dark glasses.’
‘So now all we’ve got to do is to ask Interpol for a list, world-wide, of
all known criminals with eye defects. There must be tens of thousands of
them. Even if there were only ten on the list, it still wouldn’t help us
worth a damn. Chances are good, of course, that he hasn’t even got a
criminal record.’ Van Effen pondered briefly. ‘Or maybe they could give us
a list of all albino criminals on their books. They need glasses to hide
their eyes.~
‘The Lieutenant is pleased to be facetious,’ de Graaf said morosely. He
puffed on his cheroot, then said, almost wonderingly: ‘By Jove, Peter. You
could be right.’
Ahead, Dekker had slowed to a stop and nowvan Effen did also. Two boats
were moored alongside a canal bank, both about eleven or twelve metres in
length, with two cabins and an open poop deck. Ile two policemen joined
Dekker aboard his boat: Bakkeren boarded his own which lay immediately
ahead. Dekker said: ‘Well, gentlemen, what do you want to check first?’
De Graaf said: ‘How long have you had this boat?’
‘Six years.’
F.-B 33
‘In that case, I don’t think Lieutenant van Effen or I will bother to
check anything. After six years, you must know every comer, every nook
and cranny on this boat. So we’d be grateful if you’d do the checking.
just tell us if there is anything here, even the tiniest thing, that
shouldn’t be here: or anything that’s missing that should be here. You
might, first, be so good as to ask your brother-in-law to do the same
aboard his boat.’
Some twenty minutes later the brothers-in-law were able to state
definitely that nothing had been left behind and that, in both cases,
only two things had been taken: beer from the fridges and diesel from the
tanks. Neither Dekker nor Bakkcren could say deftitely how many cans of
beer had been taken, they didn’t count such things: but both were adamant
that each fuel tank was down by at least twenty litres.
‘Twenty litres each?’ van Effen said. ‘Well, they wouldn’t have used two
litres to get from here to the airport canal bank and back. So they used
the engine for some other purpose. Can you open the engine hatch and let
me have a torch?’
Van Effen’s check of the engine-room battery was cursory, seconds only,
but sufficient. He said: ‘Do either of you two gentlemen ever use
crocodile clips when using or charging your batteries – you know, those
spring-loaded grips with the serrated teeth? No? Well, someone was using
them last night. You can see the indentations on the terminals. They had
the batteries in your two boats connected up, in parallel or series, it
wouldn’t have mattered, they’d have been using a transformer, and ran
your engines to keep the batteries charged. Hence the missing forty
litres.’
‘I suppose,’ Dekker said, ‘that was what that gangster meant by
incidental costs.’
‘I suppose it was.’
De Graaf lowered himself, not protesting too much, into the springless,
creaking passenger seat of the ancient Peugeot just as the radio telephone
rang. Van Effen answered then passed t~e phone across to de Graaf who
spoke briefly then returned the phone to its concealed position.
‘I feared this,’ de Graaf said. He sounded weary. ‘My minis-
34
ter wants me to fly up with him to Texel. Taking half the cabinet with
him, I understand.’
‘Good God! Those rubber-nccking 6lowns. What on earth do they hope to
achieve by being up there? They’ll only get in everyone’s way, gum up the
works and achieve nothing: but, then, they’re very practised in that sort
of thing.’
‘I would remind you, Lieutenant van Effen, that you are talking about
elected Ministers of the Crown .’If the words were intended as a
reprimand, de Graaf’s heart wasn’t in it.
‘A useless and incompetent bunch. Make them look important, perhaps get
their name in the papers, might even be worth a vote or two among the
more backward of the electorate. Still, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it, sir.’
De Graaf glowered at him then said hopefully: ‘I don’t suppose you’d like
to come, Peter?’
‘You don’t suppose quite correctly, sir. Besides, I have things to do.
‘
‘Do you think I don’t?’ De Graaf looked and sounded very gloomy.
‘Ali! But I’m only a cop. You have to be a cop and a diplomat. I’ll drop
you off at the office.’
‘Join me for lunch?’
‘Like to, sir, but I’m having lunch at an establishment, shall we say,
where Amsterdam’s Chief of Police wouldn’t be seen dead. La Caracha it’s
called. Your wife and daughters wouldn’t approve, sir.’
‘Business, of course?’
‘Of course. A little talk with a couple of our friends in the Krakers.
You asked me a couple of months ago to keep a discreet, apart from an
official, eye on them. They report occasionally, usually at La Caracha.’
‘Ah! The Krakers. Haven’t had much time to think of them in the past two
months. And how are our disenchanted youth, the anti-evcrything students,
the flower men, the hippies, the squatters?’
‘And the drug-pushers and gun-runners? Keeping a suspiciously low
profile, these days. I must say I feel happier, no that’s not the word,
less worried when they’re heaving iron bars
35
and bricks at our uniformed police and overturning and burning the odd car,
because then we know where we are: with this unusual peace and quiet and
uncharacteristic inactivity, I feel there’s trouble brewing somewhere.’
‘You’re not actually looking for trouble, Peter?’
‘I’ve got the nasty feeling I’m going to find it anyway. Looking will be
quite unnecessary. Yesterday afternoon, when that call came from the FFF,
I sent two of our best people into the area. They might come across
something. An off-chance. But the crime in Amsterdam is becoming more and
more centralized in the Kraker area. The FFF would you say qualify as
criminals?’
‘Birds of a feather? Well, maybe. But the FFF seem like pretty smart boys,
maybe too smart to associate with the Krakers, who could hardly be called
the intellectual Titans of crime.’
‘The FFF. So far we’ve got a pretty tall fellow, with maybe something wrong
with his eyes and maybe of foreign extraction. We’ve practically got it all
wrapped up.’
‘Sarcasm ill becomes you. All right, all right, no stone unturned, any
action is better than nothing. What’s the food like at La Caracha?’
‘For that area, surprisingly good. I’ve had a few meals -‘ He broke off and
looked at de Graaf. ‘You are going to honour us at the table, sir?’
‘Well, I thought, I mean, as Chief of Police
‘Of course, of course. Delighted.’
‘And no one will know where I am.’De Graaf seemed cheered at the prospect.
‘That damned radio phone can ring its head off for all I care. I won’t be
able to hear it.’
‘Nobody else will be able to hear it either. That damned phone, as you call
it, will be switched off the moment we park. How do you think the dockland
citizens are going to react when they hear a phone go off in this refic?’
They drove off. By and by de Graaf fit another cheroot, van Effen lowered
his window and de Graaf said: ‘You have, of course, checked up on the
proprietor of La Caracha. What’s he called?’
36
‘He prefers to be known just as George. I know him moderately well. He’s
held in high regard among the local people.’
‘A kindly man? A do-gooder? Charitable? An upstanding citizen, you would
say?’
‘He’s reputed to be a ranking member of three, perhaps four, successful
criminal organizations. Not drugs, not prostitution, he despises those and
won’t touch them: robbery, it is said, is his forte, usually armed, with or
without violence according to the amount of resistance offered. He,
himself, can be extremely violent. I can testify to that personally. The
violence, of course, was not directed at me: you have to be out of your
mind to attack a police lieutenant and George is very far from being out of
his mind.’
‘You do have a genius for picking your friends, associates, or whatever you
call them, Peter.’ De Graaf puffed at his cheroot and if he was ruffled in
any way he didn’t show it. ‘Why isn’t this menace to society behind bars?’
‘You can’t arrest, charge, try and convict a man on hearsay. I can’t very
well go up to George with a pair of handcuffs and say: “People have been
telling me stories and I have to take you in.” Besides, we’re friends.’
‘You’ve said yourself that he can be excessively violent. You can pull him
in on that.’
‘No. He’s entitled to eject any person who is drunk, abusive, uses foul
language or is guilty of causing an affray. That’s the limit of George’s
violence. Ejection. Usually two at a time. The law says he can. We are the