‘All getting a bit serious, isn’t it?’
‘Something we’d do well to remember,’ Gissing muttered. He switched off the projector and got up to open the blinds. ‘Worst-case scenario we’d all go to prison, lives and reputations in tatters.’
‘For the sake of a few paintings,’ Allan said quietly.
‘You getting cold feet, Allan?’ Mike asked him.
Allan thought for a moment before shaking his head. He’d removed his spectacles and was polishing them with a handkerchief.
‘We need to be sure in our own minds,’ Gissing added, ‘why we’re prepared to go through with it.’
‘That’s easy,’ Allan said, replacing his glasses. ‘I want something at home my employers could never have.’
‘Or your ex-wife’s boyfriend, come to that,’ Mike teased.
Gissing gave an indulgent smile. ‘When I retire to Spain, my two go with me. I could be happy all day just staring at them…’
Mike studied his two friends but said nothing himself. He didn’t think they’d want to hear him say he was just bored to high heaven and looking to be challenged for the first time in a long time. And then, of course, there was Monboddo’s wife to consider…
‘Young Westie had a point,’ he said at last. ‘Even with four of us, it’s going to be far from easy.’ He looked at Gissing. ‘Have you had a chance to draw up the plan?’
Gissing nodded and reached into his desk drawer. The three men stood over the sheet of paper, holding its corners flat against the table as Gissing unrolled it. As a professor and a noted art historian, Gissing had visited the warehouse dozens of times in the past. Problem was, this made him a known face – dangerous for him to be part of any actual heist. On the other hand, he had drawn a beautifully rendered plan of the site, complete with guardroom, security cameras and panic buttons.
‘You did this from memory?’ Mike asked, duly impressed.
‘And in such a short time,’ Allan added.
‘I told you, I’ve been mulling this over for quite a while. But be warned – they may have made some changes to the layout since my last visit.’
‘But the measurements are accurate?’ Mike was studying the route from the loading bay to the guardroom. Gissing had marked it with a thick red dotted line.
‘Fairly accurate, I’d say.’
‘And you’ll do another recce before we hit the place?’ Allan added.
Gissing nodded. ‘After which, I’ll be useful to you only as the getaway driver.’
‘Better watch a few episodes of Top Gear, then,’ Mike said with a smile.
‘Prof,’ Allan asked, ‘you’ve been to Doors Open Day before, right?’
Gissing started running his finger along a line marked in blue. It started at the main gate to the compound and continued through a door into the warehouse itself. ‘This is the route I’m hoping they’ll take – can’t really see any alternative. The tour is limited to a dozen visitors every hour, on the hour. Tour itself only takes about forty minutes, leaving them twenty to prepare for the next lot of arrivals. Names are on a list at the gatehouse. One guard stays there, the other three are inside, usually drinking tea in the guardroom and watching their CCTV screens. Staff from the Museums and Galleries Department conduct the actual tour.’
‘And they don’t do background checks on visitors?’
Gissing shook his head. ‘Not last year, at any rate.’
‘So fake names won’t be rumbled?’ Mike persisted.
Gissing just shrugged. ‘They ask for a contact phone number, but in my experience there’s never any contacting.’
Mike’s eyes caught Allan’s and he knew what his friend was thinking – we need more bodies. Mike was thinking much the same thing. The problem was…
Whose?
At the end of the meeting, Allan hopped into a cab, heading back to the office, his phone already pressed to his ear. Mike preferred to walk. Standing with Allan on the pavement outside the art college, he had touched him lightly on the forearm.
‘Sure you’re ready to go through with this?’
‘Are any of us?’ Allan asked in return. ‘I like all the Ocean’s 11 stuff – the prof’s detailed plan of attack. It makes me think we really could pull this off… if we wanted to.’
‘Do we want to?’
‘You seem keen enough.’ Allan studied Mike, then gave a twitch of the mouth. ‘Not sure about Westie, though. How far can we trust him?’
Mike nodded his agreement. ‘We’ll keep an eye on him.’
‘Christ, listen to you.’ Allan was laughing. ‘You sound more Reservoir Dogs than George Clooney.’
Mike offered a smile. ‘It could work, though, couldn’t it?’
Allan thought this over for a moment. ‘Only if we can get the guards scared and keep them scared. We have to convince them we really are the mean team… think we can manage that?’
‘I’ll practise my snarling.’
‘And how will they see it, behind the mask you’d be wearing?’
‘Good point,’ Mike conceded. ‘There’s a lot we need to think about.’
‘There is,’ Allan agreed, stretching out an arm to wave down an approaching cab. ‘The prof’s done the groundwork and you’re fronting the cash…’ Allan stared at Mike. ‘Not exactly sure what the pair of you think I can offer.’ He pulled open the cab’s back door.
‘You’re our details guy, Allan. Stuff like the masks – just keep mulling over all the potential flaws and glitches and you’ll be earning your stripes.’
Allan gave a mock salute as he closed the door behind him.
Mike watched the cab pull away, then crossed the road and headed down Chalmers Street, towards The Meadows. This had all been farmland once, but was now playing fields, edged with trees. Cyclists were out in force – students, he assumed, on their way to and from lectures. There were a few geriatric joggers, too, and he wondered if he should make an attempt to get fit. Would it help cow the guards if he added some muscle to his upper body? Probably not. Not as much, certainly, as a big fat handgun. Or maybe a machete of some kind, or a hatchet. There would be shops in the city where such items could be bought. Not real guns, of course, but replicas. Some of the tourist shops sold claymores and even Japanese-style swords. Passing a couple of dog-walkers, he had a little smile to himself. Probably no one in the history of The Meadows had ever been thinking such thoughts as these.
‘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.