2007 - The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam

by Chris Ewan

  “Riker? As in ‘striker’?”

  “Almost. There’s a ‘j’ in there too. Silent, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  I paused and thought about what Rutherford had told me for a moment. As a burglar myself, there was a fair amount I didn’t buy to begin with, but even then, some of the facts simply didn’t gel.

  “So why did he flee, I wonder?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “If he never saw a guard, as he claimed, why did he leave without the diamonds?”

  “Ah, well that’s the point, isn’t it?” Rutherford said, leaning back in his chair and opening his arms in an expansive gesture, as if he was willing to give the entire cafe a hug. “One would assume that if the American never saw the guard, he got away with all the jewels he could care for.”

  “Yes, I suppose one would. But I take it the jury saw it otherwise.”

  “Well, yes. He put himself at the scene, after all, gave himself motive, had no credible alibi.”

  I sighed and put my face in my hands. “It’s all pretty confusing Rutherford.”

  “Well, it was only one newspaper article. We could go back and find more. Only,” he said, wincing a little, “I really do have to get back to the office this afternoon.”

  “That’s okay,” I said, peering out from behind splayed fingers. “I’m not sure it would help a great deal anyway. The trial report must have contained most of the information on the case.”

  “You’re probably right. But there is one more thing I haven’t told you yet.”

  I lowered my hands. “Oh?”

  “The police officer who arrested the American. Guess who?”

  “Not Burggrave?”

  Rutherford nodded, a playful grin spreading across his face. “Oh yes,” he said, rising from his chair. “Your favourite Dutchman.”

  SIXTEEN

  What does that mean?” Victoria asked me, when I telephoned her later. “This Burggrave being the arresting officer?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “Probably just a coincidence.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  “Don’t I?”

  “No. The lead character never does. He tells everyone it’s just a coincidence but really he thinks it means something. And that’s how he solves the case.”

  “Well, not this time,” I said, smiling. “This Burggrave is a good officer. I might not like the man a great deal, but he knows what he’s doing. And it’s not so unusual that he arrested Michael back then. Somebody had to.”

  “And that somebody just happens to be investigating his murder too?”

  “Well, try it this way: say he took the murder assignment because of his history with Michael. Or maybe he was put on the case because of it. That’s very possible. It’s not as if his bosses wouldn’t know about the connection.”

  “I suppose. But still.”

  “But still.” I glanced out of my window, above the uppermost branches of the tree outside my building to the low, grey clouds that had begun to form, pregnant with rain. “You know,” I said, in an offhand way, “I’m beginning to think you read too much crime fiction.”

  “Well, duh. It is my job.”

  “Sometimes I worry it’s a bit more than that though.” I craned my neck and looked to the west, where the blue sky of earlier in the day was drifting away. “Tell me, when was the last time you went on a date?”

  “You mean a real one? Not imaginary?”

  “Seriously.”

  “Last night, as it happens.”

  I whipped my head back around. “Oh.”

  “But you needn’t worry. It was a complete disaster. He was the brother of one of my friends.”

  “Compromising?” I asked, dropping into my desk chair.

  “Potentially. But that wasn’t the problem. He had false teeth.”

  “Really? How old was this guy?”

  “Thirty-two,” she said, primly. “Same as me.”

  “And he had false teeth?”

  “Almost a complete set. He even took them out and showed me them.”

  “Am I that out of touch? I didn’t realise poor dental hygiene was such an aphrodisiac these days.”

  “Ha ha. I actually felt quite sorry for him. It was an accident, the poor sod. He works back-stage at one of the theatre companies, you see, and a winch he was using hadn’t been tied back properly and, well, it swung down and caught him square in the face.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yes, ouch.”

  “And then you compounded things by freaking out about it,” I said, laughing.

  “They were yellow, though! Not canary yellow, but still, you could tell. And I couldn’t stop looking. So he took them out, to put my mind at rest.”

  “Only it didn’t.”

  “No, it bloody didn’t. The thing is, when he took them out, he kept talking. And I happened to look up from his teeth to his gums. And they were…horrid Charlie.”

  “He might have been a nice guy.”

  “He was a nice guy. But imagine waking up to those gums every morning. Urgh. It was too much for me. But you see, I do have a real life. It’s just sometimes it’s more fantastical than the books I read.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “But even then it’s nothing compared to what you’re caught up in. It’s exciting, don’t you think?”

  I sighed. “It’s more worrying than anything else. These people have been inside my home now. And I’ve been inside a police cell. I’m wondering what else can happen.”

  “Maybe you’ve caught something from the blonde.”

  “Vie!”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Be serious though, it is all quite a mess.”

  “You’ll figure it out, I’m sure.”

  “Will I? I still don’t know if I even want to.”

  “Ah, but do you have a choice? Events seem to be conspiring against you.”

  “Jesus.”

  “It’s true. Really Charlie, you’re going to have to solve this thing if you want any peace.”

  “From you at least. But listen, how about I leave it to Burggrave?”

  “The genius who arrested you?”

  “It wasn’t necessarily a bad move. I was lying to him, after all.”

  “But you’re not the killer.”

  “No.”

  “So who is?”

  “Got me.” I heard a gentle tapping against my window and looked up to see the first drops of rain striking the glass. The beads of water began to cluster, then slide down the pane. “And to be honest,” I went on, “I’m still more interested in these monkeys. Pierre says they’re not worth a thing but then you look at all the trouble they’re causing. The lengths people will go to just to get their hands on them.”

  “The blonde being a case in point.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So the monkeys are the key?”

  “I guess so,” I said, as the clouds really let go and the rain fell in sheets for the first time, the branches of the tree outside my window bowing under the onslaught.

  “Either them or the second intruder,” Victoria said.

  “What’s that?”

  “You said he was the one who broke into your apartment.”

  “Yes,” I replied, returning my attention to the telephone while the rain beat against the glass just to my side. “I did say that, didn’t I?”

  “But now you’re not so sure.”

  “Tell you the truth, I never was.” I turned in my chair and scanned my room, as if to jog my memory. “The break-in I had was similar to the one in the wide-man’s apartment, granted. But there were differences too. Ignore all the mess, the slicing and everything. The thing that gets me is my door.”

  “The one you found on your floor.”

  “Exactly. Whoever broke into my apartment drilled the hinges and then kicked it through. But the second intruder used a mallet or something, similar to break through the door in the Jordaan apartment. It was messy,
but it worked.”

  “Is there really such a big difference?”

  “I think so. Drilling the hinges was cleaner but it would have taken a little longer. And why would the second intruder try something different if the mallet worked for him before?”

  “Maybe your door was sturdier.”

  “I don’t think so. My door wouldn’t have withstood a mallet attack.”

  “So,” Victoria said slowly, as if to gather her thoughts. “If it wasn’t the second intruder, who the hell was it?”

  “Well, ask yourself something—what were they after?”

  “The monkeys.”

  “Yes. And why would they want them?”

  “We don’t know that. We’re going round in circles.”

  “Not if we make an assumption.”

  “What kind of an assumption?”

  “That whoever broke into my apartment already has the third monkey.”

  I waited. It didn’t take long for the cogs to mesh in Victoria’s brain.

  “Ah. And they want the complete set.”

  “Naturally.”

  “So it was the wide-man and the thin-man?”

  “That’s my guess. We can rule the second intruder out—the break-in didn’t match his style and even if it did, I have no way of tracing him.”

  “Right. He’s banished from my mind. So what now?”

  “I find out what’s so important about these damn monkeys.”

  “And how do you plan on doing that?”

  “I have a few ideas.”

  “Oh, no. You can’t be like that. Tell me.”

  “Not just yet. Things might not pan out.”

  “Not fair, Charlie. You know, I’m beginning to think you write too much crime fiction.”

  “Ha,” I said, looking glumly towards my desk. “No danger of that at the moment. I still haven’t solved my briefcase problem.”

  “I did wonder. I wasn’t sure if I should ask or not.”

  “I have been kind of busy with other things, you know.”

  “I do. I guess I just thought with all that thinking time in your police cell,..”

  “Didn’t happen. I tried but I didn’t come up with anything. How about you?”

  “You’re the writer, Charlie.”

  “Oh sure, I forget, that’s why they pay me the big bucks, right?”

  SEVENTEEN

  He was waiting for me outside of my apartment building. I had walked down the front steps, still slick from the recent rain shower, fixed the headphones of my walkman into my ears beneath my beanie hat, and turned west, barely registering the noise of the car engine turning over or the sensation of the car trundling along the wet cobbled street just behind my shoulder. It was only when the car pulled level with me and I caught a glimpse of him leaning across the vast front passenger seat of the old Mercedes that I realised he was beckoning to me. I removed my headphones and lowered my head towards his open window.

  “Inspector Burggrave,” I said, as pleasantly as I could. “Just passing were you?”

  He gave me a hard look, in no mood for my games.

  “Get in the car,” he said, speaking in a flat, robotic tone.

  I cocked my head on an angle and studied him. His face was pitted with stubble and his clothes looked rumpled. His eyes were red-tinged behind his angular glasses and dried spittle was encrusted on his lips and at the corners of his mouth. He looked as if he’d been up all night but I couldn’t quite bring myself to believe he’d spent the night in his car waiting for me to emerge. A man like Burggrave would have just called up to my apartment.

  “Get in,” he said again.

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “Just get in the car.”

  “So this is a social call. I’m afraid I have plans this morning. Perhaps we could do this another time?”

  His hand tightened around the steering wheel, the flesh of his knuckles beginning to whiten. He took a deep breath and then prised his fingers away from the steering wheel and gestured at the world beyond his rain-streaked windscreen.

  “Let us just go for a drive.”

  “No, not today,” I said, and began walking again.

  Burggrave engaged his clutch and crawled along the road beside me, his wheels splashing through the puddles. He didn’t speak for a moment and I got the sense he was trying to order his thoughts. Either that or he was fighting to control his temper.

  “You did not kill the American,” he said at last, as if explaining events to a child. “I know this now. But you were with him that night, in St. Jacobsstraat.”

  I met his eyes. He certainly looked as if he believed it.

  “Does Detective Inspector Riemer know you’re here?” I asked.

  Burggrave made a growling noise, deep in his throat.

  “You were in St. Jacobsstraat,” he repeated, fighting to keep his voice under control.

  “And you know about the wide-man and the thin-man,” I said. “The two men who made Michael go back to his apartment? Marieke told you about them.”

  He waited for me to go on, eyes wary.

  “But you arrested me instead of investigating them. And ever since I’ve been wondering why.”

  “You lied to me.”

  “People lie to police officers every day. They don’t usually spend a night in custody because of it.”

  The hint of a smile tugged at his features. He liked that he’d bothered me and that bothered me a little more. I stopped walking and he halted the Mercedes beside me.

  “I don’t know what you want from me,” I said.

  He didn’t speak. We just measured each other, trying to gauge something indiscriminate from one another’s eyes, the large engine of his car idling between us. There was something there, though I didn’t know what it was.

  “Is there something you have to say to me Inspector? Because I’m waiting to hear all sorts of things. Anything, in fact, you’d care to share. I have more questions than answers, you understand.”

  He thought about it. I could tell from the way his expression softened that he was considering taking a chance on me. But then, in the next instant, his face clouded over and he set his jaw and re-gripped the steering wheel. He shook his head, as if resolving himself to some new course of action, and then, looking away from me, he squeezed on the accelerator and the car slipped forward and moved off along the sodden street.

  I wondered at first if I should have done as he asked and climbed into his car. I asked myself if he would have told me the things he’d almost said. Perhaps he’d believed he would, if we got out of Amsterdam for a while, but I wasn’t so sure he could bring himself to do it. He didn’t trust me, and for good reason, so why should he tell me more than I needed to know? And what did he want me to tell him in return?

  Somehow, the way the conversation had played out felt unsatisfactory to me. I had the nagging sensation I’d missed an opportunity, though I had no idea what that opportunity was. And maybe, in the end, I’d really saved myself from something. Maybe Burggrave had planned to go all renegade on me. Maybe he’d intended to drive me to a remote spot and beat the information about the monkey figurines out of me. Maybes. There were too many of them, too many unanswered questions, all of them fogging my brain and preventing me thinking clearly.

  I walked on from my street the short distance to the Oosterdokskade Bridge, at one end of the Oosterdok. To my left was the grand red-brick fagade of Centraal Station, nexus of the Dutch train system and home to raggedy-clothed vagabonds and glassy-eyed druggies, hookers who couldn’t afford the overheads of a lighted glass booth and western students bent-double with the weight of the ruck-sacks on their backs. To my right was the bleak expanse of the eastern dock area, rain drops ticking onto the surface of the water from the bridge railings I was leaning against. The dark, petroleum-laced currents undulated listlessly, nudging the flotsam of discarded city litter against the concrete edges of the dock.

  Commercial vessels were moored all around—tugs, tran
sporters, [ sightseeing barges and even a dated cruise ship that had been transformed into a floating youth hostel. A few decrepit houseboats awaiting refits or the scrap yard were dotted here and there, along I with the odd rubber dinghy.

  The edges of the dock were bordered by anonymous pre-fab warehouses where nameless industrial processes were undertaken or complex chemicals stored. Between the warehouses I saw bare concrete yards, with stacks of wooden palettes and mini forklift trucks parked beside the gleaming BMWs and Mercedes of the factory owners. Occasional manual workers, dressed in faded boiler suits and heavy duty work boots, smoked cigarettes or talked into two-way radios beneath plastic hard hats.

  The docks were a large, open area and the biting wind that had followed the storm showers swooped across the surface of the water unhindered, cutting into me, seemingly passing right through the fabric of my overcoat and woollen hat and gloves. I blew warm air onto my hands and rubbed them together as I walked, pulled my chin down against my chest to stop the wind getting at my bare neck, and battled the cold for quite some time before I found the buildings I was looking for.

  The complex of stone-built warehouses lined the curved area near the mouth of the harbour, at the point at which the dockland-water met with the expanse of tidal water that separated central Amsterdam from its northernmost district. There were three warehouses in all, linked by raised walkways positioned on the fourth floor of the six storey buildings. All of the warehouses were empty and looked as if they’d been that way for a number of years. Most of the single-glazed panels in the windows fronting the dock had been smashed or blown through and on closer inspection, the bottom floor of each building was nothing more than a vast concrete carcass, while the yards that adjoined them were filled only with wild-grass and abandoned metal cages and the burnt-out remains of a Renault 19. Painted alongside the front fascia of the middle warehouse, in stylised, faded white lettering, were the words Van Zandt, just as Rutherford had said.

  I’m not sure what I was hoping to find, really. Some grizzled old employee of Van Zandt’s, perhaps. A factory hand who’d worked there twelve years ago and had fallen on hard times since, warming his gloved hands over a burning oil drum, just itching to talk with me and bestow a nugget of information every bit as valuable in its way as the jewels the American may, or may not, have stolen. But it wasn’t to be. The truth was there was nothing there except dead air and vacated space; the shell of a memory of a place that used to exist.