They decided some foot slogging was necessary, so left the station — bundling the folder and all their notes into the shoulder bag again — and made for the self-storage facility, where the owner wasn’t able to add much. Marber had arranged for a standing order to pay for the unit. He hadn’t said why he might need it. Back at Marber’s gallery, they found his secretary trying to clear out the office. She was on a retainer from the estate until the work was complete, and didn’t seem in a hurry to hit the dole queue.
Her name was Jan Meikle. She was in her early forties, with tied-back hair and thick oval glasses, her frame seeming needle-thin amidst the haystack of boxes, papers and artifacts in the overheated room. The gallery itself was empty, the walls denuded of the pictures which had given it its personality. Rebus asked where they were.
“Gone to auction,” Jan Meikle replied. “All monies to accrue to the estate.” It sounded like the line she’d been given by Marber’s solicitor.
“Were Mr. Marber’s affairs in order at the time of his death?” Rebus asked. He was standing with Siobhan in the doorway, there being no floor space worth mentioning inside the room itself, apart from two small patches which were currently being occupied by Miss Meikle’s sandaled feet.
“As much as could have been expected,” she replied automatically. It wasn’t the first time a police detective had asked the question.
“You didn’t get the sense that the business was winding down in any way?” Rebus pressed.
She shook her head, but didn’t look at him.
“Sure about that, Miss Meikle?”
She mumbled something neither of them caught.
“Sorry?” Siobhan said.
“Eddie was always getting ideas into his head,” the secretary repeated.
“He told you he was selling up, didn’t he?” Rebus asked.
She shook her head again, defiantly this time. “Not selling up, no.”
“Taking time off then?”
This time she nodded. “His place in Tuscany . . .”
“Did he mention anyone he might have been taking with him?”
She looked up, working hard to keep the tears from flowing. “Why must you persist in this?”
“It’s our job,” Siobhan stated. “You know Malcolm Neilson’s in custody, charged with Mr. Marber’s murder?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think he did it?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“You want it to be him because it brings all this to an end,” Siobhan said quietly. “But wouldn’t it be better to get the person who was really responsible?”
Meikle blinked at her. “Not Malcolm Neilson?”
“We don’t think so,” Rebus said. “Did you know about Laura Stafford, Miss Meikle?”
“Yes.”
“And you knew she was a prostitute?”
The woman nodded, unwilling to speak.
“Did Eddie say he was going to go to Tuscany with Laura Stafford?”
Another nod.
“Do you know if he’d actually asked her?”
“As I say, Eddie was always getting ideas . . . This wasn’t the first time he’d spoken of it.” She paused. “And she was by no means the first woman he’d spoken of taking with him on one of his jaunts.”
From her tone, Rebus guessed that maybe Miss Meikle had at one time thought herself one of those candidates.
“Could he have meant it this time?” he asked quietly. “He was putting his paintings into mothballs. He’d rented a storage unit . . .”
“He’d done that before, too,” she snapped.
Rebus thought for a moment. “The Vettriano that went missing, would there be any records here about its purchase? The when and where?”
“The police took them.”
“Did they take any other records?” Rebus was looking towards two four-drawer filing cabinets in a corner of the room. “We’re interested in sales and purchases, between six and five years ago.”
“All in there,” the secretary said, nodding not in the direction of the cabinets but towards two large boxes on the floor beside the desk. “I’ve spent the last two days sorting them out. Lord knows why . . . it’ll all probably go to the dump.”
Rebus tiptoed gingerly into the room, removing the lid from one of the boxes. There were bundles of invoices and receipts, wrapped in clear plastic envelopes and elastic bands, page markers sticking out, showing relevant dates. He looked up at Miss Meikle.
“You’ve done a grand job,” he said.
An hour later, Rebus and Siobhan were seated on the floor of the gallery, the paperwork spread out and divided between them. A few curious passersby had stopped to watch, perhaps thinking themselves spectators at some new style of art installation. Even when Siobhan had raised two fingers at a studenty couple, they’d just smiled, as if in appreciation that this, too, must be part of the performance. Rebus had his legs stretched out, ankles crossed, back resting against the wall. Siobhan sat with her legs folded beneath her, until pins and needles set her hopping across the whitewashed wooden floor. Silently, Rebus was blessing Miss Meikle. Without her organizational skills, their task might have taken days.
“Mr. Montrose seems to have been a good customer,” Rebus said, watching Siobhan rubbing the circulation back into her foot.
“No shortage of those,” she said. “I didn’t realize people in Edinburgh had so much money to burn.”
“They’re not burning it, Siobhan, they’re investing it. Much nicer to hang your cash on the drawing room wall than have it molder in a bank vault.”
“You’ve convinced me. I’m closing my savings account and buying an Elizabeth Blackadder.”
“I didn’t know you had that much tucked away . . .”
She flopped down beside him so she could study Mr. Montrose’s purchases. “Wasn’t there a Montrose at the opening?”
“Was there?”
She reached over for her shoulder bag and produced the Marber folder, busying herself flipping through its many sections. Rebus called through to Miss Meikle, who appeared in the doorway.
“I was thinking of heading home soon,” she warned him.
“All right if we take this lot with us?” Rebus indicated the sprawl of paperwork. The secretary looked disappointed at what had become of her careful filing. “Don’t worry,” Rebus assured her, “we’ll put it all back together again.” He paused. “It’s either that or leave it lying here till we can come back . . .”
This was the clincher. Miss Meikle nodded her agreement, and made to turn back into the office.
“Just one thing,” Rebus called out. “Mr. Montrose: how well do you know him?”
“Not at all.”
Rebus frowned. “Wasn’t he at the preview?”
“If he was, we weren’t introduced.”
“Buys a lot of paintings, though . . . Or he did four, five years ago.”
“Yes, he was a good client. Eddie was sorry to lose him.”
“How did that happen?”
She shrugged, came towards him and dropped to a crouch. “The numbers on these page markers refer to other transactions.” She started sifting through the paperwork, plucking out this sheet and that.
“List of people at the party,” Siobhan said, brandishing a sheet of her own. “We were dealing with signatures, remember, some more legible than others. One particularly nasty squiggle is down here as possibly Marlowe, Matthews or Montrose. I remember Grant Hood showing it to me.” She handed him a photocopy of the relevant page in the gallery’s visitors’ book. No first name, unless the squiggle was a first name. No address in the space left for one.
“Miss Meikle says Montrose stopped being a client of Mr. Marber’s.” He handed back the photocopy, which Siobhan now studied. “Would he turn up at a preview?”
“He didn’t get an invite,” the secretary stated. “I never knew his address. Eddie always dealt with him direct.”
“Was that unusual?”
“A little. Some clients didn’t want to be identified. Famous people, or the aristocracy, wanting a valuation and not wishing anyone to know they were needing to sell . . .” She drew out another sheet of paper, checked its page marker, then started looking again.