‘The raiders tried to get away with a Monboddo,’ the guest explained to the table. ‘Portrait of the artist’s wife.’ She turned to Laura. ‘Do you know the one I mean?’
Laura nodded. She knew it all right, and remembered the last time she’d seen it.
And who’d seemed most interested in it…
That night, Westie and Alice ate at their favourite Chinese restaurant, then headed for a couple of bars and a nightclub, where they could dance off some of their excitement. The DeRasse abstract had been given pride of place in Westie’s studio, on an easel recently vacated by one of the fakes. Westie had even proposed a wild notion to Alice – he would display the DeRasse as part of his portfolio at the art college, passing it off as one of his copies.
‘And Gissing will see it and kick your arse to Iceland and back,’ Alice had shrieked, laughing along with him.
Dancing, dancing, dancing into Sunday.
While Ransome lay awake in bed, staring at the ceiling, careful not to disturb his wife by moving about too much, even though his nerves were jangling, his heart pounding. The late supper of spiced vegetable couscous lay like a slab in his stomach.
Allan was awake, too. His eyes were still sore from the lenses, his scalp itchy despite a shower and half a bottle of shampoo. He stood by the window in his darkened living room, staring out across a patch of grass towards Gayfield Square police station. A couple of TV crews had come and gone, the reporters illuminated as they said their pieces to camera. Every time a patrol car arrived, Allan expected to see somebody he knew – Westie or Mike or the professor – being led from it in handcuffs. He wanted to tell someone – Margot, maybe, or one of the kids. Or just pick up the telephone, press buttons at random, and blurt it all out to the first stranger who answered.
But instead he kept vigil by the window.
Robert Gissing had a busy night ahead, but took time to inspect his paintings. Nice additions to his little collection. He’d been driven home by Allan, and hadn’t said much during the journey. The detective, DI Ransome, worried him. Michael, however, had warned him to say nothing to Allan, confirming Gissing’s fears. If anyone were to unravel, it would be Allan Cruikshank.
And it might happen at any moment – hence the busy night ahead. Not that Gissing minded. Sleep could be left till later. Afterwards, he would have nothing but time. He even spoke the words out loud – ‘Nothing but time.’ And smiled to himself, knowing this to be anything but the truth…
21
Edinburgh was Sunday-morning quiet: the rhythmed tolling of church bells; a warming sun; denizens and visitors alike spreading out their newspapers across café tables. Nice day for a drive, though not many people would have chosen Granton as their destination. Gulls shrieked all along the waterfront, feasting on fast-food leftovers from the previous night. In the near distance, another new development of high-rises was creeping skywards, surrounded by wasteland and gasometers.
Not for the first time, Ransome wondered why the National Gallery of Scotland had sited its overflow warehouse here. He didn’t even know why one was necessary – couldn’t the various paintings and statues have been loaned to needy collections across the land? Surely there had to be room in the likes of Dundee, Aberdeen and Inverness. Wouldn’t Kirkcaldy have welcomed a few sketches or the bust of some historical personage? He could almost see Kirkcaldy through the haze that lay across the becalmed Firth of Forth, yesterday’s rain a memory. There was a fresh guard manning the gates of the warehouse, his colleague having been excused duties, the better to answer police questions.
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.