Doors Open

‘Fairly accurate, I’d say.’

‘And you’ll do another recce before we hit the place?’ Allan added.

Gissing nodded. ‘After which, I’ll be useful to you only as the getaway driver.’

‘Better watch a few episodes of Top Gear, then,’ Mike said with a smile.

‘Prof,’ Allan asked, ‘you’ve been to Doors Open Day before, right?’

Gissing started ru

‘And they don’t do background checks on visitors?’

Gissing shook his head. ‘Not last year, at any rate.’

‘So fake names won’t be rumbled?’ Mike persisted.

Gissing just shrugged. ‘They ask for a contact phone number, but in my experience there’s never any contacting.’

Mike’s eyes caught Allan’s and he knew what his friend was thinking – we need more bodies. Mike was thinking much the same thing. The problem was…

Whose?

At the end of the meeting, Allan hopped into a cab, heading back to the office, his phone already pressed to his ear. Mike preferred to walk. Standing with Allan on the pavement outside the art college, he had touched him lightly on the forearm.

‘Sure you’re ready to go through with this?’

‘Are any of us?’ Allan asked in return. ‘I like all the Ocean’s 11 stuff – the prof’s detailed plan of attack. It makes me think we really could pull this off… if we wanted to.’

‘Do we want to?’

‘You seem keen enough.’ Allan studied Mike, then gave a twitch of the mouth. ‘Not sure about Westie, though. How far can we trust him?’

Mike nodded his agreement. ‘We’ll keep an eye on him.’

‘Christ, listen to you.’ Allan was laughing. ‘You sound more Reservoir Dogs than George Clooney.’

Mike offered a smile. ‘It could work, though, couldn’t it?’

Allan thought this over for a moment. ‘Only if we can get the guards scared and keep them scared. We have to convince them we really are the mean team… think we can manage that?’

‘I’ll practise my snarling.’

‘And how will they see it, behind the mask you’d be wearing?’

‘Good point,’ Mike conceded. ‘There’s a lot we need to think about.’

‘There is,’ Allan agreed, stretching out an arm to wave down an approaching cab. ‘The prof’s done the groundwork and you’re fronting the cash…’ Allan stared at Mike. ‘Not exactly sure what the pair of you think I can offer.’ He pulled open the cab’s back door.

‘You’re our details guy, Allan. Stuff like the masks – just keep mulling over all the potential flaws and glitches and you’ll be earning your stripes.’

Allan gave a mock salute as he closed the door behind him.

Mike watched the cab pull away, then crossed the road and headed down Chalmers Street, towards The Meadows. This had all been farmland once, but was now playing fields, edged with trees. Cyclists were out in force – students, he assumed, on their way to and from lectures. There were a few geriatric joggers, too, and he wondered if he should make an attempt to get fit. Would it help cow the guards if he added some muscle to his upper body? Probably not. Not as much, certainly, as a big fat handgun. Or maybe a machete of some kind, or a hatchet. There would be shops in the city where such items could be bought. Not real guns, of course, but replicas. Some of the tourist shops sold claymores and even Japanese-style swords. Passing a couple of dog-walkers, he had a little smile to himself. Probably no one in the history of The Meadows had ever been thinking such thoughts as these.

‘You’re a regular little gangster, Mike,’ he told himself. But he knew he wasn’t. All the same…

He knew a man who was.

Alice Rule was late getting home from the cinema. She was trying to set up a Sunday-evening film club and had been finalising the mailshot. European arthouse of the 1950s and ‘60s; she knew there was an audience for it, just wasn’t sure she could attract enough of them. On Sunday afternoons the cinema ran a quiz in the bar. That was popular, and she wanted to capitalise on it, wanted to see those people stick around for a meal and an actual film. She’d run a short season of Hitchcock’s early work, the stuff he’d done in Britain. It had broken even, and she’d handed out questio

As she climbed the stairs to her top-floor flat, she wondered what sort of day Westie had had. He’d said he would be sourcing picture frames, plus putting the finishing touches to some of his portfolio. She just hoped he hadn’t been sitting on the sofa rolling spliffs all day. It would be nice, she thought, to walk into the flat and smell supper cooking, but she knew better than to expect anything like that. Eggs on toast was the sum total of Westie’s painfully proletarian style; or meals out, meals she ended up paying for.

As she unlocked the door and stepped into the hall, she caught no aroma of fresh paint, never mind fresh cooking. Westie’s coat, however, was in a heap next to his shoes, evidence that he had been out somewhere. As she walked into the living room (refusing, even after all these months, to bow to pressure and call it ‘the studio’), glancing around in vain for signs of frames purchased, there was a loud popping sound, followed by a spume of foam from the neck of the champagne bottle Westie was holding.

‘And what exactly are we celebrating?’ Alice asked, aware that it would have been her salary paying for the bubbly. She had shrugged herself out of her jacket and was placing her shoulder bag on the floor. Westie was pouring the champagne into two wine glasses. It didn’t look as if they’d been rinsed too thoroughly from the previous night.

‘Some men came to see me,’ he explained, handing her a filled glass.

‘Men?’

‘Businessmen.’ Westie clinked glasses and took a huge gulp, swallowing and stifling a belch. ‘They want a few of my originals for their offices.’ He started to do a little dance, and Alice, her drink untouched, wondered just how much he’d been smoking.

‘Their offices?’ she echoed.

‘That’s right.’

‘What company? How did they hear about you?’

Westie proffered a huge wink, which told her he’d already had a few drinks to go with the dope. ‘It’s all very hush-hush,’ he confided in a stage whisper.

‘Hush-hush?’

‘They’re offering enough money for you to do that film course.’ Westie nodded slowly, making sure she knew he wasn’t joking.

‘You mean thousands?’ Alice couldn’t manage to keep the disbelief out of her voice. ‘For some of your paintings? What’s the catch, Westie?’

He looked crestfallen. ‘Why should there be a catch? They’re ca

‘From scratch?’

‘They’re not buying off the peg, Alice. It’s a commission.’

Alice was looking for somewhere to sit, but not one single surface appealed. ‘Your portfolio,’ she argued. ‘You need to finish your degree show…’

But Westie was shaking his head. ‘Don’t you worry about that – it’s all in hand.’ And he had a little chuckle to himself.