Floodgate

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 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 law.’

‘Sounds an interesting character. Unusual, one might say. Two at a time, eh?’

‘Wait till you see George.’

‘And how do you propose to introduce me?’

‘No need to emphasize the police connections. Just Colonel de Graaf. This is, shall we say, a semiofficial visit.’

‘I may be recognized.’

‘Colonel, there isn’t a self-respecting criminal in this city who wouldn’t recognize you at a distance of half a kilometre. When their kids are misbehaving they probably whip out your picture, show it to their offspring and tell them if they don’t mend their ways—the bogieman will come and get them.’

‘Extremely witty. You’re not exactly unknown yourself, Peter. I’d be curious to know what the—ah—criminal element hereabouts think about you.’

‘You don’t have to be curious. They think I’m bent.’

The unprepossessing entrance to La Caracha was located halfway down a lane so narrow that not even a car could enter it. The cracked plaster of the tiny entrance porch, the fading and peeling paint belied the bar room that lay beyond. This was well lit and clean, with gleaming knotted-pine walls, half-a-dozen tables, each with four small armchairs instead of the usual metal or plastic seats, a semi-circular bar flanked by fixed stools and, beyond the bar, the barman. When one looked at him one forgot about the rest of the room.

He was huge. Very tall and very broad he probably weighed in about a hundred and thirty kilos. He wore a rather splendid Mexican sombrero—one assumed there was some connection between the barman’s headgear and the vaguely Latin American name of the restaurant—a white shirt, a black string tie, an open black waistcoat and black leather trousers. The absence of a gun-belt and a holstered Peacemaker Colt struck a discordant note. The eyes were dark, the bushy eyebrows black and the equally black moustache, equally bushy, luxuriant and dropping down past the corners of his mouth, perfectly complemented the spectacular sombrero. The craggy face appeared to have been hacked from granite by an enthusiastic but ungifted stone-mason. He was the epitome of all those ‘wanted’ portraits that used to adorn the walls of nineteenth-century western American saloons.

‘That’s George?’ Van Effen didn’t bother to answer the superfluous question. ‘When he ejects them two at a time I assume he uses only one hand.’

George caught sight of them and hurried round the corner of the bar, a wide, welcoming smile revealing startlingly white teeth. The nearer he approached, the bigger he seemed to become. His hand was outstretched while he was still quite some distance away.

‘Welcome, Peter, my friend, welcome. And Colonel van de Graaf. My word, this is indeed an honour.’ He pumped the Colonel’s hand as if he were a twin brother he hadn’t seen for twenty years.

De Graaf smiled. ‘You know me then?’

‘If there is anyone in the city who doesn’t recognize our Commissioner of Police he must either be blind or never read newspapers or magazines. Peter, as of this moment, my reputation is made.’ He looked at de Graaf and dropped his voice. ‘Provided, of course that this is not an official visit.’

‘Purely unofficial,’ de Graaf said. ‘Regard me as the Lieutenant’s guest.’

‘It is my pleasure to celebrate this auspicious occasion,’ George said. ‘Borreltje, jonge jenever, whisky, beer, wine—La Caracha has an excellent wine cellar. No better in Amsterdam. But I recommend my bessenjenever, gentlemen. Ice just beginning to form on the top.’ He touched his lips. ‘Incomparable.’