‘Sorry,’ he apologised, placing her beside him.
Aside from the TV and the artworks, not much damage had been done. He got up and went into the kitchen, running himself water from the tap. The TV would have made quite a bit of noise, which might have alerted both men to the fact that there were neighbours who could be wakened. He took the filled glass into his computer room, drinking as he went. Stuff had been thrown on to the floor, but it was nothing a bit of tidying couldn’t fix. The keyboard was awash with whisky – the contents of a bottle he’d left on top of the filing cabinet. Okay, so both would need replacing. The cabinet itself, which contained all his bank statements and investment details, remained locked. There was a mangled kitchen knife in the waste-paper bin, which told him someone had tried forcing an entry. The key was in his bedside drawer, meaning no one had bothered to look too hard for it. Desk drawers stood open, contents disturbed or emptied on to the floor. It could all be fixed.
The inventory had given him a little bit of strength. He reckoned if he’d been in charge of ransacking someone’s home, he’d have been more thorough, altogether more professional. This was petty and spiteful and nothing else. Calloway was forgetting the first rule of business – any business.
You couldn’t allow it to become personal.
He found a spare cigarette in a packet in his bedroom and smoked it on the balcony, staring out across the city. Birds were singing, and he thought he could even hear the distant sounds of animals awakening in the city zoo on Corstorphine Hill. When the cigarette was finished, he went back inside and wandered through to the kitchen, opening a cupboard, bringing out a dustpan and brush. His cleaner came in on a Friday but he guessed this was beyond her remit. He swept up some of the glass from the TV screen, but tiredness came crashing down on him once more and he retreated to the sofa. He closed his eyes and thought back to how it had all started – with Gissing’s seemingly casual remark: Repatriation of some of those poor imprisoned works of art… We’d be freedom fighters… Mike mulling over the possibility and then bumping into Chib Calloway again at the National Gallery, the gangster keen to learn about art, or at least about the profits to be made from it. Next thing, Mike was telling Gissing they should do it. He’d intended the target to be one of the city’s institutions – a banking headquarters, or maybe an insurance company – but Gissing himself had other plans…
‘Of course you did,’ Mike said out loud, raising his glass in a reluctant toast to Gissing’s plot.
Of the three of them – Gissing, Allan and Mike – only Mike could have come close to affording the paintings they were planning to steal. So why had he agreed? And not just agreed, but seemed at times to be the chief instigator – why had he done that?
‘Because you played me like a fucking Stradivarius, Professor,’ he told the empty room. Gissing had been only too happy to take a back seat – less suspicious that way. A year ago, he’d planned the exact same heist, but hadn’t had access to accomplices. But then Allan and Mike had come into his orbit, and he had probed at their weaknesses… assessed their potential.
And found them just about perfect.
And all because Mike had been bored. And greedy, of course – he’d coveted the painting of Beatrice… one thing he could never own, no matter how wealthy he became. Then there was Calloway himself, offering glimpses of a very different world. At school Mike had craved an invitation to join Calloway’s gang, its pecking order dependent on heft and ruthlessness rather than brains and guile. His first year at university, he had gone off the rails. He would pick fights in the Student Union bar. At parties he was unpredictable. He probably only won half his battles, and had eventually come to his senses. had begun to conform, to fit in…
‘Jekyll and Hyde,’ he muttered to himself.
One thing still niggled. Had Calloway and Gissing been in cahoots? Mike didn’t think so, which meant that bumping into the gangster at the gallery really had been an accident – almost the only unplanned event of the whole scheme. Bringing Calloway into play had been Mike’s idea, meaning the current mess was down to him. He was sure that was how Gissing would see it…
His head was resting against the back of the sofa, eyes closed. During the slow drive Allan and he had taken around Edinburgh, he had explained some of it to his friend, adding his own best guesses and assumptions to the mix. Allan had had to stop the car once or twice, getting things straight in his head, asking questions, refusing – at least at first – to believe what he was hearing, then slapping the palms of his hands repeatedly against the steering wheel.
‘You’re a rational man, Allan,’ Mike had told him. ‘You know this is the only way it all makes sense.’
He’d then reminded Allan that Edinburgh had nurtured Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and that Doyle’s creation Sherlock Holmes had spoken the truth when he said that once you had eliminated everything else, whatever was left, however improbable it might seem, had to be the truth.
Mike wasn’t sure whether Allan would go to the police. Maybe he, too, would return home, the better to wait out his fate. As for Mike… well, his fate was already here, announcing itself by way of the one creaky floorboard in the hallway.
But then he heard a voice calling his name, forming it as a question and sounding concerned.
‘Laura?’ he called back, getting to his feet. He realised he hadn’t switched on any of the lights, but none of the blinds were closed, meaning he could make her out well enough as she emerged into the room. ‘Just doing a bit of redecorating,’ he explained as she stood open-mouthed, arms by her sides.
‘What happened?’
‘A slight falling-out.’
‘Who with? Godzilla?’
He managed a tired smile. ‘What are you doing here?’
She had walked further into the room, negotiating her way around the shards of glass. ‘I’ve been trying your phone – both your phones. When you didn’t answer, I got scared. Mike, what have you gotten yourself into?’ He didn’t really need to answer. She’d picked up the portrait of Beatrice. ‘I knew it,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Knew it was you behind the heist. How did you do it?’
‘Switched the originals for copies.’ It sounded so simple and straightforward when put like that.
‘Which Gissing then verified?’ She nodded slowly. ‘So he’s in on it, too? But what about the missing paintings?’
He gave a shrug. ‘Nothing to do with me, I’m afraid. See, all the time I thought I was part of a team, I was actually being groomed as the patsy.’ He managed a dry chuckle at his own hubris. ‘Can I offer you a drink?’ He raised his own empty water glass.
‘No.’
‘Don’t mind if I…?’ He made for the kitchen again, Laura following. ‘Actually, I wasn’t the only patsy,’ he went on. ‘I made the mistake of bringing an outsider on board.’
‘Calloway?’ she guessed.
‘And it was decided that he would make the perfect fall guy. He’s a philistine, you see, and that’s what this whole thing was about – us versus them.’