A Good Hanging - Rankin: Short 01

by Ian Rankin

Gratefully, Holmes squeezed his way out of the scrum and came towards Rebus.

  ‘You’ve got thirty seconds to fill me in,’ Rebus said.

  Holmes took a couple of deep breaths. ‘A sculpture in bronze, male figure. It was sitting in the middle of one of the rooms. Preview opens. Somebody starts yelling that it’s disappeared. The artist goes up the wall. She won’t let anybody in or out, because if somebody’s nicked it, that somebody’s still in the gallery.’

  ‘And that’s the state of play? Nobody in or out since it went missing?’

  Holmes nodded. ‘Of course, as I tried telling her, they could have high-tailed it before she barricaded everyone else in.’ Holmes was looking at the man who had come to stand beside Rebus. ‘Can we help you, sir?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Rebus. ‘You haven’t been introduced. This is ...’ But no, he still couldn’t make himself say the name. Instead, he nodded towards Holmes. ‘This is Detective Constable Holmes.’ Then, as Cluzeau shook hands with Holmes: ‘The inspector here has come over from France to see how we do things in Edinburgh.’ Rebus turned to Cluzeau. ‘Did you catch what Brian was saying? Only I know his accent’s a bit thick.’

  ‘I understood perfectly.’ He turned to Holmes. ‘Inspector Rebus forgot to say, but my name is Cluzeau.’ Somehow it didn’t sound so funny when spoken by a native. ‘How big is the statue? Do we know what it looks like?’

  ‘There’s a picture of it in the catalogue.’ Holmes took the small glossy booklet from his pocket and handed it to Cluzeau. ‘That’s it at the top of the page.’

  While Cluzeau studied this, Holmes caught Rebus’s eye, then nodded down to the Frenchman’s pouch.

  ‘Nice handbag.’

  Rebus gave him a warning look, then glanced at the catalogue. His eyes opened wide. ‘Good Christ!’

  Cluzeau read from the catalogue. ‘“Monstrous Trumpet. Bronze and multi-media. Sixteen -” what do these marks mean?’

  ‘Inches.’

  ‘Thank you. “Sixteen inches. Three thousand five hundred pounds.” C’est cher. It’s expensive.’

  ‘I’ll say,’ said Rebus. ‘You could buy a car for that.’ Well, he thought, you could certainly buy my car for that.

  ‘It is an interesting piece, don’t you think?’

  ‘Interesting?’ Rebus studied the small photograph of the statue called ‘Monstrous Trumpet’. A nude male, his face exaggeratedly spiteful, was sticking out his tongue, except that it wasn’t a tongue, it was a penis. And where that particular organ should have been, there was what looked like a piece of sticking-plaster. Because of the angle of the photo, it was just possible to discern something protruding from the statue’s backside. Rebus guessed it was meant to be a tongue.

  ‘Yes,’ said Cluzeau, ‘I should very much like to meet the artist.’

  ‘Doesn’t look as though you’ve got any choice,’ said Holmes, seeming to retreat though in fact he didn’t move. ‘Here she comes.’

  She had just come into the room, of that Rebus was certain. If she’d been there before, he’d have noticed her. And even if he hadn’t Cluzeau certainly would have. She was just over six feet tall, dressed in long flowing white skirt, black boots, puffy white blouse and a red satin waistcoat. Her eye-makeup was jet black, matching her long straight hair, and her wrists fairly jangled with bangles and bracelets. She addressed Holmes.

  ‘No sign of it. I’ve had a thorough look.’ She turned towards Rebus and Cluzeau. Holmes started making the introductions.

  ‘This is Inspector Rebus, and Inspector Cl ...’ he stumbled to a halt. Yes, thought Rebus, it’s a problem, isn’t it, Brian? But Cluzeau appeared not to have noticed. He was squeezing Serena Davies’ hand.

  ‘Pleased to meet you.’

  She looked him up and down without embarrassment, gave a cool smile, and passed to Rebus. ‘Well, thank goodness the grown-ups are here at last.’ Brian Holmes reddened furiously. ‘I hope we didn’t interrupt your lunch, Inspector. Come on, I’ll show you where the piece was.’

  And with that she turned and left. Some of the women offered either condolences over her loss, or else praise for what works remained, and Serena Davies gave a weak smile, a smile which said: I’m coping, but don’t ask me how.

  Rebus touched Holmes’ shoulder. ‘Get the names and addresses, eh, Brian?’ He made to follow the artist, but couldn’t resist a parting shot. ‘You’ve got your crayons with you, have you?’

  ‘And my marbles,’ Holmes retorted. By God, thought Rebus, he’s learning fast. But then, he had a good teacher, hadn’t he?

  ‘Magnificent creature,’ Cluzeau hissed into his ear as they passed through the room. A few of the women glanced towards the Frenchman. I’m making him look too good, Rebus thought. Pity I had to be wearing this old suit today.

  The small galleries through which they passed comprised a maze, an artful configuration of angles and doorways which made more of the space than there actually was. As to the works on display, well, Rebus couldn’t be sure, of course, but there seemed an awful lot of violence in them, violence acted out upon a particular part of the masculine anatomy. Even the Frenchman was quiet as they passed red splashes of colour, twisted statues, great dollops of paint. There was one apparent calm centre, an extremely large and detailed drawing of the vulva. Cluzeau paused for a moment.

  ‘I like this,’ he said. Rebus nodded towards a red circular sticker attached to the wall beside the portrait.

  ‘Already sold.’

  Cluzeau tapped the relevant page of the catalogue. ‘Yes, for one thousand five hundred pounds.’

  ‘In here!’ the artist’s voice commanded. ‘When you’ve stopped gawping.’ She was in the next room of the gallery, standing by the now empty pedestal. The sign beneath it showed no red blob. No sale. ‘It was right here.’ The room was about fifteen feet by ten, in the corner of the gallery: only one doorway and no windows. Rebus looked up at the ceiling, but saw only strip lighting. No trapdoors.

  ‘And there were people in here when it happened?’

  Serena Davies nodded. ‘Three or four of the guests. Ginny Elyot, Margaret Grieve, Helena Mitchison and I think Lesley Jameson.’

  ‘Jameson?’ Rebus knew two Jamesons in Edinburgh, one a doctor and the other ...

  ‘Tom Jameson’s daughter,’ the artist concluded.

  The other a newspaper editor called Tom Jameson. ‘And who was it raised the alarm?’ Rebus asked.

  ‘That was Ginny. She came out of the room shouting that the statue had vanished. We all rushed into the room. Sure enough.’ She slapped a hand down on the pedestal.

  ‘Time, then,’ Rebus mused, ‘for someone to sneak away while everyone else was occupied?’

  But the artist shook her mane of hair. ‘I’ve already told you, there’s nobody missing. Everyone who was here is here. In fact, I think there are a couple more bodies now than there were at the time.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Moira Fowler was late. As usual. She arrived a couple of minutes after I’d barred the door.’

  ‘You let her in?’

  ‘Of course. I wasn’t worried about letting people in.’

  ‘You said “a couple of bodies”?’

  ‘That’s right. Maureen Beck was in the loo. Bladder trouble, poor thing. Maybe I should have hung a couple of paintings in there.’

  Cluzeau frowned at this. Rebus decided to help him. ‘The toilets being where exactly?’

  ‘Next flight up. A complete pain really. The gallery shares them with the shop downstairs. Crammed full of cardboard boxes and knitting patterns.’

  Rebus nodded. The Frenchman coughed, preparing to speak. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you have to leave the gallery actually to use the ... loo?’

  Serena Davies nodded. ‘You’re French,’ she stated. Cluzeau gave a little bow. ‘I should have guessed from the pochette. You’d never find a Scotsman carrying one of those.’

  Cluzeau seemed prepared for this point. ‘But the sporran serves the same purpose.’

&nbs
p; ‘I suppose it does,’ the artist admitted, ‘but its primary function is as a signifier.’ She looked to both men. Both men looked puzzled. ‘It’s hairy and it hangs around your groin,’ she explained.

  Rebus stayed silent, but pursed his lips. Cluzeau nodded to himself, frowning.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Rebus, ‘you could explain your exhibition to us, Ms Davies?’

  ‘Well, it’s a comment on Knox of course.’

  ‘Knocks?’ asked Cluzeau.

  ‘John Knox,’ Rebus explained. ‘We passed by his old house a little way back.’

  ‘John Knox,’ she went on, principally for the Frenchman’s benefit, but perhaps too, she thought, for that of the Scotsman, ‘was a Scottish preacher, a follower of Calvin. He was also a misogynist, hence the title of one of his works — The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women.’

  ‘He didn’t mean all women,’ Rebus felt obliged to add. Serena Davies straightened her spine like a snake rising up before its kill.

  ‘But he did,’ she said, ‘by association. And, also by association, these works are a comment on all Scotsmen. And all men.’

  Cluzeau could feel an argument beginning. Arguments, to his knowledge, were always counter-productive even when enjoyable. ‘I think I see,’ he said. ‘And your exhibition responds to this man’s work. Yes.’ He tapped the catalogue. “Monstrous Trumpet” is a pun then?’

  Serena Davies shrugged, but seemed pacified. ‘You could call it that. I’m saying that Knox talked with one part of his anatomy — not his brain.’

  ‘And,’ added Rebus, ‘that at the same time he talked out of his arse?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  Cluzeau was chuckling. He was still chuckling when he asked: ‘And who could have reason for stealing your work?’

  The mane rippled again. ‘I’ve absolutely no idea.’

  ‘But you suspect one of your guests,’ Cluzeau continued. ‘Of course you do: you have already stated that there was no one else here. You were among friends, yet one of them is the Janus figure, yes?’

  She nodded slowly. ‘Much as I hate to admit it.’

  Rebus had taken the catalogue from Cluzeau and seemed to be studying it. But he’d listened to every word. He tapped the missing statue’s photo.

  ‘Do you work from life?’

  ‘Mostly, yes, but not for “Monstrous Trumpet”.’

  ‘It’s a sort of ... ideal figure then?’

  She smiled at this. ‘Hardly ideal, Inspector. But in that it comes from up here -’ she tapped her head, ‘from an idea rather than from life, yes, I suppose it is.’

  ‘Does that go for the face, too?’ Rebus persisted. ‘It seems so lifelike.’

  She accepted the compliment, studying the photo with him. ‘It’s not any one man’s face,’ she said. ‘At most it’s a composite of men I know.’ Then she shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

  Rebus handed the catalogue to Cluzeau. ‘Did you search anyone?’ he asked the artist.

  ‘I asked them to open their bags. Not very subtle of me, but I was - am — distraught.’

  ‘And did they?’

  ‘Oh yes. Pointless really, there were only two or three bags big enough to hide the statue in.’

  ‘But they were empty?’

  She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose between two fingers. The bracelets were shunted from wrist to elbow. ‘Utterly empty,’ she said. ‘Just as I feel.’

  ‘Was the piece insured?’

  She shook her head again, her forehead lowered. A portrait of dejection, Rebus thought. Lifelike, yet not quite real. He noticed too that, now her eyes were averted, the Frenchman was appraising her. He caught Rebus watching him and raised his eyebrows, then shrugged, then made a gesture with his hands. Yes, thought Rebus, I know what you mean. Only don’t let her catch you thinking what I know you’re thinking.

  And, he supposed, what he was thinking too.

  ‘I think we’d better go through,’ he said. ‘The other women will be getting impatient.’

  ‘Let them!’ she cried.

  ‘Actually,’ said Rebus, ‘perhaps you could go ahead of us? Warn them that we may be keeping them a bit longer than we thought.’

  She brightened at the news, then sneered. ‘You mean you want me to do your dirty work for you?’

  Rebus shrugged innocently. ‘I just wanted a moment to discuss the case with my colleague.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. Then nodded: ‘Yes, of course. Discuss away. I’ll tell them they’ve to stay put.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Rebus, but she’d already left the room.

  Cluzeau whistled silently. ‘What a creature!’

  It was meant as praise, of course, and Rebus nodded assent. ‘So what do you think?’

  ‘Think?’

  ‘About the theft.’

  ‘Ah.’ Cluzeau scraped at his chin with his fingers. ‘A crime of passion,’ he said at last and with confidence.

  ‘How do you work that out?’

  Cluzeau gave another of his shrugs. ‘The process of elimination. We eliminate money: there are more expensive pieces here and besides, a common thief would burgle the premises when they were empty, no?’

  Rebus nodded, enjoying this, so like his own train of thought was it. ‘Go on.’

  ‘I do not think this piece is so precious that a collector would have it stolen. It is not insured, so there is no reason for the artist herself to have it stolen. It seems logical that someone invited to the exhibition stole it. So we come to the figure of the Janus. Someone the artist herself knows. Why should such a person - a supposed friend - steal this work?’ He paused before answering his own question. ‘Jealousy. Revenge, et voilà, the crime of passion.’

  Rebus applauded silently. ‘Bravo. But there are thirty-odd suspects out there and no sign of the statue.’

  ‘Ah, I did not say I could solve the crime; all I offer is the “why”.’

  ‘Then follow me,’ Rebus said, ‘and we’ll encounter the “who” and the “how” together.’

  In the main gallery, Serena Davies was in furious conversation with one knot of women. Brian Holmes was trying to take names and addresses from another group. A third group stood, bored and disconsolate, by the drinks table, and a fourth group stood beside a bright red gash of a painting, glancing at it from time to time and talking among themselves.

  Most of the women in the room either carried clutch-purses tucked safely under their arms, or else let neat shoulder-bags swing effortlessly by their sides. But there were a few larger bags and these had been left in a group of their own between the drinks table and another smaller table on which sat a small pile of catalogues and a visitors’ book. Rebus walked across to this spot and studied the bags. There was one large straw shopping-bag, apparently containing only a cashmere cardigan and a folded copy of the Guardian. There was one department store plastic carrier-bag, containing an umbrella, a bunch of bananas, a fat paperback and a copy of the Guardian. There was one canvas shopping-bag, containing an empty crisp packet, a copy of the Scotsman and a copy of the Guardian.

  All this Rebus could see just by standing over the bags. He reached down and picked up the carrier-bag.

  ‘Can I ask whose bag this is?’ he said loudly.

  ‘It’s mine.’

  A young woman stepped forward from the drinks table, starting to blush furiously.

  ‘Follow me, please,’ said Rebus, walking off to the next room along. Cluzeau followed and so, seconds later, did the owner of the bag, her eyes terrified.

  ‘Just a couple of questions, that’s all,’ Rebus said, trying to put her at ease. The main gallery was hushed; he knew people would be straining to hear the conversation. Brian Holmes was repeating an address to himself as he jotted it down.

  Rebus felt a little bit like an executioner, walking up to the bags, picking them up in turn and wandering off with the owner towards the awaiting guillotine. The owner of the carrier-bag was Trish Poole, wife of a psychology lecturer at
the university. Rebus had met Dr Poole before, and told her so, trying to help her relax a little. It turned out that a lot of the women present today were either academics in their own right, or else were the wives of academics. This latter group included not only Trish Poole, but also Rebecca Eiser, wife of the distinguished Professor of English Literature. Listening to Trish Poole tell him this, Rebus shivered and could feel his face turn pale. But that had been a long time ago.

  After Trish Poole had returned for a whispered confab with her group, Rebus tried the canvas bag. This belonged to Margaret Grieve, a writer and, as she said herself, ‘one of Serena’s closest friends’. Rebus didn’t doubt this, and asked if she was married. No, she was not, but she did have a ‘significant other’. She smiled broadly as she said this. Rebus smiled back. She’d been in the room with the statue when it was noticed to be missing? Yes, she had. Not that she’d seen anything. She’d been intent on the paintings. So much so that she couldn’t be sure whether the statue had been in the room when she’d entered, or whether it had already gone. She thought perhaps it had already gone.

  Dismissed by Rebus, she returned to her group in front of the red gash and they too began whispering. An elegant older woman came forward from the same group.

  ‘The last bag is mine,’ she said haughtily, her vowels pure Morningside. Perhaps she’d been Jean Brodie’s elocution mistress; but no, she wasn’t even quite Maggie Smith’s age, though to Rebus there were similarities enough between the two women.

  Cluzeau seemed quietly cowed by this grand example of Scottish womanhood. He stood at a distance, giving her vowels the necessary room in which to perform. And, Rebus noticed, he clutched his pouch close to his groin, as though it were a lucky charm. Maybe that’s what sporrans were?

  ‘I’m Maureen Beck,’ she informed them loudly. There would be no hiding this conversation from the waggling ears.

  Maureen Beck told Rebus that she was married to the architect Robert Beck and seemed surprised when this name meant nothing to the policeman. She decided then that she disliked Rebus and turned to Cluzeau, answering to his smiling countenance every time Rebus asked her a question. She was in the loo at the time, yes, and returned to pandemonium. She’d only been out of the room a couple of minutes, and hadn’t seen anyone ...