2007 - The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam

by Chris Ewan

  “Tell me about the passport,” I said. “When did he ask you to get it?”

  Stuart stuck out his bottom lip, thinking it over.

  “Month ago, maybe. He called me from inside. Said there was this girl he wanted looking into.”

  “Marieke.”

  “Was the name she gave him, yeah,” he said, nodding. “But he figured there was something up with it.”

  “So he asked you to steal her passport?”

  “Nah.” He ran his hand backwards over his glistening forehead. “He asked me to find out what I could. So what I did was I found where she worked and I spoke to some guy who works there too.”

  “The young barman? Has a good scowl?”

  “Fella worked behind the bar. I guess he could be the one you’re referring to. Anyhow, fact is barkeeps in Amsterdam are the same as any place else—they don’t get paid so good.”

  “So you bribed him.”

  He rolled his eyes and showed me his clammy palms. “I asked him to have a quick shufty at some of her things, was all. He was the one brought me the passport.”

  “And you photocopied it and sent it to Michael.”

  “Now how’d you know that?” he asked, eyes narrowing.

  I shook my head. “Never mind. What was his reaction when you sent it to him?”

  “No idea,” he said, casually. “I just posted it to him, inside a birthday card.”

  “The prison guard’s didn’t check?”

  “Not the way I did it. I pasted the thing inside a cardboard flap in the card.”

  “Clever.”

  “Not really. Prison security is pretty slack over here. Doesn’t take a lot to figure out ways around it. I mean, I doubt it was even his birthday.”

  I sat forward in my chair, elbows on my knees and my fingers pointing at him.

  “Did her name mean anything to you?”

  “The girl? Not until we were in that library. The minute we found that newspaper article, it started to make some sense.”

  I looked at him intently. “Kim Wolkers. Her surname is the same as the security guard Michael killed.”

  Stuart nodded. “Except he didn’t kill nobody. Least, he always said he didn’t. But you’re right about the name. You figure she’s his daughter?”

  “That would be my guess.”

  “Mikey’s too, I reckon. Fact, I have a suspicion he knew all along.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Just a feeling I got. Something in his voice. I can’t explain it.”

  “There’s still a few things I don’t get,” I said.

  “Only a few?”

  I smiled, nursing my head in my hands. “One thing in particular—why did he get close to the girl once he knew who she was? He must have realised she was setting him up.”

  Stuart shrugged and slouched further down in his chair, balancing the lager can on his gut.

  “Mikey was a peculiar fellow. He swore blind he’d never killed that guard but he was never your average prisoner either.” He paused, face clouding over as his finger tapped absently on the side of the lager can. “Thing is, he had no beef with being inside. Me, I’d bitch about it just about every minute but with him, well, it was almost as if he welcomed it.”

  “Penance?”

  “You might say.”

  “Though that doesn’t add up if he didn’t kill the guard.”

  “No.”

  “And it doesn’t explain why he didn’t blow her cover.”

  “Unless he did. In private, say.”

  I bobbed my head from side to side, as though mimicking a set of weighing scales.

  “I didn’t get that impression.”

  “Me either. But it’s a theory.”

  Stuart threw up a hand in a helpless gesture, then imbibed from the lager can. He was sat in a very un-Rutherford way, gut hanging loose over his trousers, legs splayed open. The contrast made me aware of just what a performance he put on whenever he got into character and knowing that made me cautious. I very much doubted Stuart was his real name. It was probably years since he’d last used that.

  “You’re not a lawyer,” I said.

  “Nope.”

  “So just out of interest, how did you pull that off? Getting to represent me, I mean.”

  He grinned, like he was recalling a recent sexual conquest.

  “Easier than you’d think. I kind of just waited around in the police station for a while that morning. Overheard a couple of uniforms saying you were refusing to talk until you had a lawyer there. So I waited until they’d gone and I presented myself to the duty sergeant, or whatever it is they call them over here.”

  “But didn’t they want to check your papers?”

  “Oh I have papers. Anyone can get them.”

  “I see. No, scratch that, I don’t see. How did you even know to come to the police station?”

  “Your arrest was in the papers,” he said, sounding surprised I hadn’t thought of it. “I came as soon as I saw. Thought I might pick something up that could be useful to me.”

  “About what?”

  He shrugged.

  “The diamonds,” I prompted.

  He nodded, slowly. Then he glanced up at me with doleful eyes. “Turned out better than I imagined.”

  “It was one hell of a trick.”

  “Well,” he said, chin bobbing, “you do something for a living, it pays to be good at it. I’m guessing you don’t just steal things as a hobby.”

  “You could say.”

  “You wait until something comes along that’s worth your time, right?”

  “And the risks.”

  “The risks are half of the fun.”

  “Not for me,” I replied, shaking my head.

  “Come on, you don’t get a thrill when you break into someone’s home? I don’t buy it.”

  “It’s maybe a side-effect of what I do.”

  “Sure.”

  “Really. I’m a writer first of all. It’s just, every now and again, I might supplement my income a little.”

  “Reminds me,” he said, poking a fat digit at my forehead. “Read one of your books the other day. Had the murderer sussed by chapter three.”

  “Maybe you just guessed right.”

  “Nab, I knew. Doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it, mind.”

  “We’re getting off the point,” I told him, finding my feet and walking around to the back of the wingback chair, gripping the fabric in my hands. “You said you knew about the diamonds from the start?”

  Stuart nodded again, the fatty skin on his neck folding up like a thick roll-neck sweater as he pulled his chin towards his chest.

  “Heard about them inside. Not a lot else to do other than talk, you know. And a man like Mikey, a whole bunch of myths can build up.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, he was a quiet one, I guess,” he said, peering down into the opening of his lager can and gently swirling the contents. “Most every con I ever met is willing to tell you what scam’he’s inside for, where it went wrong, how he’d do it different next time. But not Mikey. He wasn’t like that at all. It gets to the masses. Everyone wants to know what the deal is. Every detail gets picked over.”

  “Like?”

  “Like for instance the little monkey toy he kept in his cell. A queer little thing, right? He was always looking at it. Made people talk.”

  “And what did they say?”

  “All kinds of things. Before long,” he said, tapping his forehead sagely, “a man like Mikey can become a real topic of conversation.”

  “One of which was that he’d got away with a fortune in diamonds.”

  “Among others.”

  “Did you ever ask him about it?”

  “Sure.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “Nothing.” He shook his lager can, drank a little more. “But that changed.”

  I waited a beat, trying not to rush things. “Oh?” I said, as casually as I could manage.
>
  Stuart grinned, aware of what I was trying to do. “Listen,” he said, “I’m putting some pieces together here myself, okay? But I’m assuming you’re the English guy he asked to steal the two monkeys for him. I mean, who else, right?”

  “Go on.”

  “And you said no. At least, that’s what you said to begin with.”

  He paused, waiting for me to confirm it, but I didn’t oblige him. It didn’t seem to matter a great deal. A confidence man is a storyteller at heart and Stuart liked to tell a good story.

  “It got Mikey,” he went on. “For whatever reason, he needed those monkeys. And it was getting late on that Thursday and he began to think maybe you wouldn’t go through with it. And then he called me.”

  “As back-up.”

  “Except he didn’t know for sure it was back-up.”

  “Right. And you agreed to break into the houseboat and that apartment for him.”

  He made a whining noise deep in his throat, almost a whimper. “Not to begin with. Like I said, I’m a scam king, not a B&E merchant. But…” He raised his eyes to the ceiling and nodded his head, as if to acknowledge his moral failings. “It was getting late in the day and it was important to him that he got the monkeys that night, okay? And I knew about the one he’d had inside with him, knew how important it always seemed to be. So I played him for a while, got him so he was almost begging me to help, but being careful, you know, not wanting to blow it. And I guess I couldn’t have done it much better in the end because that was when he came clean about the diamonds.”

  “How much did he offer you?”

  “Half,” he said, then gulped some lager.

  “You’re lying.”

  A sly grin crept across Stuart’s face. “What makes you so sure?”

  “Your lips are moving.”

  “Jeez,” he said, throwing a hand up, then letting it drop onto his belly. “That line’s as old as my grandmother. And she’s been dead almost twenty years.”

  “Even so, it’s true, isn’t it? I’d say it was more like ten per cent.”

  “Well guess away, buddy. All’s you need to know is it was enough to get me on board.”

  “So you were the second intruder.”

  “Come again?”

  “The guy who broke into both places after me.”

  “If you say so. It makes sense that way but I’ve never known for certain you were there.”

  “I was there,” I said, folding my arms. “I was in the apartment in the Jordaan when you were searching it. You cut the mattress with a knife.”

  “Well, I’ll be. Where were you hidden?”

  “The attic.” I glanced up, as if an identical hatch had appeared in Stuart’s ceiling to help me explain. “There was a crawl space there. But I couldn’t see you.”

  “Or else you’d have had me pegged the first time you saw me in the police station,” he said, in an almost wistful tone.

  “You were luckier than you realised.”

  “Although what could you have told them, I guess?”

  “It’s a conundrum.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “You know,” I said, scratching at the sore spot on my chest, “I happen to believe what you’re telling me. I knew whoever broke into the apartment was a beginner. What did you use on the door, by the way?”

  “Fire extinguisher. Found it on the street.”

  “I’d figured it was a mallet, though a fire extinguisher works I suppose.”

  “Sure worked for me,” he said, grinning again.

  “But why did you go to the apartment at all? You must have known I’d taken the first figurine from the houseboat.”

  Stuart shook his head. “Couldn’t get into the safe, could I? I told Mikey I wouldn’t be able to but I guess that shows how desperate he’d got. He wanted me to try.”

  “But when you got to the second apartment and the monkey wasn’t there, you had to assume I’d been in before you?”

  “There was no sign that anyone had broken in.”

  “Because I didn’t break anything. I used my picks.”

  He pouted. “Except I didn’t know that, did I? It was a possibility, sure, but equally the monkey could have been moved.”

  “So what did you do after you left?”

  “Headed to the cafe the girl works in. That’s where Mikey wanted to meet. But when I got there he was already leaving so I came here and waited for him to call.”

  “Was he with the wide man and the thin man?”

  “There were two men, yeah.”

  “You think they’re the ones who killed him?”

  “Could be. Or it could have been the girl. Or maybe it was you.” He peered at me, brow furrowed.

  “Or you,” I suggested.

  “Well now,” Stuart said, sitting up in the Chesterfield and spilling some of the beer on his shirt. “I know it wasn’t me.”

  “Likewise,” I told him, then reached up and probed at my head wound, picking away a flake of dried blood. “And after they put a baseball bat to my head, the wide man and the thin man said it wasn’t them.”

  “So it was the girl then.”

  I leaned my head on an angle. “Perhaps. Although she would have had to wait until the wide man and the thin man had left him alone, then beaten him, then got back to the cafe to meet me. Which I don’t see happening. Are you sure she wasn’t with Michael and the two men?”

  “Absolutely,” he said, looking as serious as he had done at any time since he’d got home. “Although she could have already been in his apartment, maybe. I didn’t go inside the cafe once I saw him leave but I didn’t see her through the window either.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Or somebody is lying.”

  “Or somebody else killed him.”

  “Hell, maybe it was suicide.”

  I gave Stuart a look that told him that wasn’t funny. He slumped a little on the sofa, then drained the rest of his lager.

  “Was it you who broke into my apartment?” I asked.

  He frowned, wiping his lips clean with the back of his hand. “I don’t know anything about that. Matter of fact, I’ve been tying to find out where you live. So you got burgled, huh?”

  “I’m not sure it’s something I’m entitled to complain about.”

  “Did they get the monkeys?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Stuart squinted at me, then gestured in my direction with his lager can.

  “You know, you just looked away when you said that. It’s a sure sign you’re lying.”

  “I’m telling you the truth,” I said, focussing on his eyes.

  “Horseshit. You blinked.”

  I sighed, then rubbed the back of my neck and afterwards the stubble on my chin.

  “What about your secretary, the one who called me?”

  “Some bird in a bar. I gave her a few notes.”

  “She was kind of curt.”

  “No shit. You get what you pay for, I guess.”

  “And that whole library thing,” I went on, throwing my hands up. “Why’d you go through all that? We were in there for hours.”

  “Well, I couldn’t go finding what you were looking for right away now, could I?”

  “But three hours!”

  “Yeah,” he said, smirking, “I sensed you were getting a bit restless. I could have gone another hour or so.”

  “There was no need.”

  “I was being thorough. Besides, you’d paid me well enough.”

  “The six thousand euros? I found it in the safe in the houseboat.”

  He shook his head, amused. “Easy come, eh?”

  “Something like that. Truth is I figured it could be marked and I might as well get it laundered through your office account.”

  He whistled. “What did you think, you’d ask for some of it back after a while?”

  “The thought had occurred to me.”

  “From a lawyer? Man, you’re a born optimist.”

  I le
aned forward against the chair and planted my hands on the backrest again.

  “One final question,” I said. “Marieke, Kim, whoever she is—you think she might have the third monkey?”

  He chewed his lip, then nodded slowly. “I’d say the odds are pretty good. And I say that as somebody who knows you must already have been through my apartment.”

  “Hey,” I told him, smiling, “you do something for a living, it pays to be good at it.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Cafe de Brug was busier than I’d ever seen it. All of the tables were occupied and a cigarette smog was suspended above the room. Both the girl and the young man were working the bar and because of the number of customers she didn’t see me to begin with. I took a stool and lit a cigarette with a book of matches from a nearby ashtray, looking, I thought, a bit like Glint Eastwood in one of his Western movies. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know how I really looked.

  When she finally saw me, I could tell she thought about not serving me and leaving it to her light-fingered friend. In the end, though, she thought better of it and fixed me a beer.

  “Thanks Kim,” I said, when she placed the beer in front of me.

  Her hand didn’t leave the glass. All that mattered right then was that she’d heard me say her real name.

  “You might want to let go,” I told her. “Otherwise, it’s going to be pretty hard for me to drink.”

  When she still didn’t move, I prised her fingers away from the glass and raised it to my lips, swallowing a mouthful of the icy liquid. Then I took another draw on my cigarette. My chest still hurt when I inhaled deeply, though I did my best not to show it. I vented the dry smoke through my nostrils, reached into my pocket and removed her passport. I slid it across the surface of the bar towards her.

  “Let’s take a walk,” I said. “Tell your friend to earn his wage for a while.”

  I drank another mouthful of the beer and then got up from the bar and waited outside for her to join me. She emerged around five minutes later, having taken longer than I’d expected to put on a black puffa jacket and gloves. I led her towards the lighted canal bridge without saying anything and waited until we were in the middle of the bridge span before taking a last draw on my cigarette, then flicked the butt into the oily waters below and leaned against the brick balustrade.