2007 - The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam

by Chris Ewan

  “Where was I?” I asked.

  “Insurance,” Stuart repeated.

  “Oh yes. Insurance. Well, as you can imagine, the premiums on an anti-theft policy for a diamond business are huge. And as the head of security, Mr. Van Zandt had to justify the expense. Well, what better way to explain the cost away than by arranging for a theft? And with a little careful paper management, he could claim for one amount from the insurer and notify the board that a lower amount had been recovered.”

  “This is enough,” Van Zandt said, and forcefully pushed himself up onto his feet. For a moment, he locked onto Burggrave’s eyes, the two of them sharing some wordless communion. Then he turned and began to hobble away.

  “The difference would be used to line his own pocket,” I went on, raising my voice so Van Zandt could still hear. “So you found a likely guard, Mr. Van Zandt, and you offered him a bonus if he contacted a local thief and arranged for a convenient burglary to occur, didn’t you?”

  Van Zandt ignored me and kept moving in the direction of the exit.

  “Isn’t that so, Mr. Van Zandt?”

  He waved me away with his hand, head shaking, but he didn’t pause. As it happened, that didn’t matter a great deal because with a wordless jab of his thumb, the wide man signalled to his partner and the two of them were off after the old man, covering the distance to him in a matter of seconds and lifting him clean off the floor by the elbows. Van Zandt struggled and kicked and wheezed, his feet wind-milling in the air, but he didn’t have the slightest chance of freeing himself. Within a matter of moments he was pressed back into his seat and this time he was flanked by two gentlemen who weren’t inclined to allow him to leave. Thankfully, Detective Inspector Riemer didn’t see any reason to intervene. In fact, she was the one who motioned for me to continue.

  “But I had to wonder, how did you know which thief to approach? And then I realised, that’s where Inspector Burggrave came in. He was a thrusting young officer back then but all those crimes he was solving had started people talking. Was he on the take? You certainly thought so. My guess is you contacted Burggrave and the two of you came to an arrangement and after that all the pieces fell into their neat little places. The scam was set. Arrangements were made for Louis Rijker to go missing for an hour or so. Perhaps that was something the Inspector handled himself or perhaps he knew a local thug who could apply the necessary pressure. However it worked, though, on the given night Louis Rijker followed orders and Robert Wolkers let our unsuspecting thieves into the warehouse and watched over them while they set about their work. From there, things panned out much as I’ve previously described except, of course, for the aftermath.”

  I paused, and paced from one side of the small semi-circle of spectators I was stood inside to the other, my rubber soles tapping softly against the concrete floor. I lifted the gun above my head and waved it about, as if it were just an everyday prop that I was using to trigger my mind. I didn’t, though, stand too close to Burggrave because I still wasn’t sure what his reaction would be. For the moment, he seemed to be waiting to hear more of what I had to say, perhaps believing he could poke enough holes in my theory to end the matter there and then.

  “With the strong room empty and the gang long gone,” I carried on, “Wolkers still had enough time before Rijker returned to report the theft. First, he called his head of security and after that a call went out to the local police force. Burggrave was the first to respond, naturally. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if he’d been waiting with Mr. Van Zandt just a short distance away. The two of them would have met Wolkers, as pre-arranged, but unbeknown to the guard, he’d become a major loose end by then. Perhaps Burggrave told him he’d need to be tied up or knocked on the head to make things look more plausible. Before all that though, he’d have to remove his gun and hand it over. It wouldn’t do for Van Zandt to be found arming its guards—it would almost certainly invalidate their insurance.”

  I cut away from the picture I’d been painting and looked from Van Zandt to Burggrave. I tried to close out the image I’d glimpsed of Kim sat between them, her face ghostly white, eyes shut tight and teeth clamped together.

  “I’m not certain which of you shot him,” I said, “but my guess would be you Inspector Burggrave. Mr. Van Zandt saw himself as a businessman so it’s possible he believed the pay off was enough to keep Robert Wolkers mouth shut. Maybe he even had ideas of carrying out the same scam again at some point further down the line. But it was all too risky for you, Inspector—there was no way you could bungle the investigation of such a daring robbery. So you killed Robert Wolkers and after that you made your first serious error.”

  “Killing my father wasn’t enough?” Kim said, in a hollow voice.

  “Excuse me,” I told her, “you’re right. My phrasing was clumsy. I should have said he made his first tactical mistake. You see, he agreed to cover up the use of the gun altogether.”

  I met Burggrave’s gaze and held it. I was right—I knew it—but he still wasn’t giving anything away. Van Zandt could be broken by a skilled investigator, I hadn’t the slightest doubt about that, but Burggrave would present a real challenge. In this particular arena I’d devised, he was like a prize fighter, a real old bruiser, and it was beginning to feel like I could give him as many jabs as I cared and he still might never go down.

  “I’m sure that originally the Inspector would have planned to ditch the gun, perhaps in one of your many canals, but for some reason, most likely more money, he agreed to entrust its destruction to Mr. Van Zandt. Once he’d handed over the gun, he would have had just enough time left to put some finishing touches to the scene before more officers arrived. Then, over the course of the next twenty-four hours, he set about framing Michael for the crime, even sprinkling a few diamonds that Mr. Van Zandt had held back from the latest delivery around his apartment. It was amazing how quickly he was onto the thief’s trail—made all the papers. Only, it was less amazing when you knew how he’d got onto Michael in the first place.”

  Finally, Burggrave spoke. “I hope your books are many times better than this,” he told me. Then he turned to Riemer and waved his hand in the air. “It is an illusion. A fantasy.”

  “I don’t think so. Although no doubt this gun can be the judge of that,” I said, drawing everyone’s attention to the pistol in my gloved hand once more.

  “You could buy this gun anywhere,” Burggrave said.

  “We’ll see,” I told him, and allowed myself a smile. I was still enjoying how much it was irritating him when Kim interrupted us.

  “Tell me the rest,” she said, in a pleading voice. “I want to hear it. There is more, yes?”

  “A little,” I admitted. “Take Michael, for instance. He knew he hadn’t killed anyone—in fact, he knew your father was still alive when he left here. So he had to figure something was up, especially when Burggrave found those cheap jewels in his home. But what could he do? And besides, I happen to believe that somewhere in his head he felt culpable for the murder in the way a less moral man might not.”

  Van Zandt made a snorting noise, as though the credibility of what I was saying was being stretched ever thinner.

  “You scoff,” I told him, “but I think it’s true. He might not have pulled the trigger and he might always have denied being guilty, but part of him still felt a sense of responsibility for what happened here. I guess that’s because the job had smelt a little off to him from the start. Maybe that had something to do with why he did his time, but don’t be fooled into thinking he went in blind. Michael was an intelligent man, Mr. Van Zandt. The top thieves usually are. And all through that time he spent in prison he was thinking about what had happened, putting the fragments of what he knew together, weaving them into a greater overall understanding. And when he got out, I think one of the first things he did was he broke into your rather impressive home near the Museum Plein. And do you know what I think he found? I think he found that you hadn’t destroyed the gun at all—I think he fo
und that you’d simply hidden it in your house, though not particularly well. Who knows why you held onto it? Perhaps you thought it might give you something over the Inspector here. But keeping it turned you into the foolish one. And as soon as Michael found it he must have had an inkling that it could frame you or Burggrave for the murder he’d gone down for. So he took it and a few days later he left it in an apartment belonging to one of his former gang members.”

  “It makes no sense to me,” Riemer cut in. “Why would he not bring the gun to the police?”

  “The same police who’d framed him?”

  “If that is what he believed, he could have found a different officer, someone he felt he could trust.”

  “Well now,” I told her, “I’m not sure that all of your colleagues are as decent and noble as you Detective Inspector.”

  She stared at me flatly.

  “Will you give me the gun?” she asked.

  I chewed on my lips and studied the piece of hardware at the end of my arm. I was growing used to it; the stock was well crafted and it felt snug in my hand. But I could see why Riemer might object to me waving a gun about willy-nilly, especially if it had the capacity to prove the things I said it could. I turned to Burggrave and gestured at him with it.

  “You won’t mind, I assume,” I told him.

  “Of course not,” he said, rather stiffly.

  “Well then I don’t see why I shouldn’t hand it over to you Detective Inspector Riemer. You are wearing gloves, I see.”

  I offered the gun to her and she snatched it from my outstretched hand, releasing the cylinder and emptying it of bullets. Then she returned the cylinder to its housing with a flick of her wrist and slipped the gun into one of her coat pockets.

  “And the other one,” she said.

  “I don’t see why not,” I told her, and motioned for her to go ahead and pick up the gun Karine Rijker had removed from her handbag.

  Riemer stepped forwards and gathered the pistol, going through the same process to check it was empty, then slipping it into another of her coat pockets.

  “You will remember which is which, I take it.”

  “You have finished your story?” she asked.

  “Calling it a story’s a little pejorative in the circumstances, don’t you think? And I’m afraid there’s just the small matter of more recent events to clear up, if you can bear with me.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Good. Well, your colleague here, Inspector Burggrave,” I said, acknowledging the tensed figure to my right, “would have spent a lot of time over the twelve years Michael was in prison thinking about all those diamonds Michael got away with. They had to be hidden somewhere and if he could just get his hands on them their value would dwarf whatever money he’d been paid by Van Zandt. Of course,” I said, gesturing to my newest guardian angels, who were still flanking the old man, “he couldn’t exactly go investigating these two gentlemen in case things didn’t tie up as neatly as they had done before. But perhaps he could still work some avenues, ask a few contacts in the prison system to see if Michael ever let anything slip. Michael never did, he was careful, but talk got around about a small monkey figurine he kept in his cell. Maybe Burggrave knew what that meant right away—after all, I get the impression he’d made plenty of money over the years that he couldn’t exactly pay into his current account—but even if he did, he couldn’t do anything without all three keys. The Chinatown facility doesn’t exactly yield to police jurisdiction, especially not when the officer who wants to look inside their strong boxes doesn’t want anyone on the force to know about it. And Burggrave couldn’t get access to Michael’s figurine inside the prison system. It was ironic really—Michael found the most secure place in the world to keep his key.”

  I smirked at Burggrave and shrugged my shoulders in a showy way, wanting to rile him that bit more. I could tell from his expression and the way he was trembling very slightly that if we were on our own right now, I would be in trouble.

  “So what were you left with? Well, you had twelve years of corrupt policing business to take care of and, at the end of that time, Michael was released. From that point on, I imagine you kept him under watch, following him around the city, finding the bed-sit he was holed up in, noting the details of the young girl he seemed to be seeing. You would have gone on like that, watching him endlessly, obsessively even, until one night, you would have seen Michael having dinner at Cafe de Burg with the exact same men he’d stolen those diamonds with in the first place. I can’t know exactly what happened, I admit, but it doesn’t seem beyond the realms of possibility that you would have seen the group of them leave and followed them back to Michael’s apartment. You would have seen them go into Michael’s building and you would have seen these two gentlemen come out shortly afterwards and I guess you might well have decided that this was it, that if you didn’t act now you’d miss your chance forever.”

  I stopped, hoping he might interrupt in some way, but he said nothing. Maybe that had to do with how angry he’d become. Seething is the only word to describe it. His face had turned puce and spittle clung to his lips. He kept rising up on his toes, as if ready to lunge at me, and I could tell it was an effort for him to keep his arms down by his sides because they kept shaking and all the tendons and arteries were bulging in his neck.

  “So you made your way inside the building and you confronted Michael. Perhaps you caught him unawares. In any event, the conversation can’t have gone as you’d hoped. There’s no way Michael would tell you where the jewels were and I suspect there’s a good chance he goaded you about some kind of evidence he had tying you to the murder of Robert Wolkers. You’d have lost it, of course. You wanted to know where the jewels were, where the monkey figurines had got to, at all costs. And at some point I guess you began using force, but still Michael wouldn’t tell you what you needed to know. He must have put most of it together by then and the way you were acting wasn’t exactly the behaviour of a decorated officer of the Amsterdam-Amstelland police force.”

  “You will regret this,” he cut in, voice quivering. “You cannot say such things without consequences.”

  “Eventually,” I went on, speaking over him, “you took things up a level, even broke some of Michael’s fingers like a crude torturer, but it didn’t get you anywhere. Michael had spent twelve long years behind bars waiting to get his hands on his jewels and he wasn’t about to give up their whereabouts to the man who’d set him up in the first place. Maybe he said as much; it wouldn’t surprise me. And you must have known then that it was true. And what else could you do? You couldn’t drag him down the station on false pretences in that state and you couldn’t let him get away with the diamonds. So,” I said, shrugging, “you killed him.”

  Burggrave shook his head at me, his eyes like blades behind his glasses, perspiration breaking out across his forehead.

  “Or perhaps I should say you thought you’d killed him,” I went on. “You beat his head against the back of the bath tub until he was unconscious, and then you made a quick search of the apartment. Luckily for you, you found Michael’s monkey figurine, the one covering his eyes, and I’m guessing you also saw the photocopied passport page that I found moments later when I entered the apartment,” I said, giving Kim a warning look so that she wouldn’t contradict this version of events, “a page that showed Marieke Van Kleef’s real name was Kim Wolkers.”

  Burggrave screwed his face up in disdain but I was on a roll now.

  “I’m not altogether sure what happened next. Either you had just enough time when you heard Kim and me enter the front of the building to climb another flight of stairs or you were already outside the building working out what to do when you happened to see us arrive. Either way, you would have known by then that Kim was the daughter of the guard you’d killed and I suppose you might also have known who I was, since you could have seen me meeting Michael the night before and perhaps even followed me home. Something else you would have known is that w
e were about to find Michael’s body. So you waited until we were inside the apartment and then you made an anonymous call to the police, most likely from a payphone—there’s one just along the street from Michael’s building. Then, just as you’d done all those years before, you made sure you were the first officer to respond when the call went out.”

  He inhaled deeply, as though readying himself to pour scorn on what I’d just said. I didn’t give him the opportunity.

  “Of course, you knew something was up when Kim was the only person you found inside that apartment. To my shame,” I said, looking towards Mrs. Rijker as the only non-English speaker, “I’d jumped out the back window on hearing the sirens.”

  Mrs. Rijker smiled at me brightly, as if I’d just recounted her favourite anecdote. I nodded back, as though acknowledging some form of wordless absolution, then returned my attention to Burggrave.

  “Because of my reaction, you made it your business to find me and once you heard from the British Embassy that I had a conviction for theft you began to put two and two together in the way that good police minds are want to do, and you began to wonder if maybe Michael had set these two gentlemen up. And now that he was dead, it occurred to you there was a fair chance I was the one with the two remaining figurines you needed. So you arrested me on suspicion of being involved in Michael’s death and you kept me in custody overnight, ignoring Kirn’s testimony,” I said, looking pointedly at Riemer, “that I’d been with her at the time of the killing because, for one thing, you knew she’d made a statement under a false name and for another thing, you knew she was lying. Sadly for you, when the questioning went nowhere you couldn’t bend my fingers back to the vertical or beat my head against the wall. But conveniently, you could detain me overnight and it was during that time you broke into my apartment, literally removing the door from its hinges to get inside.”