The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam (27 page)

“For the purposes of this afternoon, I want you to assume,” I
said, turning from them to look at Stuart so as to give some
emphasis to the assumption part, “that as well as being a writer, I
have certain talents of a less than entirely legal nature.”

“You are a thief,” the wide man announced.

“On a purely theoretical basis,” I replied, “I will agree with
you.”

Burggrave turned and looked pointedly towards Riemer. She
ignored him but it didn’t prevent her from giving me an ice-like
glare. I shrugged, as if my criminality was nothing more than an
unfortunate ailment I’d picked up some years before and had never
quite been able to shake.

“Working on this assumption,” I went on, “let us suppose that
Michael Park contacted me, via the website I run, and asked me to
meet him at Café de Brug, where, coincidentally, the beautiful,
tragically orphaned Ms. Wolkers also happened to work. Let’s also
say I showed up and over the course of a beer or two Michael asked
me to obtain some items for him – the items in question being two
monkey figurines located in the homes of these two gentlemen.”

I cast my hand in the general direction of the wide man and the
thin man. Somewhat ridiculously, I still didn’t know their real
names, so I couldn’t introduce them as I might have hoped.

“I’m afraid I still don’t know your names,” I said, and received
a derisive snort from the thin man.

“But we know them,” Riemer interrupted, surprising me as much as
them. “I have reviewed a file on them only yesterday.”

The two men looked at one another. The wide man shook his head
minutely, as if telling his companion it was nothing to worry
about. I wasn’t so sure about that.

“Would you care to elaborate?” I asked.

“It is police business.”

“Tsk,” Van Zandt cut in. “Some people say there is too much of
this ‘police business’ and not enough police work.”

“If you have a complaint, sir,” Riemer began, “there are
appropriate channels.”

“Quite,” I said, “and more convenient times, if you’ll forgive
me for saying so.” I smiled meekly at Van Zandt and, in time, he
graced me with another of his considered nods. “And, to be honest,
the names of these gentlemen really don’t concern us a great deal.
During the last week or so, I’ve discovered that names can be
untrustworthy things in any case. The only thing that really does
matter is that these gentlemen had the monkey figurines Michael
wanted.”

“Can you describe them?” Riemer asked.

“It’s not important.”

“We will be the judge of that,” Burggrave said.

“With respect,” Stuart told him, “I don’t think you’re here to
be the judge of anything. At least not yet, anyway.”

“Rutherford’s right,” I said. “But for the sake of clarity, they
were so big.” I held my hands a few inches apart. “And they were
made of plaster of Paris. The one Michael had was covering his
eyes. It was part of a set of what we English call the Three Wise
Monkeys.”

Burggrave turned to his superior and began talking in Dutch,
moving his hands at the same time to first cover his mouth and then
his ears.

“Yes, yes,” Riemer said, in English again, as if she was talking
to a fool. “Everyone has heard of them. They are worth money?”

“I didn’t think so,” I told her. “But Michael offered me a
generous sum to obtain them for him nonetheless. At that point, I
should say, I had no idea who he was, least of all that he was a
thief himself. But it didn’t matter a great deal because I turned
him down. He said he needed the job carried out the following night
and the time-frame bothered me a great deal. Unfortunately, he gave
me the addresses where I might find the monkeys anyway.”

“Why did he do this?” Burggrave asked, trying, I thought, to
regain some credibility after being slapped down by his
superior.

“He said he hoped I would change my mind. Sadly for me, I’m
afraid I did just that. The following night, while Michael was
dining with these two gentlemen at Café de Brug, I let myself into
their homes and relieved them of the two monkey figurines in their
possession. Problem was, when I got back, Michael was gone. That
was when Kim appeared and told me he’d been frogmarched to his
apartment by our friends here.”

“It is not true,” the wide man said. “We walked to Michael’s
home with him, but he invited us to do this.”

“Yes, I thought that might be the case. I guess maybe it was
getting close to the time we were supposed to meet and perhaps your
meal hadn’t finished as soon as he’d hoped. Tell me, when you
reached his apartment, did he make some kind of an excuse, feign an
illness perhaps?”

The wide man shrugged, as if I was close enough.

“That wouldn’t have been long before Kim and I arrived. She
wanted me with her because Michael had deviated from the plan he’d
explained to her and she was worried. Partly her concern was for
Michael, but in truth it was more for the monkeys.” I glanced over
to her but still she refused to look at me. “When we arrived, we
found him badly beaten in the bathroom.”

“So these men killed him,” Van Zandt said, as if it were
perfectly obvious who had committed the crime.

“I assumed so,” I agreed. “In fact, I was sure of it and I
thought I knew why. They didn’t know I’d stolen their monkeys, you
see, so it seemed to me they were after the monkey Michael had. For
some reason, the figurine was important enough for them to kill him
and that was why he’d been so concerned to have me steal the
monkeys when I did.”

Burggrave removed his hands from his coat pockets and reached
for the handcuffs suspended from his belt. Riemer stopped him with
just a touch on his arm and a shake of her head.

“You no longer think this?” Riemer asked me.

“No. And for several reasons. One is that a few days after I was
arrested on suspicion of beating Michael, quite wrongly I might
add, these two gentlemen abducted me and held me prisoner in their
apartment. When I was there, they told me they hadn’t done it.”

Burggrave scoffed and threw up his hands. “And this was enough
for you?”

“No, of course not. But that changed when I discovered that they
thought I had the third monkey, the one that belonged to Michael.
That was interesting. I mean, if they thought I had it, then it
meant they didn’t.”

“This does not mean they did not kill him,” Riemer said flatly.
“They maybe killed him because he would not tell them where this
monkey was.”

“I thought of that too. But see, if the monkey was important
enough for them to kidnap me to find it, I couldn’t understand why
they would have beaten Michael so badly that he couldn’t tell them
where it was.”

Riemer nodded slowly, as if she was willing to go along with me
for the time being.

“And when I told them the truth, about Michael hiring me to
steal the figurines from them, they didn’t believe me at all. It
was as if something like that was unimaginable to them, as if they
trusted Michael implicitly.”

This time, I caught the wide man and the thin man nodding along
with me.

“Why would they feel that way about him, I got to asking myself?
And pretty soon the answer was obvious. Actually, I was kind of
embarrassed I hadn’t thought of it before. These men weren’t just
friends with Michael, they were colleagues.”

For a moment, I thought I might lose them both. They certainly
became more agitated, shifting in their seats. Then Riemer said
something that caused all of us to stop and turn.

“We know this already,” she said. “It was in their files.”

“So why didn’t you arrest them for Michael’s murder?”

“This is also police business.”

“You see!” Van Zandt said. “When they do not know the answer to
something, this is what they say. When they make mistakes, this is
what they say. It is police business. Pah.”

“They also say it,” I told him, “out of force loyalty. This was
Inspector Burggrave’s case, wasn’t it, Detective Inspector
Riemer?”

Riemer didn’t answer. She just stared hard at me, as if she
could silence me through willpower alone.

“No matter,” I told her. “I’m only just getting to the heart of
my story anyway. We need to skip back in time again, you see. To
the attempted robbery when Robert Wolkers was killed.” I turned
back to Van Zandt. “I believe the main diamond storage facility was
just about where we are now, is that right Sir?”

Van Zandt dithered.

“Should I repeat the question?”

His eyes narrowed and his lips thinned. He seemed to be
reassessing me from some new perspective. “It is company policy not
to…”

“Oh crap,” I said, interrupting him. “We’ve been through all
that. You told me once before already. So let me ask you again –
the main diamond storage area was around about here, correct?”

Van Zandt held off on replying. Even my best no-nonsense stare
couldn’t persuade him. Riemer’s, though, was of a different
order.

“Answer the question,” she commanded, planting one hand on her
hip and sounding as though her patience was running thin.

Van Zandt gaped at her but she wasn’t about to relent. He turned
back to me with the look of a child who’d been scolded.

“Yes,” he managed.

“Good. Would you be kind enough to describe it for us?”

Van Zandt sighed, and rolled his eyes, but there was something
pantomime about it. Just as in his study, I got the distinct
impression he was more than willing to talk once he was the centre
of attention.

“As head of security, I designed the system myself,” he began,
using a churlish voice, as if this was the hundredth time I’d made
him run through it all. “There was a large room made of steel, like
a giant safe.”

“A strong room, I believe we agreed.”

“Yes, a strong room, you may call it. The walls were made of
steel, many centimetres thick. The floor below was concrete. Around
the steel was a cement skin. Beyond that was a steel cage.”

“And how was this facility used?”

Van Zandt tutted, as if I should have known he was coming to
that part.

“At the end of each day,” he went on, “all the diamonds in the
factory were locked inside this room and the cage was locked around
it. There were always guards on duty.”

“Yes. It was a very comprehensive system, though in practice
quite simple.”

“Simple is good,” he told me. “Simple can be strong.”

“Quite,” I said, casting a knowing gaze towards the wide man.
“And presumably the lock on the strong room was a good one.”

“As I told you before, there were many locks. They were of the
highest quality.”

“I’m sure. Could the bars of the cage be cut?”

“We discussed this.”

“That’s right. I believe we agreed bolt cutters would be no
good, that it would take a blow torch to cut through the steel
rods.”

“Even that may not work.”

“And, as you said, there were always guards on duty. Guards like
Robert Wolkers.”

Van Zandt nodded.

“How many?”

He hesitated, perhaps sensing a change in my tone. “At night,
there were two.”

“And on the night that Robert Wolkers was killed, how many
guards were there then?”

“Two, of course.”

“You’re sure?”

His cheeks puffed up at that. “There were two guards.”

“Well that’s interesting. Because I happen to know for a fact
there was only one.”

Van Zandt stamped his cane into the ground, as if he was hoping
to impose a full stop on the end of whatever it was I was planning
to say next. “Two guards,” he said, simply.

“Oh there were meant to be,” I told him. “There’s no doubt about
that. And I’m sure the records you kept back then showed the same
thing. And I know the newspaper reports of Robert Wolker’s murder
did because Mr Rutherford and I checked them when we went to the
city library just the other day. The second guard’s name was Louis
Rijker. Mr Rijker, I’m afraid, passed away a little over two years
ago. Coronary heart failure. Fortunately for us, though, Rutherford
was able to make contact with his mother.”

I nodded to Rutherford and he stood up from the crate he was sat
on and walked away from the group of us towards the oblong of
daylight filling the doorway on the eastern side of the building.
Outside of that doorway was a yard and in that yard was a taxi cab,
engine idling, with an anxious looking widow sat inside of it.

While I waited for Rutherford to return, I scanned each of the
faces surrounding me and then I checked my watch and finally
contemplated my own feet. There was nothing more to say for a
moment or two and the silence felt oddly oppressive. It seemed to
fill the warehouse interior almost to choking point, as if a gas
main had been left on, and part of me was worried that if
Rutherford and Karine Rijker didn’t appear in the doorway soon
someone might say something incendiary and blow everything
apart.

Then I heard a car door shut, the sound like a muffled gunshot
in the distance, and shortly afterwards the two of them appeared.
Karine Rijker’s flat shoes scuffed against the concrete floor like
sandpaper and she seemed to take an age to reach us. One hand
gripping onto Rutherford’s arm for balance, the other holding a
bulging leather handbag, she threw her weight between her feet like
a chef separating a large egg yolk between two broken shells. Her
outfit was almost identical to the one I’d seen her wearing at her
apartment. She had on a blue housecoat with a floral design beneath
a discoloured, padded overcoat, and her swollen legs and ankles
were sheathed in thick stockings that bunched up around her knees.
The wig on her head was not a good one, looking matted and
threadbare all at the same time, and though she’d gone to the
trouble of applying make-up, it looked for all the world as if
she’d learned her technique at clown school.

“Mrs. Rijker,” I said, holding out my hand to assist the old
woman once she’d neared our small circle of friends.