R-Day. As in ‘R’ for Rijksmuseum?
Or should it be, V-Day, as in Vermeer?
I woke up early with frayed nerves from a rapidly fading dream, sat in bed without so much as a cup of coffee and went over my plan. Again.
This was the day when it would all work or all fail. I had lost my number two, my guy. Poor bastard Ian. Maybe there really was a heaven in which case I had no doubt that Ian would show up at the Pearly Gates dressed as a priest. Not sure if that would be helpful or not. Maybe St Peter had a sense of humor and a soft spot for losers.
My nerves settled as I went over the beats of the day’s planned events. The plan was solid. The moving parts were moving – I opened a confirmation email from the flash mob folks. They had received their props and knew what to do.
I had all the toys I needed, all my purchases and my DIY package and my AirBnBs with their respective Wi-Fi access codes. I had my disguises and my toys and my wheelchair. I had the accounts and the shell companies. The audio I’d recorded with a voice synthesizer was edited and loaded up.
I’m usually calm going into a job – fear doesn’t help. Nerves are fine, but only so long as they don’t mutate into fear. What was the old Frank Herbert bit from Dune?
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
Rather dramatic that, but true enough.
I put it out of my mind. No, that’s a lie. I tried to put it out of my mind, but I’m a writer as well as other things, and writers tend to have excellent imaginations. There is nothing quite like a professional-grade imagination to find the worst possible outcomes to play over and over on the movie screen in your head.
Prison. Yes, that was not a good outcome. If I ever went in I might never come back out. The Dutch would convict me, make me serve my time in the Netherlands, then extradite me to the States. In a very few hours I could be wearing handcuffs and frantically considering means of escape from prison.
Then there was the Ontario Crew. How long would it take them to discover that someone had beaten them to the Vermeer? Presumably they’d find out when everyone else did. And then what? They were salivating over a fifty-million-dollar payday and would not be happy at losing out.
The day was long and I had nothing to do. I tried to write but that was not happening. I tried to think about the Waterstones panel but why bother? Go-time was four thirty and I had nothing to do but fidget.
Until the doorbell rang.
In the catalog of sounds no fugitive is ever going to enjoy, an unexpected knock on the door was right up there with the sound of car doors slamming outside your home at night.
‘Can you get that, Chante?’ No answer. Of course.
So I walked on rubber legs and peeked through the peephole – quickly, because a person on the other side of the door can tell when someone is looking through a peephole and if that person was Willy Pete that peephole could be enlarged by a bullet passing through.
It was not Willy Pete. It was the other face I didn’t want to see. I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, plastered on my befuddled half-smile, and opened the door.
‘Lieutenant Sarip,’ I said, frowning my surprise. ‘I hope you’ve come with good news. Have you arrested the assholes who beat me up?’
‘Mr Mitre. You will remember Sergeant DeKuyper.’
‘Of course.’
‘May we come in?’
‘Sure, sure. Chante! Can you put some coffee on? Or would you prefer tea, Lieutenant and Sergeant?’
Chante emerged from her bedroom looking annoyed, took in the tableau and for once didn’t argue but went to the kitchen to put the kettle on.
‘My personal assistant,’ I explained.
I sat. They sat. The coffee table separated us.
‘I must confess we have not yet arrested your assailants,’ Sarip said.
‘Oh. Then …’
Sarip nodded at DeKuyper and she drew an iPad from her bag. She fiddled a bit as my blood slowly congealed in my arteries. Then she set the iPad on the table and there in full color, high definition, lay an Irishman soaking in his own blood.
I recoiled. ‘Jesus! What is that? Is that … is that a dead person?’
Chante interrupted with a plate of cookies. ‘Tea and coffee are coming.’
Sarip nodded at Chante and I saw a look of distaste on Chante’s face. Good: she didn’t like Sarip. Much better than if she’d taken a shine to him.
DeKuyper swiped to a second shot. Then a third, a grisly close-up.
I looked away, not needing to pretend distress. Ian looked so broken, so undignified with his legs splayed and his head sideways as if staring at his own life’s blood. ‘Why are you showing me this? What the hell, Lieutenant?’
‘This man was stabbed – fatally – in De Wallen last night.’
‘I’m sorry for his family but what the hell does it have to do with me?’ Calculated, calibrated anger, even belligerence. That was the right play now.
‘Do you recognize him?’ DeKuyper asked and swiped to a close-up of Ian’s face in a very different setting. In this shot he was framed against a stainless-steel table. This was a shot taken in the morgue.
‘Recognize him? Is he someone famous?’
‘Please take a close look, I know it is distressing,’ Sarip said smoothly. ‘But please, take a second look.’
He wanted to see my expression. He was looking for a reveal. Like I was an amateur. I screwed my face into a wince and with an expression full of disgust and growing anger, looked again at the face I knew.
‘OK, again, I don’t know that poor man. Why do you think I would? Is he an American? There are a lot of Americans in Amsterdam, are you questioning all of them?’
That brought an answering frown from Sarip and yes, even a hint of doubt. There’s nothing quite like a non sequitur to short-circuit the linear cop brain. But he was a clever boy, my pal Martin Sarip, and he recovered quickly. ‘It seems he is an Irish citizen. No current address. But fingerprint identification points to a long criminal record.’
‘Uh-huh. Whatever. A criminal got stabbed. It was probably a drug deal gone bad.’
‘Mmm. Perhaps.’
‘I mean if it was one of my books, that’s how I’d write it. Now would you mind putting that thing away? It’s kind of early in the day to be looking at dead people, don’t you think?’
Sarip flicked his cunning eyes sideways and DeKuyper complied, closing the iPad and slipping it back into her bag.
And round one goes to Mitre.
Coffee came and we all added sugar or milk or in my case, nothing. No one ate a cookie. Chante hanged back in the kitchen ostentatiously wiping down the counter and the stovetop.
‘In your books,’ Sarip began again, ‘Does your hero ever have hunches?’
I shrugged. ‘Sure.’
‘Well, I have a hunch.’
He wanted me to ask, but all I gave him was an expectantly raised brow.
‘You see, like any city, Amsterdam has a certain pattern to crime. There’s an ebb and a flow, but it’s always the same things. Drugs, sex trafficking, drunk tourists getting into fights … But now in, what, eight, nine days, we have three very unusual crimes. Or, if you prefer, incidents. Incident one being your tumble into the canal.’
‘OK …’
‘Incident two, your regrettable assault.’
‘Wait, you think the guys who beat me up did this?’
‘Why would they?’
‘How would I know?’ I could play this game all day.
Sarip smiled and said nothing for an uncomfortably long time. So I ate a cookie. Finally he said, ‘Ah, well, it is just a hunch.’
‘Dude, I mean, Lieutenant, sorry, I don’t understand any of this. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t mean to be rude – I’m a guest in your country – but I’m finding this awfully intrusive.’
Time for Sarip’s last gambit. He drew out his phone, opened it, turned it to me and aimed a long shot of Delia at me. ‘Do you know this woman?’
‘Sure,’ I said with impressive rapidity. If he was asking it was because he already knew we were connected. ‘You could say we’re dating.’
‘And what do you know about her?’
‘Whoa,’ I said and held up a hand. ‘Now you want to ask me about my friends? This is just not cool. I mean, really.’
‘Would it surprise you to learn that she is an agent of the US Federal Bureau—’
‘FBI. Yeah, FBI, of course I know. I met her when I was researching a book. But, not meaning to be unhelpful, Lieutenant and Sergeant, I am not going to answer any more questions unless you think I need a lawyer. Do I need a lawyer? I can call my embassy …’
And that was check. Not checkmate, but definitely check. Two minutes later they were gone leaving behind the thick musk of suspicion. So, yeah, sadly, however this came out, I was definitely burned in Amsterdam.
‘You are a very good liar,’ Chante said when they’d left.
‘Chante, I am the living, breathing god of bullshit.’
I checked the time. Tick-tock. Hours still to go and nothing for me to do. So I waited an hour then went out ostensibly to shop for food at the Albert Heijn. As I cruised the aisles and loaded my basket I looked for Willy Pete. And for any of Delia’s contractors who might still be eyeballing me. I spotted neither. I did however spot none other than the sullen sergeant, filling a shopping cart. I pretended not to see her and not to know that she was following me. Fine, I could always lose a tail I’d spotted. Though, there was a tingling in the back of my head, one of those vague, unsettled feelings. A vague, unsettled feeling that involved DeKuyper and groceries.
But my never-well-concealed arrogance returned as I lost her. Nice try, Sergeant. I had this. Even under Sarip and DeKuyper’s nose, I had this.
At three thirty in the afternoon of a gray and drizzly day, I returned to the apartment, unloaded groceries and wine, and began to get ready for the caper that would make me a legend, or a guy in a prison jumpsuit.
It was time. Time to rob the Rijksmuseum.