The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam (23 page)

“Why would they do that?”

“Why is anyone doing anything anymore? I don’t know, maybe they
wanted to make you think they didn’t kill the American.”

“But they didn’t kill him. And why would they care what I think?
To them, I’m just a burglar who happened to be in the wrong place
at the wrong time. I’m not a threat. I’m an inconvenience.”

“Only now you have their monkeys again.”

“Actually, no. The monkeys are long gone. They’re powder. Now
all I have are their keys and a long-shot at a locker full of
diamonds.”

“Poor you.”

“I will be if they catch up with me. Damn.”

“What?”

“This bloody thing I’m trying to open. I just broke a
paperclip.”

“A paperclip? Why are you using a…Oh, Charlie, do I want to know
about this?”

“It’s just a desk drawer. Probably harmless.”

“Is it your desk drawer?”

“Don’t ask dumb questions, Victoria. You’re a genius,
remember?”

“A genius. Yes, of course. A genius who has no idea
whodunnit.”

“You’re not the only one.”

“But it doesn’t bother you, does it? You’re only interested in
the diamonds, right?”

“Right,” I said, distractedly.

“Charlie, what is it?”

“The drawer,” I said, “is open.”

“And?”

“And you’ll never guess what I just found.”

∨
The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam
∧

N
o, it wasn’t the
third monkey. But it wasn’t so far off either. Perched on the top
of a small collection of personal items was a Dutch passport, red
in colour. I picked it out of the drawer and flicked to the back
cover and what I saw there turned everything upside down. Why?
Because it was the exact same document I’d found a photocopy of in
the overflow pipe of Michael’s bath. But what was it doing in
Rutherford’s apartment?

“I’ll call you back,” I told Victoria, then hung up the phone
and stared at the photograph at the back of the passport for a long
time, not really thinking of anything in particular, at least not
on a conscious level. The photograph would have been around five
years old, I guessed, but the likeness was still there. The
hairstyle had changed and the glasses had been replaced with
contact lenses, but there was no mistaking who it was. I read the
name and address details for perhaps the twentieth time and then I
put the passport down and picked up the telephone receiver.

The call I placed took no longer than a couple of minutes to
complete and it told me what I’d suspected it would. Once it was
over with, I had only to wait. It was gone four thirty already and
I was expecting him to return some time after five o’clock. I
occupied myself in the meantime by pacing his sitting room,
occasionally glancing out of the picture windows at the cyclists
and joggers circling the Oosterpark, at other times working out
exactly what it was I was going to say. Of course, the moment I
heard his key turn in the lock and his footsteps out in the
hallway, all of it escaped me and I had to make do with whatever
popped into my head.

“Wonderful, you’re up,” he said, meanwhile setting his plush
overcoat down on the back of a Chesterfield and beaming at me.
“Feeling better?”

“My head’s begun to clear,” I told him.

“Splendid news. And your appetite?”

“It can wait a while. I thought we might have a chat.”

“Of course. Everything alright, dear boy?”

“You tell me, dear boy,” I said, and with that I pulled the
passport from my pocket and threw it at him. Rutherford fumbled it,
then bent down to retrieve the document from the floor. He opened
it up, then looked wide-eyed at me and shook his head as if he
didn’t understand what was happening.

“You can drop the act,” I told him. “I called the British
Embassy. They don’t have a Henry Rutherford working for them.”

He almost tried something else at that point. I could see him
turning ideas over in his mind, probing new possibilities that
might just work. But then he met my eyes and he seemed to see
something there that told him whatever it was just wouldn’t
wash.

“Bollocks,” he said, shoulders plummeting. “I arseing well knew
I shouldn’t have left you on your own. Didn’t expect you to find
this, mind.”

“Dumb luck, I guess.”

“No use complaining, I don’t suppose?”

I looked hard at him.

“Yeah, I should probably just be grateful you didn’t rob me
blind. Plenty here that’s worth a bob or two.”

“Any of it yours?”

“In a round-a-bout way. You know how it is,” he said, gesturing
at me with the passport in a helpless way, as if everything that
had happened was beyond his control.

“Tell me.”

“What’s to tell? We’re the same, you and I.”

I frowned. “You’re a burglar too?”

“Nah,” he said, casting his hand around his apartment in a
vaguely fey manner. “Confidence man. But neither one of us exactly
plays by the rules now, do we?”

Shaking my head, I dropped down into the wingback chair across
from him and gestured at the passport.

“What are you doing with that?”

“Mikey asked me to get it for him,” he said, eyes blank.

“The American?”

“The one and same.”

“So you knew him?”

He nodded. “We were inside together.”

“In the Netherlands?”

“Not so far from the Hague, as it happens. I was doing some bird
for a scam that turned sour. Dutch lady I went into partnership
with got more suspicious than I bargained for when she checked into
the company I’d set up.”

“I don’t think I need to know.”

“You don’t. Want a drink? I could do with a beer.”

I shook my head and he left me for a moment, returning from the
kitchen shortly afterwards with a lager can in his hand. He popped
the lid on the can, loosened his tie and his shirt collar and began
to drink greedily, his swollen throat working overtime.

“Name’s riot Rutherford, by the way,” he offered, belching.

“I guessed as much.”

“It’s Stuart. Rutherford’s just a persona I use. You get the
right name, the right way of talking, the right clothes and the
right apartment and, well,” he said, drawing my attention to the
room around him, “you can do okay by it.”

“So long as you stay out of prison.”

“Occupational hazard. You done much time?”

I shook my head. “I don’t plan on it either.”

“Nobody does, son. Mikey sure as hell didn’t.”

Stuart knocked back some more beer, then collapsed onto the
Chesterfield, his stomach ballooning up and quivering in front of
him like a moulded jelly on a plate.

“Tell me about the passport,” I said. “When did he ask you to
get it?”

Stuart stuck out his bottom lip, thinking it over.

“Month ago, maybe. He called me from inside. Said there was this
girl he wanted looking into.”

“Marieke.”

“Was the name she gave him, yeah,” he said, nodding. “But he
figured there was something up with it.”

“So he asked you to steal her passport?”

“Nah.” He ran his hand backwards over his glistening forehead.
“He asked me to find out what I could. So what I did was I found
where she worked and I spoke to some guy who works there too.”

“The young barman? Has a good scowl?”

“Fella worked behind the bar. I guess he could be the one you’re
referring to. Anyhow, fact is barkeeps in Amsterdam are the same as
any place else – they don’t get paid so good.”

“So you bribed him.”

He rolled his eyes and showed me his clammy palms. “I asked him
to have a quick shufty at some of her things, was all. He was the
one brought me the passport.”

“And you photocopied it and sent it to Michael.”

“Now how’d you know that?” he asked, eyes narrowing.

I shook my head. “Never mind. What was his reaction when you
sent it to him?”

“No idea,” he said, casually. “I just posted it to him, inside a
birthday card.”

“The prison guard’s didn’t check?”

“Not the way I did it. I pasted the thing inside a cardboard
flap in the card.”

“Clever.”

“Not really. Prison security is pretty slack over here. Doesn’t
take a lot to figure out ways around it. I mean, I doubt it was
even his birthday.”

I sat forward in my chair, elbows on my knees and my fingers
pointing at him.

“Did her name mean anything to you?”

“The girl? Not until we were in that library. The minute we
found that newspaper article, it started to make some sense.”

I looked at him intently. “Kim Wolkers. Her surname is the same
as the security guard Michael killed.”

Stuart nodded. “Except he didn’t kill nobody. Least, he always
said he didn’t. But you’re right about the name. You figure she’s
his daughter?”

“That would be my guess.”

“Mikey’s too, I reckon. Fact, I have a suspicion he knew all
along.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Just a feeling I got. Something in his voice. I can’t explain
it.”

“There’s still a few things I don’t get,” I said.

“Only a few?”

I smiled, nursing my head in my hands. “One thing in particular
– why did he get close to the girl once he knew who she was? He
must have realised she was setting him up.”

Stuart shrugged and slouched further down in his chair,
balancing the lager can on his gut.

“Mikey was a peculiar fellow. He swore blind he’d never killed
that guard but he was never your average prisoner either.” He
paused, face clouding over as his finger tapped absently on the
side of the lager can. “Thing is, he had no beef with being inside.
Me, I’d bitch about it just about every minute but with him, well,
it was almost as if he welcomed it.”

“Penance?”

“You might say.”

“Though that doesn’t add up if he didn’t kill the guard.”

“No.”

“And it doesn’t explain why he didn’t blow her cover.”

“Unless he did. In private, say.”

I bobbed my head from side to side, as though mimicking a set of
weighing scales.

“I didn’t get that impression.”

“Me either. But it’s a theory.”

Stuart threw up a hand in a helpless gesture, then imbibed from
the lager can. He was sat in a very un-Rutherford way, gut hanging
loose over his trousers, legs splayed open. The contrast made me
aware of just what a performance he put on whenever he got into
character and knowing that made me cautious. I very much doubted
Stuart was his real name. It was probably years since he’d last
used that.

“You’re not a lawyer,” I said.

“Nope.”

“So just out of interest, how did you pull that off? Getting to
represent me, I mean.”

He grinned, like he was recalling a recent sexual conquest.

“Easier than you’d think. I kind of just waited around in the
police station for a while that morning. Overheard a couple of
uniforms saying you were refusing to talk until you had a lawyer
there. So I waited until they’d gone and I presented myself to the
duty sergeant, or whatever it is they call them over here.”

“But didn’t they want to check your papers?”

“Oh I have papers. Anyone can get them.”

“I see. No, scratch that, I don’t see. How did you even know to
come to the police station?”

“Your arrest was in the papers,” he said, sounding surprised I
hadn’t thought of it. “I came as soon as I saw. Thought I might
pick something up that could be useful to me.”

“About what?”

He shrugged.

“The diamonds,” I prompted.

He nodded, slowly. Then he glanced up at me with doleful eyes.
“Turned out better than I imagined.”

“It was one hell of a trick.”

“Well,” he said, chin bobbing, “you do something for a living,
it pays to be good at it. I’m guessing you don’t just steal things
as a hobby.”

“You could say.”

“You wait until something comes along that’s worth your time,
right?”

“And the risks.”

“The risks are half of the fun.”

“Not for me,” I replied, shaking my head.

“Come on, you don’t get a thrill when you break into someone’s
home? I don’t buy it.”

“It’s maybe a side-effect of what I do.”

“Sure.”

“Really. I’m a writer first of all. It’s just, every now and
again, I might supplement my income a little.”

“Reminds me,” he said, poking a fat digit at my forehead. “Read
one of your books the other day. Had the murderer sussed by chapter
three.”

“Maybe you just guessed right.”

“Nab, I knew. Doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it, mind.”

“We’re getting off the point,” I told him, finding my feet and
walking around to the back of the wingback chair, gripping the
fabric in my hands. “You said you knew about the diamonds from the
start?”

Stuart nodded again, the fatty skin on his neck folding up like
a thick roll-neck sweater as he pulled his chin towards his
chest.

“Heard about them inside. Not a lot else to do other than talk,
you know. And a man like Mikey, a whole bunch of myths can build
up.”

“How so?”

“Well, he was a quiet one, I guess,” he said, peering down into
the opening of his lager can and gently swirling the contents.
“Most every con I ever met is willing to tell you what scam’he’s
inside for, where it went wrong, how he’d do it different next
time. But not Mikey. He wasn’t like that at all. It gets to the
masses. Everyone wants to know what the deal is. Every detail gets
picked over.”

“Like?”

“Like for instance the little monkey toy he kept in his cell. A
queer little thing, right? He was always looking at it. Made people
talk.”

“And what did they say?”

“All kinds of things. Before long,” he said, tapping his
forehead sagely, “a man like Mikey can become a real topic of
conversation.”

“One of which was that he’d got away with a fortune in
diamonds.”