Ian Rankin art-heist tale 'sparked National Galleries lockdown'

IT's a mystery worth of Inspector Rebus. Did Ian Rankin's 2008 art heist tale, Doors Open, cause the doors to close at the National Galleries of Scotland's Granton centre?

Ian Rankin wrote of an art depot heist Picture: Jane Barlow

The Granton Centre for Art opened in late 2002 at a cost of 2 million. It was billed as a state-of-the-art facility that stored artworks for the National Galleries of Scotland but also offered access to researchers and public tours.

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In Doors Open, however, Rankin used the location as the target of a gang of robbers and forgers up to dirty tricks with the national art collection. With an inside accomplice, they use a visit on Edinburgh's "Doors Open" day, when notable buildings across the city open for behind-the-scenes tours, to overpower guards and cut off the CCTV system before raiding the vaults.

The novel led to a security review at the site, The Scotsman has confirmed. Weekly public tours there are still "suspended" and it has not been included in "Doors Open" day since.

The galleries say there are several other reasons for the closure, but Rankin's best-seller remains a prime suspect. It caused "consternation" among security staff after its world-wide publication, one insider said.

In an e-mail, the author wrote this week: "I heard on good authority that the galleries were 'slightly worried' because they could see how my heist might actually work. This may have left them scared of possible copycats. It is true Granton was not included in Doors Open Day after the book was published, but that may be coincidence."

The Granton Centre for Art is Scotland's first purpose-built art store, with 1,300sq-m of secure and climate-controlled storage space for paintings, drawings and sculptures. But with institutions under constant pressure to show they offer wide access to the public, the galleries stressed after its opening that the building, holding artworks that were not on exhibition, was open to both specialist art researchers and group tours.

"Guided tours offer the opportunity to discover how a state-of-the-art picture and sculpture store actually works," says the galleries website. It adds below: "Please note the guided tours have been temporarily suspended until further notice."

In Doors Open, it is DI Ransome who investigates the Granton theft. "The gang knew the building's layout, knew how many guards there would be and where they'd be posted. The CCTV cameras had been shut down, only certain vaults singled out. It all smacked of an inside job," he thinks.

For Doors Open day in Edinburgh this year, the nearby National Museums of Scotland Collection Centre at Granton was still open to public tours - but not the galleries centre.Staff stress it is still open to individual researchers.

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The official explanation for the closure of the Granton depot to tours is that the place became filled with major artworks from the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, which closed for its 17m overhaul in early 2009.

Another factor, staff said, was that only a handful of people a year actually turned up for tours.

SKETCHING OUT A CRIME?

In Doors Open, a bored Edinburgh software mogul joins forces with an esteemed art professor and a local gangster to "liberate" artworks at the "waterfront warehouse where the National Gallery stored its overflow", replacing them with forgeries.

"The warehouse was in Granton, an area of Scottish capital that had yet to succumb to gentrification," Ian Rankin writes. On Doors Open day, the men watch and time the tours, then join a group under false names. With a sawn-off shotgun, they bundle one guard into a gatehouse, park their van in a loading bay, hold up two more guards seated at a bank of CCTV screens, and head for vaults stuffed with framed canvases and boxed and swaddled artefacts.