2007 - The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam

by Chris Ewan

  Of course, that was only the first step, and after I’d gingerly stretched my arms and assessed the burns on my wrists and shaken some life back into my hands, I had to repeat the same process with the ropes that were binding my feet. This time, though, I could see what I was doing and what I was up against, and once I had the crucial first knot loosened it was just a question of whether I had enough time to finish the job before one of them waltzed back in with the baseball bat to finish me.

  Thoughts like that didn’t help. In fact, thoughts like that positively hindered my progress by making me snatch at the ropes and rush things a little too much. Problem was, while I was aware of how it was slowing me down, I was so worried I’d miss my chance to escape that I kept going in the same fashion; all flailing fingers and thumbs. Then again, perhaps the terror helped in a way because it kept my mind off my injuries. And thinking of something other than the pain I was in was crucial when I’d finally freed myself completely and was able to stand woozily from the chair and begin preparing myself for the challenge of getting up into the roof space.

  As it happened, hauling myself up into the hatch hurt like hell, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. There’s also a fair chance I did myself more harm than good by attempting it, given the way I had to strain my ribs, but the experience did make me think that maybe all that stuff about people summoning extra strength when they find themselves in extraordinary circumstances is true because I pulled myself up in spite of it all and I did it without screaming or yelping at the stabs of electric pain that showered my torso.

  And because it was do or die, I suppose quite literally, it was one almighty relief when I finally hooked my elbow and my thigh over the edge of the hatch and then plunged my hand down below the scratchy loft insulation to find that the gun was still there, right where I’d hidden it, just as things always are when the planets are aligned just so and the Good Lord is in a gracious frame of mind.

  Not that I had time to think of such things just then because I was far too concerned with feeling around the butt of the gun as quietly as possible until I found something that felt like a recessed button and, teeth clenched, depressed it. A cartridge of bullets fell out. Not what I’d intended. I fumbled the cartridge back into place, then located another lever, one that I hoped was the safety guard. I slipped the lever to one side, experienced nothing untoward, then lowered my leg back into the ceiling space of the room below and, bracing myself, dropped onto the lid of the trunk as deftly as I could.

  With the gun held out before me like a particularly menacing torch, I walked to the edge of the room and paused, listening for any noises from the two men that might suggest I’d been heard. I listened hard but there was only silence and the sound of my breathing; shallow and ragged in my throat. Stepping into the hallway, I trained the gun onto the darkened space in front of me and followed the muzzle towards the second bedroom. The door was closed. I checked over my shoulder, then looked back to the door and thought about kicking it through. In the end, I reached out and turned the handle as slowly and as quietly as I could, easing the door open a crack and peeking inside.

  The room was unlit. After a few anxious moments, my eyes adjusted and I could just make out the form of the thin man asleep on the single camp bed. By his side and resting on the floor was his leather jacket. I tiptoed towards the jacket and bent down, one eye on the thin man the whole time, and then I felt around the jacket until my fingers located the monkey figurines. They were in the zipped pocket still. I daren’t risk opening the zip so I just took the coat and backed out of the room into the hallway where, it transpired, the wide man was waiting for me with the baseball bat above his shoulder.

  He didn’t expect the gun, though. If he had expected it, I guess he would have waited by the side of the door and smacked me over the head as soon as I emerged. Instead, he was facing me at the end of the hallway and when he flicked on the overhead bulb he must have thought that just the sight of the bat would be enough for me to submit. His eyes became very big when I straightened my arm and pointed the pistol in his direction. Then his eyes narrowed and a series of frown lines appeared on his forehead.

  “But we searched you,” he protested.

  “Well, that’ll teach you to leave guns lying around,” I whispered back. “Anyone could find them.”

  “But…”

  “Drop it,” I cut in, motioning to the bat. “And walk backwards. Now. Back up.”

  He hesitated. I jerked the gun at him. Slowly, the wide man set the bat down to his side, handle leaning against the wall.

  “No, on the floor,” I hissed.

  The wide man began to kneel down. “Not you,” I said. “The bat. Lay it on the floor.”

  He did as I told him.

  “Good, now move away from it.”

  He shuffled backwards and I eyed the front door, noting that it had been crudely repaired instead of replaced. Just then, he yelled something in Dutch towards the second bedroom and an instant later, the thin man slurred a reply. I shook my head and this time the wide man said nothing further but it was already too late. I advanced down the hallway, then wheeled around as the thin man appeared behind me, bleary eyed, his jaw dropping to the floor the moment he saw me with his coat and the handgun.

  “Where are the keys to your van?” I demanded, switching the gun between them.

  The thin man was still too shocked to answer and the wide man delayed.

  “Your keys,” I shouted, jabbing the gun towards the thin man, gripping the trigger ever tighter. “Now.”

  Mutely, he motioned towards the jacket I was holding and I shook it until I heard the keys jangle.

  “Okay,” I went on, turning to the wide man again. “You open the door. Good. Now back away some more. Further, further. Good.”

  I checked on the thin man one last time, just to make sure he hadn’t come any closer.

  “If I hear either of you on the stairs before I get out of here, so help me I will shoot. Understand?”

  The thin man stood there with his mouth open, looking furtively towards his partner, but the wide man nodded and placed his hands behind his back in a casual gesture. I edged towards the door, gun swinging between the two of them in a wavering arc, and then when I was through the threshold I just turned and bolted for the stairs, beginning a half-jump, half-stumble routine that took me to the bottom of the five flights as quickly as I could go in my condition. By the time I was on the final flight, my breathing was laboured, my head felt light and my heart seemed to be in real danger of beating its way clear out of my body, but I couldn’t hear any footfall behind me. I reached the front door and grabbed for the snap lock, yanked the thing back and rushed out into the cold, dark night. Then I hurried away as best I could, meanwhile fumbling around in the pockets of the leather jacket until I found the van keys and veering towards the canal to toss them into the water. I thought about ditching the gun too but in the end I settled for wrapping the leather jacket around it, tucked the bundle beneath my arm and shuffled away in search of the nearest bike rack.

  TWENTY-THREE

  I paused in my apartment for just long enough to stuff a few clothes and my passport into a holdall and to grab my burglar tools. I packed the gun into the holdall too and was just about to run out of the building when I thought to go into the bathroom and check on my injuries. I lifted my shirt in front of the mirror and saw that I had a deep purple bruise smack in the centre of my chest, as if somebody had painted a target on me. Then I lowered my head and prodded gently at the blood that had clotted in my hair. I ran the cold tap on the bath and soaked a towel and used the sodden rag to clear as much of the blood as I safely could without reopening the wound. Then I changed my top for an unbloodied sweatshirt, put on the thin man’s leather jacket with the monkey figurines still zipped in the pocket and made my way back ofitside. There was no sign of the wide man and the thin man out on the street but I wasn’t about to hang around for them. Instead, I paced through the Red Light Distric
t to St. Jacobsstraat and readied myself for something I should have done a long time before.

  The front door of the building was just where it had been a little over a week ago, when Marieke had first led me through it. I glanced at the door and thought about picking my way inside, but I had my doubts. A garish crime scene notice had been pasted over the flyers at eye level and there was the remote possibility the door was under surveillance. And even if I did press ahead, there was a risk I might pass one of the building’s other tenants on the short trip upstairs to Michael Park’s bed-sit. I hovered nearby, thinking. Dance music pulsed out from the sex booth on one side of the building and some type of reggae ska was audible from the coffee house in the opposite direction. Faintly, I could hear the more distant noise of an emergency siren wailing elsewhere in the city.

  On balance, I didn’t feel comfortable going in through the front. There was every chance it would be fine but why go against my instincts? So I backed away from the door and walked off along St. Jacobsstraat again, then to the nearest cross street and afterwards to the rear of the building. Once there, I found a dark nook to stuff my holdall into and a large wheelie bin that I rolled across the alleyway until it was positioned beneath the roof overhang I was interested in.

  I climbed up onto the wheelie bin and braced one foot against the side wall and, through a kind of leaping, springing motion that ripped into the very heart of the sore spot in my chest, managed to gain enough height to grab onto the curved, felted edge of the flat roof that extended from just below Michael’s back window.

  Without the stimulus of impending death, I made something of a meal of hauling myself up, swearing and groaning with abandon. Once the ordeal was over with, I laid flat on my back in complete silence and stared at the slate grey clouds in the night sky above me. The clouds were faintly iridescent in the glow of the city’s sodium bleed, as if the sky was a dark and grisly sea, threaded with phosphorescent plankton. I took in the queer effect as I caught my breath, meanwhile fumbling in my pocket and removing a pair of disposable surgical gloves that I slipped onto my hands. Then I rolled onto my side and looked up at the bathroom window and steeled myself for one more effort.

  Luckily, there was a cast iron drain pipe positioned just close enough to the window ledge to give me something to shinny up and for some reason, the shinnying motion wasn’t as painful as I’d expected. After hoisting myself several feet into the air, I braced my right foot against one of the metal brackets securing the pipe to the wall and reached across for the window ledge. I pushed up from the ledge as best I could and, suspended diagonally, gripped one of the cross-slats on the sash window with my spare hand so that I could force the window slowly open. It took a minute or so until I had the window high enough to crawl through and by that stage my legs and arms were beginning to shake and my ribs felt like a rack of hot knives in my chest but I still somehow managed to push off from the pipe and grab the inside edge of the window frame and pull myself in through the window all in one largely fluid movement.

  I dropped down onto the toilet cistern, then the bathroom floor. The room was in darkness and it took me a few moments of feeling my way around until I found the light cord and was able to turn on the low wattage bulb suspended from the ceiling. Right in front of me, dried blood and bits of hair and possibly skull matter were still smeared against the white porcelain of the bathtub, soaking into the yellowing tiles and dark grout on the wall. It was odd, in a way, that his body wasn’t there too. Other than the bloody residue, there was no real reason to believe I was in the middle of a crime scene. I’m not sure what I expected—chalk marks or signs of a forensics examination perhaps—but it wasn’t there. I wondered how long it would be before the landlord would be allowed to clean the bath and then I wondered if the landlord would even bother. Perhaps the bed-sit would become yet another Amsterdam squat.

  Enough of that. I didn’t think I would find what I was looking for in the bathroom and I didn’t relish the prospect of searching it too thoroughly, but I did pause just long enough to lift the lid on the toilet cistern and peer inside. A clear plastic bag containing an ounce or so of white powder was floating in the stagnant water, like a listless jellyfish, but there was nothing else out of the ordinary. I replaced the porcelain lid and moved into the cramped living area, flicking on the main overhead light as I entered.

  The living area was all just as it had been too, although Michael’s suitcase was gone, and there was now a printed slip of yellow paper that looked like a police form on the foldaway kitchen table. I rested in the middle of the room, hands on my hips, and scanned the interior, asking myself where I should start and how long I should take. To some extent, I was trying to put myself in Michael’s shoes, thinking what I would have done if I’d been confronted by the same space. What I’d realised I’d overlooked, you see, was that Michael was a burglar too. And if he was anything like me, he’d keep his valuables somewhere that most people, particularly opportunist thieves, wouldn’t think to look. I’d hidden my burglar tools behind the side-panel of my bath and the two monkey figurines in a box of washing powder and my theory was that Michael could have done something similar. If he was as good as Pierre said, the third monkey might never have left his apartment, no matter how many thugs and police officers and forensic teams had been through it.

  That was the theory. Now I was back in the bed-sit, though, it was difficult to imagine where his hiding place could be. It was such a confined space, with barely any furniture, that the possibilities were limited. I started with the obvious and slid the chest of drawers out from beside the bed and removed each of the drawers and searched the cavities behind them. Then I turned the chest upside down and checked the underside. There was nothing there besides clumps of dust and household debris so I put the drawers back and pulled the bed away from the wall. The bed had a metal frame and no apparent openings where anything could be hidden. I felt around the blanket and sheets and then I lifted the mattress up and searched below that. When I didn’t find anything, I dropped the mattress, prodded it for a while, much like a surgeon feeling for a hernia, and then gave up and transferred my attentions to the kitchen area.

  The foldaway kitchen table and chairs were no good but I shook the gas canister to check there was fuel in it and then I shone my pocket torch into the back of the single burner stove where I found a miniature world of burnt crumbs and blackened chunks of who knew what, but nothing of import. I straightened with my hands on my hips and looked at the aluminium sink. It was possible he’d hidden something in the plastic U-bend beneath it but that seemed unlikely and so I passed it over for the time being. Then I looked up above my head and spied the faux-marble light fitting. The fitting was made of an opaque material and there was a possibility there could be something inside of it so I moved one of the kitchen chairs and climbed onto it and was just about to unscrew the fitting when I heard the front door of the building open, then close, and afterwards the sound of footsteps on the main stairs below.

  The footsteps were measured, as if the person they belonged to was in no hurry to get to where he or she was heading. I glanced around the room, wondering if I could put it back as I had found it in time, but I knew I couldn’t without making a great deal of noise. Instead, I unscrewed the light fitting and untwisted the scalding bulb a fraction so that the room was plunged into darkness and the owner of the footsteps wouldn’t see any light shining from beneath the front door of the bed-sit. As I blinked away the translucent hexagons that had formed in front of my eyes and tried to ignore the smell of burning plastic from my disposable gloves, I felt around blindly inside the casing of the light fitting until I was sure there was nothing there either.

  Meanwhile, the footsteps came ever closer. It was unlikely anyone from the police would be checking on the apartment so late at night, I thought, but I couldn’t be certain of that, and there was always the chance somebody was about to enter in less than strictly legal circumstances anyway. I tensed and readied myself to
flee at the first sound of the lock being touched, my toes curled up inside my trainers and my mind already rehearsing my leap towards the bathroom. The footsteps came closer still and then I heard the squeak of a loose floorboard on the landing just in front of the door. There was silence for what seemed like an eternity. It was so quiet I could hear the creaking of my knee caps. My whole body went cold, then flushed hot the moment I became aware of it. I held my breath as best I could but I was afraid the thudding of my heart might just be loud enough to give me away. It was all getting a bit too much and I was on the brink of bolting for the window when finally, and to my considerable relief, the footsteps began again and I heard the sound of measured footfall on the next flight of stairs. Either the person the footsteps belonged to was drunk and weaving slowly upwards, or they were old and needed a rest, or they were simply curious enough to pause outside of a bed-sit where someone had recently been killed, but the upshot was they weren’t about to walk in on me. I waited until the footsteps could no longer be heard and then I twisted the bulb back into its socket, looked away from the lighted element and screwed the light fitting into place once again.

  I got down from the chair and removed my micro-screwdriver and immediately used it to unscrew the light switch on the wall. I checked the cavity behind the switch and then I did the same thing with the two power sockets positioned above the floor near the sink. They were no use either. I popped the screws back into position and tightened them and then I began to think about lifting the carpet and checking the floorboards. It didn’t seem a likely scenario. If Michael needed to access the monkey in a hurry, the floorboards wouldn’t work. It was still possible, of course, but I didn’t like it, and I decided to leave it as a last resort. Much as I’d wanted to avoid it, the bathroom seemed a better bet.