Resurrection Men (2002) (42 page)

“Nor would he be the first to die for his efforts.” Siobhan pressed the tips of her fingers together. “He was thinking of leaving the country anyway, so decided he might as well try an extra squeeze on whoever it was he’d blackmailed. They didn’t like that, so they had him killed, taking the painting because they knew he’d bought it with money taken from them.”

“But the painting didn’t mean anything to them other than that,” Rebus added. “Stealing it was a gesture — and a pretty rash one. So when Neilson started to look good as a suspect, the killer decided it could be the final nail in his coffin.”

“Something the Procurator Fiscal said,” Siobhan mused. “The money Marber had paid Neilson . . . no one knew about it but us.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning the only people who knew how firmly Neilson was fitting the picture . . .”

“Were cops?” Rebus guessed, watching her nod.

“But we still don’t know who it was Marber was blackmailing,” she said.

Rebus shrugged. “I’m not so sure he’d blackmailed anyone . . . not the first time round.”

“Explain.” She narrowed her eyes. But Rebus shook his head.

“Not yet. Let’s keep digging . . .”

When Siobhan took a break to fetch more coffees, she returned with news.

“Have you heard the rumor?”

“Is it about me?” Rebus guessed.

“For once, no.” She put their cups down. “Moves afoot at the Big House.”

“Do tell.”

“Word is, Carswell’s moving on.”

“Really?”

“And there’s some shake-up at the SDEA.”

Rebus whistled, but his act was failing to convince her. “You already knew,” she stated.

“Says who?”

“Come on, John . . .”

“Siobhan, cross my heart, I didn’t know a thing about it.”

She stared at him. “Linford’s looking boot-faced. I think he’d gotten used to Carswell’s protection.”

“It’s a cold world at the Big House if no one’s looking out for you,” Rebus agreed.

They pondered this for a moment, then broke into smiles.

“Couldn’t happen to a more deserving bloke,” Rebus said. “Now let’s get back to the
real
work . . .”

They decided some foot slogging was necessary, so left the station — bundling the folder and all their notes into the shoulder bag again — and made for the self-storage facility, where the owner wasn’t able to add much. Marber had arranged for a standing order to pay for the unit. He hadn’t said why he might need it. Back at Marber’s gallery, they found his secretary trying to clear out the office. She was on a retainer from the estate until the work was complete, and didn’t seem in a hurry to hit the dole queue.

Her name was Jan Meikle. She was in her early forties, with tied-back hair and thick oval glasses, her frame seeming needle-thin amidst the haystack of boxes, papers and artifacts in the overheated room. The gallery itself was empty, the walls denuded of the pictures which had given it its personality. Rebus asked where they were.

“Gone to auction,” Jan Meikle replied. “All monies to accrue to the estate.” It sounded like the line she’d been given by Marber’s solicitor.

“Were Mr. Marber’s affairs in order at the time of his death?” Rebus asked. He was standing with Siobhan in the doorway, there being no floor space worth mentioning inside the room itself, apart from two small patches which were currently being occupied by Miss Meikle’s sandaled feet.

“As much as could have been expected,” she replied automatically. It wasn’t the first time a police detective had asked the question.

“You didn’t get the sense that the business was winding down in any way?” Rebus pressed.

She shook her head, but didn’t look at him.

“Sure about that, Miss Meikle?”

She mumbled something neither of them caught.

“Sorry?” Siobhan said.

“Eddie was always getting ideas into his head,” the secretary repeated.

“He told you he was selling up, didn’t he?” Rebus asked.

She shook her head again, defiantly this time. “Not selling up, no.”

“Taking time off then?”

This time she nodded. “His place in Tuscany . . .”

“Did he mention anyone he might have been taking with him?”

She looked up, working hard to keep the tears from flowing. “Why must you
persist
in this?”

“It’s our job,” Siobhan stated. “You know Malcolm Neilson’s in custody, charged with Mr. Marber’s murder?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think he did it?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“You want it to be him because it brings all this to an end,” Siobhan said quietly. “But wouldn’t it be better to get the person who was really responsible?”

Meikle blinked at her. “Not Malcolm Neilson?”

“We don’t think so,” Rebus said. “Did you know about Laura Stafford, Miss Meikle?”

“Yes.”

“And you knew she was a prostitute?”

The woman nodded, unwilling to speak.

“Did Eddie say he was going to go to Tuscany with Laura Stafford?”

Another nod.

“Do you know if he’d actually asked her?”

“As I say, Eddie was always getting ideas . . . This wasn’t the first time he’d spoken of it.” She paused. “And
she
was by no means the first woman he’d spoken of taking with him on one of his jaunts.”

From her tone, Rebus guessed that maybe Miss Meikle had at one time thought herself one of those candidates.

“Could he have meant it this time?” he asked quietly. “He was putting his paintings into mothballs. He’d rented a storage unit . . .”

“He’d done that before, too,” she snapped.

Rebus thought for a moment. “The Vettriano that went missing, would there be any records here about its purchase? The when and where?”

“The police took them.”

“Did they take any other records?” Rebus was looking towards two four-drawer filing cabinets in a corner of the room. “We’re interested in sales and purchases, between six and five years ago.”

“All in there,” the secretary said, nodding not in the direction of the cabinets but towards two large boxes on the floor beside the desk. “I’ve spent the last two days sorting them out. Lord knows why . . . it’ll all probably go to the dump.”

Rebus tiptoed gingerly into the room, removing the lid from one of the boxes. There were bundles of invoices and receipts, wrapped in clear plastic envelopes and elastic bands, page markers sticking out, showing relevant dates. He looked up at Miss Meikle.

“You’ve done a grand job,” he said.

An hour later, Rebus and Siobhan were seated on the floor of the gallery, the paperwork spread out and divided between them. A few curious passersby had stopped to watch, perhaps thinking themselves spectators at some new style of art installation. Even when Siobhan had raised two fingers at a studenty couple, they’d just smiled, as if in appreciation that this, too, must be part of the performance. Rebus had his legs stretched out, ankles crossed, back resting against the wall. Siobhan sat with her legs folded beneath her, until pins and needles set her hopping across the whitewashed wooden floor. Silently, Rebus was blessing Miss Meikle. Without her organizational skills, their task might have taken days.

“Mr. Montrose seems to have been a good customer,” Rebus said, watching Siobhan rubbing the circulation back into her foot.

“No shortage of those,” she said. “I didn’t realize people in Edinburgh had so much money to burn.”

“They’re not burning it, Siobhan, they’re investing it. Much nicer to hang your cash on the drawing room wall than have it molder in a bank vault.”

“You’ve convinced me. I’m closing my savings account and buying an Elizabeth Blackadder.”

“I didn’t know you had that much tucked away . . .”

She flopped down beside him so she could study Mr. Montrose’s purchases. “Wasn’t there a Montrose at the opening?”

“Was there?”

She reached over for her shoulder bag and produced the Marber folder, busying herself flipping through its many sections. Rebus called through to Miss Meikle, who appeared in the doorway.

“I was thinking of heading home soon,” she warned him.

“All right if we take this lot with us?” Rebus indicated the sprawl of paperwork. The secretary looked disappointed at what had become of her careful filing. “Don’t worry,” Rebus assured her, “we’ll put it all back together again.” He paused. “It’s either that or leave it lying here till we can come back . . .”

This was the clincher. Miss Meikle nodded her agreement, and made to turn back into the office.

“Just one thing,” Rebus called out. “Mr. Montrose: how well do you know him?”

“Not at all.”

Rebus frowned. “Wasn’t he at the preview?”

“If he was, we weren’t introduced.”

“Buys a lot of paintings, though . . . Or he did four, five years ago.”

“Yes, he was a good client. Eddie was sorry to lose him.”

“How did that happen?”

She shrugged, came towards him and dropped to a crouch. “The numbers on these page markers refer to other transactions.” She started sifting through the paperwork, plucking out this sheet and that.

“List of people at the party,” Siobhan said, brandishing a sheet of her own. “We were dealing with signatures, remember, some more legible than others. One particularly nasty squiggle is down here as possibly Marlowe, Matthews or Montrose. I remember Grant Hood showing it to me.” She handed him a photocopy of the relevant page in the gallery’s visitors’ book. No first name, unless the squiggle
was
a first name. No address in the space left for one.

“Miss Meikle says Montrose stopped being a client of Mr. Marber’s.” He handed back the photocopy, which Siobhan now studied. “Would he turn up at a preview?”

“He didn’t get an invite,” the secretary stated. “I never knew his address. Eddie always dealt with him direct.”

“Was that unusual?”

“A little. Some clients didn’t want to be identified. Famous people, or the aristocracy, wanting a valuation and not wishing anyone to know they were needing to sell . . .” She drew out another sheet of paper, checked its page marker, then started looking again.

“Makes sense,” Siobhan was saying. “We had Montrose down as being Cafferty. I can’t imagine him courting publicity.”

“You think it was Cafferty?” Rebus didn’t sound so sure.

“Here we are,” Miss Meikle said, sounding proud that her system had already proved its usefulness.

Montrose — whoever he was — had purchased in bulk to start with. A quarter of a million pounds’ worth of paintings in a matter of a few months. In the years that followed, there were a few sales, a few more purchases. The sales were always at a profit. Although Montrose’s name appeared on the sales slips and buyers’ notes, his address was given as c/o Marber Galleries.

“All these years, and you never met him?” Rebus asked. Meikle shook her head. “You must have spoken to him on the phone?”

“Yes, but only to pass him over to Eddie.”

“How did he sound?”

“Curt, I’d say. A man of few words.”

“Scottish?”

“Yes.”

“Upper class?”

She thought about this. “No,” she said, drawing out the single syllable. “Not that I’m one to prejudge people . . .” Her own cadences were Edinburgh private school. She spoke as though dictating each utterance to some slow-witted foreigner.

“When Montrose bought a painting, it must have gone to some delivery address,” Rebus guessed.

“I think they always came here. I could certainly check . . .”

Rebus shook his head. “And after they arrived here, what then?”

“I really can’t say.”

He looked at her. “Can’t or won’t?”

“Can’t,” she said, sounding peeved at his insinuation.

“Could Mr. Marber have kept them?”

She shrugged.

“You’re saying this Montrose character never actually kept any of his own paintings?” Siobhan sounded skeptical.

“Maybe, maybe not. Say he’d no interest in them, except as an investment.”

“He could still put them on his walls.”

“Not if people might suspect.”

“Suspect what?”

Rebus glanced towards Miss Meikle, letting Siobhan know this was a discussion they should carry on in private. The secretary was twisting her watchband, anxious to close up for the night.

“One last question,” Rebus told her. “What happened to Mr. Montrose?”

She showed him the final sheet of transactions. “He sold everything.”

Rebus looked down the list of paintings and prices fetched. Montrose had walked away with a third of a million, less commission.

“Did Mr. Marber put everything through the books?” Siobhan asked.

Meikle suddenly looked furious. “Of course!” she snapped.

“In which case, Inland Revenue will have been notified?”

Rebus saw her point. “I don’t suppose they’ve had any more luck tracking Mr. Montrose down than we have. And if they haven’t started looking by now, I think they’re whistling ‘Dixie.’ ”

“Because Montrose no longer exists?” Siobhan guessed.

Rebus nodded. “Know the best way to make someone disappear, Siobhan?”

She thought for a moment, then shrugged.

“If they’ve never been there in the first place,” Rebus told her, beginning to gather up the papers.

They stopped for a Chinese take-away and, already being on Siobhan’s side of town, went to her flat.

“I’m warning you,” she said, “it’ll look like a bomb’s hit it.”

And it did. Rebus could see how she’d spent her weekend: video rentals, a pizza box, crisp bags and chocolate wrappers, and a selection of CDs. As she went to fetch plates from the kitchen, he asked if he could put some music on.

“Be my guest.”

He perused the rack of titles, most of the names meaning nothing to him. “Massive Attack,” he called to her, opening the lid. “They any good?”

“Maybe not for our purposes. Try the Cocteau Twins.”

There were four to choose from. He opened one, dropped the CD onto the tray of the player, pressed the
LOAD
button. He was opening more of the cases when she came back through carrying a tray.

“You put your CDs back the right way up,” he commented.

“You’re not the first to notice. I should also tell you that I line up the tins in my cupboards with the labels facing out.”