Alistair MacLean - Puppet on a Chain

'Not hereabouts. Here. And I don't think. I know. Eighty per cent of those under surveillance — and I refer to the distributors and their intermediaries — have links with this country. To be precise, with Amsterdam — nearly all of them. They have relatives here, or they have friends. They have business contacts here or personally conduct business here or they come here on holiday. We've spent five years on building up this dossier.'

De Graaf smiled. 'On this place called "here".'

'On Amsterdam, yes.'

Van Gelder asked: 'There are copies of this dossier?'

'One.'

'With you?'

'Yes.'

'On you?'

'In the only safe place.' I tapped my head.

'As safe a place as any,' de Graaf approved, then added thoughtfully: 'As long, of course, that you don't meet up with people who might be inclined to treat you the way you treat them.'

'I don't understand, Colonel.'

'I speak in riddles,' de Graaf said affably. 'Ah right, I agree. At the moment the finger points at the Netherlands. Not to put too fine a point on it, as you don't put too fine a point on it, at Amsterdam. We, too, know our unfortunate reputation. We wish it was untrue. But it isn't. We know the stuff comes in in bulk. We know it goes out again all broken up — but from where or how we have no idea.'

'It's your bailiwick,' I said mildly.

'It's what?'

'It's your province. It's in Amsterdam. You run the law in Amsterdam.'

'Do you make many friends in the course of a year?' van Gelder enquired politely.

'I'm not in this business to make friends.'

'You're in this business to destroy people who destroy people,' de Graaf said pacifically. 'We know about you. We have a splendid dossier on you. Would you like to see it?'

'Ancient history bores me.'

'Predictably.' De Graaf sighed. 'Look, Sherman, the best police forces in the world can come up against a concrete wall. That's what we have done — not that I claim we're the best. All we require is one lead — one single solitary lead… Perhaps you have some idea, some plan?'

'I arrived only yesterday.' I fished inside the inside of my lower right trouser-leg and gave the Colonel the two scraps of paper I'd found in the dead floor-waiter's pockets. 'Those figures. Those numbers. They mean anything to you?'

De Graaf gave them a cursory glance, held them up before a bright desk-lamp, laid them down on the desk. 'No.'

'Can you find out? If they have any meaning?'

'I have a very able staff. By the way, where did you get these?'

'A man gave them to me.'

'You mean you got them from a man.'

'There's a difference?'

'There could be a very great difference,' De Graaf leaned forward, face and voice very earnest. 'Look, Major Sherman, we know about your technique of getting people off balance and keeping them there. We know about your propensity for stepping outside the law -'

'Colonel de Graaf!'

'A well-taken point. You're probably never inside it to start with. We know about this deliberate policy — admittedly as effective as it is suicidal — of endless provocation, waiting for something, for somebody to break. But please, Major Sherman, please do not try to provoke too many people in Amsterdam. We have too many canals.'

'I won't provoke anyone,' I said. 'I'll be very careful.'

'I'm sure you will.' De Graaf sighed. 'And now, I believe, van Gelder has a few things to show you.'

Van Gelder had. He drove me in his own black Opel from the police HQ in the Marnixstraat to the city mortuary and by the time I left there I was wishing he hadn't.

The city mortuary lacked the old-world charm, the romance and nostalgic beauty of old Amsterdam. It was like the city mortuary in any big town, cold — very cold — and clinical and inhuman and repelling. The central block had down its centre two rows of white slabs of what appeared to be marble and almost certainly wasn't, while the sides of the room were lined with very large metal doors. The principal attendant here, resplendent in an immaculately starched white coat, was a cheerful, rubicund, genial character who appeared to be in perpetual danger of breaking out into gales of laughter, a very odd characteristic indeed, one would have thought, to find in a mortuary attendant until one recalled that more than a handful of England's hangmen in the past were reckoned to be the most rollicking tavern companions one could ever hope to have.

At a word from van Gelder, he led us to one of the big metal doors, opened it and pulled out a wheeled metal rack that ran smoothly on steel runners. A white-sheeted form lay on this rack.

'The canal he was found in is called the Croquiskade,' van Gelder said. He seemed quite unemotional about it. 'Not what you might call the Park Lane of Amsterdam — it's down by the docks. Hans Gerber. Nineteen. I won't show you his face — he's been too long in the water. The fire brigade found him when they were fishing out a car. He could have been there another year or two. Someone had twisted a few old lead pipes about his middle.'

He lifted a corner of the sheet to expose a flaccid emaciated arm. It looked for all the world as if someone had trodden all over it with spiked climbing boots. Curious purple lines joined many of those punctures and the whole arm was badly discoloured. Van Gelder covered it up without a word and turned away. The attendant wheeled the rack inside again, closed the door, led us to another door and repeated the performance of wheeling out another corpse, smiling hugely the while like a bankrupt English duke showing the public round his historic castle.

'I won't show you this one's face either.' van Gelder said. 'It is not nice to look on a boy of twenty-three who has the face of a man of seventy.' He turned to the attendant. 'Where was this one found?'

'The Oosterhook,' the attendant beamed. 'On a coal barge.'

Van Gelder nodded. That's right. With a bottle — an empty bottle — of gin beside him. The gin was all inside him. You know what a splendid combination gin and heroin is.' He pulled back the sheet to reveal an arm similar to the one I'd just seen. 'Suicide — or murder?'

'It all depends.'

'On?'

'Whether he bought the gin himself. That would make it suicide — or accidental death. Someone could have put the full bottle in his hand. That would make it murder. We had a case just like it last month in the Port of London. We'll never know.'

At a nod from van Gelder, the attendant led us happily to a slab in the middle of the room. This time van Gelder pulled back the sheet from the top. The girl was very young and very lovely and had golden hair.

'Beautiful, isn't she?' van Gelder asked. 'Not a mark on her face. Julia Rosemeyer from East Germany. All we know of her, all we will ever know of her. Sixteen, the doctors guess.'

'What happened to her?'

'Fell six stories to a concrete pavement.'

I thought briefly of the ex-floor-waiter and how much better he would have looked on this slab, then asked: 'Pushed?'

'Fell. Witnesses. They were all high. She'd been talking all night about flying to England. She had some obsession about meeting the Queen. Suddenly she scrambled on to the parapet of the balcony, said she was flying to see the Queen — and, well, she flew. Fortunately, there was no one passing beneath at the time. Like to see more?'

'I'd like to have a drink at the nearest pub, if you don't mind.'

'No.' He smiled but there wasn't anything humorous about it. 'Van Gelder's fireside. It's not far. I have my reasons.'

'Your reasons?'

'You'll see.'

We said goodbye and thanks to the happily smiling attendant, who looked as if he would have liked to say, 'Haste ye back' but didn't. The sky had darkened since early morning and big heavy scattered drops of rain were beginning to fall. To the east the horizon was livid and purple, more than vaguely threatening and foreboding. It was seldom that a sky reflected my mood as accurately as this.