The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam (29 page)

I paused, and checked on the faces surrounding me, wanting to be
certain that I wasn’t about to lose any of them. That seemed
unlikely. I hadn’t held an audience like this since I’d given my
first book reading – to two die hard fans and an embarrassed book
store owner on the Charing Cross Road. If I wasn’t careful, all
this’ attention would go to my head.

“Wolkers,” I continued, “would have known some of the systems
they had in place at Van Zandt’s, and he could easily have found
out when shipments were due and what they were likely to contain.
My theory is he waited for a large delivery and then he made sure
that the guard who was supposed to be on duty with him would
conveniently disappear for an hour or so. Then all he had to do was
stand guard as Michael and his two Dutch friends tackled the steel
cage and the strong room. With enough time on his hands, a skilled
thief can get into any safe or strong room in the world. After all,
a safe is only as good as the lock that secures it and sadly that
lock is always susceptible to being forced or picked open. Once
Michael had applied his own particular expertise, the gang emptied
the strong room and, since they no longer had any use for Robert
Wolkers, they killed him and made their escape with the haul of a
lifetime.”

I heard a sharp intake of air and turned to see Kim wincing, her
eyes screwed tight and her fists balled together, nails pressing
into her skin. It was hard not to say something then, to try to
appeal directly to her in a way that would make things somehow
easier. Instead, I pressed on.

“There were too many jewels to put on the market immediately,
though, and now that Robert Wolkers was dead, there was a lot more
heat than they would have liked. The police had a hot new officer
on the case, a guy called Burggrave, and he seemed to be solving
everything he was asked to look into.”

Burggrave’s ears pricked up. He straightened and his eyes
narrowed behind his angular specs, as if someone was scratching his
back just right. I tried my best to ignore it, focussing on
Detective Inspector Riemer instead.

“So the gang had to go to ground and, in the meantime, they
agreed to store the diamonds somewhere safe. There was a place in
Chinatown they’d heard of and, although it wasn’t ideal (because
nothing ever is when one of your gang is a talented thief), they
were each as confident in it as they could be. They couldn’t use a
bank, because a bank would ask too many questions and require ID,
but the place they found was just as secure as a bank without any
of the hassles.”

I turned to the wide man and the thin man and continued my
explanation to them, trying to make them see I had it all figured
out. They were listening closely now, waiting to hear what I said
next and whether they’d need to deny any of it.

“In a neat twist of fate, the strong boxes that were used in
this establishment required three keys to open them. It was ideal:
each member of the gang could hold a key and be sure that none of
them could make off with all of the jewels by themselves. The keys
looked like this,” I said, pulling two keys from my pocket and
placing them in my palm to show to the group. “But, before they
were given out, they were encased in quick setting plaster that was
poured into moulds in the shape of the three wise monkeys. See no
evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. It was the proprietor’s way of
saying that they didn’t care what you kept in their facility – they
weren’t about to ask any awkward questions. The two keys I’m
holding were inside the two figurines that I stole for Michael.
That’s why the third monkey was so important. Whoever found it
could get their hands on a treasure trove of Van Zandt diamonds
from the early nineties. And that, it seems, was worth beating
Michael to death.”

I handed the keys to Riemer and watched her weigh them in her
hand. A few flecks of plaster were still attached to the coppery
metal, giving my story a ring of authenticity. After a moment, she
looked up from the keys and stared hard at me.

“But you said before that they didn’t kill the guard,” she said,
motioning towards the wide man and the thin man.

“Yes,” I conceded, turning then to check on Karine Rijker. There
was alarm in her eyes, though only because I’d looked directly at
her for the first time in quite some while. I certainly didn’t get
the impression that the English we were speaking meant anything to
her, so I returned my attention to Riemer.

“I’m afraid that’s where it all gets a little more complicated.
To be honest, what I’ve just told you was like my first rewrite of
the ending. But when I thought about it some more, when I really
probed into the logic, it just didn’t add up. So what I did was I
came at it from a different angle. I thought of something I hadn’t
dealt with and I asked myself the question it posed. Do you know
what that question was?”

“Why did they kill my father?” Kim asked, from nowhere.

“No,” I said, shaking my head and softening my tone. “That
wouldn’t have helped. They could have killed him to tie up a loose
end or to cut him out of the deal or just because one of them was a
hot-head. It left too many possibilities. No, what I asked myself
was this: where did the gun come from?”

“They could have been carrying it,” Burggrave suggested.

“They could have, yes. And then they could have dumped it
afterwards. But why? I’ve yet to meet a burglar who carries a gun
with him on a job. And I know from experience that these two
gentlemen favour baseball bats over firearms anyway. So I began to
wonder, what if Van Zandt had made their guards carry guns.”

“Pah!” Van Zandt said, throwing his hands up in the air and then
letting his cane thud down again, as if now I really had lost my
mind.

“That would be illegal,” Riemer told me, interrupting his
performance. “There are strict laws about this in the
Netherlands.”

“I imagined as much. But let’s suppose the head of Van Zandt
security was more concerned with protecting his jewels than obeying
the strict letter of the law. Let’s suppose he offered his guards
the means to protect themselves.”

“It is not so,” Van Zandt said, authoratively.

“Makes sense to me,” I told him. “You always liked to keep
security matters here confidential. You liked to keep things under
your hat. Take the night of Wolkers death – you suffered the
biggest robbery the company had ever endured and yet you refused to
co-operate openly with the police, or to publicise the crime in
anyway.”

“That was a decision of the board. Our concern was for the
privacy of Mr Wolker’s family. It was a difficult time.”

“Yes it was. But it also let you bury the news that Van Zandt
had armed one of its guards with the gun that killed him.”

I looked towards Stuart, then motioned towards the handbag
Karine Rijker was clutching so tightly.

“Rutherford, could you oblige?” I asked.

“Of course,” he told me, and then he lowered his face and said
something in Dutch to the old woman. She listened for a moment,
then nodded furtively and popped open the clasps on her handbag,
parting the leather with great care and reaching inside very
slowly, as if she had something incredibly fragile in there. Her
hands emerged from the bag in much the same fashion, cradling a
package wrapped in what appeared to be an old tea towel. She handed
the package to Rutherford and he passed it onto me. As carefully as
I could, I unfolded the material until I was holding the object it
contained by a corner of the fabric.

“This is the gun that Louis Rijker was provided with by Van
Zandt security. He kept it in his wardrobe after he finished
working here, in case the men who’d threatened his mother ever
showed up again, and there it stayed until Mrs. Rijker was sorting
through his things following his death. I’m as sure as I possibly
can be that Robert Wolkers was killed with an identical gun. And it
was a weapon his employer provided him with.”

“This is just talk,” Burggrave said, looking towards Riemer.
“The gun that killed him was never found. It is a pointless
discussion.”

“Well, it would be,” I said, meanwhile setting the gun down to
one side and slipping on one of my disposable surgical gloves. “If
it weren’t for this.”

The ‘this’ I was referring to was a second handgun and I pulled
it from my back pocket and held it in my gloved hand by the trigger
guard, so that it was suspended in the air before them all. Every
set of eyes seemed to be fixated on it, as if I was a stage
magician about to perform a world-renowned act.

“I’d be willing to bet serious money that this is the gun that
killed Robert Wolkers,” I went on. “And it was the gun that Van
Zandt armed him with. As you can see, it’s identical to the gun
Mrs. Rijker brought with her here today. And do you know where I
found it? In your apartment, sir,” I said, turning to face the wide
man.

The wide man sat upright for the first time. “But it is not
mine,” he said, sounding genuinely perplexed.

I waited a moment before responding, interested to see if his
composure would slip any further.

“I have never seen this gun before,” he added.

“Oh but you have,” I told him. “Though you seemed equally
surprised by it on that occasion too. You see, it was the gun I
pointed at you when I made my way out of your apartment, just after
you’d kidnapped me. I could see in your eyes that you had no idea
how I’d found a gun. After all, there was no gun on me when you
searched me before tying me to that chair in your bedroom. The
truth is this gun was in the crawlspace in your attic.”

I waited again, drawing it out, but he didn’t bite. I got the
impression it was because he was genuinely puzzled.

“I first came across it when I was searching your room for the
figurine on the night I robbed you. It was in your trunk
originally, but I hid it in the attic because I happen to have a
habit of concealing any weapons I find. Awful things, guns – they
can do such terrible damage. But I admit, you seemed very surprised
when I came out of your room with it. And I don’t mean surprised
because you’d gone looking for that gun in your trunk and couldn’t
understand where it had got to. I mean surprised because you had no
idea there was a gun in your apartment in the first place. And I
think the reason you had no idea was because Michael put it
there.”

The wide man’s brow furrowed and he squinted at me.

“You don’t get it, do you? Michael wasn’t just casing the job
for me when he broke into your apartment. He was also planting the
gun.”

There was a moment of silence. His brow became more tangled.

“So he was framing him,” Stuart said, in a wistful tone.

“No,” I said, turning to him. “Why would he do that? Why spend
twelve years in prison without giving up the other members of your
gang and then try and set them up once you get out? It doesn’t make
any sense.”

“So what then?” Stuart asked.

“Ah,” I said, “well that’s the tricky bit. Go back a step.
Michael hired me to steal the two monkey figurines, correct?”

Stuart nodded. I looked around again and found the wide man and
the thin man nodding too.

“The question is, why did he do that? Yes, it would give him an
alibi of sorts with his friends, but why else? Well, at the most
basic level, it meant he wouldn’t be the one to take them, at least
not directly. And I think that was very important to him. I mean,
he spent twelve, years inside and in all that time you two were
patient. You didn’t try and get at the jewels. No, you agreed to
wait until he was out and then share the take.”

I circled my spare hand in a casual, thinking gesture, like a
lecturer about to depart from his script.

“Of course, there’s a good chance that had something to do with
you being unable to move the stones, but it was also something
else. You were a gang and you’d developed some degree of group
loyalty. Michael wanted to steal the jewels from you but he didn’t
want to be the one to do it. And meanwhile, he also wanted to leave
you the gun, by way of compensation, if you like.”

“How was it compensation?” Kim asked, her eyes beginning to
glimmer.

“Because it was the murder weapon. It would allow them to put
your father’s real killer behind bars if he gave them any
trouble.”

“But I don’t understand,” she said. “How?”

“Fingerprints,” I told her. “The killer’s prints would still be
on the gun, even twelve years after the crime. Correct
Inspector?”

“It’s possible,” Burggrave conceded.

“Just possible?”

He shrugged. “The killer may have used gloves.”

“Of course,” I said, striking my forehead with the heel of my
palm. “I hadn’t thought of that. And did you?”

“What?”

“Use gloves? When you killed Robert Wolkers.”

∨
The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam
∧

B
urggrave was stunned
for a moment, as if he couldn’t quite believe what I’d just said.
He stood there, eyes wide, head loose on his shoulders. Then, all
of a sudden, he pulled himself together and surged forwards as if
to hit me square in the face. Before he could, though, the wide man
and the thin man stood in unison and blocked his path. Burggrave
wheeled around to look at Riemer, who was appraising him coolly,
though not, I thought, from an altogether new perspective. He
turned from her gaze and glared at me, face reddening.

“This is a lie,” he said. “You are a fool for thinking you can
say these things.”

“Inspector Burggrave was very thorough in his investigation of
the killing,” Van Zandt added.

“You mean he was very amenable to the way you wanted it
conducted,” I told him, from over the top of the wall of thugs I
was stood behind. “You expect me to believe that an investigator as
skilled and decorated as Burggrave wouldn’t have found out within
two minutes that Robert Wolkers was on the take, that Louis Rijker
had been bribed, that, in short, you had a fundamental failure in
your security system? Please. He would have known immediately. But
he knew that anyway. Because he was in on it too. You both
were.”