2007 - The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam

by Chris Ewan

  EIGHTEEN

  When I got back to my apartment I fixed myself a mug of hot tea and some toast and then I fished around in my wallet until I found Henry Rutherford’s business card. I dialled his number from my desk phone and was transferred directly to an answering machine. A tinny-sounding Rutherford invited me to leave a message and I obliged him with the shortest one I could devise.

  Once I’d returned the telephone receiver to its cradle, I leaned back in my chair, rested my feet on my desk and formed my fingers into a pyramid beneath my chin. I sat like that for a while, looking, I imagined, as if I was thinking about a whole bunch of terribly complicated things. As it happened, I was thinking of nothing very much at all. Sometimes it’s just comforting to sit that way, to rest one’s chin on one’s finger tips, to balance one’s weight over the hind legs of one’s chair, and to stare aimlessly at the opposite side of a room. And before very long, I got caught up in a kind of game with myself, easing the chair just a shade beyond its natural balancing point, taunting myself with the possibility of falling and then catching myself with my heels before I toppled right over. I could have stayed that way for hours, at least until the room became fully dark around me, but before dusk had given serious consideration to settling my telephone rang and I answered it to be confronted by a good deal of huffing and wheezing.

  “Charlie,” Rutherford gasped. “You called and left me a message.”

  “I did,” I agreed. “Are you alright? You don’t sound too well.”

  “I just walked up four flights of stairs to my office. Damn elevator was broken again. I swear they do it on purpose to keep us all on our toes.”

  “You ever wonder if it could be counter-productive?”

  “Oh, I’ll be fine,” he said, uncertainly. “Just give me a moment and the old ticker will be back to normal. You want to tell me what you need? How I can help?”

  “This Van Zandt company you were telling me about,” I said, “the one Michael robbed. I was thinking—you mentioned it was a family firm?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well are any of these Van Zandt’s still around, do you know?”

  “There’s one,” Rutherford said. “Lives near the Museum District, I believe. A recluse by all accounts.”

  “You have his address?”

  “I could get you it. But I doubt it would do you any good.”

  “I’d like to try,” I said. “See if he’ll talk to me, at least. There’s no harm in that, I don’t think.”

  “Only the risk of a wasted trip. Should I come along? I know a fine restaurant nearby and…”

  “That’s okay,” I cut in. “No need for you to tackle those stairs anymore than you need to. If you could just find me the address, though, I’d appreciate it.”

  “I’ll have my secretary look into it. She’ll call you as soon as she can.”

  True to his word, I received a phone call not ten minutes later from an efficient sounding Dutch woman who gave me the address and contact number for a Mr. Niels Van Zandt without even pausing to confirm who it was she was speaking to. I would have thanked her for her trouble but she rang off before I had chance. It’s curious—the Dutch will tell you they’re direct, but never rude. Why bother to embroider what you’re saying with politeness, they’ll ask? Just say what you need to. But the odd thing is, while the rational part of me can’t fail to agree with this approach, my emotional side struggles every time I experience it. This occasion was no different and I shook my head in wonder as I replaced the telephone receiver. Actually, it was still bugging me when I gathered my coat and walked towards Centraal Station to catch a tram to Museum Plein.

  It was already dark by the time I reached the castle-like Rijksmuseum and as I strolled through the archway running through the centre of the building, my path was lit by a series of ornamental lamps. I emerged from beneath the museum to find myself stood at the threshold of a thin reflecting pool shrouded in mist. A bar-cafe was open nearby, spilling neon light and music out into the gloomy space, but I turned from it and walked north in search of the Van Zandt residence.

  The house was not what you might typically think of as imposing, but it was impressive by Amsterdam standards, largely because it was a detached property with a genuine front lawn. The lawn looked to be well tended and it was in remarkably good health considering the amount of rain the city had endured over the past few months. The lush grass was illuminated by two security lamps at the front of the property and the ambient light escaping the windows of the rooms on the ground floor. Directly ahead of me, two parallel lines of conical-shaped topiary plants bordered a pea-gravel pathway that led to right up to the giant double doors at the front of the house. I would have liked to follow that route directly to the ornamental brass knocker if I could, but a pair of gilded security gates barred my entrance. There was an intercom just by my elbow and I pressed the call button and lowered my face to the speaker.

  I heard the burr and crackle of feedback and then a female voice answered with a simple, “Ja?”

  “Hello,” I began. “Is Mr. Van Zandt in?”

  “Who is this?”

  “My name is Charlie Howard. I’d like to speak to Mr. Van Zandt.”

  “You do not have an appointment?”

  “No,” I confessed. “But I’d appreciate it if he could give me five minutes of his time.”

  “This is not possible without an appointment.”

  “Can I make an appointment?”

  “You must telephone in the morning.”

  “Can’t I make one now?”

  “It is too late.”

  And with that she cut the intercom connection. More directness, and this time I handled it about as well as I had done earlier. The childish portion of my psyche was all set for a bout of knock-knock ginger, but the dull, adult portion soon won out. I poked my face through the gates and looked longingly at the house. Part of me was tempted to climb up over the security fence and let myself in through a window, just to see if Van Zandt might talk to me if I could bypass whoever it was that had answered the intercom. Chances were, though, he’d call the police. And given recent events, it didn’t strike me as a master plan.

  Reluctantly, I began walking off along the street. There were several more houses of a similar style, though not many of them had security gates. A few welcome lamps tripped on as I passed but I got the impression they were there to aid house guests rather than deter burglars. On another night, that might have led me to consider whether the area was full of soft targets but my mind was on other matters anyway and with Burggrave on my case it wasn’t the right time for me to contemplate any casual thievery.

  I got as far as the end of the road, then turned left and left again, until I found myself stood opposite the entrance to the Van Gogh museum. It was closing time and the last visitors were wandering down the concrete steps at the front of the building, many of them carrying poster tubes. No doubt most of the tubes contained yet more prints of those damn sunflowers. They seem to be in every tourist shop window in the city. The image is available on postcards, on T-shirts, on tea towels and on coffee mugs. You can buy it on mouse-mats or baseball caps or as a jigsaw puzzle. It’s a wonder the average visitor knows that Van Gogh painted anything else.

  The tram stop I was after was just down the street from the Van Gogh building and when I reached it I found that I was stood opposite the Costers Diamond House. Now I’m not usually one to believe in symbols or fate or cosmic balance or any of that stuff, but quite honestly, it was one hell of a coincidence. And coincidence aside, maybe all I needed was an excuse to try my luck at Van Zandt’s place one more time. Just leaving it alone was bugging me and in my experience persistence usually leads to some kind of resolution, however welcome. And if I was never going to get an opportunity to speak to Van Zandt himself, it seemed to me I might as well find out right away rather than waste my time waiting to telephone in the morning.

  So, with my mind made up, I re-crossed the tram
tracks embedded in the tarmac roadway and headed around the block to Jan Luijken Straat once more. And, wouldn’t you know it, just as I was approaching from the end of the street I saw those self same gates open and a well-dressed woman emerge. The woman wore a beige raincoat and sheer tights and high-heel shoes, and she carried a compact satchel in one hand. Her hair was tied up in a tight bun and there was a business-like expression on her face. I watched her secure the gate behind her and then I waited for her to walk off along the street, feeling certain that the woman I had spoken to on the intercom had just concluded her daily duties. I waited until she turned at the end of the road and then I approached the intercom and pressed the call button for a second time.

  On this occasion, there was no immediate answer. I gazed at the lighted downstairs windows for some indication of movement but I couldn’t discern anything at all. Perhaps the house was empty altogether, though I doubted it somehow. The woman I had spoken to hadn’t confirmed Van Zandt was home but I’d got the impression he was there. From what Rutherford said, he rarely left, and while the average householder might leave on the odd light to deter burglars, it was an unusual type indeed who left on as many lights as this.

  I was just about to press the call button again when my patience was rewarded. This time, there was no voice on the speaker, only a short buzzing noise before the gate was released from its catch. I admit I was surprised, but not being one to shy away from a bit of good fortune, I eased the gate open and stepped inside, then made my way up the short pathway to the front doors, the pea-gravel crunching beneath my feet like a thousand tiny bugs. When I reached the door, I even tried something novel and lifted the brass knocker and used it to rap on the woodwork.

  Silence.

  I waited a moment and knocked again. This time, I heard shouting. Now my Dutch was still basic at best, but I got the distinct impression I was being cursed. What on earth was going on here? Did the guy want me to use my picks and make my own way in?

  I knocked for a third time and the shouting drew nearer. It seemed to become more vehement the closer it got, as though the person doing the shouting was approaching very slowly and their irritation was increasing with each new step. Before long, the voice was coming from just the other side of the door and, at last, I heard the deadlock snick back and then a face with the potential to knock me clean off my feet appeared in the gap between door and frame.

  The thing is, corning completely clean here, sometimes in my novels I’ve based characters on people I’ve met in real life. I can even think of at least two occasions when I’ve lifted entire physical descriptions and personalities from acquaintances I’ve made. More often, though, my characters are an amalgam of two or more people. An older relative perhaps, mixed with a dash of a train conductor from the previous day and finished off with a television newsreader. Other times, I’ve based physical descriptions on a person from a magazine and invested them with character traits from a historical figure I’ve read about, or afflicted them with an illness I’ve been researching. But never before had I been confronted with the real-life incarnation of a character who’d only ever previously existed in the world of my imagination. For incredible as it seemed, stood before me now was the very image of Arthur the butler, and the likeness was so striking that I can do no better in describing him than by repeating the very first lines devoted to him in the pages of my book.

  The old man had skin that had worked hard for its living. It was shrivelled and puckered and folded into fine lines all across his forehead and at the corners of his eyes. Where it was stretched, across the bridge of his nose for example, it looked gossamer thin, while at his neck it had braided itself together into what looked like frayed lengths of old string. The hair on his head was thinning and as white and downy as pillow feathers, and on either side of his head two sprigs of it poked out of his over-sized ears like the pads of cotton wool you used to find in pill jar lids. His eyes were grey and watery, like pebbles on a seashore, and he seemed to look clean through me with them, almost as if he was blind. His shoulders were rounded and his back bowed and he walked with the aid of a dark wooden cane. Hanging from his bony frame was a black butler’s suit, finished off with a white shirt that was yellowing at the collar and a dickie bow that had probably last been tied at about the time the Titanic went down.

  So okay, the man who faced me wasn’t wearing a butler’s outfit, but in every other way the similarity was enough to make me jump. Oddly enough, he did the same thing, and then he clutched at his heart with the hand that was holding his walking stick. He steadied himself against the door frame, lips opening and closing wordlessly, like those of a beached fish. Then he looked up at me and shook his head ruefully, his teeth clenched together and eyes glowering out. All at once, he began yammering away in confrontational Dutch once more.

  “Hang on,” I said, holding up my hands. “I’m English, I’m afraid. And I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  He paused, mid-tirade, then switched to words I could understand.

  “Who are you?” he asked, eyes narrowing.

  “My name’s Charlie Howard. Are you Mr. Van Zandt? I’d like to talk with you, if so.”

  “You do not have an appointment?”

  “No.”

  “Then you must leave. This was a mistake. I thought you were my housekeeper. I thought she had forgotten her keys.”

  “She just left.”

  “Then she makes you a good example.”

  He started to swing the door closed. Before I could think better of it, I stuck my foot in the jamb and pressed back against the door with my palm. Alarm flashed in his eyes. His cheeks trembled. For a moment, I was pretty sure he thought I was going to attack him.

  “I just want to talk,” I said. “Please. It’s important.”

  He shook his head wilfully and pushed against the door again. He was a strong old goat and if I hadn’t had my foot stuck in the way he would have caught me out. As it happened, the door bounced back off of my shoe.

  “Move your foot,” he told me, shoulders quaking.

  “It won’t take more than a few moments.”

  “I will call the police.”

  “Listen, it’s about Michael Park.”

  The name carried impact. All of a sudden, the force he was exerting against the door began to ease. He glanced up with a certain wariness and I knew then what it was I needed to say.

  “He’s dead, Mr. Van Zandt. That’s what I came here to tell you.”

  NINETEEN

  Niels Van Zandt directed me into what looked to be his library. There were floor to ceiling shelves of books on every wall, many of them leather bound, almost fake looking, like those dumb book-shaped VHS cassette holders from the eighties. It was always possible he’d bought the entire collection just to fill the room and make himself appear intellectual but I didn’t think so. I got the impression this was a room where he spent a great deal of his time. The large reading table over by the front window was covered in piles of books that had been removed from the shelves, for instance, and several note pads and a typewriter were positioned among them. If what Rutherford had said about Van Zandt being a homebody was true, this was how he occupied himself.

  I guess it didn’t hurt that he had a drinks cabinet too and while he ushered me into a fabric armchair positioned just away from the imposing central fireplace, he set about fixing us both a bourbon. He didn’t ask me if bourbon was something I drank—it was an assumption he made, like trusting me that Michael really was dead. The news had certainly affected him and I was fairly sure the palsied tremble in his hand as he grappled with the ice tongs was not simply because of his age.

  “How did he die?” he asked, casting me a hawklike glare as he held a couple of ice cubes above one of the glasses.

  “He was killed,” I said. “Beaten.”

  Van Zandt’s brows hitched up, though not in surprise. It was more as if he was acknowledging that another of his assumptions had been confirmed.

 
“This was in prison?”

  “No,” I said. “Amsterdam. He was released just over a week ago.”

  Van Zandt dropped the ice cubes into the glass and pursed his lips.

  “I was not told.”

  “By the police? That doesn’t surprise me. They don’t seem as switched on as they might be.”

  “Most of them are fools. Have they caught his killer?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Do they know who it is?”

  “You’re asking the wrong person.”

  Van Zandt limped over to me with the aid of his cane and handed me my drink. I nursed it for a time, reluctant to take a sip in case the burn was more than I could handle. Spirits are not my thing. Beer, yes. Wine on the right occasion. But whiskey? Bourbon? I’d never developed the taste for it. I could drink the stuff, sure, but I had yet to learn to appreciate it.

  Very carefully, Van Zandt settled himself in a chair across from my own and then he reached to the side and grabbed for a fresh log to toss onto the fire. The lit coal in the grate fizzed with the impact and a few embers spiralled up into the chimney. He leaned back in his chair and sipped from his glass.

  “You’re probably wondering why I’m here,” I said.

  He looked at me blankly, the flames from the fire catching the light in his drink.

  “The truth is I’m a writer,” I went on. “Michael Park wanted to hire me.”

  “Hire you?”

  “To write a kind of memoir about him. There’s a market for that sort of thing nowadays. True crime is a big seller in Europe and the States. He wanted me to tell his story.”

  Van Zandt lowered his drink to his lap and tilted his head on one side, his stony eyes narrowing.