The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam by Chris Ewan

them
the picture from the back of my novel. That could be most
misleading.”
    “They described you.”
    “They must have very vivid powers of description.”
    “I can arrange an identity line, if you wish.”
    I thought about it. There seemed little point in goading him
further.
    “I don’t think that will be necessary,” I said.
    “So you admit you were there, that you lied to me before?”
    “I met with Mr. Park, yes. But as I say, I’m afraid I don’t
remember exactly what was said in our previous conversation. I know
I wasn’t under caution then.”
    Burggrave made a growling noise deep in his throat.
    “Why did you meet?” he snapped.
    “I’d really rather not say.”
    “You are under arrest now,” he said, pointing his finger at
me.
    “You must answer my questions. This man is in hospital.”
    “I’m not responsible for that.”
    “Prove this.”
    “How?”
    “Answer my questions!”
    “I’m not sure you’ll believe me. I think you have a closed mind,
Inspector.” I turned to his wordless companion. “Is he often this
way?” I asked.
    The officer looked at me dumbly, then shook his head in a
self-conscious fashion. He was using his biro to make notes on a
pad of yellow writing paper. I couldn’t read what he was writing
because it was all in Dutch. Perhaps it was a book report on my
novel.
    “Tell me why you met him,” Burggrave demanded.
    “Alright,” I said. “I will. He wanted me to write a book.”
    “A book?”
    “His memoirs. He mentioned that he’d been in prison, for theft I
believe. I understand he even killed a man. He had the idea I could
write his story for him, given that I write books about burglary. I
told him that wasn’t possible. I’m a fiction writer, not a
biographer.”
    “This you expect me to believe?”
    “Believe what you like,” I told him. “It’s the truth. And I
didn’t tell you before because as far as I’m concerned a man’s past
is his own business. What difference would it make?”
    Burggrave gave a testy shake of his head, then gestured for his
colleague to note down what was about to be said. “You left at what
time?”
    “Nine o’clock, maybe.”
    “Did you meet him the next night?”
    “No.”
    “Where were you when he was attacked?”
    “I have no idea when that was.”
    “Thursday night.”
    “I was writing,” I said. “Finishing my latest book.”
    “And you did not leave your apartment?”
    Something about his tone put me on my guard.
    “Let me see, I may have gone out for a quick stroll. Yes, I
think I remember now. Not long after ten o’clock or so.”
    “Where?”
    “Just around the neighbourhood.”
    “To St. Jacobsstraat?”
    “Possibly. I don’t remember too clearly.”
    “Try Mr. Howard. I think you had better try much harder.”
    He stood up and said something to his colleague in Dutch.
    “He will take you to your cell,” he told me. “You will eat.”
    “You’re not letting me go?”
    “You are under arrest. Do not forget this.”
    ♦
    How could I forget? Give the Dutch their due, they know how to
put a police cell together. The walls that imprisoned me were
painted two-tone, deep beige on the bottom and a lighter beige
above. Against one wall there was a hard plastic bed with a thin,
stained mattress resting on it, and on the opposing wall was a
metal toilet and basin. I had no window to gaze longingly out of –
the only light in the room came from an overhead strip light that
was housed in one of the ceiling panels above me, beside a heating
vent. The door to my cell was made of some kind of reinforced
metal, with a slot a little bigger than a letterbox in it, and it
was through this slot that my food tray had been passed and where,
every hour on the hour, an officer would peer inside to check I
hadn’t conspired to dig an escape tunnel through the concrete floor
with my plastic cutlery. They may have done something clever to the
walls, too, because I couldn’t hear anything from my