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.’