The truth, p.18
The Truth, page 18
So, let’s do better than that this time, Smith. From the rucksack he took the notebook and a pencil and sat on a seat close to one of the little porthole windows. When he looked out, two white swans were peering in, feet away from his surprised face. This was lovely. He would come back with Jo. They could explore the city. He didn’t know a great deal about art but he was partial to a bit of Van Gogh.
In the Alwych he found the list and ticked off three items. 10.06 now. That’s almost forty-eight hours since the Klymene left Farmbridge. According to Robbie, if Amsterdam was their destination, they should be here by now. He took out the camera and checked the charge in the battery – one hundred per cent. Then he removed the miniature Swarovski binoculars from their case and gave the lenses a wipe with the cloth he had tucked inside. His mobile had more than ninety per cent but he went into the settings and switched it to the low energy mode – he didn’t know when he would be back here to charge it again. He had to make sure there was enough to power the maps.
It was already a warm day. He took off the jacket, hung it up and put everything back into the rucksack except for the camera – shirtsleeves, sunglasses, rucksack and camera should make him reasonably invisible among the thousands of tourists on the highways and byways of the city. Outside on the deck, he locked the hobbit-sized door and checked the phone signal – on the Norfolk coast it would be fifty-fifty whether you had one at all but here he had five bars; this was another item on the list in the Alwych, to be ticked off when next opened. This is how it’s done, operating as an independent unit, like climbing a cliff-face alone in the dark – inch by methodical inch, with military precision, always thinking about the way down as you make your way up.
The pep-talk over, Smith climbed the ladder and stood on the quayside. He looked up and down the Prinsengracht canal, measuring, recording and remembering. Nothing had altered since he arrived, as far as he could see. Six, perhaps seven, people knew he had come to Amsterdam. Of those, Robbie, being closest to the men he was seeking, was the obvious risk but there was no conceivable reason why the young man would have played a double game. Proceed as planned, then.
He opened the digital street-map on his phone and headed north north-east alongside the canal. At the Pancake Bakery – amazingly, shown on his phone before he reached it – he joined a short queue and bought a baguette filled with brie and cranberry, two pieces of millionaire’s shortbread and two bottles of spring water, enough to keep him going until the evening.
Back outside, he put the food and drink into the rucksack and checked the map again. Jo had placed another pin, this time at the City Marina. It should be about ten minutes’ brisk walking from where he stood now. Simultaneously he wished she was here and was glad she was not. The time was 10.44.
Chapter Nineteen
At 16.04 Smith arrived back at the City Marina and sat down on the same bench he had used almost six hours ago. His knee, the other one, that the surgeon had warned him about years ago, was hurting and glad of the rest. It seemed odd that this knee allowed him to jog for miles along coastal footpaths but as soon as he began pounding city streets it played up. He tried to think of a logical reason for this – a different surface or different footwear perhaps, but the fact remained it was aching badly and he might need to find some painkillers. Of course, it could be something to do with his age as well.
With the binoculars, he scanned the marina once more but there was no sign of the Klymene. Arriving here for the first time that morning, Smith had been surprised at how few boats the place contained; he had imagined there would be hundreds to search through, but not so. Only fifty or sixty craft were moored here. He’d gone through them carefully from a distance, remembering to wave the camera about a bit too, as if taking the pointless pictures that tourists do, and then he had wandered into the City marina itself, certain the boat was not there, and even if it was and he had missed it, there was little risk because he wasn’t known to any of the occupants, or at least to the ones who had been on board when it left England.
He had walked up and down the pontoons with a purposeful air and noted there were spaces where a recent new arrival could have moored – the thought had occurred that if this one was full, the Klymene might have sailed on to another marina. As he returned to the entrance, he’d passed a nautical-looking sort wearing a peaked sailing cap who had said good morning in English. Smith had seized the opportunity and explained that he was searching for a friend’s yacht – perhaps he had misunderstood the directions. Which were the most likely alternative moorings to the City marina? This chap couldn’t have been more helpful. He accompanied Smith back up to the riverside walk and pointed out the Sixhaven marina on the other side of the river – and yes, it was a lot bigger. Catch the ferry from the terminal near Centraal station, he said, a few hundred yards east of here, and Sixhaven is a short walk from there. But had he considered the others?
The others? The man began to list them, revealing such detailed knowledge of the matter that Smith began to wonder whether he had inadvertently stumbled across another fellow in the same business as the Frenchman and his crew of two. Or maybe the chap was simply an anorak and Dutch marinas were his abandoned English railway stations. Either way, Smith took out the Alwych and made another list. ‘So,’ his new friend began, ‘further down from Sixhaven you have the Watersportvereniging Aeolus, which has very good facilities. But on this side, heading back upstream – not that there is any current as such – you have several more. I’ll list them in order of proximity from here. Marina Realeneiland, Nauticadam Marina Westdok and Aquadam Marina Westdok. There are also good moorings for visitors along the Marnixkade canal, depending on the length of your friend’s yacht. He could also sail into the Herengracht and moor up at the Watergate…’
Smith had visited most of these during the day, and on foot. There were trams going in all directions but it was impossible to work out how to use them in the time he had available. He could have hired one of those famous bikes, which Jo would have found hilarious, and was on the point of trying this but how would he follow the map on his phone whilst riding it? Walking was simpler. He must have cast his eye over thousands of boats of every imaginable sort today, but of the Klymene there had been not a trace.
Could it have come in yesterday, loaded up its latest cargo and gone already? We’re only talking enough to fit into a suitcase or two, after all. If they’d had a good passage over the weekend, was that possible? Perhaps this time the pick-up had been in Rotterdam. Wasn’t it likely these people were too smart to use the same routes repeatedly? Especially, he realised with a sinking feeling, after they’ve just had a shipment seized? Why hadn’t he thought of that before he came out here? Robbie had said the City marina, no doubt of that; one of them had told him that’s where they went, but how long ago? The temptation was to call him again but Smith knew he had already pushed the young man further than he’d wanted to go.
Heading for Schiphol immediately and getting on the first available plane home would be pathetic, and they had paid for this night on the boat, so he might as well use it. This had been an expensive miscalculation but he would have to see it through to a better conclusion than quitting now. The phone had enough charge left to make the agreed call to Jo, the arrangement being that she would pass on any news to Charlie and Diver and Diver. When he spoke to her, he sounded more upbeat than he felt, and said he would have another go tomorrow morning but he might then get an afternoon flight and be home for a late supper. After the call, he was back on the all-too-familiar street-map. If he returned to the Tulp Roze via the Herengracht canal, he could tick off the Watergate marina. It was further to walk but the pain in his knee had eased off a little. Look out for a chemist on the way. Or maybe one of those cannabis cafés. Might do the trick…
He passed one of the said cafés on the way back to the Prinsengracht, called, appropriately enough, Amnesia. He stopped and studied the tariff in the window, and wondered how the world had become so confused and ambivalent about the use of such substances. For now at least, this country and his own were members of the same economic, social and political organisations, yet here one could enter this café, order cannabis in its various forms, sit at a table in a comfortable seat and consume it without fear of prosecution. Back across the water, it was still a Class B substance, which, unless a great deal had altered since he retired and no one had told him, could get you up to five years in prison merely for its possession, and up to fifteen for being engaged in its production and supply – which, of course, was exactly what the proprietors of this establishment were doing. And yet the Home Office would confirm if asked that they had the closest ties with their European counterparts in the war on drugs.
Smith had little time for those who prefer to discuss the subject in philosophical terms. Cannabis, as far as he was concerned, is the gateway drug for many young people, and it’s a gateway to dependence, addiction and all too often death. Unlike the Oxbridge professors of ethics and the media pundits, he had been inside the rooms of those who had completed that cycle of misery. He had smelled the stale vomit and picked up the syringes as evidence of where your first joint can take you. He had seen the bodies carried out to ambulances. He had knocked on the doors of those who wait in silent dread for years on end, and seen their haggard faces fall. See what a scourge is laid upon your liberties now, professor? Except, of course, you never do see it, and others clear up the mess on your behalf.
He turned away from the café, only too well aware his views on the subject had become stronger as the years had passed, too strong even for some on the force. They argued that it’s a war which cannot be won, that the tide now flows too strongly, that passing more stringent laws will never prevent the misuse of drugs. True, he would say, just as laws against murder and rape can never prevent some from committing those crimes, which are as old as mankind itself. Shall we, then, admit defeat, and say we shall not pursue murderers and rapists? And then the argument became, but you cannot equate the personal use of drugs in the privacy of one’s own home with the dreadful deeds of, say, Peter Sutcliffe. Be reasonable, Smith!
Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, was convicted of killing thirteen women, and of attempting to kill another seven. In the last year for which Smith could recall the official statistics, three thousand, seven hundred and forty-four people were killed by poisoning with drugs they had willingly taken, the vast majority being substances that were already illegal. No serial killer could ever match the damage done by those who profit through supplying such unhappy victims with the means to destroy themselves.
He found a chemist along the Prinsengracht and went inside, not unaware of the irony – he was here to purchase drugs to ease the pain in his knee. On the other hand, he had never had to explain to a heart-broken mother that her daughter had wrecked her life with ibuprofen.
There was a footbridge over the canal, and he stopped halfway and looked north at the lines of barges and houseboats moored beneath the avenues of trees. He wasn’t naïve, he wasn’t fooling himself. It’s an epidemic now. A pandemic, in every society, in every class in every society. It quite possibly is a war that is lost. And it’s one reason why he was here, of course. If Anthony Hills’ ‘offence’ had been any other, would Smith have gone to such lengths? Hadn’t he seen this whole sorry escapade – for that’s what it is, he told himself – as a means of getting after the big boys one more time?
He could see a café not far along the other side of the canal. Something to eat out would make more sense than buying food which would end up in the fridge on the houseboat or being thrown into a bin when he left tomorrow.
The Café 69 was busy inside but a waitress spotted him turning away. You can sit on our barge, she told him, and watch the boats go by as you enjoy your meal… She found him a seat as promised and disappeared to fetch a menu. Proper service – if he was going to be sold something, Smith liked it to be done well. They had pizzas and fries – an annoying word though the slivers of potato he had spied on other plates would never merit the honest title of chips – but he asked if he could have something a little more Dutch. She looked at him thoughtfully, as if trying to match this rather unusual customer with the culinary possibilities on the piece of card. In the end she came up with a chicory salad, comprising rucola, grapes, gorgonzola, hazelnuts and a tarragon-balsamic dressing, and as a side-dish he should try the raw pickled herring and sourdough bread. And to accompany this, a tall glass of cold Amstel beer. ‘What else?’ he said with a smile, and she went away happy with a job well done.
The meal was good and the situation pleasant indeed. There was no hurrying him to make way for another customer, and he sat for a long while with a second glass of beer, watching the people along the canal-side and on the barges. The evening was warm, the air soft, and the late sunshine angled through the trees now, dappling the scene and simultaneously touching it with points of light worthy of a Monet or a Pissaro. It’s the water, of course, that’s what the Impressionists were in love with, the eternal but ever-changing light on the water… He’d fly home tomorrow, and retire once more to his own sunlit saltmarshes and creeks, to the wild cries of the redshanks and the bubbling song of the curlews.
He went inside to pay, planning a generous tip with the now superfluous euros in his wallet. He had heard the music from outside but the surprise was that it was a live performer and not a recording. He stopped at the counter and watched as a young man on what might be the smallest stage in the world played a Taylor acoustic and sang that he didn’t know what’s going round inside but he can tell you that it’s hard to hide when you’re living on solid air. The boy’s tuning was a little different to the original but he was making a fine job of it – every head in the café was turned towards him. At the final words – I don’t know what’s going on – Smith had to smile, just a little.
There was generous applause and Smith added his own. The young man had fans, four girls at the nearest table, and he asked them what they would like next. Curious, Smith stayed to see what else he could do. And if he wasn’t mistaken, the troubadour was German, too, which only added to the pleasantly cosmopolitan confusion any middle-aged English ex-copper was bound to feel after a couple of beers in Amsterdam.
The prettiest of the young women, dark-haired, dark-eyed and petite, had said nothing but it was she the guitarist wanted to please. He waited and eventually she said, ‘More John Martyn.’
Good choice, thought Smith, but the opening chords caught him unawares, like a low blow he hadn’t seen coming. The boy looked at the girl as he played them and said, ‘Sweet Little Mystery’. But by the time he reached the final verse that says, I want to see you but I don’t know where, ’Til then I’m walking on my own, the middle-aged English ex-copper had gone. The song had been one of Sheila’s favourites. He had played it to her many times when she was alive, and for her many times after she had gone. He didn’t need to hear it tonight.
Chapter Twenty
To save his knee, he took the little yellow car and parked it in one of the metered spaces forty yards away from the bench he had sat upon yesterday. He had almost no change in his pockets but the Dutch do not lag behind in technology and he was able to pay contactlessly for two hours using his debit card – he took the ticket back and placed it on top of the dashboard. Isn’t the silence of those vehicles unnerving? It was like driving an electric sewing machine and he could not imagine parking anything like it outside Drift’s End anytime soon. On top of that, they travel on the wrong side of the road. Thank goodness the journey was mercifully short.
The day promised to be as fine as the one before. Smith glanced across at the City marina and that hadn’t changed either, as far as he could see. Taking out the phone again, he checked his messages and saw that Jo had done as he’d asked – he was booked on a flight from Schiphol to Stansted, leaving at 17.12 local time. He needed to be at the airport two hours before that, so say 15.00 – allow twenty minutes for the taxi ride. He took out Osmanek’s card and booked him for the return journey, collection once more outside the Ann Frank house at 14.30. Flying back he would lose an hour; if he managed to get out of Stansted as quickly as he had got into it, he could be home by eight o’clock this evening.
Once that was all sorted, he relaxed. He’d find time for a light lunch – for now he had one piece of the shortbread left and ate it for breakfast. This early in the day, it tasted disgustingly sweet, and now he could do with some coffee. There was one of the American places a little way up the road behind him – if he went for the flat white option it would be almost bearable.
He lifted the binoculars and went right to left across the marina. Nothing. He lowered the glasses and had a word with himself – if you’re going to finish the job here and now, at least finish it properly. He raised them again and scanned back from the left-hand end, looking at the yachts individually this time, mentally ticking each one off as not the boat he had come a long way to find.
At the far side, partially obscured by another craft, was a yacht he had not noticed yesterday. It lay at forty-five degrees to his line of vision, but the longer he looked, the more familiar it became; eventually he muttered to himself, ‘Unless I’m very much mistaken, that’s a Beneteau Oceanis…’
Binoculars lowered again, Smith turned and looked casually to his right and then to his left, just another tourist taking in the scene. People on the move, going about their everyday business, no one taking any notice of him as far as he could see. He took another, longer look, focusing and refocusing the binoculars. The name under the bows was partially visible but in shade – he could not make it out clearly. Leaving that for a moment, he studied the rest of the yacht for signs of life. There were curtains across the side windows but no covers or tarpaulins across the aft deck behind the bridge. He examined a few other boats and most were fully covered. There had to be someone around, surely.
