De Graaf said: ‘How long have you had this boat?’
‘Six years.’
‘In that case, I don’t think Lieutenant van Effen or I will bother to check anything. After six years, you must know every corner, 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 Bakkeren could say definitely 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 the 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 minister wants me to fly up with him to Texel. Taking half the cabinet with him, I understand.’
‘Good God! Those rubber-necking clowns. 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.
‘Ah! 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-everything 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 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 relic?’
They drove off. By and by de Graaf lit 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?’
‘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