh. ‘One’s just gone for thirty-eight K. This time last year he was lucky to break twenty . . .’ He looked from one man to the other. ‘What’s up with you two? You look like kids who’ve been caught with their hands in the sweetie jar.’
‘We were just going to have a drink,’ Gissing said. ‘And maybe a little chat.’
‘What about?’
‘Robert here,’ Mike began to explain, ‘has been stating his intention to lift some paintings from the national collection without their absence being noticed. A little retirement gift to himself.’
‘Beats a gold watch,’ Allan agreed.
‘Thing is, I think he might actually be serious.’