Read Online The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam by Chris Ewan - Free Book Online Page A

problem I’d run into.
    Nicholson was my killer. For once, I’d known it right from the
beginning of my book, and I’d known how to prove he was guilty too.
It was all about the briefcase, one with a grizzly secret inside –
the right hand of his victim, Arthur the butler. I had my hero,
Faulks, figure it all out – how Nicholson wanted Arthur dead so he
could get inside the home of Arthur’s employer and take back the
photograph he was being blackmailed with, how he’d created an alibi
by having his wife believe that he’d spent the evening in his
study, how Nicholson had, in fact, caught a cab across town, talked
his way inside Arthur’s apartment, choked him, cut off his hand,
and then taken his hand back across town in a briefcase he’d found
in Arthur’s apartment, at which point he’d used Arthur’s keys to
get in through the front door and then his cold, dead fingers to
open the electronic safe by means of the fingerprint scanner. What
I hadn’t noticed, until Victoria pointed it out to me, was that I
had Faulks pull the briefcase out from inside Nicholson’s study to
prove his guilt, at which point Nicholson broke down and confessed,
but I hadn’t explained just how the briefcase had moved from
Arthur’s apartment, and then latterly the safe storage complex at
the police evidence room, to the inside of Nicholson’s home.
    It was a hitch alright. In the past, I’d solved problems just
like it by having Faulks break into places and move the evidence
about as he wished. I couldn’t do that here, though, because the
briefcase was in the heart of a police station, and no matter how
fanciful I might allow my burglar books to become, I drew the line
at having Faulks burgle the police. One way of sorting it out was
to introduce a new character, say a street-wise cop that Faulks
could talk into helping him. Maybe the cop would get the collar in
return for loaning Faulks the briefcase? It wasn’t a bad idea but I
didn’t like it because it would involve too big a rewrite. If the
cop was to have a role like that, he had to appear early on and I’d
need to develop a few scenes where Faulks could talk to him and
gain his trust and it all sounded like far too much work. Besides,
if things worked that way, where was the surprise for the reader
when Faulks opened the cupboard in Nicholson’s apartment and pulled
out the briefcase?
    Just as I was wrestling with that very thought, my telephone
rang and I answered it. It was Pierre, returning my call. Now I’m
pretty sure Pierre isn’t his real name but the truth is you need to
use a name when you talk business with someone, and since he was
French and he lived in Paris, Pierre had always struck me as an
appropriate choice. For his part, Pierre didn’t care what I called
him, so long as he got a share of each job he passed my way and his
cut of any stolen goods I needed him to shift.
    “Charlie, you have business for me in Amsterdam?” he began.
    “Perhaps,” I said, leaning back in my chair and propping my feet
up onto the surface of my desk, ankles crossed. “Though it really
depends on you, Pierre. On how much I can trust you, to be
exact.”
    “Charlie. Please,” he said. “We are friends. We do not talk like
this.”
    “Not usually, no,” I said, glancing to my right and
straightening the picture frame that contained my Hammett novel.
“But then I hear things have changed. I hear you give my name to
anybody who wants it.”
    There was a pause on the other end of the line. I cleared away a
dust spot from the glass of the frame.
    “Americans, Pierre,” I prompted. “Admirers of my work. Does that
mean anything to you?”
    “Charlie – ”
    “Take your time. This had better be good.”
    “He is a friend, too,” Pierre said, carefully. “An old friend.
He wanted the best I knew in the Netherlands. You are my best,
Charlie.”
    “That’s reassuring. Did he tell you what he was after?”
    “Only your name. I said I would contact you, like