The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam (31 page)

I stopped, hoping he might interrupt in some way, but he said
nothing. Maybe that had to do with how angry he’d become. Seething
is the only word to describe it. His face had turned puce and
spittle clung to his lips. He kept rising up on his toes, as if
ready to lunge at me, and I could tell it was an effort for him to
keep his arms down by his sides because they kept shaking and all
the tendons and arteries were bulging in his neck.

“So you made your way inside the building and you confronted
Michael. Perhaps you caught him unawares. In any event, the
conversation can’t have gone as you’d hoped. There’s no way Michael
would tell you where the jewels were and I suspect there’s a good
chance he goaded you about some kind of evidence he had tying you
to the murder of Robert Wolkers. You’d have lost it, of course. You
wanted to know where the jewels were, where the monkey figurines
had got to, at all costs. And at some point I guess you began using
force, but still Michael wouldn’t tell you what you needed to know.
He must have put most of it together by then and the way you were
acting wasn’t exactly the behaviour of a decorated officer of the
Amsterdam-Amstelland police force.”

“You will regret this,” he cut in, voice quivering. “You cannot
say such things without consequences.”

“Eventually,” I went on, speaking over him, “you took things up
a level, even broke some of Michael’s fingers like a crude
torturer, but it didn’t get you anywhere. Michael had spent twelve
long years behind bars waiting to get his hands on his jewels and
he wasn’t about to give up their whereabouts to the man who’d set
him up in the first place. Maybe he said as much; it wouldn’t
surprise me. And you must have known then that it was true. And
what else could you do? You couldn’t drag him down the station on
false pretences in that state and you couldn’t let him get away
with the diamonds. So,” I said, shrugging, “you killed him.”

Burggrave shook his head at me, his eyes like blades behind his
glasses, perspiration breaking out across his forehead.

“Or perhaps I should say you thought you’d killed him,” I went
on. “You beat his head against the back of the bath tub until he
was unconscious, and then you made a quick search of the apartment.
Luckily for you, you found Michael’s monkey figurine, the one
covering his eyes, and I’m guessing you also saw the photocopied
passport page that I found moments later when I entered the
apartment,” I said, giving Kim a warning look so that she wouldn’t
contradict this version of events, “a page that showed Marieke Van
Kleef’s real name was Kim Wolkers.”

Burggrave screwed his face up in disdain but I was on a roll
now.

“I’m not altogether sure what happened next. Either you had just
enough time when you heard Kim and me enter the front of the
building to climb another flight of stairs or you were already
outside the building working out what to do when you happened to
see us arrive. Either way, you would have known by then that Kim
was the daughter of the guard you’d killed and I suppose you might
also have known who I was, since you could have seen me meeting
Michael the night before and perhaps even followed me home.
Something else you would have known is that we were about to find
Michael’s body. So you waited until we were inside the apartment
and then you made an anonymous call to the police, most likely from
a payphone – there’s one just along the street from Michael’s
building. Then, just as you’d done all those years before, you made
sure you were the first officer to respond when the call went
out.”

He inhaled deeply, as though readying himself to pour scorn on
what I’d just said. I didn’t give him the opportunity.

“Of course, you knew something was up when Kim was the only
person you found inside that apartment. To my shame,” I said,
looking towards Mrs. Rijker as the only non-English speaker, “I’d
jumped out the back window on hearing the sirens.”

Mrs. Rijker smiled at me brightly, as if I’d just recounted her
favourite anecdote. I nodded back, as though acknowledging some
form of wordless absolution, then returned my attention to
Burggrave.

“Because of my reaction, you made it your business to find me
and once you heard from the British Embassy that I had a conviction
for theft you began to put two and two together in the way that
good police minds are want to do, and you began to wonder if maybe
Michael had set these two gentlemen up. And now that he was dead,
it occurred to you there was a fair chance I was the one with the
two remaining figurines you needed. So you arrested me on suspicion
of being involved in Michael’s death and you kept me in custody
overnight, ignoring Kirn’s testimony,” I said, looking pointedly at
Riemer, “that I’d been with her at the time of the killing because,
for one thing, you knew she’d made a statement under a false name
and for another thing, you knew she was lying. Sadly for you, when
the questioning went nowhere you couldn’t bend my fingers back to
the vertical or beat my head against the wall. But conveniently,
you could detain me overnight and it was during that time you broke
into my apartment, literally removing the door from its hinges to
get inside.”

“So now I am a burglar too.”

“Don’t sound so appalled,” I told him. “In my book it’s a good
deal more civilised than murder. Of course, you’d already been in
my apartment once before when you came to question me about
Michael’s attack but you didn’t have time to find what you were
looking for then. Now you had the opportunity to search at your
leisure, although I’m glad to say you didn’t find the two figurines
I’d squirreled away.”

I looked back at Kirn and this time I gave her an apologetic
look.

“That temper of yours got the better of you again, though,” I
resumed, “and you made a real mess of my apartment. There’s always
a chance you left some fingerprints there while you were doing it,
of course, and I was careful to wear gloves when I cleared up.”

“If any prints are found,” Burggrave said, “they will be from
when I first visited your apartment. From the things that I
touched.”

“Oh, you could argue that,” I said. “But then how are you going
to explain it if the third monkey happens to be found in your
apartment? Your colleagues are there now, I believe, Detective
Inspector Riemer?”

Riemer held my eyes, ignoring Burggrave’s bewildered look. She
nodded slowly.

“What is this?” Burggrave demanded, turning to Riemer and
leaning into her face. “You are searching my home! This is all
lies. You cannot do this. On whose authority?”

“The Superintendent’s authority,” Riemer told him, blankly.

They stared at one another for a moment, neither of them
conceding anything in the slightest. Their mutual loathing would
have been apparent to a blind man, though Burggrave’s
self-confidence was really quite something to behold. If I hadn’t
been so sure of myself, even I might have been persuaded that I’d
got it all wrong.

“We will see about this,” he said, and began to walk away from
the group of us towards the double doors on the far side of the
building, the tails of his police coat swinging from the back of
his legs.

I looked at Riemer searchingly, waiting for her to do something.
She held my gaze for some time, giving nothing away. Then, just as
I threw up my hands in disbelief and tossed my head back on my
shoulders, she reached into her inside pocket and removed a small
two-way radio.

∨
The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam
∧

S
o,” I said, once
Victoria had picked up the phone, “I have a view of the Eiffel
Tower from my balcony.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Well, you have to lean out and crane your neck, then look
through the sitting room of the flat across the way, but it’s all
there, as clear as day. So long as you use a telescope.”

“Oh Charlie.”

“But I can smell croissants from the patisserie at the bottom of
my building. And I have a wonderful traffic scene from my
bedroom.”

“Will you be able to write?”

“Of course I will. Once I’m used to it, I won’t even notice the
noise.”

“And you don’t regret not going to Italy?”

“Not at all. I ignored Paris for a while, you know. I mean, it
just seems so obvious, doesn’t it? But it’s beautiful here.”

“And the women?”

“I hear there are some. They get everywhere these days. Some
brave soul should really go in search of their nest.”

“The blonde got to you, huh?”

“It’s not so bad,” I told her. “Just a sucking chest-wound kind
of pain.”

“Always so dramatic.”

“Occupational hazard.”

“Charlie,” Victoria said, “I still have some questions about
what happened.”

“More?”

“Just a few. You know how I am with plot holes. Can’t rest if
something doesn’t add up all the way around.”

“But the last time we spoke you said you were happy.”

“And I was. But then I went home and I finished off a manuscript
I’d been reading and climbed into bed and it hit me. Wham! Why did
the American do it? Why did he turn on the wide man and the thin
man and try to take the diamonds all by himself? It just didn’t
make sense to me. It didn’t sound like something he’d do.”

“He was a thief, Vicky.”

“I know.”

“Taking things was what he did.”

“Granted. But he’d mellowed, hadn’t he? And if the reason he
hired you was because he couldn’t stomach taking the monkey
figurines himself, how is it he felt just dandy about taking the
diamonds?”

“Trust you,” I said. “You’re too good.”

“I am?”

“Yes. Vie, I had eight people in that warehouse with me, two of
them trained investigators, and none of them asked me a question
like that.”

“Does it hurt your theory?”

“Not really. Oh, it hurts the theory I set out for everyone
else’s benefit. But that’s a different matter altogether. The thing
is, I’d asked myself that exact same question when I was working
things through. And it took me quite a while before I came up with
something that I think makes sense.”

“And what’s that?”

“I think Michael planned to give the diamonds away.”

“Sorry?”

“To Kirn.”

“Oh Charlie. You can’t be serious. Why would he do a thing like
that?”

“For starters, I think he felt guilty about the way things
turned out for her father. More to the point, though, a young girl
lost her dad because of a scam he got involved in and that girl was
messed up enough to go and work in the prison where his killer was
supposedly locked up. When he found out who she really was, I
imagine that would have got to him. And then, of course, there’s
the possibility he really had fallen for her.”

“Oh come on.”

“You didn’t see her, Vie. Sure, she was attractive. But there
was something about her, some quality that set her apart in some
way. I imagine that after twelve years in prison any man would find
her pretty alluring.”

“Alluring enough to give her a fortune in diamonds?”

“For him, anyway. My thinking is he wanted to compensate her for
what she’d lost. And it wasn’t as if the wide man and the thin man
would understand that. I think I said before that there was
something very appealing about Michael.”

“I’m not sure I buy it.”

“I suppose it is a little out there. But you know yourself how
it is when you fall for somebody. You can throw logic out the
window, really.”

“Hmm. Well I might be prepared to go along with you half way.
Let’s say he planned to take all the jewels and run off with
her.”

“It’s possible. Or maybe it was as straightforward as I made it
seem in the first place. Maybe, after spending twelve years inside,
he felt he deserved all the loot for himself.”

“I think I like that explanation most of all.”

“Well, that’s the difference between us,” I said. “The romantic
and the mercenary.”

“Either way, I don’t suppose it matters much now. What with him
being dead and the police having all the jewels.”

“Mmm.”

“‘Mmm,’ Charlie?”

“Well, one might say they don’t exactly have all of the
diamonds.”

“But how can that be? You said you let them have the two keys
you’d stolen and you told them where they could find the third
monkey. Were some of the diamonds hidden somewhere else?”

“Not to begin with.”

“Not to…Oh Charlie, what have you done?”

“Nothing that should surprise you.”

“You took some?”

“More than some, as it happens.”

“But how?”

“It was easy, really. Once I was sure the wide man and the thin
man and Kim didn’t have the final monkey, I was pretty confident
Burggrave had it hidden somewhere. But before I went to his
apartment, I went back to the place in Chinatown and paid for my
own storage deposit box up front. It wasn’t cheap, I’m afraid, but
I had a feeling it would be worth it. Of course, I was given three
new figurines to go with my new keys and my new storage box. So
then all I had to do was smash open the figurine that was covering
his ears and the one covering his mouth and keep those keys to one
side. When I found the third monkey in Burggrave’s apartment, I
switched it for the monkey covering his eyes that I’d been given
that morning.”

“So the box the police had keys to was empty?”

“Well, no. I had to put some of the diamonds in it. Quite a lot
of them, actually. Otherwise my story wouldn’t have added up.”

“But you took the rest?”

“Guilty.”

“Charlie, you’re crazy. They’ll come looking for you.”

“I doubt it. I handed them a murderer and a fair amount of the
loot. And I can’t see the Van Zandts wanting to publicise any of
this. They’ve been denying the theft out of hand for years,
remember.”

“Well, I hope you’re right, for your sake. Are the diamonds
worth a lot of money?”