The Pilgrim Conspiracy Read online

  ‘The Duty Officer has been informed,’ the policeman said, interrupting him.

  ‘He’s calling in the Forensic Investigations Unit. They’ll be here in about fifteen minutes.’

  ‘Right then,’ said the woman who had introduced herself as Dijkstra. ‘We’ll get this lot cordoned off here and outside as well. Nobody will be allowed to leave the building until we’ve taken everyone’s name and address.’

  Peter looked up at the All-Seeing Eye above the chair where Coen Zoutman had sat earlier that evening, so relaxed and completely absorbed in his role.

  Was the All-Seeing Eye the only witness to this murder? How ironic.

  ‘No security cameras here?’ Dijkstra asked. It sounded more like a statement than a question.

  ‘I doubt it,’ Peter said. ‘Only initiates are allowed to see the rituals that are performed in here.’

  ‘That sounds creepy,’ Van Hal said. ‘Secret rituals … in Leiden of all places.’

  ‘There’s nothing else we can do here for now,’ Dijkstra said. ‘We’ll go down and cordon everything off.’

  Peter needed some fresh air. He followed the two officers outside. While Dijkstra and Van Hal were blocking off both ends of the street with red and white tape, two more police cars arrived, followed by an ambulance and a car from the coroner’s office.

  Behind them was a large SUV that pulled up outside the Masonic Hall and parked on the kerb. Two men dressed in civilian clothes got out. One of them was an older man with short, grey hair and a neatly trimmed moustache, and the other a younger man who was completely bald.

  Dijkstra strode over to the two men to report her findings. She looked over her shoulder at Peter, and he heard her saying his name.

  The three of them approached him.

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector Rijsbergen,’ the man with the moustache said, shaking Peter’s hand. ‘Willem Rijsbergen. This young man here is my “partner”, as we’re apparently calling them these days.’

  The younger detective introduced himself. ‘Van de Kooij. That’s just my surname, not where I’m from,’ he added with a grin, referring to De Kooi, a neighbourhood in Leiden Noord that was known for its colourful character and salt-of-the-earth residents.

  ‘Right, well …’ said Rijsbergen, rolling his eyes. He had clearly heard this ‘joke’ many times before.

  ‘Willem!’ someone shouted. It was a slim man in his fifties with dark curls and narrow, trendy-looking glasses.

  ‘Ah, here comes Anton,’ Rijsbergen said to no one in particular. ‘Anton Dalhuizen.’ He turned to Peter. ‘Dalhuizen is the forensic physician from the Public Health Department. In cases of unnatural death, which is what we appear to have here, they perform the autopsy.’

  Dalhuizen jogged over to join them, clutching an old-fashioned black doctor’s bag.

  ‘I understand there are still people inside the building?’ Rijsbergen asked.

  ‘There are still some visitors downstairs,’ Peter said. ‘There was an open evening tonight, and it was very busy. But quite a few people have already left.’

  ‘Guestlist?’

  ‘I don’t think there is one. There were at least sixty or seventy guests. I’m not sure exactly. There were about twenty members of the lodge, so forty, maybe even fifty people were non-Masons.’

  ‘And you’re a member?’

  ‘No, I’m not a Mason. My girlfriend is. I came with her.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Rijsbergen said under his breath. It wasn’t clear to Peter whether this was meant ironically; there was absolutely nothing about this situation that could be described as ‘excellent’.

  They went into the function room.

  ‘Right,’ Rijsbergen said to Dijkstra. ‘If you and Van Hal get started with taking the names of the people who are still here, we’ll have a look upstairs.’

  Peter followed them, but once he reached the landing, he wondered why he was there. Right now, what he wanted more than anything was to go home with Fay, get into bed next to her and hold her tight.

  Dalhuizen produced some blue plastic covers from his bag, which he, Rijsbergen and Van de Kooij pulled over their shoes.

  ‘Dear God,’ Rijsbergen exclaimed when they opened the temple door and saw Coen Zoutman lying on the floor.

  ‘It looks just like a film set,’ Dalhuizen remarked.

  They lingered at the door for a few moments, like they actually were afraid that they might be interrupting a take on a film set.

  Van de Kooij entered the room first. ‘See if you can put the lights on, Curly,’ Rijsbergen told him, and Van de Kooij felt along the wall for a switch. He soon found it, and the whole temple was flooded with bright light.

  The staged lighting had seemed to cast an eerie enchantment over the temple. Now the spell was instantly broken.

  Dalhuizen crouched next to the body and felt Coen Zoutman’s neck with his index and middle fingers, just as Peter had done earlier.

  ‘The manner of death looks pretty clear to me,’ he said, loud enough for Peter to hear. ‘Severe blunt force trauma to the back of the head caused by a heavy object – presumably, this mallet here. I expect the victim would have been killed instantly. Whoever did it …’ Rijsbergen and Van de Kooij moved closer to the body ‘… would probably have had to make an incision with a knife before they could insert this set square into the heart. You wouldn’t be able to get it through the bone and muscle tissue otherwise. The same goes for the compass through the hands … And even then, they would have had to use considerable force. But anyway …’ Dalhuizen stood up. ‘That’s my initial assessment. I’ll leave the rest to the pathologist. My job’s done. I’ve confirmed his death, and there’s nothing else for me to do here.’

  They returned to the landing where Peter was still hovering.

  ‘Thanks, Anton,’ Rijsbergen said.

  Dalhuizen pulled the blue covers from his shoes, crumpled them up and put them in his bag.

  ‘You can dismiss the ambulance crew when you get back downstairs. And send someone in to block these stairs off, if you don’t mind.’

  Dalhuizen gave them a thumbs up. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said by way of goodbye before he left.

  ‘I don’t think it’s going to be easy,’ Peter said. ‘So many people in one place.’

  ‘Right,’ Rijsbergen said. ‘We’ll wait for forensics. They’ll be here soon. Van de Kooij, could you give the public prosecutor a call?’

  Peter had seen enough Dutch true crime shows to know that the public prosecutor – the officier van justitie – was officially responsible for leading the preliminary criminal investigation. The police worked in close consultation with them, and their permission had to be obtained before the police could use more serious investigative tools like phone taps.

  Peter was about to go over to Fay when Rijsbergen asked abruptly, ‘Would anyone be able to confirm that you were both downstairs all evening? And that you only went upstairs when this gentleman was already dead?’

  Peter hesitated before answering. The thought had struck him that he might be an obvious suspect. ‘Um … Yes, of course. Lots of people saw me. Saw us. Fay and me. When we came upstairs, he was already dead.’

  ‘How much time was there between you discovering the body and calling 112?’

  ‘That was … That can’t have been more than a minute.’

  ‘All right,’ Rijsbergen said. ‘The time of the call will have been logged, naturally, and the conversation will have been recorded. The problem, Meneer De Haan, is that the pathologist will shortly establish a time of death. That’s always going to be an estimate, so we’ll never know the time to the minute. But it’s clear that he died somewhere between the presentation finishing at about ten o’clock this evening and about eleven o’clock when you made the call.’

  ‘Yes, but …’ said Peter, who was not only beginning to get angry now but also growing increasingly concerned by how easy it was to follow the detective’s logic. ‘You surely aren’t suggesting that you suspect F
ay and me of …’

  A smile appeared on Rijsbergen’s face that seemed to be an attempt to convey both fatherly reassurance and incredulity at Peter’s apparent naivety. ‘Don’t take it personally, Meneer De Haan,’ he said. ‘At this stage, as I’m sure you’ll understand, we can’t rule anything or anyone out.’

  ‘Shall I have them taken to the station?’ Van de Kooij cut in eagerly.

  ‘Just take it easy, Van de Kooij. No need to be hasty.’

  ‘I’m not a suspect, am I?’ Peter asked.

  ‘It would be a very devious murderer who called the police,’ Rijsbergen said, ‘but I’ve seen stranger things.’

  Peter didn’t find this answer particularly reassuring.

  ‘You and your girlfriend found the victim, so …’ He left the rest of the sentence hanging. ‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Meneer De Haan,’ he said wearily. ‘As I said, at this stage, we need to consider all possible theories.’

  Suspects? Us? Thoroughly unsettled, Peter shook his head. He could imagine how the idea would seem reasonable from a policeman’s point of view, but to him, the mere thought of it was too absurd for words.

  But not even I could say that I knew where Fay was for the entire evening.

  He heard movement on the staircase.

  Two men and two women came up the stairs, each carrying a briefcase-sized evidence kit. They wore baggy white crime scene suits made of a thin, papery material. All four had pulled the hoods of their suits over their heads and covered their mouths with face masks.

  ‘We’re going in,’ the woman at the front said curtly before pushing past them.

  ‘Hey, Dexter,’ Van de Kooij greeted the man at the back who raised his free hand in a salute.

  Rijsbergen sighed.

  ‘I think, perhaps, that it might be a good idea to do what my colleague suggested.’

  He looked at Peter almost triumphantly, like he was ready to slap the handcuffs around his wrists there and then.

  ‘What do you m-mean?’ Peter stammered.

  ‘I think we ought to have you and your girlfriend taken to the station. Separately.’

  Peter was dumbfounded.

  ‘Until then, the pair of you are not to speak to each other.’

  Chapter 2

  Earlier that day

  Despite being turned up to full blast, the space heater didn’t give off much heat. By the time Peter had managed to warm up one side of his body, the opposite side had already cooled down, and he had to twist around to warm it up again. And so he sat, uncomfortably turning this way and that while he tried to read a copy of Mayflower, Christopher Hilton’s comprehensive history of the Pilgrims. The situation hardly lent itself to quiet study, but Leiden’s American Pilgrim Museum was far from busy that afternoon, and there wasn’t much else for him to do.

  Peter had met the museum’s director Jeffrey Banks some time back, an American with a dark sense of humour and a slightly wry smile that seemed to play permanently on his lips. This veritable walking encyclopaedia had originally been an art historian, but now he delighted in showing visitors around the little museum that was really just two rooms: the ‘living room’ and the ‘kitchen’.

  In anticipation of the upcoming four-hundredth anniversary of the English Pilgrims’ journey from Leiden to America, Jeffrey wanted to expand the museum’s opening hours beyond its current limited schedule of 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons. Peter had volunteered to cover two afternoons a month, and that was why he now found himself sitting here, surrounded by original seventeenth-century furniture and other objects in the museum’s living room. Visitors to the modest little museum could almost literally step back into the 1600s – with the obvious exception of the space heater, of course.

  The only entrance to the living room was via a stable door that opened onto the street. The top half could be opened independently if someone rang the bell or knocked on the window.

  The room had a terracotta flagstone floor and was dominated by a large table covered in history books about the American Pilgrims. Several wicker chairs, all from the seventeenth century, were arranged around the table.

  In front of the window was another table stacked with more books, one of which had been left open. A chair had been pushed back from the table at an angle, making it look as though the book’s reader had just popped out on an errand and would be back at any moment.

  The sturdy, thick wooden beams on the ceiling and the original tiles that decorated the wall and box-bed all added to the rustic ambience.

  There were moments when Peter imagined that he really had travelled back in time here, especially at the end of the afternoons when the daylight faded. Then he could sit in complete silence and let his eyes wander around the dim room that was lit by three large candles.

  There had been a noticeable increase in the number of tourists streaming through the museum lately, more than half of them from the United States, the New World that the Pilgrims had set out for in 1620 after an eleven-year stay in Leiden.

  But there were very few of them in today.

  Peter de Haan, fifty-eight years old, lecturer in Archaeology and History, had – if you counted his time as a student – been at the University of Leiden for exactly forty years. Two years ago, he had missed out on a professorship after the sudden death of his boss, Arnold van Tiegem. The board had chosen another candidate over Peter, just as they had done years earlier when his old mentor Pieter Hoogers had retired. He knew that some people looked on him with a certain amount of pity because of this, but he had never actually been very interested in a professorship at all.

  However, after the snub, Peter had decided to work one day a week less, which gave him more time for volunteering, and, more importantly, time for the great love of his life.

  Fay Spežamor.

  He and Fay had met in the National Museum of Antiquities. Fay complemented her work as a lecturer in Greek and Latin Language and Culture at the university with the post of Curator of Roman and Etruscan Art at the museum. They had formed a friendship which, to their mutual surprise, had blossomed into romance.

  Fay had been widowed when her husband had died of cancer shortly after the birth of their daughter, Agapé. She was an extraordinarily vivacious woman in her early fifties who had an inexhaustible fascination for everything related to the classical era. Her shoulder-length hair was more grey than black, and she had a petite frame and unmistakably Slavic features with a narrow face and eyes that blazed fiercely whenever she was trying to make a point. Those same eyes could smoulder with love when she looked at Peter, a love that neither of them, after so many years of being alone, had ever expected to find.

  Peter shivered.

  Although spring had officially arrived almost a month ago, it was still cold, especially in this old building with its single-pane windows where the sun’s rays never quite reached.

  There was a knock on the window.

  Peter turned the heater down, tucked the ribbon marker into his book and put it aside. He stood up, and a twinge of pain in his shoulders made him realise how awkwardly he had been sitting in the wicker chair for the last hour. He hobbled stiffly over to the door and opened the top half.

  Willem Hogendoorn’s cheerful face beamed back at him.

  ‘A very good afternoon to you, Peter,’ he said.

  A small group of people was waiting behind him.

  Peter had got to know Willem quite well. He was a tall man, almost entirely bald except for a wispy ring of hair around his skull. His open face had the healthy glow of someone who spent much of his life outdoors. After his retirement, the former detective had devoted his time to providing guided walks around the city, and he regularly called in at the museum with his tour groups. He had devised the walks himself, and they covered a wide variety of themes. The Pilgrims tour started at the museum, and it was enjoying an increasing popularity.

  ‘Come on in,’ said Peter, opening the bottom half of the door.

  T
he visitors each paid the five-euro entrance fee, and Peter dropped the money into a tin on the table.

  The group of eight, including Peter and Willem, was really the maximum number of people that the tiny museum could accommodate – in such a small space, visitors soon found themselves bumping into each other.

  ‘This house, ladies and gentlemen,’ Willem said, launching straight into his talk, ‘is furnished as it would have been in the time of the Pilgrims. The building itself is from the fourteenth century and was built between 1365 and 1370. It’s been rebuilt and remodelled over the years, but everything you see here is authentic. Every chair, table and cabinet dates from the seventeenth century.’

  Willem took a couple of steps away from the group and stood next to the historical map of Leiden that was hanging on the wall above the desk.

  ‘In the sixteenth century, there were various Puritan groups in England who thought that the Anglican Church hadn’t taken the Reformation far enough. To put it simply, they felt that England wasn’t Protestant enough. The whole hierarchical system of bishops and archbishops was still in place with all its incense and robes and so on. So they wanted to separate themselves from all of that, become their own, autonomous religious community.’

  ‘That was in the time of King James, wasn’t it?’ one of the tourists asked.

  The slightly mousy woman spoke Dutch, but she had the typical accent of someone who had lived in an English-speaking country for a long time.

  In response to her question, the man next to her began to nod enthusiastically. He had a full, grey beard and an enormous belly upon which rested an expensive-looking camera that was hanging from a strap around his neck.

  ‘Exactly,’ Willem confirmed. ‘That was in the time of King James I. Or Koning Jacobus, as we called him in Dutch. Jacobus de Eerste, to be precise. After his accession to the throne in 1603, the situation in England became unbearable for the Puritans. King James was very much against the separation, and he began to persecute them.’

  ‘Puritans,’ the fat man said with a smile. ‘Music to my ears, that word.’