‘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 canny investors, Alice, the kind who like to ride a wave just before it explodes on to the shore.’ To paint this picture more fully, he started making sounds approximating to just such an event. Then he tapped Alice’s glass, encouraging her to drink. ‘I need to get started, though. It’s a big job - seven paintings.’
‘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.
‘Are you sure about this?’ Alice asked. She experimented with a small sip of the champagne. It was chilled to perfection and sharp-tasting - the real thing.
Westie held his glass out towards her, and this time she did the clinking.
All very hush-hush
. . . She had to smile at that. Westie was terrible at keeping secrets. He would always blurt out the identity of her birthday and Christmas gifts before she had a chance to unwrap them. When he’d snogged a girl at a party once, a party Alice had missed because of work, he’d admitted everything to her over breakfast the next morning. She didn’t think he could lie to her, even if his life depended on it. She doubted she’d have any trouble finding out what the story really was.
Especially when she was so intrigued.
9
The last thing Chib Calloway ever expected to see squatting on his parked Beamer was a six-foot-three Hell’s Angel in a tailored double-breasted suit. The man wore polished black brogues on his feet and a crisp white shirt with a mauve silk tie. His long brown hair was tied back into a presentable ponytail, and he sported just the single studded earring (though with lobes pierced for plenty more). He had removed any other facial jewellery and was clean-shaven, cheeks glowing. When he raised his head there was a giveaway blue dotted line across his throat - a prison tattoo. As he scratched his hands down his face, Chib noted more tattoos on both sets of knuckles - HATE on the right, HATE on the left. Blue ink again, home-made. The guy sported laughter lines around his eyes, but the eyes themselves glowed with milky-blue malevolence.
Now this is more like it
, Chib thought to himself.
This I understand . . . sort of
.
It wasn’t the most genteel part of town, nearer Granton than Leith and not yet part of any regeneration scheme. Leith itself had changed. There were more Michelin restaurants there than in the city centre. It made Chib wonder what the
Trainspotting
tours made of the place. The guy who did those tours, Chib had tried persuading him that he should feature one of Chib’s pool halls. Chib also owned a couple of neighbourhood bars, and had just been into one of them to do the weekly check. He was realistic enough to know that the staff would be skimming, but needed them to know that he knew. That way nobody got too greedy. And if temptation proved too much, leading to takings below the norm, Chib would get out the photos of Donny Devlin and tell the staff, ‘This is what I do to
friends
who cheat me. So consider what I’ll do to you if that cash doesn’t magic its way back into my till by next week.’
Exiting the bar, happy enough with its turnover, Chib had started gnawing his top lip. The place was run almost
too
well. The manager had come to Chib from a big pub-grub chain in the south; said he missed Edinburgh and wanted to come home. Overqualified for the job, but never complaining. It was making Chib wonder. Could the guy be a plant, some kind of grass or CID undercover thing? Johnno and Glenn had checked him out as best they could, but that didn’t mean much. They were with Chib now as he crossed the road towards his car, flanking him in the approved manner. Across the street was a park - not much of a park, just playing fields for football, criss-crossed with paths and a few benches where teenagers could gather of an evening to scare their elders. Twenty-odd years ago, that would have been Chib, swigging cheap booze and blasting the ciggies, shouting and cursing, eyes on the lookout for intruders, strangers, victims . . . Top of the world and wanting the world to acknowledge the fact.
‘Hell’s going on?’
Johnno had been the first to spot the Hell’s Angel. Chib’s car was a 5-Series BMW, solid but not too showy. There was a Bentley GT in the garage back home, never used for business. The stranger had parked himself on the Beamer’s bonnet, sitting there cross-legged in his suit, hands rubbing up and down his cheeks as he watched the three men approach. Though he wore shoes, his ankles were sockless. There were tattoos there, too. Chib clicked his fingers and Glenn reached a hand into the front of his jacket, even though there was nothing there. The stranger couldn’t know that, of course, but he still grinned at the gesture, seeming to dismiss it. His eyes bored into Chib’s.
‘Better not have scratched the paint,’ Chib warned the man. ‘Respray could end up costing you an arm and a leg.’
The man eased himself off the bonnet and stood with his hands either side of him, fists bunched.
HATE and HATE.
‘You were not expecting me, Mr Calloway?’ The accent was foreign. Stood to reason. ‘I represent some people, Mr Calloway, people you should know better than to disappoint.’
By which he meant the Norwegians, the biker gang from Haugesund. Chib had known there’d be some trouble there.
‘You owe your friends for a shipment, Mr Calloway, and you have not been forthcoming.’
Johnno had taken half a step forward, but Chib swiped a hand against his shoulder. ‘I’ve already told them the money’s on its way,’ he rasped.
‘Repeatedly so, Mr Calloway, but it is hardly a sustainable bargaining position, is it?’
‘Chewed a bloody dictionary,’ Glenn snorted, Johnno adding a low chuckle.
The Hell’s Angel turned his face towards Glenn. ‘You mean because I speak your native language better than you yourself do?’
‘You don’t just come barging up to Mr Calloway!’ Glenn barked back. ‘You show him some respect!’
‘The same respect he has displayed towards my clients?’ The question sounded genuine.
‘You’re not part of the gang, then?’ Chib interrupted.
‘I am a collector of monies due, Mr Calloway.’
‘For a percentage?’
The man shook his head slowly. ‘I work for a straight fee, half of it in advance.’
‘Do you always collect the other half?’
‘So far.’
‘First time for everything,’ Johnno spat, while Glenn pointed out some marks on the BMW’s bonnet. The man ignored the pair of them: he had eyes only for Chib Calloway.
‘Tell them,’ Chib said, ‘the money’s coming. I’ve never let them down before and, frankly, I’m insulted they’ve sent you.’ He looked the stranger up and down. ‘A grocer’s boy running their errands for them.’ Chib decided a wagged finger might even be in order. ‘You report back to them, and we’ll talk again next week.’
‘That won’t be necessary, Mr Calloway.’
Chib’s eyes narrowed. ‘Why not?’
The man offered a sliver of a smile. ‘Because by next week they’ll have had their money paid in full.’
Johnno’s face broke into a snarl and he lunged forward, but the man sidestepped him neatly and grabbed his wrist, twisting until Johnno buckled in pain. Chib noticed that there were spectators: the manager from the bar had been told by a couple of pavement smokers to come look. Kids bunking off school had stopped their BMX wheelies to follow the entertainment. Glenn was ready to wade in but Chib stopped him. He’d never liked playing to an audience. Not since schooldays . . .
‘Let him go,’ he said quietly.
The stranger held Chib’s gaze for a few more seconds and then pushed Johnno’s arm away. Johnno was left sitting on the roadway, rubbing at his injury. The look the stranger was giving Chib said it all: Johnno and Glenn were as much use as infants in a playground when the artillery comes calling.
‘I’ll be sticking around,’ the man was saying. ‘I need to hear from you today; tomorrow at the latest. After that, the talking will all be over - do you understand?’
Johnno took a petulant swipe with one foot, trying to make contact with the stranger’s shins. The man ignored him and handed Chib a folded scrap of paper. It was a row of digits: a mobile phone number. When Chib looked up, he was walking away, making to cross the park.
‘Hey!’ Chib called out to him. ‘What’s your name, big man?’
The stranger paused for a moment. ‘People have a habit of calling me Hate,’ he called back over his shoulder, striding past the serried ranks of BMXs.
‘That figures,’ Chib muttered to himself. Glenn had helped Johnno to his feet.
‘Dead man walking!’ Johnno yelled. ‘Next time I see you - that’s a promise, pal!’ He jabbed a finger in Hate’s general direction. Glenn was patting him on the back, trying to calm him down. Johnno’s eyes were on his employer. ‘We need to take him out, Chib. See him taken care of . . . send a message to anyone and everyone.’
‘Reckon you’re up to the job, Johnno?’ Chib asked. ‘I wouldn’t say you looked rusty back there, but I’ve known scrapyards with merchandise in better nick - and that’s
after
the compactor’s had a go at them.’
‘We could follow him,’ Glenn was saying. ‘Find out where he’s staying, what his real name is . . .’
Chib nodded thoughtfully. ‘Knowledge
is
power, Glenn. Reckon you could track him without him noticing?’
‘We can give it a go,’ Glenn offered. But the giant was three quarters of the way across the playing field. No way they could go after him on foot without him knowing about it: there was no cover.
‘Make some calls instead,’ Chib suggested by way of an alternative. ‘Bed and breakfasts to start with. Say you’re from the tourist office and some Norwegian bloke’s gone and dropped some money.’
Glenn was nodding. ‘I want to get his money back to him.’
‘And put out his description among the dossers and the jakeys - that lot have got eyes in the backs of their heads and would pimp their granny for a bottle of Buckie.’
Glenn was studying his employer. ‘Can I take it you’re not planning on paying up?’
‘Let’s see,’ was all Chib Calloway said, unlocking the car with his remote.
10
‘I don’t like this,’ Mike Mackenzie was saying.
He was in Robert Gissing’s office, the door locked and the plan of the warehouse spread across the desk, weighted down at its corners with oversized art books. Gissing had paid another visit to the warehouse and had amended the plan accordingly.
‘You turned up there unannounced,’ Mike stated. ‘Might make them suspicious come the heist.’
The professor patted Mike on the back. ‘I never thought of that, Michael. You’re quite right, and I’ll be sure to check with you first in future. But to put your mind at rest, I do the same thing once or twice a year, and I don’t think my presence was much noticed. They’re too busy finding space for all the new arrivals.’
By which he meant the extensive overflow from the Royal Museum. The place was getting a major overhaul, and a good part of its collection needed shifting elsewhere for the duration. As Gissing had explained, it might make their job harder on the day. Items could have been moved to make space. But he didn’t think the paintings would be relocated - he’d made the trip to assure himself of that.
Mike was studying the plan. ‘Gatehouse,’ he recited. ‘CCTV cameras. Guardroom. Staff acting as guides, plus everyone on the tour. If you’re sitting in the getaway van, that only leaves three of us to cope with it all.’