Puppet on a Chain by Alistair MacLean Page B

-- but from where or how we have no idea.'
    'It's your bailiwick,' I said mildly.
    'It's what?'
    'It's your province. It's in Amsterdam. You run the law in Amsterdam.'
    'Do you make many friends in the course of a year?' van Gelder enquired politely.
    'I'm not in this business to make friends.'
    'You're in this business to destroy people who destroy people,' de Graaf said pacifically. 'We know about you. We have a splendid dossier on you. Would you like to see it?'
    'Ancient history bores me.'
    'Predictably.' De Graaf sighed. 'Look, Sherman, the best police forces in the world can come up against a concrete wall. That's what we have done -- not that I claim we're the best. All we require is one lead -- one single solitary lead . . . Perhaps you have some idea, some plan?'
    'I arrived only yesterday.' I fished inside the inside of my lower right trouser-leg and gave the Colonel the two scraps of paper I'd found in the dead floor-waiter's pockets. 'Those figures. Those numbers. They mean anything to you?'
    De Graaf gave them a cursory glance, held them up before a bright desk-lamp, laid them down on the desk. 'No.'
    'Can you find out? If they have any meaning?'
    'I have a very able staff. By the way, where did you get these?'
    'A man gave them to me.'
    'You mean you got them from a man.'
    'There's a difference?'
    'There could be a very great difference,' De Graaf leaned forward, face and voice very earnest. 'Look, Major Sherman, we know about your technique of getting people off balance and keeping them there. We know about your propensity for stepping outside the law --'
    'Colonel de Graaf!'
    'A well-taken point. You're probably never inside it to start with. We know about this deliberate policy -- admittedly as effective as it is suicidal -- of endless provocation, waiting for something, for somebody to break. But please, Major Sherman, please do not try to provoke too many people in Amsterdam. We have too many canals.'
    'I won't provoke anyone,' I said. 'I'll be very careful.'
    'I'm sure you will.' De Graaf sighed. 'And now, I believe, van Gelder has a few things to show you.'
    Van Gelder had. He drove me in his own black Opel from the police HQ in the Marnixstraat to the city mortuary and by the time I left there I was wishing he hadn't.
    The city mortuary lacked the old-world charm, the romance and nostalgic beauty of old Amsterdam. It was like the city mortuary in any big town, cold -- very cold -- and clinical and inhuman and repelling. The central block had down its centre two rows of white slabs of what appeared to be marble and almost certainly wasn't, while the sides of the room were lined with very large metal doors. The principal attendant here, resplendent in an immaculately starched white coat, was a cheerful, rubicund, genial character who appeared to be in perpetual danger of breaking out into gales of laughter, a very odd characteristic indeed, one would have thought, to find in a mortuary attendant until one recalled that more than a handful of England's hangmen in the past were reckoned to be the most rollicking tavern companions one could ever hope to have.
    At a word from van Gelder, he led us to one of the big metal doors, opened it and pulled out a wheeled metal rack that ran smoothly on steel runners. A white-sheeted form lay on this rack.
    'The canal he was found in is called the Croquiskade,' van Gelder said. He seemed quite unemotional about it. 'Not what you might call the Park Lane of Amsterdam -- it's down by the docks. Hans Gerber. Nineteen. I won't show you his face -- he's been too long in the water. The fire brigade found him when they were fishing out a car. He could have been there another year or two. Someone had twisted a few old lead pipes about his middle.'
    He lifted a corner of the sheet to expose a flaccid emaciated arm. It looked for all the world as if someone had trodden all over it with spiked climbing boots. Curious purple lines joined many of those punctures and the whole arm was