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Ian Rankin
Doors Open
Copyright © 2008 John Rebus Ltd.
The open door was only yards away, and beyond it lay the outside world, eerily unaffected by anything happening inside the abandoned snooker hall. Two thickset men had slumped bloodily to the floor. Four more figures were seated on chairs, hands tied behind them, ankles bound. A fifth was wriggling like a snake towards the doorway, straining with the effort. His girlfriend was yelling encouragement as the man called Hate stepped forward and slammed the door shut on all their hopes and dreams, hauling the chair and its occupant back to the original line.
‘I’m going to kill you all,’ the man spat, face smeared with his own blood. Mike Mackenzie didn’t doubt him for a second. What else was someone called Hate going to do? Mike was staring at the door, reminded that this chain of events had begun – so i
And with greed.
And desire.
But above all, with doors opening and closing.
A few weeks earlier
1
Mike saw it happen. There were two doors next to one another. One of them seemed to be permanently ajar by about an inch, except when someone pushed at its neighbour. As each liveried waiter brought trays of canapés into the saleroom, the effect was the same. One door would swing open, and the other would slowly close. It said a lot about the quality of the paintings, Mike thought, that he was paying more attention to a pair of doors. But he knew he was wrong: it was saying nothing about the actual artworks on display, and everything about him.
Mike Mackenzie was thirty-seven years old, rich and bored. According to the business pages of various newspapers, he remained a ‘self-made software mogul’, except that he was no longer a mogul of anything. His company had been sold outright to a venture capital consortium. Rumour had it that he was a burn-out, and maybe he was. He’d started the software business fresh from university with a friend called Gerry Pearson. Gerry had been the real brains of the operation, a genius programmer, but shy with it, so that Mike quickly became the public face of the company. After the sale, they’d split the proceeds fifty-fifty and Gerry then surprised Mike by a
Building the business had been exciting and nerve-racking – existing on three or four hours’ sleep a night, often in hotel rooms far away from home, while Gerry preferred to pore over circuit boards and programming issues back in Edinburgh. Ironing the glitches out of their best-known software application had given both of them a buzz that had lasted for weeks. But as for the money… well, the money had come flooding in, bringing with it lawyers and accountants, advisers and pla
Art, one of Mike’s advisers had advised, was a ca
‘But why the hell would he do that?’ Mike had asked, appalled.
‘He’s probably got a few Bossuns tucked away in storage,’ Allan had explained. ‘If prices for the artist look like they’re on the way up, he’ll get more interest when he dusts them off.’
‘But if I’d pulled out, he’d’ve been stuck with the one I bought.’
To which Allan had just shrugged and given a smile.
Allan was somewhere in the saleroom right now, catalogue open as he perused potential purchases. Not that he could afford much – not on a banking salary. But he had a passion for art and a good eye, and would become wistful on the day of the actual auction as he watched paintings he coveted being bought by people he didn’t know. Those paintings, he’d told Mike, might disappear from public view for a generation or more.
‘Worst case, they’re bought as investments and placed in a vault for safe keeping – no more meaning to their buyer than compound interest.’
‘You’re saying I shouldn’t buy anything?’
‘Not as an investment – you should buy whatever pleases you…’
As a result of which, the walls of Mike’s apartment were replete with art from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – most of it Scottish. He had eclectic tastes, so that cubism sat alongside pastoral, portraiture beside collage. For the most part, Allan approved. The two had first met a year ago at a party at the bank’s investment arm HQ on George Street. The First Caledonian Bank – ‘First Caly’ as it was more usually called – owned an impressive corporate art collection. Large Fairbairn abstracts flanked the entrance lobby, with a Coulton triptych behind the reception desk. First Caly employed its own curator, whose job it was to discover new talent – often from degree shows – then sell when the price was right and replenish the collection. Mike had mistaken Allan for the curator, and they’d struck up a conversation.
‘Allan Cruikshank,’ Allan had said, shaking Mike’s hand. ‘And of course I already know who you are.’
‘Sorry about the mix-up,’ Mike had apologised with an embarrassed grin. ‘It’s just that we seem to be the only people interested in what’s on the walls…’
Allan Cruikshank was in his late forties and, as he put it, ‘expensively divorced’, with two teenage sons and a daughter in her twenties. He dealt with HNWs – High Net Worth individuals – but had assured Mike that he wasn’t angling for business. Instead, in the absence of the curator, he’d shown Mike as much of the collection as was open for general viewing.