The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam (11 page)

“Well there’s really no need,” he said, eyeing the cash
greedily. “You know, I didn’t do a great deal.”

“Nonsense,” I said, closing his hand around it. “You did more
than enough. But if you feel a little queer about it, how about we
call it a retainer? I have a feeling I might need to call on your
services again.”

Rutherford ran his tongue over his fleshy lips. “Well, I can
always use a little extra cash, dear boy. But you must promise to
call if you need me. You have my number?”

“I do. You have a good day Rutherford.”

“You too, dear boy. You too.”

∨
The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam
∧

S
ince I hadn’t slept
at all the previous night, the first thing I did after parting
company with Rutherford was to find the nearest tobacco shop and
buy a fresh packet of cigarettes. I lit up immediately and smoked
first one, and then a second cigarette right down to the filter.
After that, I went back inside the newsagents and bought a strip of
tram tickets. There was a tram stop right outside the shop and I
waited there for just a handful of minutes until a three carriage
street tram arrived. I boarded the tram and stamped two of my
ticket coupons and then I rode the short distance to Leidseplein.
From Leidseplein I walked east, past the crowded tourist bars and
restaurants and the canal-side casino, into the entranceway to
Vondelpark.

Even though it was a weekday afternoon in winter, the park was
still busy. People on rollerblades and rusting bicycles zipped past
me, couples strolled along arm-in-arm, groups of backpackers sat
together on rucksacks, smoking candy-smelling joints, and the
occasional freak show walked by – one girl had her face pierced
with countless metal rivets and the man she was with wore nothing
more to protect himself from the cold than a pair of fishnet
stockings and a leather jockstrap.

I dragged my weary bones as far as the Blue Tea House, where I
took an outside table, settled into a rubber-strung chair and
ordered a Koffie Verkeerd. I smoked some more of my cigarettes and
drank my coffee, letting the caffeine and the nicotine and the icy
breeze battle against my fatigue and the sore ache in my eyes. Then
I ordered a second coffee and sat there drinking it and smoking
another cigarette until finally the chill and the nicotine became
too much for me and I buried my hands in my pockets and continued
my walk.

I walked right around the perimeter of the park and it took me
close to an hour. By that time my toes were feeling the cold too
and my nose had started to numb. My mind felt clearer, though, and
I seemed about as awake as I was likely to get. So I made my way
directly to a side exit from the park and after that another tram
stop, where I punched two more coupons on my ticket and rode the
tram as close to Café de Brug as it would take me.

Marieke didn’t appear surprised to see me. Without uttering a
word, she left the bar under the control of a middle aged woman she
was working with and led me to her upstairs apartment. Once there,
she settled on her wicker couch and lit a hand-rolled cigarette.
The cigarette turned out to be a joint. She offered me a hit and
when I waved my hand no, she vented a long stream of marijuana
smoke towards my face. I blinked it away, inhaling just a
little.

She was wearing a pair of low slung jeans with no belt and a
hot-pink sweater. Her tanned stomach was exposed and from the way
the sweater gripped to the rather lovely contours of her breasts, I
could tell she wasn’t wearing a bra. I waited for her to wrap her
lips back around the joint and take another draw and once she had a
mouthful of the smoke I got down to it.

“You took one hell of a risk with your statement,” I said. “Say
I’d already told them the truth?”

“I did not think you would tell them anything,” she said,
exhaling halos of blue smoke along with her words. “Like you told
me when we found Michael.”

“That was different. It was a spur of the moment thing.”

Marieke watched me for a moment and, even in that short period
of time, her pupils seemed to dilate just a shade and her features
began to soften.

“So what if it was a risk?” she asked, in a faint drawl. “You
did hot kill Michael. I know it.”

“I’m sorry he’s dead.”

She nodded and toked on the joint once more. “He liked you,” she
managed, her voice sounding pinched.

“We only had one conversation.”

“Even so,” she went on, croaking. “He told me you were
smart.”

“Not smart enough to avoid getting arrested.”

“But you did not tell them about what Michael asked you to do.
The stealing?”

I shook my head. “I told them Michael wanted me to write a book
about him. That was all.”

“They believed this?”

“No. But then you made your statement and they had to let me go.
Burggrave didn’t like it, not one bit.”

She took another hit on the joint. She seemed to be enjoying it.
The tension in her face eased yet again and her eyes became
unfocused, dreamy even. I wondered how much she’d smoked since
Michael had died. I wondered just how together she’d been when she
made her statement.

“You told them what, we were smoking weed together?”

“I told them we were lovers,” she said, in a matter-of-fact way,
and tapped a fragment of ash into a mug on the coffee table.

“But they knew you were in a relationship with Michael.”

“Yes, but it is not so hard to believe that I might have slept
with you too,” she said, straightening her back. “Or that you would
not want to tell the police about this.”

I forced my eyes away from her breasts and onto her face.

“I could have told them once he was dead.”

She frowned. “But I told them this yesterday.”

“Yesterday? What time?”

“It was quite late, perhaps eleven o’clock,” she said, pouting.
“I came to the police station when the woman called me. Riemer,
ja?”

“But Burggrave kept me in until this afternoon,” I said, half to
myself. “No wonder she was pissed with him.”

“I did not know.”

“No,” I said, turning back to her, “that’s what he was relying
on. I get the impression he doesn’t believe either of us.”

Marieke lowered the joint and searched my face, her movements
languid. “But it is over now, yes?”

“I don’t know,” I said, shrugging. “Maybe. The two men Michael
met, do they know about you?”

“No. We were careful.”

“And you really don’t know their names?”

She shook her head, then looked up abruptly. “But you know where
they live. You have been there, yes?”

“And?”

“We can tell the police!”

“I don’t see how,” I told her. “Not without it being clear we’ve
been lying.”

Marieke took another contemplative drag. Then she nodded, as if
to confirm the idea that had formed in her mind.

“We will say that we found some papers, that Michael left their
names here where I could find them.”

“But we don’t know their names.”

“Their addresses then.”

“It might work. I’m not sure. You want them caught?”

“Of course.”

“But we don’t know for certain they killed him.”

“Who else could it be?”

“Well,” I said, “now there’s the question.”

I leaned back in my chair and threw up my hands, as if I was
open to suggestions. Marieke watched me, her face quite severe. I
didn’t shy from her gaze. I just looked back at her, simple as
that. From nowhere, she giggled. It just slipped out, as if she’d
had no idea it was coming, and a plume of hashish smoke came with
it. Wide-eyed, she smothered the laugh, doubled over with her body
jiggling. Then she righted herself and took a deep breath and held
it and fought to regain her composure. She arched her back and
inhaled through her nose and her breasts swelled against the pink
sweater in a way I gave up trying to ignore. I looked back to her
face, where a druggy smile played around the corners of her mouth,
and she looked away from me, towards the corner of the ceiling. She
struggled to make her face serious again, one more smile slipping
through the net. Then she waved it away, wafting it from her face
with both hands, sighed, took her deepest drag so far, ground the
joint into the ash tray on the low table between us and stood and
crossed the short distance towards me. She paused for just a moment
by my feet, and then, as if she’d finally resolved herself to it,
she straddled me, lowered her face towards my own and pressed her
lips against mine. She parted my mouth with her tongue and exhaled
gently and, as we kissed, the reefer smoke floated up around us,
catching in her sweet smelling hair and scratching at the back of
my throat.

♦

Afterwards, we lay on Marieke’s bed while she lit a fresh joint
that we smoked together. I watched the smoke drift up from my mouth
and hang in the air above me, meanwhile teasing a strand of her
hair between my fingers. She rested her hand on my chest and
crossed her leg over my waist. Then, when I was sucking on the last
of the joint, she finally asked me what she’d wanted to know all
along.

“Charlie, will you give me the two monkeys?”

“But you don’t have the third one,” I said, exhaling.

She shook her head against my chest.

“So what’s the use?”

“For me. Please. I would like the two you took.”

I made a show of thinking about it.

“Do you have the twenty thousand?”

“Michael made me keep it here.”

“Then we should go to my apartment.”

∨
The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam
∧

I
n all honesty, I
knew the moment we reached my apartment that someone else had been
inside. Call it a burglar’s intuition. Call it the small things I’d
learned during my years of breaking and entering. Call it the fact
my door had been smashed clean off its hinges and was lying flat on
my living room floor.

As soon as I saw the door, I told Marieke to wait out in the
hallway and stepped cautiously inside. I didn’t expect to disturb
anyone but I didn’t want to take unnecessary risks either. Checking
the place didn’t take long. I only had the living room, the
kitchen, the bathroom and my bedroom to search. Once I’d confirmed
there was nobody inside, I went back to the doorway and told
Marieke to join me.

“Excuse the mess,” I told her.

“But this is ridiculous,” she said. “Charlie, it is
terrible.”

It was pretty terrible, even for a self-confessed burglar. My
every possession was scattered across the floor – books,
manuscripts, notes, CDs, photographs, even my laptop. The few soft
furnishings in the living room had been sliced open and their
stuffing exposed and much the same thing had happened in the
bedroom to my clothes, my sheets and the mattress I slept on. In
the bathroom, the side-panel along the bath had been unscrewed and
my burglar tools had been removed from their hiding place there and
discarded in the bath itself. In the kitchen, all the cupboard
doors had been opened and the food and household sundries the
cupboards had contained had been dumped in a big, soggy pile on the
floor. The freezer door was ajar too and a pool of water had formed
around its base, then spread to touch the edge of the grocery pile
and form a stinking toxic sludge.

I led Marieke away from the kitchen and back to the living room,
where I approached my desk, picking up the broken desk drawer from
the floor on my way towards it. I set the drawer to one side,
dropped to my knees and felt around in the space where the drawer
had been. My fingers searched right around the drawer cavity but no
matter how hard I searched, the figurines weren’t there. My
shoulders dropped and I turned to her and shook my head.

“They’re gone.”

“No,” she said, through gritted teeth, like a teenager trying to
deny the obvious.

“I’m sorry,” I told her. “I thought they’d be safe here. I had
good locks fitted to that door. And I didn’t think anyone would
know I was involved.”

“Who could know?”

“Perhaps my arrest was in the paper. That would connect me with
Michael and it would be easy enough to find out where I live.
Anyway, it’s obvious, isn’t it? The second intruder, the man who
broke into the apartment in the Jordaan while I was still there, he
did this.”

Marieke frowned at me. “It is obvious why?” she asked.

“Because I saw what he did to that apartment, remember? He’s
done the same thing here. All the ripping and the slicing. Forcing
his way inside by breaking the door. Leaving everything in a mess.
And it wasn’t a random burglary. My laptop would be gone if that
was the case.”

“But who is this man?”

“You tell me.”

“But I do not know. How could I know?”

“Because I think Michael hired him. And because I think he would
have told you about it.”

“I told you he didn’t,” she said, swatting the air with her hand
and then pointing at me. “Do not say these things. They are not
true.”

Marieke stamped her foot on the floor and then she started to
scream and yelp. I could have told her to quieten down, that she
might disturb the neighbours, but then I remembered that the noise
of my door being smashed through and my apartment being torn apart
hadn’t upset them, so I let her scream all she wanted. She was so
good at it that part of me was tempted to join in. Eventually,
though, she stopped and glared at me, looking for all the world as
if I was the only reason for her present troubles in life.

“You told me they were safe,” she said, pointing again. “You are
an idiot. You kept them in your desk. This is stupid. It is the
first place I would look.”

“Well it wasn’t the first place he looked, or he wouldn’t have
gone to the trouble of carving open a perfectly respectable couch.
That’s my damage deposit gone, right there.”