The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam (13 page)

“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.”

∨
The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam
∧

W
hat 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?”

∨
The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam
∧

H
e 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.