Bruges was refreshingly old fashioned I was pleased to be discovering over the course of my sojourn there. Drinks were paid for by the hosts, thugs and policemen alike. People travelled by bicycle, foot or by water. Cars just seemed to get in the way. I was also pleased to find that there was no speed of light forensic approach to evidence. Of course I refer to the jumper that I had found in the boat house. It yielded no tell tale fibres, no specks of mud that were only found in one particular street where the cobbles were up for roadworks and there were no bloodstains which meant that no one, as far as we could tell, had been hurt. Instead of being examined the jumper was photographed, its picture displayed on posters and flyers with a description of Gunni and a number to call.. It was then the job for these to be distributed throughout the city, stuck on noticeboards and thrust into the faces of anyone who passed by.
I joined the party of those walking and talking – I was able to help when it came to tourists, maybe there was some other sucker who’d fallen for this girl whilst she was playing truant from the Hotel Mother Superior. The nights were long and the shoe leather wearing thin, the nightbirds were turning to roost. Perhaps there was something we had missed, wasn’t there always some big revelation at this point where the hero gets his big break in tracking down the villain.
It had occurred to me that knowing her father’s situation Gunni would only go somewhere that she felt safe, she was headstrong but not stupid. Remy’s bar was where I found her, or rather, she had found me. So to Remy’s bar I headed, not without some trepidation. Hopefully this time they would not be planning to mug me, hopefully my temporary ID courtesy of Inspector Lehrmann would protect me she that be the case….
It was near closing time when I got to the bar but I got the impression that last orders didn’t happen around here. Stumbling in a few heads looked my way but were too bleary eyed to focus, maybe I hadn’t been recognised. Ordering a drink I plonked myself onto a stool at the bar and showed the staff my poster from the police.
“Would you mind putting this up somewhere? …And I’m not being offensive.”
There may have been a joke there somewhere but this was the wrong time of night. The barman gave it the once over, said ‘sure’ and tacked it up at one end of the bar. Unsure of how to proceed I drank my beer, my thought processes dulled already by fatigue a few drinks would hardly be a problem. I hadn’t eaten much that day and I’d done a lot of walking on my bad foot. Going unnoticed by myself was a gathering crowd of locals by the new poster, the hubbub of noise sailed past my ears. My first awareness of this sudden interest was when the crowd migrated to surround a stool by the bar. My stool, my crowd and just my luck.
“Monsieur, we did not know that you were involved in this case. We apologise” said the spokesman in accented English, “You are looking for Gunni Burune with the Police, non?”
Fishing out my temporary ID I showed it to the ringleader, I flipped it back into my pocket quickly. Perhaps this small crowd could be my very own hired goons. That is assuming of course that they were not someone else’s and this was the end of the line or canal as it may be.
“Any chance that you men could help or throw some light on the situation?”
“Monsieur, we have already helping you, this is a policeman’s bar.”
And they had been planning to mug me days ago, pardon me if I had the cheek to be surprised that they were rozzers.
The frontman continued,
“We had heard that there was a British detective involved but we assumed it was someone competent, no offence.”
This from the man who sounded more and more like Inspector Clouseau with each passing syllable. Maybe I didn’t recognise them out of uniform but it seems I had fallen into the trap of thinking there was only one real policeman in the adventure and that all the others were faceless extras. In works of fiction the hero simply demands things and they get done, no one ever mentions all the foot work done by the bobby on the beat. Walking and talking that went on dogmatically until there were some answers for the detective’s questions. They provided the clues for the hero to wrestle with. They never got a mention before and they weren’t going to get much of one now.
“Henri here is an eye-witness, he believes he saw your little girlfriend the other night. Tell him Henri!”
A little man in a woollen jumper stepped from behind the first man. He shambled a little and mumbled his words.
“It was by the main canal I saw her with three men, she had two either side and one behind her. She was wearing the jumper in the picture, it was long and stretched.
She went down Ganyerestraat to the boathouses and then lost sight of them. I did not think it was anything unusual except when I saw her again she was in boat! She must have been cold because the jumper was gone! That jumper in the picture was gone! This was about half an hour later on the north canal – I can take you to where I saw them go.”
This was a revelation indeed and with all these policeman for friends and he did not know that what he had seen was important, not until he saw the jumper. He had witnessed the kidnapping and not even known it was a kidnapping.
As one mob we left the bar, promising to return for our drinks. I felt empowered marching along with my ‘gang’. A gang that had planned to do me over and steal my wallet but days ago, how very empowering.
Yes, it had occurred to me that they may still wish to overpower me and steal my wallet. But to get beaten up that many times in so few days was beyond even my luck. I hadn’t seen a single warrant card but I assumed that Gunni must have known of the copper’s bar and chosen to drink at Remy’s for protection.
There by a stretch of canal was Sean’s Gang all standing by the water side, looking north almost as if we were trying to make out the fugitive boat in the distance. Of course, that boat was long gone. However this was on of the smaller canals on the edge of the city, there were few places that they could have gone from here.
I sent a handful of the lads back to the police station, to wake up Lehrmann and to bring him here with some officers who were both on duty and sober. Whilst planning my next move I worked on my profile in the moon’s reflection on the water.