The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam (2 page)

“You’ll get in.”

“Or I can’t find the figurine in the apartment.”

“Guy keeps it under his pillow.”

I frowned. “He sleeps on it?”

“Sleeps with it for all I care. But you’ll find it under his
pillow.”

I backed away from him and looked about the room. The blonde was
wiping down the bar with a damp cloth, her hair dancing around her
face. The only other customers were three Dutch men drinking beer
at a table near the front door. They were laughing and clapping one
another on the back, grinning toothily as if life simply didn’t get
any better. Behind them, sheet rain blasted against the picture
window, blurring the outline of the lighted canal bridge I could
see on the other side of the glass. I sighed, and gave it to him
straight.

“Listen,” I said, “I’m going to have to say no. I don’t know how
you found me and that’s part of the problem. The other thing is you
want this done tomorrow night and that’s a concern for me. I like
to look around a job before I get inside of it and you’re not
giving me the time I need.”

The American laced his hands together on the table and tapped
his thumbs against one another.

“Say we double your fee?”

“It’s funny,” I told him, “that just makes me more nervous. See,
I have to think it’s vital to you now, for whatever reason, that
this thing is done tomorrow night. And the fact you’d pay me twenty
thousand makes me think there’s twice the risk I’d considered in
the first place.”

“Risk is a part of it. So’s the reward.”

“It’s still a no.”

The American grimaced, shook his head wearily. Then he reached
inside the sleeve of his windbreaker and removed a square of paper.
He hesitated for a moment, looking me in the eyes once more, before
sliding the paper across to me.

“Kid, I’m gonna take a chance. These here are the addresses. I
want you to keep them. Say tomorrow night comes around and it gets
to seven o’clock and you change your mind.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“And you’re confident about that. But why don’t we leave
ourselves open to the possibility that you just might reconsider
your attitude? This way, you have the details you need and
everything’s in your control. You make the decision.”

I held his gaze, and, fool that I was, reached out and took the
piece of paper.

“That’s right, kid,” he told me. “All I’m asking you to do is
think about it.”

∨
The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam
∧

A
nd think about it I
did, for most of that night and throughout the following day. I
thought about it when I should have been proof reading the
manuscript that was sat on my writing desk and I thought about it
when I took my lunchtime stroll and then when I went out for a
packet of cigarettes around three. And damn if I wasn’t still
thinking about it when I found myself stood opposite the window of
Café de Brug at a quarter after seven later that night. The
American was in there alright, sat at the same table, and he had
two men with him. The men were younger than the American and there
was a European vibe about the way they dressed, though whether they
were Dutch or not I couldn’t tell without hearing them speak. They
wore matching leather jackets and light denim trousers but
physically they were complete opposites. The man with his back to
me was heavy-set, with a thick neck and a shaved head whereas his
friend was rail-thin, almost ill-looking, with a pinched quality
about his face that made it look as if he’d sucked too hard on a
cigarette and had forgotten to exhale. Were they the men who lived
in the houseboat and the apartment in the Jordaan, and if they
were, which was which? I had the thin man pegged as the boat owner,
because I couldn’t see him making it up and down five flights of
stairs each day without a team of medics in support and a troop of
cheerleaders up ahead, but the wide man didn’t strike me as the
type to have enough cash to live in the Jordaan. But then, why
judge a book, you might say, because I sure as hell hoped I didn’t
look anything like a burglar.

Hand inside my pocket, I fingered the piece of paper with the
two addresses written on it. For a moment, I had it in mind to run
through the situation once again, to weigh up the pros and the cons
that were confronting me, but really there was no point. I mean,
who was I kidding, stood outside the café, pretending I had a
decision to make? There was more chance of me turning down a
midnight tumble with the blonde bartender than walking away from
the job now. So I backed off from the window and crossed over the
canal bridge and took a few turns this way and a few that, and
before very long I found myself stepping down from the street and
onto the painted metal deck of a grand old Dutch barge.

I guess that’s something that might surprise some people – that
most professional thieves tend to avoid breaking into a place in
the middle of the night. Sure, there are less people around then,
but if anybody does happen to spot you crouching before a locked
door at three in the morning, well, they’re going to be pretty
suspicious. On the other hand, if you tackle that same lock at,
say, half past seven in the evening, you risk being seen by more
people but there’s also a fair chance they won’t be concerned about
it. After all, burglars only operate after midnight, right?

As it turned out, this particular burglar didn’t have to worry
either way. For one thing, it was already dark and there was a raw
bite to the wind that was keeping people inside their homes and off
the streets but, more to the point, it took me longer to pull my
micro screwdriver and set of picks from my pocket than it did to
snap back the lazy old cylinder lock on the door to the barge.

I rapped on the door and waited long enough for somebody to
answer before opening it fully. There were no stirrings or
rumblings or, in fact, noises of any kind, which didn’t come as a
great surprise because the interior of the barge was in darkness
and I knew (or at least thought I knew) that the owner was out for
the evening chewing on minute steak. I knocked once more and when I
was sure there was nobody at home, I stepped inside, locked the
door behind me (for all the good that would do) and flicked on a
light switch. I suppose some people might be surprised about that
too, but it’s just common sense – putting a main light on suggests
you have a right to be some place whereas flashing a torch beam
around a property is just another needless giveaway.

The interior was large and open-plan, a seventies mishmash of
wall-to-wall wooden panelling painted yellow, with a shag-pile
brown carpet and orange window curtains. I drew the few curtains
that were still open and took a moment to look around. There wasn’t
a great deal of furniture, just a large bed at the bow end of the
boat covered in twisted sheets and discarded clothes, a plastic
kitchen table stacked with dirty plates and take-away food
containers, and a threadbare couch with sinking cushions that faced
a television that dated, at a guess, from the last time the room
had been decorated. There was also a good deal of built-in storage
around the edge of the room, some of it covered in plaid seating
cushions, and a small cubicle that protruded from one wall where I
assumed the bathroom was to be found.

I raised my hands and cracked my knuckles, like a concert
pianist or, more accurately, a thief with mild arthritis. Then I
flexed my fingers, waggling them in the air as if I was capable of
tuning in to some cosmic presence and divining the hiding place of
the safe. My fingers made a faint swishing noise as I did this
because I was wearing disposable surgical gloves from a box I had
at home which, in turn, I’d taken from the city hospital during a
recent visit (for my arthritis, naturally). I was wearing the
gloves out of habit – my fingerprints weren’t on record anywhere
outside of the UK and it was unlikely anyone would look for them
here – but habit and routine were my friends, the surest way I knew
of protecting myself against costly mistakes.

But I digress. The safe.

Finger waggling aside, the best way to find it was to conduct a
reasoned, methodical search, beginning at the front of the boat and
working my way along either side, port then starboard, checking
each cupboard and cubby hole and cavity until I reached the bedroom
area at the rear, assuming it took me that long. And this was the
approach I would surely take, in just a moment, after I’d tried a
few things first.

So now, if I were a safe, where would I be hiding? Antigua?
Hmmm. The bathroom? No, not there. The kitchen? What kitchen? Above
the bed? No sign of it. Behind the not-quite-straight picture of a
field of tulips hanging on the wall above the couch? Ah, I thank
you. Our boat owner, it would appear, was not afraid of the odd
cliché or two.

Neither, sadly for me, was he a fan of the classic combination
lock safe. Now this was a shame because I’ve spent more evenings
than I’d care to remember with my ear pressed against the metal
doors of one or two of the more common makes, listening for the
tell-tale click of contact points on a drive cam dial, plotting the
numbers these clicks correspond to onto graph paper and coming up
with the sequence of digits necessary to open the once impregnable
door. All that practice was wasted here, though, because the safe
in front of me had an electronic lock. Ten digits in all, from zero
through to nine, housed in a no-nonsense keypad. I could try
listening for clicks, but it wouldn’t do me any good, since an
electronic lock doesn’t make any noise. Or I could try every
possible combination for what might very well turn out to be the
remainder of my time here on earth, though I was a little short on
patience for that. No, an electronic lock was a difficult customer,
alright, and I knew of only three ways around it.

The first, and the least appealing, was to torch the thing. You
see, safes generally fall into two categories – they’re either
burglar-proof or fire-proof. Amazing as it may seem, it’s rare to
come across a domestic safe that does both jobs for the simple
reason that it would make the safe very expensive. So while
burglar-proof safes are designed and manufactured to resist
attempts to break into them, they lack fire protection. Which is
all well and good, but didn’t help me very much, since I didn’t
have time to lay a controlled fire that could reach the kind of
intense heats necessary to buckle the metal casing and, more to the
point, taking that approach would likely transform the safe into an
oven and cook the very item I was aiming to steal.

The second, and much more preferable method, was to use the
code. Forgive me for stating the obvious here, but the truth is
that no matter how many times and ways we’re told not to, most of
us keep a written record of the codes to our credit cards and
mobile telephones and, yes, our safes, and more often than not we
keep these handy notes right beside the very items the codes are
meant to protect. So I had a good look for the code. I looked on
the fascia of the safe itself, on the wall surrounding the safe, on
the front and then the back of the painting that had been hanging
in front of the safe, in the nearby cupboards and drawers, in the
not so near cupboards and drawers, in the bathroom, among the dirty
linen, under the bed. And I didn’t find a thing. Not a digit. But
it was worth a try.

All of which left me with my final option, which although
similar to the second is a little more devious, even though it’s
based on the most simple of facts – in order to open an electronic
lock, you have to press the keypad. And if you press the keypad,
come now, what does that mean? Fingerprints, yes! Lots of them. And
assuming you don’t change your code all that often (or even better,
ever) your fingerprints can tell the resourceful burglar which
buttons to press, although sadly, not which order to press them in.
Incidentally, the only way I can think of avoiding this trap is to
wear gloves whenever you access your safe, but then, who wears
gloves inside their home, other than your friendly neighbourhood
burglar?

If I’d had a little more time, I could have used a particularly
neat trick and smeared a little ultraviolet ink on a nearby surface
the owner of the boat was liable to touch before opening the safe,
such as the picture frame, and then returned at my leisure with a
black light (which would have complemented the decor nicely) and
got the code that way. But sadly, time was not on my side and I was
left to rely on the next best thing – a fingerprint kit.

So, from among the small collection of burglar tools in my
pocket, I removed a make-up compact that I’d re-filled some months
beforehand with fingerprint powder. I popped the compact open,
removed the small brush that was clipped inside and began to
carefully dust each numbered key. When I was done, I blew the
excess away, then turned off the overhead lights for a moment and
angled the beam of my pocket torch over the keypad until I could
see what I was looking for. And there they were – four keys smeared
in layers and layers of prints – the mystery numbers being 9, 4, 1
and 0. Once this bit of magic was done with, I put the overhead
lights back on, wiped the fingerprint powder from the keypad as
best I could and began to enter various combinations of the code
I’d obtained, working on the assumption that it consisted of just
four digits. At some point around ten minutes later, when I was
deep into a fantasy that involved me punching the keypad way into
next Sunday, I finally heard the welcome clunk and whirr of the
locking mechanism retracting and, wouldn’t you know it, the door to
the safe popped open.

Being a resourceful type, I pulled the door fully back and
peered inside. It was only a small space and it contained just four
items. First off was a crumpled photograph of two men stood in
front of a muddy river, holding fishing rods and tackle boxes,
smiling to camera. I recognised one of the men as the thin man from
the café and the second figure was almost certainly his father.
Beneath the photograph was a stack of euro notes. I picked them up
and counted them. The bills were in denominations of one hundred
euros and there were sixty of them altogether. I put the bills back
where I’d found them, next to a tan coloured bar of what looked to
be cannabis. Beside the cannabis was the monkey figurine. The
monkey was clutching his ears, as if he was afraid I’d been
planning to blow the safe apart. I picked him up and hefted him in
my palm and he felt exactly like the figurine the American had
shown me. I slipped him into my pocket and had a think about what
to do next.