Free The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam by Chris Ewan

briefcase is.”
    “And he can also see who the killer is. Which ends your book on
page 10.”
    “Stupid ef me. So try this. Faulks gets the make of the
briefcase from someone at the police station, maybe one of the
female officers, in return for a steak dinner. It’s a common make,
so he goes out and buys a copy.”
    “Except if the real briefcase is with the police, and if
everyone knows it, including Nicholson, they’ll also know it’s a
plant.”
    “Damn.”
    “And the briefcase is only part of it, Charlie. You need the
hand. You need to pop open that case and thrust that bloody hand
right in Nicholson’s face. In the reader’s face, too. That’s your
climax.”
    “So I get another hand.”
    “Another hand? How are you going to do that? Cut off Arthur’s
left one?”
    “No of course not. What about Arthur’s niece, the actress?
Suppose she isn’t an actress so much as a special effects
designer?”
    “You want a prosthetic hand?”
    “It’s not so much I want one,” I said. “I just thought maybe it
could work.”
    “But you still don’t have your second briefcase, or at least any
way of matching the original that makes sense.”
    “Granted, it needs some finessing.”
    “I’ll say.”
    I breathed heavily into the telephone receiver. “You know, these
are not the easy words of encouragement I was seeking.”
    “Well guess what, you didn’t give me the complete solution I was
seeking, either. So it appears we’re both disappointed.”
    “Hmm.”
    “Although I am glad to hear from you. I’ve been worried.”
    “Sweet.”
    “It’s true. Tell me, how are things?”
    “Thieving things?”
    “What else?”
    “Well, they’re interesting, I guess. Or complicated, depending
on your perspective.”
    “Enlighten me.”
    And so I did. I told Victoria about my visit from Inspector
Burggrave of the Dutch police, about my conversations with Marieke
and Pierre, and what I’d learned about the American. In fact, I
breezed through it all as if it was a familiar pitch for a new
novel I’d been plotting out and when I was done she said, “So he’s
a burglar too. It’s odd that he hired you.”
    “Isn’t it?”
    “You really think his nerve had gone?”
    “I’m not sure,” I said. “What do you think?”
    “Well, it’s difficult without meeting him, of course.”
    “Of course.”
    “But it does seem odd that he had enough nerve to plan a theft
but not enough to carry it through.”
    “My thoughts exactly. And he killed a man, Victoria. If he’d had
some kind of conversion in prison, maybe I could believe it, but a
born again convict doesn’t get out and start planning a new
job.”
    “I don’t like that at all, the fact he killed a man. Put that
with the gun you found in the apartment and you’ve, well, you’ve
got a handful of people who are capable of really hurting
someone.”
    “By breaking fingers and beating skulls, you mean?”
    “Quite. So what about the blonde ,” she said, layering the
word with contempt. “What does she have to say?”
    “Her name’s Marieke, as well you know. And to be honest I don’t
think she told me everything she could have.”
    “They never do.”
    “Blondes?”
    “Femme fatales, Charlie.”
    “She’s hardly that!”
    “She’s the nearest thing you’ve got. It all makes you wonder,
doesn’t it, what Faulks might do in your situation?”
    “Faulks wouldn’t be in my situation. At this rate, I’d rewrite
the opening chapters to give him some more clues to go on. Think
about it: the man who knows everything is in a coma, the femme
fatale, as you call her, is holding out on me.”
    “In every conceivable way.”
    “Funny. What else? Oh yes, Pierre, who got me into this mess in
the first place, knows just about as much as I do, maybe even less.
And then there’s the rogue intruder, who I don’t have a hope of
tracking down.”
    “Plus the wide man and the thin man. Who sound more like a
comedy duo every minute, by the