Doors Open

‘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, ru

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 pla

‘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 pla

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 unpla

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, a

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.’

‘So Ransome was right all along… you and that thug were partners?’

‘Allan was in on it, too, and a student at the art college called Westie.’

‘Plus Professor Gissing,’ she added.

Mike drained the glass before answering. ‘Above all of us, yes,’ he said quietly. ‘Professor Robert Gissing. He’s done a ru

‘I’ve never liked him. And I was never really sure what you saw in him.’

‘I wish to Christ you’d tried warning me.’

She was still holding the Monboddo. ‘And all for this?’

‘All for that,’ he conceded.

‘Why is it so important, Mike?’

‘I think you know the answer.’

‘She looks like me, is that what you’re saying?’ Laura studied what was left of the portrait. ‘You do realise there’s something slightly creepy about that? I mean, you could just have asked me for a date instead.’