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.