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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 fit 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,