St Paul’s Labyrinth
JEROEN WINDMEIJER

A division of HarperCollinsPublishers

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright

KillerReads

an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

First published in Holland in 2017 by HarperCollins Holland, as Het Pauluslabyrint

Copyright © Jeroen Windmeijer 2017

Translation copyright © HarperCollins Holland 2017

Cover Design © Wil Immink Design

Cover images © Shutterstock.com and iStockphoto.com

Jeroen Windmeijer asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © August 2018 ISBN: 9780008318468

Version: 2020-01-23

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Consulted Literature

Notes

About the Author

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

Mérida (Hispania), 72 AD

The executioner draws his sharpened dagger across the convict’s belly, slicing it open with a single cut. A torrent of blood gushes out, like water breaking through the walls of a dyke. The man screams in agony as his guts spill like skinned snakes down to his knees. Then the birdmen come, their eagles balanced on their leather armguards. The birds’ sharp beaks take great, greedy bites of the man’s exposed liver. The three other men, lashed to wooden stakes and doomed to the same fate, struggle hopelessly to escape.

The audience is ecstatic. This amphitheatre, built during the reign of Caesar Augustus, is big enough to hold sixteen thousand. Today, every single seat of its three tiers is occupied.

After the venatio, the staged hunt of exotic beasts, comes the spectacle of public executions. During today’s underwhelming opening act, in which a few criminals were merely beheaded, many took the opportunity to relieve themselves in the catacomb latrines.

The executions are inspired by stories from ancient Greece and the public appreciates the creativity with which they are carried out. After the eagles have eaten their fill of entrails and the four men have died – as in the tale of Prometheus – four wooden ramps are wheeled into the arena. In the middle of each ramp is an enormous boulder. Convicts are brought out to recreate the Sisyphean task of rolling the rocks to the top of the ramps, a feat which they naturally all fail to accomplish. The sound of their breaking bones travels all the way up to the third tier.

Another group of men is sent into the sweltering arena. They have gone without food and drink for days and must now attempt to reach the bread and jugs of water that dangle from the stands on long poles. To the crowd’s delight, just before they grasp them, the poles are raised high above their heads, making the bread and water as unreachable as they were for Tantalus. When the public’s attention begins to wane, starved dogs are released to rip the men apart.

Now, eight men covered in oil and pitch are brought into the ring and tied to stakes. Roman boys, none of them a day over twelve, shoot flaming arrows at the prisoners until they eventually begin to burn. The men scream as they meet their fiery end and a murmur of approval rumbles around the amphitheatre. This may not have been inspired by a Greek story, but it is a novelty that has never been seen before.

A late arrival makes his way to the stands and looks for a seat on the end of one of the benches. He is small, and his legs are crooked, but he looks sturdy, with eyebrows that meet above a long nose. He is a charismatic man and he radiates the serenity of an angel. A brief look at the young man who is already sitting on the end of the bench is all that is needed to create space. He takes his seat and sets his small earthenware jug on the ground next to his feet.

While the dead criminals are dragged from the arena and the patches of blood are covered with fresh sand, musicians and fools do their best to entertain the public with acrobatic antics. The crowd cheers as dozens of boys and girls enter the stands carrying huge baskets of bread between them. The distribution of bread at the games began two years ago in Rome and was so popular among the commoners that the practice rapidly spread to every corner of the Empire. The boys and girls walk up the steps, throwing hunks of bread into the crowds. A forest of arms reaches up to meet them where they land. Once caught, the bread is swiftly tucked beneath cloaks, leaving hands free to snatch another piece.

‘Panem et tauros,’ the youngster says mockingly to the old man next to him. Bread and bulls. He takes the chunk of bread that has fortuitously landed in his lap and, without looking, sullenly hurls it in a huge arc behind him.

But this is what most people have come for today; for the bread, but mostly to see the bullfight.

The editor muneris, the sponsor of today’s games, orders the release of the bull by raising his arm in an impressive saluto romano. A deafening cheer fills the arena. The editor looks around the crowd, then, gratified, returns to lie on his couch. He picks up a small bunch of grapes from the lavishly spread table next to him and watches as the gigantic, wildly bucking bull enters the amphitheatre. The animal has been force-fed salt for days and denied even a drop of water. It has spent the last twenty-four hours in a stall too small for its enormous mass while its belly was battered with sandbags to cause internal bleeding. The game has been rigged before it has even begun. He cannot win today.

Now the ministri, the attendants, enter the arena. They taunt the bull with huge capes, assessing its strength, intelligence and fighting spirit. They wave the brightly coloured cloths with great bravado, skilfully dodging the bull’s charges. Gasps of awe pour down from the stands and into the arena, like the waters of a river tumbling down a mountainside.

The bull is judged worthy of the fight. Four venatores, hunters, come through the four gates of the battleground on horseback, each one clutching a verutum, a hunting spear, in his right hand. They enter like gods, wearing only loincloths. Spiky leaves of laurel are woven into their hair. Their horses, protected by heavy armour, are visibly frightened, but their vocal chords have been severed and they can make no sound.

They close in on the bull from four directions and it does not know which horse to attack, but the circle closes tighter and tighter around the bull until it is forced to launch itself at the nearest rider. As soon as it approaches one of the horses, the rider stands up in the stirrups to plunge his verutum into the bull’s neck, bearing down upon it with the weight of his entire body. The venatores each charge at the bull in turn, goring the bull’s neck at least once before retreating to loud applause. The bull is dazed and its head lolls as blood drips onto the ground from its wounds.

Then the mactator arrives, the star of the show, the bull killer, the man who will finish the job. He is a mountain of a man, dressed in a simple, short tunic, arms bare and lower legs covered by protectors. In each hand, he carries a pole as long as his arm, decorated with ribbons and ending in a barb. He walks towards the bull in a straight line. The more determinedly he follows this invisible path, the more the crowd admires his courage. Most of them are sitting again now, and instead of the cheers and yells that made all conversation impossible moments ago, there is silence, as though they are collectively holding their breath. The bull responds to the new threat heading towards him by scraping the sand with its hoof. With a guttural roar, the mactator commands the attention of the whole arena. When he is within a few steps of the bull, it charges. The taurarius, the bullfighter, spins neatly to avoid the attack, and before he finishes his pirouette, he drives a barbed lance between the bull’s shoulder blades. The arena explodes with joy, so graceful was the parry, so perfectly aimed the lance. Now the mactator runs away from the bull. Then, he circles back towards it, and with an impressive leap, lands his second spear next to the first.

Those who assume that the bull has given up are about to find that they are mistaken. The animal seems to know that this is its last chance to wound his attacker. It summons all its strength to lift up its head, while blood gushes from its wounds and long, bloody strings of mucus hang from its mouth.

The taurarius approaches the editor’s box, bends one knee on the sand and bows his head. The editor gives a small nod of approval, upon which the venator at the eastern gate comes forward to place a special headcovering on the mactator’s head – a soft, red conical cap with a point that falls forwards – and hand him the linteum, the half circle of red flannel, draped over a wooden rod.

The taurarius walks back to the bull. He waves the cloth tauntingly, and from somewhere, the beast finds the energy to make a few desperate lunges. The enthusiasm of the audience’s reaction spurs the bullfighter on to take even greater risks. This is the most dangerous stage of the fight. One moment of distraction could be fatal. The bull, stunned by pain and fear, could still mortally wound the mactator in a last attempt to avoid death by goring his unprotected belly with his horns.

But the liberating blast of a trumpet is already sounding and the venator comes scurrying over from his post at the western gate. In one hand he carries a light, curved sword – with a hilt in the form of a snake, the falcata – and in the other, a flaming torch. He hands over the falcata and takes up position behind the bull’s left flank. This is the hora veritatis, the hour of truth, when the mactator will end the beast’s suffering by plunging the sword between its shoulder blades and piercing its heart.

He stands before the exhausted animal. It is too tired now to even lift its head. He places his hand on its forehead and forces it to the ground, a flourish which brings a sigh of admiration from the crowd.

A minister rushes over from the eastern side of the arena. He carries a silver chalice in one hand and, in the other, a blazing torch which he points at the ground.

The bull is lying in the sand now, and the mactator straddles it with his knee on its right haunch and his other leg on the ground. He pulls its head back by the horn with his left hand and raises his right arm in the air. The falcata’s blade flashes in the sun. And then, with a masterful stroke, he brings the sword down and expertly slits the beast’s throat. Blood spurts out, soaking the sand with a powerful geyser of red until the bull finally succumbs. The curved sword is buried so deeply that the snake on the hilt appears to lick the bull’s wound.

‘Sanguis eius super nos et super filios nostros.’ The old man in the stands murmurs a hopeful prayer. His blood be on us, and on our children.

The mactator rubs his bloodied hands across his face, as though washing himself with the blood. He is a terrifying sight now; the blood has mixed with sand and sweat, but he seems unmoved, and stares out at an imaginary point in the distance.

‘Et nos servasti eternali sanguine fuso,’ the old man whispers. And you have also saved us by shedding the eternal blood. The man pulls a hunk of bread from his sleeve and tears a piece from it as he stares intently at the spectacle in the arena.

The taurarius takes up the blade once more, this time to cut a chunk of flesh from the bull. He shows this to the audience then puts it in his mouth and swallows it whole.

‘Accipite et comedite, hoc est corpus meum quod pro vobis datur.’ Take this and eat; this is my body which is given for you.

The old man closes his eyes, puts the piece of bread into his mouth, and chews thoughtfully, as though he is tasting bread for the first time in his life.

The mactator takes the chalice from the venator behind him and fills it with blood from the bull’s neck. This he also shows to the audience before emptying it one, long gulp.

‘Bibite, hic est sanguis meus qui pro multis effunditur.’ Drink, this is my blood poured out for many. The old man retrieves a small, earthenware jug of wine from under his seat. He twists the cork from it and takes a drink, swirls the wine around in his mouth then swallows.

The euphoric crowd chants the name of the taurarius and he stands up to begin his victory lap. Meanwhile, a venator removes the bull’s testicles with a pair of scissors shaped like a scorpion. These are believed to be a powerful aphrodisiac and will be offered to the editor later.

‘Iste, qui nec de corpore meo ederit nec de mea sanguine biberit ut mecum misceatur et ego cum eo miscear, salutem non habebit,’ the old man ends his ritual. He who does not eat of my flesh and drink of my blood, so that he remains in me and I in him, shall not know salvation.

A dog that has escaped from the catacombs seizes its chance to get close to the bull and lick at the blood still streaming from its neck. A minister delivers a well-aimed kick to its belly and it scuttles away, its teeth and muzzle red.

The people stand on the benches, waving white cloths to show their appreciation of the taurarius’ bravery and the elegance with which he has fought. A group of men jump into the arena to lift the bullfighter onto their shoulders. They parade him past his audience as wreaths and flowers rain down on him. Two ropes are fastened to the hind legs of the lifeless animal. A portion of the applause is surely meant for the bull as it exits the arena, leaving a bloody trail in the sand. Its meat will be served at the tables of the city’s wealthy families tonight. A small fortune will be paid for its tail, a delicacy when stewed with onions and wine.

The old man gets up and takes a last look at the arena behind him where the trail of blood in the sand is the only evidence that an unfair fight has taken place here today.

‘Consummatum est,’ he says, satisfied. It is finished.

1
CORAX
RAVEN

Leiden, 20 March 2015, 1:00pm

Technically, Peter de Haan’s lecture was already over. He had given a brisk overview of Leiden’s most important churches in his ‘Introduction to the History of Leiden’ for Master’s students. It was part of an elective module, but it packed the small lecture theatre every year. He had stopped being surprised by it years ago, but it always did him good to see the theatre so full.

Some of the students had started to pack away their things, but they hadn’t yet dared to leave their seats. One young man watched him like a dog waiting for a command from its master.

An aerial photograph of the Hooglandse Kerk was projected onto the screen behind him. At the start of the fourteenth century, it had been no more than a small wooden chapel. By the end of the sixteenth century it had grown into a cathedral so enormous that it had become too big for its surroundings, like an oversized sofa in a tiny living room. The photograph also showed the Burcht van Leiden, the city’s iconic eleventh-century motte-and-bailey castle. This six-foot-tall crenelated circular stone wall was built on top of a man-made mound about twelve metres high.

Peter raised his hand, and the quiet chatter in the room immediately stopped. ‘I know you all want to go to lunch,’ he said, with a hint of hesitation in his voice, ‘but which of you are going to watch the first underground waste container being installed at the public library this afternoon?’

Most of the students looked at him politely, but none of them responded.

‘You know that there’s a major project starting in town at two o’clock today, installing these containers?’

‘I didn’t know about it, sir,’ said one young man politely, keeping his hand in the air as he spoke. ‘But why would we be interested in that?’

‘Well now, I’m so glad you asked,’ Peter said.

This response drew some chuckles from his audience. The students stopped what they were doing and accepted that they weren’t going to be allowed to leave just yet.

Peter grabbed his laser pointer and drew a circle around the church on the screen.

‘This might come as a surprise to you, but not much is known about Leiden’s origins or how it developed. There aren’t many opportunities to carry out archaeological research in the centre of town. The simple reason for that is that anywhere you might want to dig has been built on, as those of you who go into urban archaeology later will no doubt discover. We might, very occasionally, be given a brief opportunity to excavate when a building is demolished, but it’s extremely rare. This project means that we can go down as deep as three metres, at literally hundreds of sites across the city. Who knows what might be hidden beneath our feet?’

‘Or which skeletons will come out of the closet,’ said the young man.

‘Exactly!’ Peter replied enthusiastically. ‘Now it looks like we’d rehearsed that earlier, but it was actually going to be my next point. Look …’

He traced a route along the Nieuwstraat with a beam of red light. ‘This street used to be a canal, but like many of the other canals in Leiden, it was filled in. Some canals were covered over, overvaulted, meaning that instead of being filled with sand and debris, they were just roofed over and then the roads were built on top of them. You can still walk through some of them, like tunnels, but this one was infilled. The cemetery was here, on the other side of the church. But people were sometimes secretly buried in this area, near what used to be the canal, next to the church. Those were people who couldn’t afford to be buried in the churchyard but who wanted to be laid to rest as close to the church as they could get.’

His mobile phone started to vibrate in the inside pocket of his jacket.

He looked around the lecture theatre. If he kept on talking, he’d become that uncle who endlessly droned on about the past at parties.

‘You can go,’ he said instead. ‘I’ll see you all this afternoon!’

The room sprang to life again, as though he’d pressed play on a paused video. As they made their way to the door, the students filed past his desk to hand in their work. The course required a fortnightly submission of a short essay about one of the subjects they had covered.

The room was empty. Peter turned off the projector and gathered up his things. When he picked up the sheaf of papers, a blank envelope fell out from between them. He picked it up and looked at it. It was probably a note from a student apologising for the fact that various circumstances had prevented them from doing their assignment this week.

He was about to open it when Judith appeared in the doorway.

She smiled. ‘You’ve not forgotten, have you?’

‘How could I possibly forget an appointment with you?’ Peter said, stuffing the envelope in his bag with the rest of the papers.

He had met Judith Cherev, a woman in her early forties, twenty years ago when he had supervised her final dissertation. They had become close friends in the years that followed. She had researched the history of Judaism in Leiden for her PhD. Now she was a lecturer in the history department, as well as freelancing as a researcher for the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam.

Her dark curls, accented here and there with a charming streak of grey, were effortlessly tied back with a thick elastic band. She was still a beautiful woman, slim, and dressed, as always, in a blouse and long skirt. The Star of David necklace that hung around her neck glinted in the fluorescent lights.

‘Did you just send me a text?’

Judith shook her head.

Peter took his phone from inside his jacket and opened the message.

Hora est.

He smiled.

‘What is it?’

‘I think one of my students wanted to let me know that it was time to stop talking.’

He walked over to the door with the bag under his arm and turned off the lights. He showed the message to Judith on the way.

The hora est – the hour has come – was the phrase with which the university beadle entered the room exactly three-quarters of an hour into a doctoral candidate’s defence of their thesis before the Doctoral Examination Board. At this point, the candidate was no longer permitted to talk, even if the beadle had entered mid-sentence. To most candidates, the words came as a huge relief.

‘That’s quite witty,’ Judith said, handing back the phone. ‘Odd that it was sent anonymously though.’

‘Probably scared that their wit will get them marked down.’ He deleted the message. Just as he was about to lock up the lecture hall, he noticed that someone had left a telephone on one of the tables, an iPhone that looked brand new. He walked back into the hall, picked it up and put it in his jacket pocket. Its owner would appear at his office door soon enough. The students were practically grafted to their phones.

They walked outside and headed for the university restaurant in the Lipsius Building. It had been called the Lipsius for years, but Peter still called it the LAK, the name of the theatre and arts centre that used to be there.

‘Mark is probably there already,’ Judith said, tenderly. ‘You know him. One o’clock means one o’clock.’

Mark was a professor in the theology department, a brilliant man with a history of mental illness. He and Judith were in a ‘LAT’ relationship, living together in every way except that they had each kept their own little houses in the Sionshofje. Because of the hofje’s rules, actually moving in together would mean moving out of the Sionshofje, and neither of them wanted to leave the picturesque little courtyard.

Inside the restaurant, students and tutors sat at long tables. A monotone din of chatter and clatter filled the room. The warmth and smells from the kitchen made the air in the room stuffy and humid.

As Judith had predicted, Mark was already sitting at a table and saving two seats for them. He waved.

They visited the buffet counter on their way over to him. Peter chose an extra-large salad and a glass of fresh orange juice and Judith picked up a bowl of soup with a slice of bread and cheese.

‘Well done,’ Judith complimented Peter, giving his stomach a teasing little pat.

Mark was already half way through his meal by the time they sat down. Judith kissed him lightly on the cheek, something that still gave Peter a pang of envy, even after many years.

‘What are your plans for the afternoon?’ Peter asked.

‘I have an appointment with someone at two, sounds like an older gentleman,’ Judith said. ‘He’s inherited some bits and pieces from a Jewish aunt’s estate. He found me via the museum. I’m going to drop by and see if any of them are suitable for our collection.’

‘Sounds good,’ said Peter.

‘Oh, usually these things end up being a disappointment, to be honest. But every now and then something special turns up. A bit like The Antiques Roadshow. Diaries, letters from a concentration camp, or just interesting everyday bits and pieces like kitchen utensils, tools and so on. You never know. I usually enjoy it anyway. They often just want someone to talk to …’

‘Never a dull moment with you, is there?’

‘Never a dull moment, no,’ she agreed. ‘And I want to plan a lecture for Monday, nothing out of the ordinary, really. I’ve got the next few days to myself.’ She put her hand on Mark’s arm.

‘Yep,’ said Mark. ‘I’m off to Germany again. A week with no phone, no internet, totally cut off from the rest of the world. Heaven.’

Once or twice a year, Mark retreated to the depths of the German forests, beyond the reach of cell phone towers, to ‘reflect’, as he called it. Judith would tease him by suggesting that he had a secret mistress, but she knew that he needed time to recharge now and then. He always came back revitalised, full of energy. The only compromise he made was that he agreed to venture back into civilisation once a week to call Judith and let her know how he was.

‘And this afternoon,’ Mark continued, ‘I want to spend a couple of hours working on an article I’m writing with Fay Spežamor. You know her, right? The Czech classicist, curator of Roman and Etruscan Art at the Museum of Antiquities.’

‘I’ve met her a few times, yes,’ Peter said. ‘Funnily enough, hers is the only mobile phone number I know off the top of my head. If you remember the first two numbers …’

‘Then you just need to keep adding two,’ Mark finished his sentence.

None of them spoke for a while.

‘Were you planning to do anything this afternoon then?’ Mark asked.

‘I’m going to go into town to see them install the container in the Nieuwstraat. I’ve been following the project a bit. The Cultural Heritage Department invited me. Daniël Veerman, Janna Frederiks … They’ve promised to let me know if they come across anything interesting.’

‘Oh yes! I wanted to show you something!’ Mark said suddenly, as though he hadn’t heard what Peter said at all. He pushed his tray aside. Underneath it was a large envelope, addressed in neat, unmistakably old-fashioned handwriting.

‘To the most noble and learned professor doctor M. Labuschagne,’ he read with amusement. ‘I need to send the author of this letter a quick reply this afternoon.’ He took a large bundle of densely typed pages out of the envelope. They had apparently been written on an old-fashioned typewriter. ‘This is one of those things …’ he said, leafing through them as though he was looking for something specific. ‘Ever since I graduated, people have been sending me things. Amateurs writing to tell me that they think they’ve found the code that makes the Book of Revelation all make sense, or that they have definitive proof that Jesus didn’t die on the cross …’

‘Or that the Apostle Peter is buried in Leiden,’ Judith joked.

They laughed.

‘But this … Look, usually it’s nonsense and probably not worth holding onto, but I keep everything. I might do something with them one day. Sometimes an idea seems crazy, or the whole world thinks an author is mad, but sometimes these people are just way ahead of their time. I had another one today, a Mr …’ He looked at the title page. ‘… Mr Goekoop from Zierikzee, Zeeland. It’s about the Burcht. He says that it originally had an astrological function. Look, he’s even drawn some diagrams.’

Mark held up a sheet of paper with a surprisingly good pen-and-ink illustration of Leiden’s castle. The artist had left space between the battlements so that the whole thing strongly resembled a megalithic circle, like Stonehenge.

‘He has this whole theory about how the first rays of the sun shine through the Burcht’s main gate on the equinox on March twenty-first, taking the earth’s precession into account. The precession is the way the axis moves. The earth is like a spinning top, its axis is never exactly vertical. It’s a bit complicated … He uses all these calculations to try to show that the original castle must have been built more than two thousand years ago. According to him, the word megalith is derived from the Greek mega-leithos, or, Great Leiden.’

‘That should be easy to check. Tomorrow is March twenty-first.’

‘Yes. But actually, it’s not that easy. The earth’s axis has shifted since then. Anyway, that part about the megalith is bunk, and the rest too, probably. Look at this; he thinks he has further proof of his theory in the three trees in the middle of the castle. Because they’re arranged in exactly the same way as the three stars on Orion’s belt. You know, like the Pyramids in Egypt.’

‘And that would make the Rhine the River Nile, I suppose?’

‘He says that the Rhine is the Lethe, or the Leythe, one of the five rivers of the underworld in Greek mythology, just like the Styx. According to him, the name Leythe is connected to Leiden of course.’

‘And this is what you spend your time on,’ said Peter.

‘It amuses me. You never know what someone is going to come up with. Sometimes the amateurs make surprising discoveries. But what fascinates me about this story is his theory that the Burcht was a centre for sun worship. He does have a point about the name Lugdunum …’

‘The Roman name for Katwijk.’

‘That’s right. But he reckons that it was originally the name given to the hill that the Burcht stands on. Lug is the name of the Celtic sun god, and dunum means “hill” or “mountain”. “Lug Hill”, or if you want to translate it more loosely, “the hill where Lug is worshipped”.’

‘With that sort of reasoning,’ Peter countered, ‘you could prove that Mr Goekoop’s hometown of Zierikzee can be traced back to the Greek goddess Circe. And that would put the city of Troy somewhere in Zeeland.’

Mark put the papers back in the envelope. ‘All the same, I always send these people a polite reply. That’s usually enough to satisfy them.’

Judith picked up her tray. She had already eaten her soup and bread.

‘Are you leaving already?’ Peter asked, a little disappointed.

‘I’ve got that appointment at two o’clock. I’m going back to my office to get my things. We could get together for a nightcap later this evening if you like?’

Peter nodded.

Judith rested her hand briefly on Mark’s shoulder. He tilted his head a little to meet it, like a cat reaching to be petted. She winked at Peter and went to tidy her tray away.

‘So, Lug then,’ said Peter, bringing the conversation back to where they had left it.

‘Yes, Lug, but there have been lots of other sun gods over the centuries of course. Fascinating subject, actually. That’s what the paper I’m working on is about. A bit of pop history about how they’re always born on the third day after the winter solstice, on the evening of the twenty-fourth of December, a symbolic celebration of the arrival of light in a dark world. Born to a virgin, usually in a cave, a star appears, they’re adored by shepherds, kings come bearing gifts, a wise man predicts that this is the saviour the world has been waiting for, and so on …’

‘Yes, I know those stories. By the way, did you manage to see some of the eclipse this morning?’

‘No, barely gave it a thought to be honest.’

‘It was cloudy anyway. I don’t suppose there would have been much to see.’

‘Probably, but … where was I? Oh yes, the sun gods … They always die round about the time of the spring solstice and they’re resurrected three days later. Attis, Osiris, Dionysus, take your pick. The god dies or his son dies, there’s a day of mourning, and then on day three, there’s unbelievable joy when the god rises from the dead. Just like the natural world around them that appeared to have died in the winter, but then comes back to life.’

Of course, Peter had also read about the early Fathers of the Church and how they had become confused when they saw the similarities between the Gospels and these other stories that were evidently much older. The only explanation they could give was that the older stories were the work of the devil. Satan would have known about the circumstances under which Jesus would be born and so he established the sun gods’ rites centuries earlier in order to confuse people.

‘My article will lay out the parallels between all sorts of basic Christian concepts and the religion’s sacred mysteries. It’s terribly interesting. Take Orpheus and Eurydice, Demeter and Persephone … all variations of the same theme. The cult of Dionysus slaughtered a bull every year. The followers ate the meat and drank the blood so that they could become one with Dionysus, a communion, and share the power of his resurrection.’

‘It’s … Listen,’ Peter interrupted him. Mark was usually fairly introverted, but once he felt at ease with someone, it could be very difficult to get him off his soapbox. ‘I still need to take my bag back to my office, and the mayor’s coming for the opening at two o’clock …’

Mark smiled and held his hands up apologetically. ‘No problem.’

Peter finished his last few forkfuls of salad and emptied his glass. He opened his mouth wide and bared his teeth like a laughing chimpanzee.

‘Not got anything stuck between my teeth, have I?’ he asked. Mark reassured him that he hadn’t.

They said goodbye and Peter walked to his office in the archaeology faculty next to the LAK.

Peter’s office hadn’t changed in more than twenty years. It was almost like a living room to him. The same three pictures had always hung on the walls: The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci, a poster of a famous painting of Burgemeester Van der Werff by Gustave Wappers, and a large photograph of Pope John Paul II in his popemobile.

There were weeks when he spent more time in his office than in his flat on the Boerhavenlaan. He even kept a change of clothes in the cupboard for the odd occasion when he spent the night on the three-seater sofa.

When he pulled the stack of papers from his bag, the envelope fell out onto the floor. Intrigued, he picked it up and opened it. The note inside didn’t contain excuses for an unfinished assignment. Instead, written neatly in the middle of the sheet of the paper, was:

Rom. 13:11

But it was the text below it that suddenly made his mouth feel dry. He dropped the note, repulsed, as though he was throwing a used tissue in the bin.

Hora est.

2

Friday 20 March, 1:45pm

Peter looked at his watch. Quarter to two. He would need to hurry if he was going to make it to the Nieuwstraat on time. The anonymous note had disturbed him more than he wanted to admit. That ‘hora est’, the same message that he had received by phone, made him feel uneasy. He went to his bookcase to get a bible, but then realised that he didn’t have time. He knew that Romans 13:11 referred to Paul’s letters to the Romans in the New Testament, but his knowledge of the scriptures wasn’t good enough to be able to recall the passage from memory.

He reluctantly left the bible on his desk, then closed the door and headed for town.

It was against his principles to look at his phone when he was walking – he resented having to give way to people who shuffled around like zombies, their eyes glued to their screens – but he opened the Biblehub.com website to look up what the scripture was about.

The connection was slow. When images of hell had come up in one of his lectures, on a whim, he’d asked his students about their own ideas of hell. Without missing a beat, one young man answered: ‘Hell is a place where the internet is really, really slow.’

Peter hoped he wouldn’t bump into anyone he knew. The page loaded sluggishly as he walked through the Doelensteeg and along the Rapenburg to the Gerecht square. He clicked on ‘Romans’ and, at last, on ‘13’. He’d reached the Pieterskerk church by the time the text finally appeared on his screen.

It was almost two o’clock now. It wouldn’t do to be late. He impatiently closed the cover on his phone. He knew that the scripture would still be there when he opened it again.

He continued his route at a brisk pace, walking through the narrow alleys that led to the Breestraat, past the town hall and then he went left. As he crossed the river via the colonnades of the Pilarenbrug, the library came into view.

The council’s decision to move the city’s waste containers underground had been brought about by a plague of seagulls. As the crow flew, the college town of Leiden was a mere ten kilometres from the coast. Nests full of gulls’ eggs were easy prey for the foxes that had been reintroduced to the dunes, and hordes of the birds had fled to the city. They pecked open the bags of rubbish left out for collection, scavenged in bins and grew increasingly aggressive. Various measures had been taken to deter them: replacing the seagulls’ eggs with plastic dummies, birds of prey, pigeon spikes on roofs, all without success. The hope was that the city would be less attractive to the birds if the city’s rubbish was moved underground.

Peter stopped to catch his breath on the corner of the street. He studied himself in a shop window. A little on the portly side, it was true, a day or two’s worth of stubble, and a full head of hair that was just a bit too long. The image in the window was, in fact, a bit flattering; the reflection didn’t show the deep lines he knew he had on his forehead or the dark circles under his eyes.

‘For now we see through a glass, darkly …’ he said to himself quietly.

He tucked his shirt neatly into his trousers, and felt the student’s forgotten mobile phone in his jacket pocket. He made a mental note to call one of the numbers on its contacts list when he got a chance. Whoever it was would surely be able to tell him who the phone belonged to.

A large crowd had gathered around the excavation site. The Leiden press of course, local residents, all sorts of dignitaries, and workmen, recognisable from their yellow helmets and orange vests. Part of the area around the excavated pit was fenced off with barriers and red and white tape.

‘Hullo! Peter!’ he heard Arnold van Tiegem shouting. Peter could tell from the exaggerated joviality of Arnold’s waving that he had already made a head start on the drinks reception that would be held later.

Twenty years ago, Peter’s old tutor, Pieter Hoogers, had retired and vanished off into the sunset directly after his farewell address. Everyone had expected that Peter would take his place as full professor, but after a couple of months of typical academic machinations, the university had produced a surprise candidate seemingly out of nowhere: Arnold van Tiegem, a senior official at the Ministry of Housing, Planning and the Environment who had found himself sidelined. He had studied Soil Science at the University of Wageningen in the distant past and that had been deemed sufficient qualification to lead the faculty. The fact that he would also bring with him a one-off grant of five million guilders ultimately convinced the board of his suitability for the post.

After he was appointed, it turned out that Arnold was in the habit of going missing now and then, often for days at a time. At first, his disappearances were reported to the police, but because he always reappeared a few days later, people accepted the fact that he sometimes simply checked out for a while. He liked to compare these episodes with John Lennon’s ‘lost weekends’ and saw them as part of a grand and exciting life.

Peter made his way to the tall bar tables where his suspicions were confirmed by a number of empty beer bottles and two half-empty bottles of wine.

Daniël Veerman was standing at one of the tables. He surreptitiously rolled his eyes as he moved his gaze from Arnold to Peter. Daniël was in his early thirties and the quintessential archaeologist: he had long, dark hair that undulated down to his neck, tiny round spectacles perched on his nose with intelligent eyes behind them, a trendy beard that looked casual but was well-groomed. He had once told Peter that he had done nothing but dig for treasure when he was a child. While other children played nicely in the sandpit, heaping the sand into mountains or building sandcastles with buckets and spades, he was usually found outside it, digging holes in the dirt.

Peter shook Daniël’s hand and then greeted Janna Frederiks, who was leading the project for the Cultural Heritage Department together with Daniël. Peter was less familiar with Janna, a serious, remarkably tall woman – almost two metres in height – whose head was permanently bowed at a slight angle, as though she was scouring the ground in the hope of finding something interesting.

Arnold opened another bottle of beer, and poured it down his throat in a couple of gulps. Then he smoothed his long, grey hair back with a small comb, a nervous tic that he performed countless times each day. He probably thought the little flick of a mullet that this made at the back of his neck was terribly bohemian. Combined with his enormous paunch and spindly legs, he reminded Peter of a circus ringmaster. Put a top hat on his bloated head and he’d look just the part.

‘He just lives for these moments, doesn’t he?’ Peter whispered to Daniël.

‘He’ll post the photo of himself with the mayor on Facebook as soon as it’s over,’ Daniël added, laughing. He gave Peter a sideways look. ‘It was good of you to come, Peter. I really appreciate it.’

‘You don’t need to thank me. I’m happy to be here. I wanted to come and wish you luck. I’m here for you and Janna, not for myself, like Van Tiegem.’

‘He’s a great networker though, you have to give him that. And your department needs one of those, right?’

Peter was about to say something cutting in reply, but a round of applause interrupted him. Mayor Freylink had arrived in full regalia with the chain of office around his neck.

‘What’s the plan, exactly?’ Peter asked.

Daniël carried on looking straight ahead and clapping for the mayor who was walking past close to where they were standing. ‘I’ve dumped a bit of sand in the hole,’ he answered. ‘He’s going to take it out with the digger. And that will be the project’s symbolic launch.’

‘Not very elegant, is it?’

‘Well we could have sent him down there with a bucket, but I thought this would be more refined. Freylink was enthusiastic about it anyway. And he used to be a historian, as you know, so he’s glad to be closely involved. He’s even been to a building site to practise.’

The applause died out.

A small excavator came towards them. Little black clouds of smoke escaped from the long, thin exhaust pipe on its roof.

‘I’d better get over there,’ said Daniël. Janna followed him. He turned around to look at Peter. ‘We’re going for dinner at El Gaucho tonight with the team. You’re very welcome to join us if you’d like to come along.’

Peter gave him a thumbs-up. Maybe I could ask Judith to go with me, he thought.

He took the opportunity to take a quick look at his phone. He skimmed through chapter 13 of Paul’s letter to the Romans and recognised the contents straight away. It was about allegiance to the authorities who had been placed above you. A text which had often been misused throughout the course of history, and for which Paul had been heavily criticised. Pay your taxes, do as you are told, don’t be rebellious, ‘for there is no authority that does not come from God’. Whoever opposes authority opposes one of God’s agencies, and thereby opposes God.

Little wonder, then, that the people of Leiden suddenly found themselves drawn to Calvin when the Spaniards were at the city’s gates. He said that you could rebel against your rulers. People were often inclined to choose the convictions that best suited their own interests …

Suddenly, the student’s phone began to vibrate. Peter was surprised that it hadn’t happened before now; youngsters spent more time in conversation with people they couldn’t see than with the people who were right next them. But first, he wanted to read the specific verse that had been written on the note. ‘Let no debt remain outstanding,’ he read, ‘except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law …’ Here it was, verse 11:

And do this, understanding the present time: the hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.

The hour has already come …

‘Hora est,’ Peter repeated, absent-mindedly making quiet, smacking sounds, as though trying to taste the words on his tongue.

He read the rest of the scripture aloud to himself in a staccato mumble, as though this would help him to decipher a message hidden in the words.

The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armour of light.

Someone slapped him, a bit overenthus‌iastically, on the shoulder. Van Tiegem.

‘Come on, put that phone down,’ he said, and made a playful attempt to snatch the phone from Peter’s hand.

Peter irritably fended him off. ‘Okay, okay,’ he said, putting the phone away.

‘Don’t you want a beer?’

‘Thanks Arnold, but I’m officially still working.’

‘Oh you’re good,’ Arnold said, without much conviction, ‘very good. I should follow your example.’

The mayor was standing next to the digger now. Someone had put a yellow safety helmet on his head, apparently more for show than anything else. He patiently posed in it while photographs were taken.

‘Shouldn’t you go and stand with him?’ Peter suggested.

‘That’s actually a very good idea,’ Arnold said, sounding genuinely pleased. On his way over to the mayor, he waggishly stole a helmet from a construction worker and set it at a jaunty angle on his own head. He stood next to Freylink and held two thumbs aloft as the cameras clicked.

Peter took the other phone from his pocket. It had received a message, not via WhatsApp, but another app he’d not heard of before, Wickr. He opened the message. There were just three words:

iuxta est salus

Another message arrived as soon as he’d read it.

salvation is at hand

Only then did he see the sender’s name. Paul.

This was …

Peter started to type in a reply, but then he saw that the messages had already disappeared. They seemed to be available for only a few seconds, just long enough to be able to read them.

He opened the phone’s address book. He had to check twice to make sure that he wasn’t mistaken.

It was completely empty.

3

Friday 20 March, 2:15pm

Peter looked up from the phone and scanned his surroundings, first round to the left, and then all the way back round to the right, like a security camera watching a street. But there was nothing to see. No one shiftily ducking out of sight, no man in a fedora looking at him from behind a newspaper with two peepholes cut into it.

What he really wanted right now was to go back to his office. Maybe he’d be able to uncover the joker’s identity by looking through the list of students on his course? But he also knew that he needed to be seen here. In his world, success ultimately came down to who you knew, short lines of communication, cronyism, a good network. In these times of austerity, it would do him no harm to know the right people, Daniël was right about that. You could say what you liked about Van Tiegem, but the man was a born networker who had always been very successful in raising funds for the faculty.

Peter was suddenly very thirsty. He took a bottle of beer from the table and prised off the cap. He rinsed his mouth out with the first swig before he swallowed it. The beer was warm.

Freylink was sitting in the cab of the excavator now and had closed the door. The engine purred smoothly as the mayor nervously drove it towards the hole outside the library. A group of men slowly walked alongside him on either side of the digger, like coffin bearers at a funeral. They even took a dignified step backwards when they reached the edge of the pit.

Daniël stuck both of his thumbs in the air at Freylink, who pulled a lever to move the grapple. Everything seemed to be going according to plan. It was calm and controlled, which suggested that Freylink had indeed been rehearsing for this moment.

Janna came back over to where Peter was standing.

‘I was ready at half nine this morning already,’ she said out of nowhere.

‘Ready for what?’ Peter asked, but he knew the answer before he’d finished asking the question. ‘Ah, the eclipse.’

‘Exactly, but there wasn’t much to see, really,’ Janna said, sounding disappointed. ‘There was far too much cloud cover, I’m afraid. It went on until quarter to twelve, but I missed most of it.’

‘That’s a pity.’

By now, the excavator’s arm had almost entirely disappeared into the hole. The next task was to use the large bucket to collect some sand and carefully bring it up to the surface. The task demanded great precision as there wasn’t much room for manoeuvre. After a flying start, the mayor seemed to be hesitating. The thrum of the machine’s motor grew a little louder and the exhaust belched out more puffs of smoke. The bucket appeared to be stuck. The machine listed forwards slightly. Someone in the crowd let out a little scream. A couple of spectators laughed nervously.

A construction worker knocked on the cab window to ask if everything was all right. Freylink smiled and gave him a thumbs-up, but then mopped his forehead with a handkerchief.

The hydraulic arm started to move again. Suddenly, there was an ear-splitting noise. Breaking rocks mixed with the revving sound of an overworked motor. The little puffs of smoke had now become huge, jet-black clouds; the smell of diesel filled the air, and the machine keeled over. Two men attempted to pull it back into its original position by hanging from it, but without success.

Peter could see that the mayor’s usually placid face was contorted in terror. Freylink tried to push the door open, but the machine was already toppling forwards into the pit.

As the machine became jammed, half in and half out of the earth, the spectators shrieked and jumped back, revealing the perilous position the mayor was now in. Total chaos erupted. A few people tugged at the digger’s tracks, but soon gave up. The door was jammed against the wall of the pit and there was no way to open it.

Instinctively, Peter raced over to see if he could help. He crouched down next to Daniël who was banging on the window. Freylink looked back at them with a painful grimace as blood trickled from his eyebrow and nose and spread over his face. Nevertheless, he managed to smile.

‘We’ll get you out of there as soon as we can!’ Daniël shouted. His face was red, perhaps from exertion, or because of his embarrassment at the mayor’s predicament.

Peter looked up and saw that a group of people had gathered in a semi-circle around the hole in the ground. Many of them were taking photographs and recording videos with their phones.

‘Stop that!’ he yelled as he leapt to his feet.

Most of them sheepishly put their phones away again.

Peter was briefly dazed after jumping up so quickly and had to hold onto Daniël to stop himself from stumbling.

Just then, Janna Frederiks came running over. ‘We’ve got another digger down the street,’ she said to Daniël. ‘They’re going to get it now and see if they can pull him out with a cable.’

‘But we can’t just leave him in that cramped little box while they’re gone.’

‘Well what do you want to do?’ she asked. ‘Smash the window in?’

‘Yes, that’s exactly what we’ll do. It’s made of plastic, not glass, so there won’t be any sharp pieces. If he takes his jacket off and puts it over his head, he can protect himself from any splinters that might come loose. Look at how uncomfortable the man is. That’s the mayor in there!’

Janna thought about it for a second or two and then agreed. Winching him out would take at least half an hour, even if it all went without a hitch.

Daniël knelt down on the ground again and tapped on the window. Freylink had managed to move himself around to sit on the control panel. Although it looked like he had calmed down, his bloodied face made him look terrible.

‘Take your jacket off!’ Daniël shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth to amplify his voice. Then he took off his own jacket to demonstrate what he wanted Freylink to do. ‘We’re going to break the window!’ he yelled, over-articulating each word and miming the actions exaggeratedly, ‘so you can crawl out. They’re going to winch the machine out shortly, but we don’t want to leave you in there that long. Put your jacket over your head.’

Freylink understood. He took off his jacket and draped it over his head and shoulders.

Janna came back with large hammer, a chisel and a pair of work gloves and handed them to Daniël.

After a few well-aimed strikes of the hammer, the hard plastic began to crack. Daniël knocked the window out, leaving only a few splinters. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll get you out in no time. I’m almost done. How are you doing?’

‘More in shock than anything,’ came Freylink’s muted voice. ‘I don’t think I’m hurt.’

Daniël checked the window frame for shards of plastic. When Freylink removed his jacket, Peter was taken aback again by his bloody face and the way his hair was pasted to his clammy forehead. As soon as the mayor poked his head outside, the crowd began to applaud with relief.

He climbed onto the steering wheel and stood up a little straighter. Peter and Daniël grabbed him by his armpits and gently pulled him upwards. His trousers snagged on a hook, ripping a long tear in them as they dragged him out.

When the mayor finally emerged from the pit, there was more applause. He smiled weakly and waved. Daniël and Peter took him to the waiting ambulance. The crew started to unload the stretcher, but the mayor motioned it away and got into the ambulance himself to allow the paramedics to see to him.

The second excavator arrived, led by a group of men carrying thick cables. Daniël stuck his head inside the ambulance door. The blood had been wiped from the mayor’s face already and he sat holding a handkerchief to his nose while a paramedic wound a bandage around his head. He reminded Daniël of a footballer with a head wound, being patched up before returning to the pitch.

‘I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am, sir,’ Daniël began.

‘It wasn’t your fault … I don’t know what went wrong. I must have pressed the wrong button … It felt like there was some resistance and then I broke through something.’

‘We’re going to investigate, Mr Mayor. And again, please accept my sincere apologies.’

The paramedic finished dressing Freylink’s head wound and told him he would like to take him to the hospital for further assessment, to which the mayor agreed. Before he got into the ambulance, he gave another jovial wave to the people who stood watching from a distance. The ambulance doors were closed and it quietly drove away, without lights or sirens.

The cables had been attached to the excavator, and now the other digger reversed, growling and puffing smoke while four men stood around the pit to supervise it all. The trapped machine soon began to move and, after twenty minutes, it was back on the surface.

Daniël stood waiting impatiently with a rope ladder in his hands.

‘Do you want to go down?’ Peter asked.

‘Yes, of course! I want to see what the hell went wrong. We didn’t find anything unusual when we were digging. I inspected everything myself just an hour ago.’

They both stared down into the pit. It looked like part of the bottom of it had subsided. When the all-clear was given, Daniël carefully lowered the rope ladder. He made sure that it was securely anchored into the ground with two pegs before he put his foot on the first rung. He switched on the lamp on his helmet and began to climb down.

‘And?’ Peter called after him.

‘It smells different … like the air is damper, heavier. And …’ He had reached the bottom now. ‘There’s been a partial collapse at the bottom!’ he shouted. ‘It looks like there’s a space underneath it.’

‘Is there room for one more?’ Peter shouted. He wanted to take a look too, hoping it would take his mind off the strange text messages.

‘I knew you were going to ask that! Come on!’

Peter descended cautiously, as Janna watched, looking worried and indignantly shaking her head.

Daniël took off his hardhat and pointed the headlamp at the ground below him. ‘This is really bizarre. Look.’

Now Peter could see it too. It was obvious. The walls of the pit were clearly made of bricks and mortar. What on earth was this? A stone floor? Three metres underground?

Peter knelt down and leaned forward to see how far down the hole at the bottom of the pit went. He took Peter’s helmet and pointed its headlamp downwards.

Suddenly he heard a groan. A soft, but unmistakable groan.

He jerked his head backwards with a sharp cry. The helmet fell into the hole.

‘Have you seen a ghost?’ Daniël asked, laughing nervously.

‘I … I think there’s someone …’ Peter stammered.

The groan came again, harder now. He hadn’t imagined it. Daniël had heard it too.

Peter took a deep breath. He stuck his head back into the hole, searching for the source of the groaning. Nothing could have prepared him for what he saw.

Two bare legs poked out from underneath a pile of bricks. At the other end of the pile lay the naked torso of a young man.

The headlamp only barely lit the scene in front of him, but as soon as his eyes grew used to the darkness, he gasped as though he had been punched in the stomach. What appeared before him could have been a medieval painting of the torments of hell.

The man was covered from head to toe in blood.

4

Friday 20 March, 5:10pm

Anja Vermeulen’s shift was almost over, less than two hours to go. The kitchen staff were serving meals ahead of the start of visiting hours.

She set out the patients’ medication on her trolley. The general ward at Leiden University Medical Centre was known for being fairly quiet. Most of the patients were here to recover from minor surgeries like appendectomies, or to be helped with the transition back to their homes after a longer stay.

Ordinarily, nothing particularly interesting ever happened here. But today had been extraordinary. That afternoon, a young man had been brought in, a mysterious case. He had been discovered when a digger fell into a pit during excavation works in the town centre. The man, who was in his mid-twenties, was covered in blood. He’d been found lying in a cavity below the hole that had been dug for an underground waste container. Except for a loincloth, he had been completely naked. Nobody knew how he had ended up under the ground. Anja had heard the news about the accident on the local radio. It said that Mayor Freylink had been injured, but they hadn’t mentioned this nameless casualty.

After he was admitted to the hospital, unconscious but in a stable condition, the young man was washed from head to toe. Not a single wound was found on his body, and miraculously, none of his bones were broken. The blood that covered his body must have come from someone else. A sample had been collected and was being tested in the hope that it would reveal clues, a disease or some other condition. The police had said they would come the next day to take photographs of the young man and question him, if he had regained consciousness.

The anonymous patient was dressed in a clean hospital gown and taken to an empty room.

At about quarter past five, Anja looked in on ‘Anonymous’, as the name card next to his door said. She opened the door and saw that all was as it should be. The young man, well-built, clearly the sporty type, was breathing calmly. Everything appeared to be under control.

Clothes from the depot had been left on a chair, ready for him to wear when he was discharged from the hospital.

She stood next to his bed for a while, wondering what could have happened to him. As she turned to leave, she saw his eyelids flutter, a sign that he was regaining consciousness. She turned up the dimmed light on his bedside cabinet to make sure. Now the patient was clearly blinking his eyes. Instinctively, she blinked back.

When his eyes were completely open, he only stared at the ceiling at first, disoriented. Anja took hold of his hand. He slowly turned his head to look at her, furrowed his brow, and then closed his eyes again.

‘Can you hear me?’ she asked softly.

He nodded weakly.

‘Do you know where you are?’

He shook his head.

‘You’re in hospital. The LUMC. You were brought in this afternoon.’

He frowned again.

‘Do you know what happened?’

The young man pressed his lips together, as though he wanted to speak but was being silenced by something stronger than himself. He tried to lift his head.

‘Don’t worry,’ Anja said comfortingly. ‘Whatever happened to you, it’s over now. You’re safe. Nothing can hurt you here.’

Her words were apparently what he needed to hear. The frown vanished from his forehead, his mouth relaxed and he let his head fall back onto the pillow.

‘I have to leave you for a few minutes, but I’ll be back as soon as I can. I won’t be long.’

Anja hurried back to the ward reception desk to report the patient’s progress to the doctor on call. He put her mind at rest and said that he would look in on him later. Since there didn’t appear to be anything medically wrong with him, no immediate action was necessary.

She made a note in the records, along with a short summary of their conversation.

Just as she was about to go back to the young man’s room, the ward telephone rang. She answered it, but kept an eye on the corridor.

‘Hi, it’s Patrick.’

Anja and Patrick talked almost exclusively by phone, almost never in person. He worked in the hospital’s lab and often called to pass on test results.

‘Shouldn’t you be at home?’ she asked. ‘The lab’s closed, isn’t it?’

‘Normally I would be home by now, and we are actually closed for the day, but I’m calling about the man who came in this afternoon. You know, the one who was found after that accident with the mayor.’

‘Yes, he’s here. He woke up a few minutes ago, although he’s not said anything yet. I’ve just told the doctor.’

‘Good, listen … The bloodwork was scheduled for tomorrow but his case was so interesting that I went ahead and made a start already.’

‘Right. And?’

‘It’s not his blood,’ he said, sounding slightly hesitant.

‘No,’ Anja said, ‘but they were fairly sure of that already anyway, weren’t they? I mean, he didn’t have any wounds, right?’

‘No, he didn’t but …’

‘What’s wrong?’

Patrick fell silent.

‘What’s wrong?’ Anja repeated the question, with an increasing mix of worry and curiosity.

‘Listen, it’s—’

‘Hang on a second,’ Anja said.

She was sure she had just caught a glimpse of someone leaving the anonymous man’s room.

‘I think something’s not right here,’ she said to her colleague. ‘I’m just going to put the phone down for a second.’

‘But—’

Anja threw the receiver down on the desk and ran down the hall to Anonymous’ room. The light, downy hairs on both her arms stood on end, like marram grass on a bare dune. Before she even got into the room, she could see that the pile of clothes was gone from the chair.

The bed was empty.

Anja ran back to her desk to call security.

The phone’s receiver was still on the desk. When she picked it up, she heard her colleague’s voice again.

‘Oh, there you are. Listen—’

‘Sorry, I have to hang up. That man is gone.’

‘What? But … Wait, wait, this is important.’

Her finger hovered over the button to hang up, but Patrick spoke so urgently that she hesitated for a second.

‘You know I said the blood wasn’t his?’

‘Yes. So?’

‘It’s not human blood.’

‘What? What do you mean?’

‘It’s from an animal.’

5

Friday 20 March, 5:55pm

There were no more text messages. After the bizarre events of the afternoon, Peter’s unease about them faded into the background.

The moment he had realised that someone was buried under the rubble, he and Daniël had crawled through the hole in the bottom of the pit. They had found a young man whose lower body was pinned to the ground. He was unconscious, but his breathing seemed normal. Working in the scant light provided by the helmet, they’d removed the bricks to free him.

A putrid stench had emanated from the man and he was sticky with the congealed blood that covered him. Peter and Daniël had retched more than once.

Getting him out of the hole had been no easy task. Another ambulance had been called for and arrived soon afterwards. After a stretcher had been lowered into the pit, two sturdy-looking paramedics had taken over. After briefly assessing him, they had put him inside a cover that looked like a body bag, then fastened him onto the stretcher and eventually lifted him up to the surface.

Peter and Daniël had taken the opportunity to investigate further. With everyone else gone, a great silence had fallen over the site. They appeared to be in a tunnel, around two metres high and perhaps a metre and a half wide. The floor was made of stone, the walls and the vaulted ceiling that arched over their heads were constructed from red bricks.

The tunnel ran in the direction of the Burcht one way and looked like it went towards the Hooglandse Kerk in the other.

Peter had heard about the tunnels that were rumoured to run below Leiden’s streets, stories that did the rounds in many Dutch cities. Supposedly, some of them had been part of the original designs when the Pieterskerk, the Hooglandse Kerk and other churches were built. Others were thought to have been created to move supplies into the town during the Siege of Leiden, when it was twice besieged by the Spanish. It was said that secret tunnels led from the Burcht and the town hall to places that had once been outside the city walls.

‘This is just bizarre,’ Daniël had said.

‘How was this not discovered at the planning stage, before digging started?’

‘We relied on the Land Registry for information about pipes and cables. And of course, we have a good idea of where the former canals are. But maybe if you go down another layer, there are things that have never been mapped. They didn’t find anything when they were drilling either.’

‘That doesn’t seem possible.’ Peter still hadn’t been able to shake off his disbelief. ‘Surely this would have been discovered years ago?’

‘Apparently not,’ Daniël had replied testily. ‘Otherwise we wouldn’t be standing here.’

‘We need to hire one of those gadgets, a …’

‘A GeoSeeker? Yes, exactly, that’s what I was thinking.’

Peter had worked with a GeoSeeker before, a device that detected cavities below ground. They were very expensive pieces of kit.

‘We’ll have to put in a request for one first. I don’t think we’ll be able to get it until Monday.’

Daniël and Peter had walked just a few metres into the tunnel before turning around and going back to where they started.

‘It’s not safe to go any further,’ Daniël had said. ‘We’ll need to set it up properly with a team, decent lights …’

They had climbed back up to the street, where the noise and activity had calmed down by now. Most of the spectators had gone home after the young man had been taken to hospital. The drinks reception had been cancelled, the tables had been collected by the catering company, and the drinks and food had been cleared away. A truck full of building materials had driven off as they emerged from the pit. When they were back on the surface, the police had placed two safety barriers over the hole and cordoned it off with red and white tape.

Daniël and Janna had stayed behind, as had the unavoidable Arnold van Tiegem, who had been to fetch a Belgian beer from the De Twee Spieghels jazz bar.

Peter had promised Daniël that he would wait for him so that they could walk part of the way back together.

Now, just before six, he was sitting in a shop doorway.

He had washed his hands in the toilets of a nearby pub, but no matter how much he’d scrubbed, he hadn’t been able to get rid of the blood that had found its way under his fingernails. His shirt and jacket were covered in dust.

He sat in a daze, holding the phone that had been left in the lecture theatre, half-expecting a new message to arrive. But it stayed silent.

He opened Google. He noticed that the internet connection was fast now. He typed in ‘Wickr’ as a search term and learned that it was a mobile phone app similar to Snapchat. Wickr encrypted text messages and then deleted them when they had been read. The sender could decide how long messages would be stored for before they disappeared. The site security.nl said:

Wickr is based on 256-bit symmetric AES encryption, RSA 4096 encryption, and our proprietary algorithm. ‘It is the first end-to-end encryption that does not require a PGP key,’ according to professor and co-founder Robert Statica. According to Statica, Wickr’s servers do not see user accounts. Nothing is stored except the cryptographic version of the Wickr ID and the user’s hardware ID.

Peter read the text without understanding much of it, but it told him that the person who was sending him the messages wanted to remain anonymous.

He took a silver case from his other inside pocket and flipped it open. Inside was a single cigarillo, held in place with a small clip. Every Sunday, he refilled the case with exactly five little cigars. In the old days, he’d smoked in his room at the faculty, but the university’s smoking ban had put an end to that. Sometimes he wistfully remembered the days when he could just light a cigar and watch the smoke curl upwards as he collected his thoughts.

He lit his last cigarillo of the week, took his earphones from his pocket and put them in his ears. Then, on his own phone, he opened a Spotify playlist that he had filled with the works of Bach. He’d become something of an expert on Bach’s cantatas over the years. They had a meditative effect on him. He had once spent some time looking into the numerological symbolism in Bach’s compositions, but had soon found himself out of his depth.

‘Erfreut euch, ihr Herzen, entweichet, ihr Schmerzen,’ the singer lilted softly, ‘es lebet der Heiland und herrschet in euch.’ Listening to Bach was good for his German too. Rejoice, O hearts, begone O agonies, the saviour lives and reigns in you.

After he lit his cigar, he tried to keep the spindly cedarwood spill burning for as long as he could. When the flame licked at the top of his index finger, he quickly dropped it on the ground.

From where he sat, it looked like Janna, Daniël and Arnold were having a heated discussion about something. At one point, Arnold turned angrily away from the others and disappeared into the bar. Peter assumed he had gone to get another drink.

But he came back outside not long afterwards, clumsily fastening his belt as he headed straight for Peter, with Daniël and Janna behind him.

‘Come on,’ he said with surprising articulacy, ‘we’re all going to have a look down that hole. I just want to—’

‘Absolutely not,’ Janna cut him off.

Daniël wobbled his head, as Indians do when they are reluctant to say either yes or no.

‘I want to be the first person to walk through part of the tunnel,’ Arnold said, smiling at Janna. ‘Further than you went. Come on, let this old fogey have a bit of fun.’

‘It can’t hurt to have a quick look, can it?’ Daniël said, although he didn’t sound sure.

Peter turned off his music and stood up. Speaking of networking, he thought, watching Daniël.

Janna’s jaws were tightly clamped together. It was clear that she also understood that it would be unwise to cross the great Van Tiegem. He was known for his vindictive character.

‘Okay then,’ she said, like a parent giving in to a spoiled child but trying to sound strict at the same time, ‘but just a few minutes, and no more than twenty or thirty metres … I’m not taking any responsibility for this. Daniël and I will wait for you both up here so that …’

Arnold was already tugging at the safety barriers that had been laid over the pit. He yanked at one of them with his full weight until it suddenly moved and he fell backwards. A monstrous screech of metal on stone echoed through the narrow street.

Janna swore under her breath.

Daniël and Peter carefully lifted the barriers up and moved them out of the way.

‘Is this really a good idea?’ Peter tried again.

‘We can hardly let him go down there on his own,’ Daniël said, with more reluctance than he had shown just moments ago. ‘And you know what he can be like once he’s got an idea in his head … I don’t want to be the one to antagonise him. But I don’t want to upset Janna either, so if you could go with him …’

‘Oh, great. That’s all I need,’ Peter mumbled like a sulky child.

Janna, who had apparently decided to make the best of a bad situation by at least making sure everything was done correctly, fetched the rope ladder and secured the two pegs firmly in the ground. She produced two bulky hardhats with lamps on them from an enormous bag and gave them to Peter and Arnold.

‘You can use the light on your phone as well if you need to,’ she said.

Arnold was already crawling over to the ladder on his hands and knees.

‘Those who are about to descend salute you,’ he said, tapping his helmet in a jocular salute.

A fiery bolt of annoyance shot through Peter.

Daniël helped Arnold by guiding his feet onto the first rung of the ladder. The ladder wobbled as he steadied himself, but he quickly found his balance.

If this was the circus, the audience would be applauding with relief now, Peter thought.

When Arnold reached the bottom, Peter got onto his knees, with his back to the pit. He felt around with his foot for the first rung. When he was sure it was secure, he lowered his other foot and began to climb down.

‘You brought me up from the grave, O Lord. You kept me from falling into the pit of death,’ he murmured.

He glanced into the gaping black chasm below him now and then as he descended and saw the faint glow of light from Arnold’s hardhat. When he reached the hole at the bottom of the pit, he lay on his front, dangled his legs over the edge and slowly slid down into the darkness.

‘You’ve got to see this,’ he heard Arnold say in the distance, as though he was talking to no one in particular. He said it again, and this time there was a note of bewilderment in his voice. ‘You’ve got to see this!’

The lamp on Peter’s helmet gave off a bright, broad beam of light, but it only made the gloom beyond it seem even blacker.

Arnold had walked in the direction of the Hooglandse Kerk and then stopped, a few metres away from Peter.

‘What, exactly, have I got to see?’ Peter asked. But as soon as he got closer, he saw what Arnold meant. Fixed to the wall at shoulder height was a metal ring that held a blackened torch.

Arnold touched it hesitantly, as though he expected it to burn his hand. He looked at his sooty fingers and rubbed them together.

‘That’s what my hands look like when I clean out the grate after we’ve been burning logs all evening. This torch has only just been put out.’

‘What is this?’ Peter said, astonished by how calmly Arnold was handling this absurd situation, as though he had been through much worse before.

Suddenly, they heard something fall not far from where they were standing. Arnold turned around so abruptly that his hardhat fell off. He clumsily tried to catch it, but lost his balance and banged his head hard on the rough wall. He reeled and crashed into Peter, who barely managed to catch him.

‘What was that?’ Arnold asked. His voice came out strangled and shrill, like a frightened child’s. All the bravura he’d put on display earlier was gone in an instant. He bent down to pick up his helmet.

Peter looked behind him at the spot where the faint light from outside permeated the thick, black darkness. They heard Daniël shout something, but couldn’t make out the words. It was only then that Peter noticed that Arnold was bleeding from a large scratch on his forehead.

‘You’re bleeding, Arnold. We should go back.’

‘It’s nothing,’ Arnold said, wiping the blood from his brow with his sleeve. ‘I feel fine. Don’t worry.’

Peter walked back to the spot where they had entered the tunnel and shouted up to the surface. ‘Did you say something, Daniël?’

‘We’ve thrown a rope down!’ Janna shouted back. ‘Can you see it?’

Peter looked down and saw a long rope coiled near his feet.

‘Like Ariadne, remember, in Knossos. In the Minotaur’s labyrinth.’

‘Thanks! But we’re coming back up in a minute!’ he shouted. His words were meant for Arnold rather than Janna, but Arnold had already moved a few paces further down from the torch.

Peter put the end of the rope under a pile of bricks that had been left when the tunnel collapsed. If they didn’t pull on it too hard, it would stay where it was. He had no intention of going any further into the tunnel than the rope was long.

‘I hope your initial curiosity has been satisfied,’ he said as he unwound the thin, strong rope. ‘Let’s go a bit further. We’ve got about thirty metres of rope here, I think.’

But Arnold had already walked away. Peter couldn’t tell if this was the overconfidence of a drunkard, or the burning desire to beat him to an archaeological scoop. Peter quickened his step so that he wouldn’t fall too far behind.

All at once, the light from Arnold’s headlamp vanished.

‘Arnold!’ Peter shouted. His voice echoed through the chamber.

‘I’m here!’ came the distant reply. Peter realised that the tunnel must have curved away from him so that the light from Arnold’s helmet was no longer visible.

They had walked about twenty metres now; Peter had let out more than two-thirds of the rope.

He walked further down the tunnel and saw that he had been right about the bend. Arnold came into view again, standing still and staring upwards as though there was something fascinating there. Peter stood next to him and looked at the same spot, but saw nothing.

‘What are you looking at?’

‘I’m not looking, I’m listening.’ He raised his hand and pointed a finger in the air. ‘Shush.’

Peter listened intently. He could hear the faint gurgle of flowing water. It was coming from … below them.

Arnold stamped his foot on the ground. ‘Ab urbe condita … ’ he said solemnly. ‘Are you familiar with the work of Livy?’

Arnold was fond of demonstrating the knowledge of Greek and Latin he’d gained at grammar school, although in practice this was limited to recitations of a few well-known sayings and proverbs.

From the foundation of the city … The opening lines of Livy’s history of the city of Rome.

‘I wouldn’t go as far as to say I was familiar with his work,’ Peter replied, ‘but I know that saying, naturally.’

‘Exactly, this is … It looks like this was planned when the city was founded. I believe what we hear below us is part of a drainage system. It must be … You would usually expect to see groundwater this far down. You wouldn’t be able to dig this without anyone knowing about it. Not if the city had already been built above you.’

Peter was becoming increasingly excited about what they had found. They couldn’t even begin to imagine what the consequences of their discovery would be. But at the same time, he felt a growing disquiet. A young man covered in blood in subterranean passage … Who knew what other macabre things took place here?

‘Listen, Arnold, this is all fantastic, and you’re … We’re the first people to come down here, apart from the poor man who ended up under a pile of rubble this afternoon … But let’s leave it at this for now. We’ve satisfied our initial curiosity. We can come back tomorrow with more people, more light, and we definitely need more rope. It’d be irresponsible of us to go further now. We don’t know what’s down there. You’ve wounded your head … After the weekend, we’ll have the Geo—’

But Arnold was deaf to his objections and walked away from him again. ‘Just a bit further. This is …’

The beams from their headlamps cast grotesque shadows on the walls. Their footsteps sounded hollow.

We must be under the Hooglandse Kerk by now, Peter thought. But there was no sign of a way out or up. When he looked around him, he had to admit that he was impressed by the neatly constructed walls, by the solid arch of the ceiling, by the dry, even floor, by the drainage system.

They were running out of rope. It would reach as far as where Arnold was standing now, a few metres away from Peter.

Arnold carried on walking.

‘Hey, will you listen to me? We’re going back. We can go further tomorrow.’ Peter stood with the end of the rope in his hand, not sure what to do next. His headlamp illuminated the path ahead and shone on Arnold’s back.

‘We can’t really get lost down here. We’ve not seen any side tunnels, or any stairs … This is sensational, Peter. I just want to walk a little further.’

Aware that he was likely to lose sight of Arnold again, Peter put the rope down. He laid it carefully on the ground, next to the wall and well in sight. By the time he looked up again, his companion’s light had vanished.

The silence and darkness seemed to have intensified, as though Arnold had literally been swallowed up.

Peter took a few uncertain steps forward and saw that the tunnel formed a T-junction and split off to the left and right a few metres ahead of him.

‘Arnold?’ he said. He cupped his hands around his mouth and called out Arnold’s name again, but there was no response.

He was suddenly aware of how cold and damp it was. What should he do now? He called out again, but all that came back was the echo of his own voice. He began to half-heartedly go down the tunnel on the right, but after a few metres, he reached a wall. This part of the tunnel was a dead end.

He turned around, making sure that he didn’t let go of the wall. Without the rope, it was his only guide. He went back to the point where the path split and then walked a couple of metres into the other tunnel. He called Arnold’s name again and it came out like a hiss. ‘Arnold!’

He took a few more apprehensive steps.

‘Arnold!’ He was screaming now. His voice died away almost instantly.

He was jarred by the sudden, chilling sensation that he was being observed by something or someone hiding just beyond the reach of his headlamp beam. He was suddenly very scared, like a small child in the night, afraid of the monsters under his bed. He wanted to get out of here, go back up into the sunlight.

‘Hello,’ he said haltingly. ‘Hello? Is anyone there?’

He had to get out of here. Now.

But before he’d even started walking back out of the tunnel, his headlamp blinked erratically and then went out. Now he was in total darkness. An instinctive fear of the dark – a deep, primitive, irrational fear – overwhelmed him. He flailed his fists around to ward off an invisible enemy.

‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me …’ he murmured to himself.

His breaths were quick and shallow. His hands trembled as he took his phone from his pocket. The light from the screen that usually glowed so softly blazed now with the brilliance of a lighthouse beam.

Where had that bloody Van Tiegem gone? That obstinate bastard.

This was useless.

He turned back to fetch help.

He felt something cold brush past his neck.

Peter spun round in a panic. The jerking movement made his headlamp come on again. He took the hardhat off and aimed the light at the tunnel behind him. He couldn’t see anything.

He shone the light on the ground in front of him and saw the end of the rope a few metres away. Tears pricked his eyes, as much from relief as from the dust in the air. He left the rope where it was in case Arnold came back.

This had been such a stupid idea! He had let himself get carried away by that damned Van Tiegem and his insistence on being first! Never, not once, had that man shown the slightest interest in the actual work of digging. But if there was ever a nice find somewhere, he was there like a shot to make sure he was front and centre on the photos.

Above all, Peter was angry at himself. They’d have to come back of course, with more people, more light, and a longer rope.

He reached the opening where they had entered the tunnel. When he was directly under the hole, he shouted upwards. ‘Daniël! Janna! Hey! Can you hear me?’ His voice was hoarse and cracked.

‘We can hear you Peter! We’re here! Did you find—’

‘I’ve lost Arnold! He’s … The bastard kept going, past the end of the rope. We have to—’

‘What!’ Janna and Daniël exclaimed together.

‘You’re kidding,’ Janna said. ‘What happened? I told you! You should never … This is not my respons—’

‘Yes, I know that! Wait, I’m coming up.’ Peter stood on the pile of rubble so that he could reach the bottom rung of the rope ladder. Afraid that something or someone might grab his legs at any moment, he frantically writhed and squirmed his body through the hole. He looked up as he climbed, and although the light was fading as night approached, he could see the worried looks on Daniël and Janna’s faces.

They both held out a hand and helped him out of the pit.

Peter took off his hardhat. His face and clothes were grey with dust, like a miner coming up from the coalface after a long day’s work.

He stooped over with his hands on his knees. Then he straightened up again and told them what had happened. Daniël leaned in as he listened, but Janna drew back slightly, as though she was afraid. When Peter had finished speaking, she gripped him by the collar, pulled him emphatically towards her, and turned him round so that she could examine him. A studious frown appeared on her forehead. She looked at him questioningly, making Peter suddenly feel very small.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked,

‘Come and look,’ she said to Daniël. Daniël moved closer and his eyes widened.

Janna gripped Peter’s arm and squeezed it urgently. ‘What really happened down there, Peter?’

Peter followed their gaze to the spot they were both staring at.

In the middle of his chest was an enormous bloodstain.

6

Friday 20 March, 6:50pm

The three of them stared at the bloodstain on Peter’s shirt, frozen like characters in a promotional still from an action film.

‘That wasn’t there just now, was it?’ Janna asked.

Peter tugged himself free of her grasp. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. What do you mean by asking me what really happened down there? I’ve told you, haven’t I? He walked into the tunnel ahead of me and then he walked around the corner. There was no rope left, but I went in after him, shouting his name. When he didn’t answer, I came back to get you so you could help me.’

‘And that blood on your shirt? Is it yours?’ Janna demanded.

‘He fell over. We heard a loud noise … You threw the rope down and it gave us a fright. Arnold was stumbling around and his hardhat fell off. He grazed his head on the wall and then he fell against me …’

Daniël stood between Peter and Janna, like a football captain trying to prevent one of his players from attacking an opponent.

‘What do you think happened? That I was down there in the tunnel and thought, oh, I know, I’ll smash Arnold’s brains in, they’ll never find out that I did it?’

‘Well … everyone knows you can’t stand him …’ Janna said.

‘Hey now,’ Daniël intervened, ‘this won’t achieve anything.’

‘We have to go back down,’ Peter said. ‘I didn’t want to go any further on my own.’

‘I’m calling the police first,’ Janna said, taking out her phone and dialling the emergency number.

It was quiet for a moment. They heard her say ‘Police’ and then ‘Leiden’. Peter checked the time on his own phone. It was almost seven o’clock.

Janna explained the situation. After a brief pause, her voice rose sharply. ‘Excuse me, what do you mean by that?’ She listened to what the person on the other end of the line had to say, then said, ‘Yes, I know he’s been reported missing lots of times before, but this is a totally different situation. He was in a tunnel … under the city, yes … was only discovered today … no, just now … with a colleague … no, they went on their own, but … he’s gone yes … l know this isn’t the first time, you keep saying that, but this time … Listen to me! He’s—’ She looked at her phone as though she was wondering what it was doing there. ‘She hung up on me,’ she said with disbelief. ‘She’s not allowed to do that, she’s not allowed to hang up.’

‘Why did she do that?’ Daniël asked.

‘She didn’t take it seriously,’ she answered bleakly. ‘The boy who cried wolf …’

‘Then perhaps we should …’ Peter started to suggest, but he stopped mid-sentence when something in the distance caught his eye. It was already twilight, but the streetlamps gave off enough light for Peter to see a shadowy figure standing just beyond the Hooglandse Kerk, looking at them.

He appeared to raise his hand, as if he was beckoning them over. He wasn’t wearing a coat and his clothing flapped around him as though his shirt and trousers were far too big. When he noticed that Peter had seen him, he abruptly turned around.

‘Hey!’ Peter shouted. ‘Hey! You! Wait!’

Janna and Daniël looked to see who he was shouting at, but the man had already disappeared around the corner into the cobbled alley of the Beschuitsteeg.

Peter ran after him. ‘Stay here!’ he heard Janna shout angrily, but he kept running. He saw the man turn left and run along the Nieuwe Rijn canal. Peter ran past the American Pilgrim Museum. He saw the man cross the canal via the narrow Boterbrug and then turn left again, running towards Van der Werfpark. There was too much distance between them now for Peter to be able to catch up with him, and to make things worse, his knees had started to hurt. He decided to gamble on the man having gone to the park; he’d be able to hide himself easily there at this time of day.

Peter wheezed as he ran along the Mosterdsteeg. Sweat dripped from his brow. I’m going on a diet on Monday, he promised himself.

After crossing the Breestraat, he turned right at De Kler’s bookshop and ran into the Boomgaardsteeg. It brought him out onto the Steenschuur, with the park shrouded in dusky shadows on the other side of the canal. He thought he saw someone go into the park via the left entrance. They were casually sauntering, as though they were enjoying an evening stroll. Was he imagining it? Peter slowed his own pace and stayed close to the Lorentzgebouw, trying not to cause suspicion by looking behind him. He went over the Steegbrug.

The shadowy figure walked behind the statue of Burgemeester Van der Werff and sat down on a bench. He still looked relaxed, almost as though he might produce a sandwich from a bag and enjoy a leisurely lunch, as office workers often did in the park. But instead, he looked straight ahead.

Peter approached the man, being careful not to be seen. Just as he was getting ready to sprint after him again, he turned to look at him.

‘Ah, there you are,’ he said calmly, as though they had agreed to meet at exactly this time.

Peter stared at him in bewilderment. ‘What do you mean, “there you are”?’ He moved closer, so that he was just a couple of steps away from him. ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

It was difficult to make out the man’s face in the dark, but he could see that he was young, slim, clean-shaven, with medium-length dark blond hair and a plain-looking face. His clothes were so ill-fitting that they appeared to belong to someone else.

‘But you’re …’ Peter said in amazement. ‘You’re the one who was lying in that tunnel this afternoon.’

The young man ignored Peter’s words. ‘I have a message for you,’ he said.

‘What were you doing there? How did you get there?’

‘That’s not relevant right now.’

‘Not relevant? My colleague disappeared in that tunnel.’

The man looked at him in surprise, but seemed to be sincere. ‘Disappeared?’

Deep furrows appeared on his brow. ‘Even so,’ he continued, ‘I have a message for you.’

Peter opened his mouth to say something, but the man cut him off before he had a chance.

‘You’ve been chosen,’ the young man said abruptly, as though he was keen to avoid any discussion.

‘Chosen?’

‘Yes, chosen. A great honour.’

‘Now listen,’ Peter said with irritation, ‘I don’t have time for this now. My colleague has just disappeared and I—’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t know anything about your colleague.’

There was a short, awkward pause.

‘I’ve been … chosen?’ Peter asked, confused by the direction the conversation had taken.

‘Yes, that’s right.’ The young man sat up straight. ‘Have you seen The Matrix?’

Peter nodded impatiently.

‘With the red and blue pill …’ the man continued. ‘Neo is given a choice: if he takes the red pill, he’ll wake up and experience the world as it really is. If he takes the blue pill, nothing changes and he carries on as before …’

‘And that would make you Morpheus, I suppose?’

The man scoffed. ‘Peter …’

Peter was unpleasantly surprised that the young man knew his name.

‘Listen,’ the man said, getting up from the bench. They were standing no more than a metre apart now. When he spoke again, his voice was very calm. ‘Just like the prisoner who escapes Plato’s cave and discovers the truth, you can … be set free, disconnected … like in The Matrix.’

‘So I need to choose the red pill?’

‘You don’t need to understand everything now. You will, eventually. “The hour has come.” That’s the message.’

‘The hour has come?’

‘Hora est.’

‘Hora est. This is …’ Peter let his arms fall to his sides, nonplussed. ‘How do you know who I am? And who are you? Do you have a name?’

‘You can call me Raven.’

Peter had run out of patience. He was exhausted from the chase, from the adventure in the tunnel, from worrying about what might have happened to Arnold. ‘You know what, I’m done here—’

‘Look out! Behind you!’ the man said suddenly.

Peter turned around. As soon as he did, Raven pushed him backwards and he fell to the ground, hitting his head hard on the edge of the bench. He felt his skull explode with pain.

The oldest trick in the book.

The man sprinted off but then he stopped a few metres away and shouted: ‘Salvation is at hand!’

7

Friday 20 March, 7:30pm

Peter rubbed the painful spot on his head. What sort of idiot was he to fall for that? ‘Look out! Behind you?’ That was what children shouted to distract their friends in playfights.

He walked in the same direction that Raven had run, out of the park, over the Steenschuur canal. He crossed the Breestraat and went along ‘t Gangetje onto the Nieuwe Rijn. The street was quiet and empty. The light from the streetlamps sparkled in the canal.

What should they do? The police had clearly given Van Tiegem’s umpteenth vanishing act a low priority, but everything was different this time. Perhaps one of them should go to the main police station on the Langegracht canal to explain the situation properly. The story about him suddenly going missing while exploring a secret tunnel must have sounded quite absurd.

As soon as he got back to the pit, he would talk to Janna and Daniël about what to do next, he decided.

But when he turned into the Beschuitsteeg, he saw blue lights flashing on the walls of the Hooglandse Kerk ahead of him.

He took a few careful steps forward, staying close to the houses on the left-hand side of the alley. Now he could hear the crackle of radios too. So the police had come after all. How was he going to explain his sudden disappearance? The way he’d run off earlier would make him an obvious suspect in Arnold’s case. And what could he say? That he’d had a discussion in the park with a man calling himself Raven who wanted him to choose between a red pill and a blue pill? Oh yes, and that the same man had said that the hour had come and salvation was at hand?

They’d arrest him there and then and detain him until they knew what had happened to Arnold.

Peter stopped next to the last house on the street and peered around the corner. There were two police cars, and some police officers were standing around the hole with Daniël and Janna. They appeared to be discussing something urgently while one of the officers spoke into a radio. When one of the policemen looked in his direction, Peter ducked back around the corner and decided to walk the other way. I need to find out what’s going on here first, he thought. I want to investigate. Need to investigate. Who knows how much precious time will be lost if they arrest me?

He retraced the route he’d taken earlier that afternoon.

The faculty was deserted by the time he got there. He opened the door with his key card and walked down the hall to his office.

Once he was in his room, he took off his dusty clothes and put his wallet and the two mobile phones on his desk. He took a clean shirt, trousers and socks from the cupboard. As he got dressed, he wolfed down two of the cereal bars he kept in his desk drawer as afternoon snacks.

He went to the toilets and craned his head under the tap as best he could. The water that streamed into the sink was grey. He dabbed his face dry with paper towels, studying himself in the small, round mirror. He looked tired. The whites of his eyes were shot with red, and there was a scratch on his nose. He ran his hands roughly through his hair, releasing a dusty shower of grit that made him look like he had a severe case of dandruff.

And there was a clearly visible piece of lettuce stuck between his teeth. He dug it out and rinsed out his mouth.

Now that he had calmed down, he could see that walking away had been a bad idea. He’d been so taken aback by the strange encounter with Raven, the messages, and Arnold’s disappearance that he’d wanted to go off and investigate on his own. But where would he start?

He went back to his office and took the folder from that afternoon’s lecture out of his bag. The students were required to turn up for least eighty percent of their lectures and he was required to keep accurate records of their attendance. Reading out a roll and ticking off every name individually took much too long, so he usually passed the register around the class. Of course, this sometimes meant that there were more people present on paper than were actually in the lecture hall. He usually brushed it off with a joke. (‘Once again, it appears that, just like a Russian election, we have more votes than voters.’)

He ran his finger down the list of names, trying to remember their faces. He only succeeded in one or two cases. He soon realised that this was utterly useless. What had he hoped to find? A student called Raven Ravensbergen? Or a red arrow pointing to a name and the words ‘hora est’?

He grumpily folded the list up again. As he slotted it back into the folder, his eye fell on the little book that he had been using on the course. More of a thick pamphlet than a book, its cover was printed on the same paper as the contents. Written on the front were the words: GEDEMPTEGRACHTENWANDELING or A WALKING TOUR OF INVISIBLE CANALS, published by the Leiden Canal Society and the Old Leiden Historical Society. It was a route around all the canals in Leiden that had been covered over or filled in.

He picked it up distractedly. How was it possible that the tunnel had never been discovered before?

He spread it open and began to read random pages, looking for answers.

Leiden has always been a city rich with water. Around the middle of the sixteenth century, the Italian-Flemish merchant Guicciardini described the city as a true archipelago. He counted thirty-one islands, connected by a hundred and forty-five bridges. At that time, the city was still medieval in scale.

He read on.

And even now, one is struck by the abundance of water in Leiden. Over the years, however, many of the canals have been infilled or overvaulted. This walking tour hopes to give an impression of these changes. The route covers more than thirty sites where the city’s canals have been removed over the centuries, showing how the water gradually disappeared from Leiden.

How the water gradually disappeared from Leiden …

In the medieval city, the streets of Leiden became densely populated and, over the course of the seventeenth century, the city was expanded three times. The increased density of the buildings resulted in an increase in traffic on the streets. This was not only accommodated by the infilling of some canals, but primarily by means of moving them underground to large brickwork drainage channels, or by roofing the canals over.

The tunnel they had discovered that afternoon was so far underground that it even ran below the canals that had existed in the Middle Ages. Peter leafed through the pamphlet looking for the illustration that showed all the city’s former canals.

A few years ago, the invisible canals tour had been complemented by the addition of an urban legends walking tour that Peter and Judith had once taken. The tour guide had told them a story about each location they’d stopped at and asked the participants to guess whether or not it was true. There was a tale about the well in the Burcht that the guide had told them was false. In the seventieth century, it was believed that a tunnel started at the bottom of this well and led all the way to the ‘Roman arcenal near Cat-wijck’, as the contemporary sources put it. The tunnel was thought to have been built during the Spanish siege of the city in 1573–1574. According to the legend, a live herring was found in the well which was supposed to prove that it was connected to the coast. That fishy tale could obviously be disregarded as belonging to the realm of fables, but persistent rumours about the tunnels were widely accepted to be true.

Then there was Annie’s Verjaardag, the café in the old city vaults which everyone ‘knew’ were part of an underground network of tunnels that led to the Burcht. The city had developed so densely around these areas that there had never been a serious attempt to find out how much truth there really was in the old stories.

Although Peter knew a great deal about the history of Leiden, he hadn’t managed to make a correct guess about even half of the stories on the tour. The lesson he had taken away from the experience was: if a story sounded too unlikely to be true, then it probably was true.

He ran his finger over the Nieuwstraat, another ‘invisible’ canal. He squinted at the page until the fine outlines of the buildings faded away and all he could see were the red and blue delineations that formed an alternative map of the city.

He tapped his finger on the picture.

If there had been a tunnel present ab urbe condita, he thought, then perhaps there wouldn’t have been much digging needed to connect it to the roofed-over canals … What if it wasn’t just one tunnel, but a whole labyrinth of tunnels beneath the city? My god, this could be one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the century …

He put the book down and picked up the new mobile phone again. The only apps on it were the pre-installed programs it would have been sold with, and Wickr. Tomorrow he would go to a phone store and ask if they could find out who it was registered to.

Peter jumped when his own phone rang. He involuntarily synchronised his breathing with the ringtone, breathing in when the tune played, and out when it paused.

An 0900 number. That could be the police.

Just as he was about to answer it, the ringing stopped.

Then it immediately rang again. He answered it this time.

‘Is this Mr De Haan?’ The voice sounded formal but friendly.

‘Yes.’

‘This is the Leiden constabulary of the Hollands Midden regional police. We’ve been looking for you, Mr De Haan.’

‘So I, er … so I understand. I …’ Peter felt his face redden. He would make a useless criminal, he thought. He would fall to pieces the minute he was interrogated.

‘Where are you at the moment? We can come and pick you up, if that’s easier for you.’

‘This is about Arnold van Tiegem, isn’t it? Is there any news?’

‘This will be easier if we discuss it face to face. I can send a car for you. That would be the quickest way, I think. Where are you now?’

‘I’m … I’ll come myself. I can walk.’

‘Sir, will you please—’

Peter hung up. He put the telephones inside his jacket and stuffed his wallet into his trouser pocket.

On his way outside he realised that his phone made him easy to trace. If he changed his mind and didn’t go to the police station after all, they would have no trouble finding him. He stopped at the faculty’s pigeonholes and slipped his own phone into the box that had his name above it. It was an intuitive decision that instantly felt right.

He decided to visit Judith first. She was the only person he could talk to in confidence about this absurd situation, and her house was close to his route to the police station on the Langegracht.

Less than ten minutes later, he arrived at the Sionshofje on a side street off the Haarlemmerstraat. He pushed open the heavy, green outer door and walked into the large inner courtyard, which was bordered by a brick pathway. There were no lights on in Mark’s house. He was away travelling of course, but Judith’s house was dark too. Surely it was too early for her to go to bed? Had she gone out?

He looked through the window, but the living room looked deserted. He knew that Judith kept a key under a flower pot near the front door. He removed it, carefully opened the door and turned on the light.

As he stepped through the door, a new message arrived.

He opened it nervously.

‘Prophet!’ said I, ‘thing of evil! – prophet still, if bird or devil!

By that heaven that bends above us – by that God we both adore –

Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,

It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore –

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels name Lenore?’

Quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore.’

He wasn’t much of a poetry connoisseur, but even he immediately recognised it as a verse from Edgar Allen Poe’s famous poem The Raven, about a mysterious raven’s midnight visit to a man mourning the death of his lover.

Nevermore … The poem’s distraught protagonist is denied the hope of ever being reunited with his deceased love. Peter had barely finished reading the poem when the message disappeared. Nevermore …

Peter called out Judith’s name, but no answer broke the silence. He climbed the narrow staircase to the first floor, but it was dark there too. He hurried back downstairs.

Now he regretted leaving his own phone behind. Like many other people, he hardly knew any phone numbers by heart now that he had a smartphone.

However, just then another message arrived. He struggled to hold in an expletive.

Do not seek help. Only you can find her.

It was immediately followed by another.

Follow the black raven.

A few seconds later, the messages were gone.

Follow the black raven … What? Do not seek help? Find her? Judith? What did she have to do with it?

The phone vibrated again. It was a link this time. He clicked on it. A digital clock appeared on his screen. The time on it was counting down.

17:08:22 – 17:08:21 – 17:08:20 …

He stared at the screen, transfixed.

The starting time was displayed in the top left-hand corner of the screen. Two o’clock in the afternoon.

Almost seven hours had gone already.

THE FIRST VISION

And behold, I saw a young man standing on the bow, with his arms wide like a bird. He gazes up to the heavens but his eyes are closed. He is short, his nose is long, and despite his youth, his head is already bald. He has a friendly appearance. The play of shadows and light on his face changes his countenance from man to angel and back again.

And the prow cuts through the clear blue water, rising out of the sea on the crest of a wave and coming back down with a crash, splashing wild, white foam. But the young man does not lose his balance. He stands there as steady as a statue, like a man with a mission. He pays no attention to his surroundings. Neither to the green coast that they steadily sail past, away in the distance on the portside, nor to the dolphins who swim alongside the ship. They arc gracefully out of the water, pausing for a moment as though hanging between heaven and earth before diving back down.

And then suddenly he opens his eyes and it is as though he sees me, looks right through me. As though he wants to tell me: I know you, I know who you are. His intense, fiery gaze burns right through my soul, disregarding all barriers, all appearances, all ostentation. My mask falls away and there I stand – naked. You know who I am, he says wordlessly. I will show you the way. Follow me. Salvation is at hand.

And behold, evening comes and the young man takes a hunk of bread and a small, earthenware amphora from his knapsack. He goes over to the ship’s starboard side. He raises the bread up to the setting sun with both hands and murmurs a prayer. Then he does the same with the amphora. He breaks the bread and eats it thoughtfully. He takes a drink from the jug and the wine trickles out of the corner of his mouth and into his beard. Then he seeks out a quiet place on the deck to which he can retreat. He lays his head on his knapsack, and before long, he is fast asleep.

And behold, the ship docks at a port. The marble on the temples glitters in the sun, and he can already see the great theatre and the hippodrome from the quayside. The young man picks up his travelling bag. It does not appear to contain many possessions. Without looking around or greeting anyone, he walks down the gangplank and into the town to find a bed for the night.

And the next day, he rises before the light of dawn and goes on his way. He has joined a group of travellers and pays the leader to protect him. They will travel only by daylight and stay on the great road that leads to Jerusalem, sixty miles away. He speaks to no one on the way, and when the group rests, he does not join them, but sits alone to eat his bread and drink his water.

And after three days, they enter the eternal city. They see the temple in the distance, shimmering in the sun. Many of the travellers fall to their knees, some raise their hands to the heavens and weep. But not he. He walks on, leaving the group behind him.

And he walks through the narrow streets of the city. He does not know them, but he knows they will be his home from now on. He knows where he must go, he has memorised the way. People try to stop him. Traders hold up bolts of cloth to him, invite him to taste the fruit from their stalls, extol the qualities of their pottery. Women with heavily made-up faces tug at his sleeve and ask him to join them … The city air is thick with the odour of charred flesh from the ceaseless burning of offerings in the temple. Beggars cling to him, faces disfigured, hands missing, legs deformed, dragging themselves over the ground. But he does not allow any of it to distract him. His eyes are fixed on a point in the distance.

And behold, he arrives in the tanners’ district. Their bloody hides stink as they hang drying in the sun. Defiled by so much blood, this is the neighbourhood that is shunned by the Jews. But this is where the young man will stay, where he will practise his craft. His sewing tools, a gift from his father, are in his knapsack. He will live here for two years, far from home. He must spread his wings and go out into the world. That is his task.

He stops at a large, green door. The heavy iron knocker is shaped like a bull. He holds it in his hand and waits, as though he is unsure what to do, but then he knocks three times. The sound echoes in the hallway. He hears footsteps approaching. The door opens and an old man appears, tall, with a full grey beard and hair clipped short. The young man falls to his knees. The old man puts his right hand on his head as a blessing.

‘Pater,’ the young man says. Father.

‘My son, welcome,’ the old man answers. The young man stands up and they embrace each other like brothers.

And behold, just before he enters, the young man turns around unexpectedly and looks at me for the last time. He moves his lips, but no sound leaves them. I hear his words in my heart:

I am a Raven.

8
NYMPHUS
BRIDEGROOM

Friday 20 March, 8:00pm

‘Father.’

The young man knelt with one knee on the rough stone floor and bowed his head.

The old man put his hand on the young man’s hair and let it rest there.

‘Get up now,’ he said.

The young man stood up, but kept his head bowed, his eyes fixed on the floor.

‘May I ask you something?’

‘You may.’

The young man paused. ‘Are we doing the right thing?’

‘Look at me.’ The man looked at him earnestly, like a parent trying to discern whether their child is challenging him or sincerely wants an honest answer. He sighed. ‘Listen …’ he said, considering his words carefully. ‘I cannot expect any of you to have the insight that I have, but the hour has come, the time is now. We discussed it in our meeting this morning … I explained it to all of you.’

‘But …’

‘Enough!’ he shouted.

This show of temper was so startling that the young man’s face and neck burned with shame.

‘I’m sorry, Father. I don’t doubt you … You know I’ve always been faithful to you.’

‘There now, all is well,’ the man said unctuously, as though he was calming a frightened dog. ‘This day was always going to come, sooner or later,’ he explained serenely. ‘It’s up to us now. We decide what will be revealed and when. I have chosen someone. You know that. I’m certain that if he shows himself to be worthy …’

‘I am sorry, Father, for doubting you.’

‘Doubt is not such a terrible thing. Even Thomas doubted … But blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe. Have faith. You are forgiven.’

‘Thank you.’ The young man seemed to be reassured.

‘You know our history,’ the man said in a lecturing tone. ‘We’ve endured much worse than this in the past and we’re still here. We’ve survived because we live in truth. We serve something greater than ourselves, greater than we can comprehend. And our reward will also be great, an eternal reward … We are storing up treasures in heaven. Where they cannot be damaged by moths or rust, nor be stolen by thieves. And where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. Our Lord, who sees what is done in secret, will reward us. Remember that well.’

He ended his sermon with a smile and a fatherly pat on the young man’s arm.

The young man bowed his head again, as a sign of respect. ‘It’s not that I doubted you, but—’

‘All is well, my son, all is well,’ the man reassured him again. ‘Have faith in me, as I have faith in him. We must be steadfast if we are to do his will and receive what he has promised. So, let us do this well, let us not give up, and soon, when the time comes we will reap the rewards.’

‘The hour has come.’

‘Indeed, the hour has come.’

The old man stood up. They left the small room and went into the sparsely furnished kitchen, where a door led directly to a garden.

The young man picked up a coat from a kitchen chair and put it on. ‘I’m going home. You know where I am if you need me,’ he said as he left.

The old man locked the door behind him, then poured himself a glass of water and drank it slowly. Afterwards, he went upstairs to a spartan study. It contained only a rough wooden table, a chair, a single bed and a shelf filled with books.

He sat at the table and let his mind drift back to a time twenty years ago, when he was forty years old. Forty was a good, symbolic age. Forty was a number for tests and trials: the forty years that the Israelites wandered in the desert; the forty days that Moses spent on Mount Sinai before he received the tablets with the Ten Commandments; the forty days and nights that Jesus fasted before he was visited by the devil.

Not long after he had arrived in Leiden as a priest, he had become the head of a group of young, Catholic men who made it their purpose to fight against superstition and idolatry in all their forms. Their enemies were not the Christians who had left the warm bosom of the mother church – to a certain extent, that battle had already been fought – but the psychics, the mediums, the diviners, the tarot readers. They saw it as their duty to fight against these false prophets who led people away from the only path to salvation: Christ. Only he was the Way the Truth and the Life. They used their chicanery to steer their customers, those poor sheep, straight onto the road that eventually led to hell.

The man and his group infiltrated all the paranormal and spiritual fairs that took place in and around Leiden. They went to every big event where the likes of Rasti Rostelli, charlatans in their eyes, came to demonstrate their skills. They sometimes even went to lectures where practices like meditation and yoga were shown in a positive light. They adhered to the Christian laws much more closely than their peers, and they were committed followers of the traditions of their ancestors.

They stood outside venues and handed out leaflets, trying to convince people not to go in. Occasionally there would be a confrontation with the organisers, or with one of the mediums who was performing. Even within his own church, there were many who did not understand why they had taken on this battle and believed that people should be left in peace to make their own choices. He preached sermons that warned that their struggle was not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. That they must therefore put on the armour of God so that they could resist and be prepared to stand firm.

They targeted the Theosophical Society too, the International Study Centre for Independent Search for Truth or ISIS – an acronym that spelled the name of an Egyptian fertility goddess – who held monthly lectures on subjects like reincarnation, homeopathy, and the cosmos. Soon, the ‘Knights of Christ’, as the group had been christened, were guaranteed to turn up at every lecture. Most people tolerated the young men’s presence but chose to ignore them. However, some attendees would engage them in discussion. The priest would clash violently with Ane, the ISIS chairman, who had once had the entire group removed by the police when these discussions became too heated. Two police vans had been needed to transport them to the police station on a charge of disorderly conduct. They had felt like modern-day martyrs in the back of the vans; they were suffering in Jesus’ name, after all. Eventually, the threat of a restraining order convinced them to set their fight against ISIS aside.

He welcomed the opportunity to take a break from their activities. He had been plagued by epileptic fits since his early youth and they could be especially intense whenever he allowed himself to become too agitated. His fellow knights had had to prevent him from swallowing his tongue on numerous occasions when he had fallen to the ground with his mouth foaming and his whole body shaking with violent convulsions. They had panicked at first but after a few episodes they knew what they had to do. His epilepsy had even become a way of measuring the importance of each event: if its theme stirred up so much anger and frustration in the priest that it brought on a fit, then it must be of great consequence.

But now he had found a new target.

9

Friday 20 March, 8:30pm

‘This is very strange,’ Janna said, her austere face looking sterner than ever. She also seemed to be even more stooped than usual, as though she was standing in a room with a low ceiling and was afraid to bump her head. ‘Very strange,’ she said again, more to herself than to Peter.

Twenty minutes had passed since the police had called Peter. The officer who had made the call had contacted the main police station several times, but when it had become clear that Peter hadn’t presented himself there, a warrant had been issued for his arrest.

After the emergency services operator had hung up on Janna the first time, she had called again and been able to convince them of the gravity of the situation. This wasn’t just another Arnold Van Tiegem vanishing act that would resolve itself in a day or two. Eventually Janna and Daniël had been persuaded not to take action themselves, but to wait for the imminent arrival of a police car.

When the police had arrived, Daniël and Janna had given them a brief report of everything that had happened since Peter and Arnold had gone into the tunnel. It would have been impossible to accuse the police of acting in haste; when Janna and Daniël had finished speaking, the officers had tucked away their notebooks and then stood shuffling their feet.

‘What now?’ Daniël had eventually asked.

‘Let’s …’ one of the officers had said uncertainly. ‘Let’s call for backup.’

Not long after he’d made the call, two more officers, an older man and a younger woman, had arrived in another police car. They had taken two lighting units from the back seat, small silver-coloured cases that were protected with an armour of metalwork. They had switched on the lamps and shone two powerful beams into the tunnel.

The two officers who had arrived first had decided to stay above ground. The two new arrivals had gone into the tunnel with Daniël and Janna.

Once they were underground, the improved lighting allowed them to really see how impressive the tunnel’s construction was.

Even the two police officers were impressed. The female officer whistled in amazement. ‘This is quite bizarre, isn’t it, right under the city?’ she asked. Her radio crackled slightly and then grew silent about ten metres into the tunnel.

‘Nothing can happen to us here, right?’ her colleague asked nobody in particular. It wasn’t clear if it was a casual observation or an attempt to quell his own fear.

When they reached the point where the tunnel split, they turned right then quickly hit the dead end and went back the other way.

The officers held the lamps in front of them and swept them from left to right over the ground and above their heads. The tunnel appeared to be solidly built, like a well-maintained wine cellar in a big castle.

‘By the way,’ the older officer said, standing still, ‘the young man who was found in the tunnel this afternoon … he’s escaped.’

‘What?’ Janna exclaimed.

Daniël clenched his fist, like a sports fan watching his team miss a huge opportunity.

‘Yes, escaped,’ the officer said again, as though it was nothing out of the ordinary. ‘He just got up and walked away. The stupid thing is he was so covered in blood that we didn’t get a chance to take any photos of him. His interview was planned for tomorrow, assuming he’d come round by then. But, there you go. Things don’t always go the way you plan them.’

‘The mystery deepens …’ Janna whispered to Daniël.

‘Whereabouts do you reckon we are now?’ the female officer asked. She took out her mobile phone, then immediately put it away again. ‘I thought as much. No coverage down here. I thought we might be able to look at a map …’

‘I think,’ her colleague said, ‘I think that we’re somewhere past the Hooglandse Kerk, under the Hooglandse‌kerkgracht, but …’ He stood still. ‘That’s odd.’

Daniël and Janna stood next to the officers so that they could see what he was looking at.

He took a few steps forward and swung the lamp back and forth. Now they could all see that the tunnel didn’t go any further.

‘But how is that possible?’ Janna said, raising her hands in disbelief like a bad amateur actress.

The younger police officer crouched down to examine the wall more closely. Then she pointed the lamp at the wall as she slowly stood up.

‘I don’t know what you’re searching for, Indiana Jones,’ her colleague said, ‘but I think moving walls and secret passages are more of a Hollywood thing.’

‘This whole tunnel is a Hollywood thing,’ his colleague replied curtly, not taking her eyes off the wall. She studied the point where the wall and the ceiling met, then crouched down to look at the other corner.

‘Nothing unusual here,’ she said, finally.

The older officer turned to Janna and Daniël. ‘Ladies and gentleman, whichever way you look at it, what we have here is a mystery.’

They nodded in agreement.

‘We need more equipment.’

‘A GeoSeeker,’ Daniël said.

The man grunted in a way that was entirely open to interpretation.

‘We’re definitely under the Lutheran church,’ said Daniël.

‘Could I have that lamp for a second?’ Janna asked the female officer, who passed it straight over to her.

Janna moved the lamp back and forth over the ground with a broad, systematic sweeping motion, as though she was clipping a lawn with a strimmer.

‘What are you looking for, Janna?’ Daniël asked.

‘Didn’t Peter say Arnold had wounded his head? So that means there must be blood somewhere, right?’

‘I don’t think it was a gaping wound. He just bumped his head. Most of the blood ended up on Peter’s shirt.’

Janna ignored him and started slowly walking backwards.

The others followed along behind her, scanning the ground inch by inch.

‘Here!’ Janna shouted triumphantly, after she had shuffled another ten or so metres. She put down the lamp with a thud, then got down on her knees and held her nose to the ground.

The others squatted near the area where Janna thought she had seen something.

She circled a spot in the sand with the index finger of her right hand. It was slightly darker than the area around it, like something damp and red had mixed with the sand.

The younger police officer wiped her little finger over the stain and sniffed her fingertip. ‘Hmm,’ she said, ‘that’s blood, without a doubt. That metallic smell …’

‘But it doesn’t look like it’s dripped here,’ her colleague said, ‘otherwise it would look like more like a splashed raindrop. It looks like someone fell here.’

‘Arnold,’ Janna concluded.

‘We can’t say that for certain, although I can see why you think that …’ the older officer said, a little too gravely. ‘But all we can say is that someone was here recently, that they were wounded and very probably fell, but other than that—’

‘We need to go back,’ the other officer said urgently. ‘We can leave one of the lamps here. We need to close this place off for forensics and we need a kit to collect the blood …’

Daniël didn’t move.

‘Are you okay?’ Janna asked him.

‘Not really …’ he replied. ‘This wasn’t what we …’

Janna put a hand on his shoulder. ‘No, this isn’t what we were expecting this afternoon. It was supposed to be a celebration.’

Daniël nodded.

‘Come on, let’s go.’ She gave him a gentle push.

The four of them walked back, leaving a lamp behind them in the middle of the tunnel, like a beacon out at sea.

When they reached the tunnel entrance, the younger officer walked a few metres ahead of them.

‘Does it continue along here?’ she asked, shining the lamp down the passage. But the light fell on a wall about ten metres away. ‘Looks like another dead end.’

‘Peter and I walked a little way down there earlier today,’ Daniël confirmed.

‘Go and have a look,’ the older officer grunted, with a note of cynicism in his voice. ‘Maybe you’ll find another secret passage.’

They helped each other climb back up to the surface. Stones came loose as they went and tumbled to the ground in a scud of gravel.

‘We’ll bring a ladder next time,’ the older officer wheezed.

Only one police officer was waiting for them on the street. The other sat in the front of the police car with his feet hanging out of the door and a radio in his hands.

‘A report’s just come in,’ the officer said, holding out a hand to help them up.

The man in the car barked short sentences into the microphone, but from this distance, all they could hear was beeping and static.

He eventually put the radio back in the cradle and sat for a while, with his hands on his knees and palms facing upwards. Then he stood up and walked towards them. ‘It looks like there won’t be any need to continue the search down there,’ he said hesitantly.

‘Whatdoyoumean?’ Daniël asked, the four words coming out as one.

‘I’ve just been told that they’ve found a body floating in the Nieuw Rijn, under the bridge next to Annie’s Verjaardag.’

Daniël covered his face with his hands.

The officer continued in an official tone: ‘There’s every indication that it’s Mr Van Tiegem.’

10

Friday 20 March, 8:58pm

Peter rushed outside, slamming Judith’s front door behind him. He bounded across the courtyard to Mark’s house and pounded on the windows, shouting his name. He realised immediately that it was useless.

Feeling helpless, he stretched out his hands, then curled his tensed fingers as though he was kneading a stress ball. His lips were tightly pressed together.

He had to go to the police of course, as he had originally intended. He would be able to explain the whole Arnold business, including why he’d foolishly run away earlier in the evening. He would be completely open and honest … up to the point where he’d met Raven in the park.

He pivoted around on one leg, like a soldier at the changing of the guard. At that exact moment, another message arrived.

Do not seek help. The same message as before. But now it was followed by something more sinister. If you ever want to see her alive again.

He looked up in panic. The timing of the messages was worryingly precise, as though someone was aware of every step he took. He searched the sky. Was there a drone up there, with a camera watching him?

Do not seek help …

He opened Google and typed in ‘black raven Leiden’, but it didn’t bring up anything useful. The first hit was a barber in Groningen of all things. So he tried ‘raven Leiden’. A student dorm, entries in a telephone book for people called Raven, a seaside holiday park, the puppet from a children’s TV show … they all led nowhere.

Peter was desperate to do something, but he didn’t know where to focus his energy. He felt like the substitute in a football match who has just spent half an hour warming up on the sidelines before being told he won’t be sent on.

Of course! The phone’s location services. He slapped his forehead, almost as though it would wake up the grey matter inside.

He opened the settings and deactivated them. It was the obvious thing to do, but it still felt devious.

‘Raven, raven …’ he mumbled. Follow the black raven. It had to be symbolic. They couldn’t possibly have meant a real raven. Could they?

He opened Google again and typed in ‘raven symbol’. Less than half a second later the search term had produced tens of thousands of hits. On the first page, there was a reference to the raven that Noah had released, but Peter’s eye was drawn to the words below the blue, underlined title of one of the links. ‘The raven is featured as a messenger in mythological tales from all over the world …’

Peter had a feeling this would lead him to something useful, so he clicked on the link. It was part of a website about mythology through the ages, a subpage with an almost endless list of animals in mythological stories. He clicked on the word ‘raven’ and skimmed through the text.

The story about Noah again, Greek mythology, Egypt, Chinese literature … the raven as harbinger of death … Edgar Allan Poe … And closer to home, the Norse myths and sagas. ‘The god Odin had two ravens,’ he read. ‘Munin and Hugin, who flew around the world during the day, and returned to Odin at night to tell him everything they had seen the people do.’

Just like Raven in the park, Peter thought.

He impatiently clicked everything away, and shoved the phone in his pocket. Then he left the courtyard via the large door. He had no idea where he was going to go; he simply wanted to keep moving so that he would feel like he was doing something. He walked past the Kijkhuis cinema, and the gothic remains of the Vrouwenkerk.

The shops on the Harlemmerstaat had closed an hour ago, but the street still sounded busy. Friday nights in Leiden were as in many Dutch towns for going out.

A group of people walked by, two female students in identical red student association jackets together with two men and two women, all having an animated conversation.

‘After hearing all those stories,’ Peter heard one of the women say, ‘it’s so nice to be able to finally see where you’ve been spending all this time.’

Many student associations held an annual ‘parents’ evening’ and invited parents to come and look around. It went without saying that everything was much quieter than normal on those evenings. There was no rowdiness, no beer was thrown around, and the music was kept at a volume that allowed proper conversation.

When the group passed him, Peter noticed the word DIONYSUS on the backs of their jackets. It was the god of wine, but also a fraternity of the Quintus student association. One of his colleagues had been a member and had told him about it. Peter himself had never joined a fraternity.

A thought began to take shape somewhere in the back of his mind. He stood still, closed his eyes and concentrated. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. Something he had seen.

Peter walked aimlessly on, but he was careful to avoid the Haarlemmerstraat. He crossed the Lange Mare, a street that had been a canal until the early 1950s when it had been filled in. So they were true after all, the stories about the tunnels that ran beneath the city’s many former canals. It was almost impossible to imagine.

He thought back to 1978, the first time he’d gone abroad without his parents. With the ink barely dry on his exam certificates, he’d travelled through Italy, ready to conquer the world.

He’d spent a long time in Rome, staying in a seedy youth hostel where men slept twenty to a room on bunk beds with filthy mattresses. He did everything he could to make his money last as long as possible, not even travelling low budget but no budget.

He had visited the catacombs, the city’s complex system of tunnels and underground burial chambers, some of which had only been discovered in the second half of the twentieth century. Many of the tunnels had been built in secret by the persecuted early Christians. It was easy to carve out tunnels and chambers in the soft, volcanic tufo that formed the bedrock of Rome. After it had been exposed to the air, the rock would eventually harden, and the result was a sturdy structure, a city beneath the city, up to four layers deep. They placed their dead in elongated niches that had been carved into the walls. The graves were sealed with slabs of terracotta or marble, although these were unlikely to have prevented the smell of death and decay from permeating this underworld.

He’d taken hundreds of photographs, carrying the rolls of film around in their little canisters for weeks so that he could have them developed in the Netherlands. When he got home, he had been disappointed to discover that the many photographs he’d taken of the frescoes were washed out because he’d had to use the flash.

But who on earth had built this tunnel in Leiden? And how had it remained undiscovered for centuries? The depth of the tunnel had probably played a role, deep below the canals that had once run above it, or ran above it still.

Could there really be an entire system of tunnels under the city? It was difficult to believe. Rome had tufo, but here in Leiden, there was soft earth, groundwater and subsidence. How had they done it?

Peter slowed his pace. He walked a few metres into the broad alley of the Mirakelsteeg and leaned against a wall.

There was something … something he couldn’t quite remember. What was it?

He pictured in his mind’s eye the one photograph he’d taken of a fresco that had come out well. It had hung on the cork board in his dorm room for years. The flash hadn’t gone off, so the only illumination had come from the faint light of the catacomb’s lamps. Despite being almost two thousand years old, the fresco was amazingly clear and bright. It depicted ravens flying above lily-like flowers, and a reference to the Gospel of Luke. In this well-known scripture, Jesus encourages his followers not to worry about their lives, about what they should eat, about their bodies or what they should wear. ‘Consider the ravens,’ he told them, ‘they do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn, yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! Consider the lilies. They neither toil nor spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these flowers … But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you also.’

Follow the black raven.

All of a sudden, it came to him. He knew where he had to go.

The students he had seen earlier with their parents. That was it. At the time, he hadn’t been able to make the connection. Like when you know you know the name of an actor in a film, but just can’t quite recall it.

And then, just like that, you remember it again.

Peter retraced his steps.

He needed to go to the student association.

He needed to go to Quintus.

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