Some of his men wondered why he chose to live on a new-build estate when he could have practically any house in Edinburgh. But those four- and five-storey Georgian piles in the New Town, they just didn’t do it for him. Too finicky and formal. Nor did he want rolling acres and stables and all of that, which would have entailed leaving the city behind. He was an Edinburgh boy, born and bred. Not too many could say the same: whole streets filled with English accents, not to mention the students - tens of thousands of them. But this was still Chib’s city, and sometimes he couldn’t help but love it to bits.
The house - corner plot, detached, ex-show home - was in darkness. A neighbour had warned him he should keep a light burning in the upstairs hall, just to deter the thieves. Chib hadn’t bothered pointing out that thieves weren’t quite that stupid. Did the neighbour think they skulked around the place wondering why whole families congregated on the upstairs landing? Thinking of it now, Chib had another chuckle to himself. The neighbours were okay, though - never minded when he turned the volume up a bit or had some of the lads and a few girls round for a party. His wife, Liz … the house had been her idea. They’d hardly been there a year when the cancer had started to eat away at her. She’d always got on with the neighbours, and most of them had paid their respects at the funeral. That might have been their first inkling that Liz’s husband was a man of substance. The cortege had been vast, consisting mainly of large gentlemen in dark glasses, their movements choreographed by Glenn and Johnno.
Little wonder the neighbours never complained about the noise.
He had yet another little chuckle, then walked up to the door and slid the key into the lock. Another thing about the house: ten-year warranty. And the builders had thrown in an alarm system free of charge … Not that he ever used it. Once he had closed the door behind him, he felt a sense of contentment. This was where he could relax, unwind, forget all his worries. A couple of whiskies and some trash TV. The local Indian restaurant would deliver. So would his favourite pizza place. And if he fancied fish and chips instead, well, the guy there would hop on to his moped, too - just because Chib was Chib. But tonight all he wanted was the whisky - maybe three or four of them, to be honest, just to shut out any lingering memories of Mackenzie, Ransome and Hate. It was the amateurs he was most wary of. People like Hate and Edvard - and even Ransome - they knew how the game was played. Mackenzie and his crew were another matter entirely, and that meant things could go wrong, spectacularly wrong. Of course, Chib himself had been no more than peripheral. If the cops came sniffing, what was there to find? He didn’t give a toss if Mackenzie, the banker and the prof all went to jail. What skin would it be off his nose? Then again, it would be a blow, no doubt about it, if Westie went with them …
With these thoughts running through his head, he couldn’t be anything but surprised to walk into the living room, flick on the lights, and see that someone was waiting for him there - though not exactly of his own accord. The man was bruised and battered, bound and gagged. He was seated on one of Chib’s dining chairs. It had been dragged away from the table and placed in such a way that it would be the first thing Chib saw when he walked through the door. The man’s eyes seemed to be pleading, even though one of them was swollen shut and the other reduced to little more than a slit. There was a crust of blood below the nose, others either side of his mouth and trailing down into the top of his stained shirt from his left ear. Sweat was drying in what hair he had left to him, and his shirt and trousers were torn.
‘This is Mr Allison,’ Hate said, emerging from the kitchen. He was eating a banana from the fruit bowl.
‘I know.’
‘Of course you do. You worked him over first time round, didn’t you?’
Chib stabbed a finger in Hate’s direction. ‘Nobody,’ he said quietly, ‘does this to me. Nobody comes into my house, making all sorts of mess …’
‘I don’t think we’ve made a mess,’ Hate replied calmly. He then dropped the banana skin on the floor and ground it into the carpet - Liz’s carpet - with the heel of a black cowboy boot.
‘You’re tangling with the wrong man,’ Chib warned him, breathing hard, stoking himself up. Hate ignored him, concentrating instead on Jimmy Allison. The man flinched as Hate’s hands reached towards him, but all Hate did was peel the length of silver tape from his mouth.
‘You know the rules, Mr Allison,’ Hate reminded him. Then he turned his attention to Chib, while resting the palm of his hand against the crown of Allison’s head.
‘Mr Allison here, as I’m sure you’re aware, is a curator at the National Gallery of Scotland. His expertise is in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Scottish art. He has a soft spot for McTaggart, so he tells me, and also Samuel Bough.’ Hate bent down a little so his face was level with the curator’s. ‘Is my pronunciation adequate, Mr Allison?’
With eyes screwed shut in fear, Allison nodded his agreement that it was.
‘It is perhaps an irony,’ Hate continued, straightening up again, ‘that Mr Allison should suffer such similar mishaps in so short a space of time. The perils of the World Wide Web, I’m afraid. His name materialized as someone in the area who might be able to tell me a little more about the painter Samuel Utterson. Our conversation - when we finally got round to it - was illuminating. So much so, that I decided Mr Allison should inspect
Dusk on Rannoch Moor
.’
Chib closed his own eyes for a moment. He knew what that meant - it meant the curator now knew too much. No way Hate was going to let the poor old bastard walk away from this. He started thinking of possible burial sites, and watched as Hate bent down beside Allison again, removing his hand from the man’s head and running it down his face until it held him by the chin.
‘Now,’ Hate was crooning to his hostage, ‘why don’t you go ahead and share your conclusions with Mr Calloway here? Tell him what you told me, Mr Allison.’
Allison swallowed hard, as if trying to summon some saliva into his parched mouth. And when his lips parted, in the seconds before he started to speak, Chib realized pretty much exactly what the terrified man was going to say …
31
Mike had been dreaming about trouble at sea. For some reason, he had dismissed his crew and set sail alone on a long voyage, only to find himself unable to steer the craft. There were too many buttons and switches and levers. The maps made little sense, though he had marked his destination - Sydney - with a large X. Before long, he had found himself in the middle of a storm and taking on water. The spray stung his face, and he realized he was soaked to the skin. He awoke to find that his face really was wet. Someone was standing over him, holding an empty glass. He sat bolt upright and wiped at his eyes with one hand as he reached with the other for the light switch. When the bedside lamp came on, he saw that it was Chib Calloway holding the glass. Behind him stood two more men, one of whom seemed to be at the mercy of the other.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ Mike spluttered, blinking. ‘How did you get in here?’
‘My friend Hate seems to have a way with locks,’ Chib explained. ‘Don’t go thinking you’re the only one it’s happened to. Now get yourself dressed.’
Still disorientated, his mind a jumble of questions, Mike swung his legs from under the duvet but didn’t rise to his feet.
‘A little bit of privacy?’ he requested, but Chib shook his head slowly, then startled Mike further by dropping to all fours. Tutting, Chib reached beneath the bed and slid out the four paintings.
‘Still haven’t learned, have you? I half expected to find them behind the sofa. Christ, we could have been in and out of here with them while you were fast asleep.’ Chib rose to his feet again and tossed Mike’s trousers to him. ‘No time for modesty, Michael,’ he warned him.
With a sigh, Mike got into his denims, then reached for the T-SHIRT draped over the back of his chair. ‘What’s this all about?’ he asked, pulling it over his head.
‘Know who this is?’ Chib asked. Mike didn’t think he meant Hate, though he’d recognized him almost immediately. As for the man Hate was holding upright, the man with the pulverized face and blood-soaked shirt, well, Mike had been trying not to look at him at all. He sat back down on the bed and slipped his feet into his shoes.
‘Not a clue,’ he said, lifting his watch from the bedside table.
‘That’s nice,’ Hate said, meaning the watch. ‘Cartier - the Santos 100.’ Even Chib turned to stare at him. ‘I’ve got one at home,’ Hate explained. Then, to Mike: ‘I looked you up on the web, Mr Mackenzie. You’re a wealthy man. That’s lucky … means we can work something out, perhaps.’
‘First things first, eh?’ Chib reminded him. Then, turning to Mike: ‘I was asking if you knew Hate’s friend there … His name’s Jimmy Allison - ring any bells?’
Mike’s eyes widened. ‘The specialist?’
‘And now the recipient of
two
beatings, which I think you’ll agree is a mite unfair.’ Chib paused for effect. ‘Especially when nobody’s laid a hand on
you
. Now get into that fucking living room. We’re going to have words, you and me.’ He scooped up all four paintings and marched towards the door. Hate waited for Mike to follow, then brought up the rear with Mr Allison. Mike was still avoiding eye contact. The mugging might have been Gissing’s idea, but he’d gone along with it. In fact, he’d told the professor it was ‘genius’. Hard now to justify his elation - consequences had been missing almost entirely from the plot. And what the hell was Hate doing with Allison anyway? Mike didn’t doubt that the answers were waiting for him in the living room, but feared what else might be there.
Hate dumped the curator on one of the chairs. The man’s hands were tied behind him, his mouth covered with tape. Mike thought about pouring himself a drink, but wasn’t sure his hand would be steady enough. Besides which, the parched-looking Allison might see it as yet another small torture.
‘See this?’ Chib was saying. He’d placed the paintings on the coffee table and was pointing towards the sofa. There was another picture displayed there.
‘It’s your Utterson,’ Mike told him. ‘
Dusk on Rannoch Moor
.’
‘That’s right. And what did I do with it?’
‘You gave it to Hate.’ Mike had no idea where the conversation was going.
‘And what did Hate do?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, have a think about it, shit-for-brains!’
But Hate had noticed the home cinema system. ‘Pioneer,’ he commented. ‘Good make.’
‘Jesus, will you shut up?’ Chib yelled at him.
Mike wondered which was preferable: that the soundproofing stop his neighbours downstairs hearing any of this, or that they decide to call the police to say that something bad was happening in the penthouse. Chib had turned towards him again.
‘Come to any conclusions yet?’
Mike rubbed at his eyes again and slicked back his hair. ‘At a guess, Hate decided he would verify the painting - despite my warnings. He went to Mr Allison here, who is an authority on the artist, and somehow Mr Allison had an accident and you came to me for help instead of heading for A and E.’ Mike held Chib’s stare for a full twenty seconds. With a growl, the gangster fetched the Utterson from the sofa and held it four inches from Mike’s face.
‘I’m not exactly the expert here,’ he snarled, ‘so maybe you’ll know better. When exactly was this painted?’
‘Early twentieth century …’
‘Is that so? Well, maybe you’re right. Take a closer look. In particular, tell me what’s going on in the bottom left-hand corner.’
Mike didn’t know what to expect. The artist’s signature, most probably. He saw heather and long blades of grass and a bit more heather.
‘Right at the very corner,’ Chib suggested. And then Mike did see it, and he screwed shut his eyes. ‘Well?’ the gangster prompted him.
‘Looks like there’s something lying in the grass, half-hidden,’ Mike muttered.
‘And what does it look like to you, Mike?’
‘A condom … a used condom.’
‘And can you enlighten us all - why exactly would a painter of Samuel Utterson’s reputation have felt the need to add that particular touch?’
Mike opened his eyes again. ‘It’s Westie,’ he stated. ‘It’s a sort of calling card of his. He copies famous paintings, then adds an anachronism, like an airliner or a mobile phone …’
‘Or a condom,’ Chib added. Mike nodded his agreement. ‘See, Mike, what I can’t understand here, what I’m really failing to get my head around, is why you would do this to me. You really thought I was so stupid I wouldn’t notice?’
‘In actual fact,’ Hate interrupted, ‘
you
did not notice.’
‘This is me talking here!’ Chib yelled at him again.
‘I don’t know anything about this,’ Mike said. ‘Really I don’t.’
Chib burst out laughing. ‘You can do better than that, Mike!’
‘I promise you I can’t, because it happens to be the truth.’
‘Well, we’ll just go and ask Westie then, see what he has to say about it during his last few minutes of life. But before we do that, there’s the small matter of my fee. What I’d like from you, Mr Michael Mackenzie, software millionaire, is one hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds - payable in cash. That way, Hate here can return home, job done. The amount of grief you and your lot have caused me, I should be asking for more, but let’s open proceedings at one seventy-five …’