‘Did he report it?’ Van de Kooij asked.
‘Oh, there was no point. He wouldn’t have been able to identify the one who did it anyway. Those boys thought they were supporting their Palestinian brothers by spitting in my father’s face. It’s just disgusting.’
‘And that’s why you—’ Rijsbergen began, but she didn’t give him the chance to finish.
Rachel’s cheeks were flushed now. ‘It’s crazy, isn’t it, that my dad is scared to walk down the street wearing his kippah? When was the war? Seventy years ago? And now we’re all afraid again. I go to the synagogue too, but our community has almost disappeared here in Leiden. We even have to have Jewish men from The Hague come to our prayer services so that we have enough for the minyan.’
‘Minyan?’ Van de Kooij asked.
‘Minyan,’ Rachel repeated. ‘There have to be at least ten men, a minyan, to hold a prayer service in a synagogue. We rarely manage that in Leiden, now. The Jewish community never really recovered after the Second World War. Almost all the Jews in Leiden were deported and killed. They took all the children from the Jewish orphanage, children who had fled here from Germany …’
‘But now—’ Rijsbergen began, but again, he wasn’t given a chance to finish his sentence.
‘My parents were so tired of it, and so was I. I want to live where I can hold my head high, where I can practise my faith, where I can belong to a community, where I can be free! A land where my father can walk down the street wearing his kippah without being scared that someone will spit in his face. Our synagogue is watched by CCTV cameras twenty-four/seven, and there’s bullet-proof glass on the windows. For goodness sake, what sort of times are we living in?’
Rijsbergen wasn’t sure what to say. ‘I understand how awful that must be,’ he decided to reply. ‘I wish you success, Rachel, and good luck, too. I’m sure it will be good to spread your wings and move on.’
Rachel had given them a melancholy smile when they left.
The neighbours hadn’t been able to tell them anything helpful, nor had the apartment’s landlord. Some of the shopkeepers in the stores below the apartment had recognised Yona’s face but knew nothing about him. The baker had told them that he often brought a loaf of bread and a small carton of milk from him, but that was as far as their interactions had gone.
Nobody seemed to have known the young man, and nobody appeared to have missed him after his death. He had moved through Leiden like a ghost.
Welcome to the twenty-first century, Rijsbergen thought bitterly. We’re connected to the rest of the world twenty-four hours a day, but we don’t know our own neighbours. Yona could have been missing for months … As long as his rent was paid on time, who would have cared?
Weeks after his murder, not a single witness had come forward. Apparently, not one person had seen any unusual activity on the wharves along the Leiden canals.
The Greek embassy had informed them that Yona had been an orphan with no family at all. There were no uncles, aunts, nephews or cousins. It looked like not a single soul had really known him except, perhaps, Coen Zoutman, if the tattoo they had in common was anything to go by. But the nature of their relationship still wasn’t clear at all.
Van de Kooij had taken it upon himself to pay a visit to the synagogue on the Levendaal. They did have CCTV footage from the day of the murder, but there was nothing to see on it but empty back gardens.
Although he understood the chief superintendent’s decision – and also respected it, of course – it frustrated Rijsbergen in a way that he couldn’t put into words.
It was half-past ten, a good time to go to sleep. His wife Corinne had already gone upstairs and was reading in bed.
He had been sitting lost in thought for a while when the doorbell rang.
Before he had a chance to get up, Corinne called down the stairs, ‘Did you hear that?’
Nobody ever comes to the door this late at night, Rijsbergen thought as he made his way to the front door. They don’t even deliver parcels after ten o’clock.
He moved the curtain at the kitchen window aside to see who it was.
Van de Kooij. He was hopping impatiently from foot to foot and staring at the door. He reached out to ring the bell again.
Rijsbergen rushed over to the front door, but he was too late to prevent the piercing sound of the bell echoing through the hall a second time.
Corrine was standing at the top of the stairs. ‘Who can that be at this time of night?’ she asked anxiously. Her greatest fear was that, one day, one of the criminals her husband had arrested would turn up to exact their revenge.
‘It’s just Van de Kooij!’ he called back to her. ‘Nothing to worry about. Go to sleep, my love. I’ll be up shortly.’ Without waiting for her reply, he opened the door.
‘I think I’ve found something,’ Van de Kooij blurted out, ignoring the usual pleasantries.
‘Something to do with Zoutman?’
‘Yes, and Falaina,’ he replied. Van de Kooij’s neck was blotched red with excitement. ‘Can I come in?’
‘Uh … Yes, all right, but …’ Rijsbergen opened the door wide and let his colleague in. As Van de Kooij brushed past him, Rijsbergen noticed the scent of Old Spice aftershave, something he had once associated with old men, but which was now inextricably linked to his partner.
He allowed Van de Kooij to walk ahead of him into the living room. He remembered the half-empty bottle of whisky and the glass next to it and felt ambushed, like an alcoholic getting a surprise visit from his AA buddy.
‘Would you like a drink?’ he asked as casually as he could manage. Van de Kooij declined, apparently too wound up to drink anything.
‘So what was so urgent that it couldn’t wait until tomorrow?’ Rijsbergen asked when they had both sat down.
‘I’ll tell you, but first I want to show it to you,’ Van de Kooij said. ‘Have you got a computer down here?’
Rijsbergen reached over to the coffee table and took a laptop out of the large drawer underneath it. ‘Here,’ he said.
Van de Kooij opened the laptop, asked for the password, entered it and immediately started typing. He pressed the mouse button a few times, and then he picked up the laptop and brought it over to the sofa. He sat down so close to Rijsbergen that their thighs squashed against each other.
Rijsbergen edged away.
‘There,’ said Van de Kooij. ‘Look at that.’
He clicked on a small triangle in the bottom left corner of the page, and the frozen image on the screen came to life.
Rijsbergen glanced at the words at the top of the screen.
Unsolved Murder Mysteries. Van de Kooij had selected an episode of one of the many Discovery Channel shows that he watched almost every night.
‘Why are we watching—’
‘Just watch,’ Van de Kooij said, interrupting him with what sounded like both impatience and triumph.
The programme began with an aerial view of a city. Rijsbergen recognised it as Jerusalem from the gleaming golden cupola on the Dome of the Rock.
The camera soared over the Eternal City as though it was attached to a mighty eagle. The image zoomed in ever closer as an off-screen narrator delivered a typically American voiceover, pausing for dramatic effect on anything that even slightly hinted at excitement or intrigue.
‘Four years ago … The eternal city of Jerusalem – the city where Jesus Christ once walked the earth … The city of the biblical kings Saul, David and Solomon was rocked by a series of brutal murders … that to this day, have never been solved … Will they ever be?’
A rapid series of images followed in which ancient symbols flashed on the screen, alternating with flickering glimpses of someone being beaten on the head with a gavel, an expanding pool of blood on the floor, slamming doors and flickering candles … Gregorian chants could be heard in the background.
Americans were masters in the creation of suspense, that much was clear.
For the next twenty-five minutes, Rijsbergen
watched, mesmerised, as the four-year-old case of the brutal murders of two men in Jerusalem unfolded before him. The murderer had never been found.
Both men’s heads had been pulverised with a Masonic gavel.
Both men had been single, with no other family … childless and the last in their family lines.
Both men had had a patch of skin, the size of a dime, about a centimetre-and-a-half across, removed from between their left breast and their armpit.
And both of them had been Freemasons.
Chapter 27
Peter turned around and set off for Boston Masonic Hall on Tremont Street. He made his way through Boston Common, passed Frog Pond on his left, and after a fifteen-minute walk, he reached the end of the park.
From here, he could already read the words inscribed on the building.
GRAND LODGE OF FREEMASONS IN MASSACHUSETTS
Below this, four large mosaics filled the spaces where windows must once have been. The murals depicted the sun, a square and compasses, a trowel, and pillars set against a background of elongated geometric shapes in different shades of blue.
The panel furthest to the right was taken up by the grand lodge’s seal which featured two beavers on either side of a coat of arms. At the top was a dove with an olive branch in its beak, and below, 1733, the year the lodge was established, making it one of the oldest in the world. Above the date was a broad, scrolling ribbon with the motto: FOLLOW REASON.
Use your intellect …
Peter went inside. The handles on the front door were in the form of the Freemasonry symbol: a large, gold-coloured square and compasses with a ‘G’ in the middle. The seal with the two beavers that he had seen outside was repeated in a mosaic on the lobby’s floor.
He reported to the uniformed security guard who ticked off Peter’s name on a visitors’ list and picked up the phone to announce his arrival.
‘You can take the elevator to the second floor,’ the man said and gave Peter a name badge, as though he was attending a conference.
When he stepped out of the lift, he was met by a rather stocky, moustachioed man with a long lock of hair combed over his bald pate.
‘Mr De Haan!’ the man said, greeting him like an old friend. ‘Or may I call you Peter?’ He smiled broadly, radiating the typically American positivity that Peter had encountered in so many people on his trip.
‘Of course,’ Peter replied.
They shook hands.
The man introduced himself. ‘Walter L. Lunt. Come in, come in,’ he beckoned.
He took Peter into a library where the walls were lined with bookcases that reached the ceiling. In the middle of the room were smaller bookcases at chest height. A wide variety of objects was displayed on top of them: photographs, books, certificates, building plans …
‘I understand you’re not a Freemason yourself?’ Walter asked.
‘No, but I’m very interested in Freemasonry,’ Peter replied. ‘My girlfriend is a member of a co-Masonic lodge where I live, in Leiden. When I told her that I was coming to Boston, she asked if I would visit the grand lodge. And take some photos for her if that was allowed.’
‘Yes, yes, of course. No problem at all.’
Walter led Peter over to a display about the history of the Boston lodges. There were lots of black and white photos of men staring into the lens with sober expressions, photographs of the building itself and its predecessors, various certificates, and books opened at pertinent pages. Walter gave Peter a potted history of Freemasonry in the United States, describing how Freemasons had held meetings at the beginning of the eighteenth century even before they had been officially recognised and registered by the ‘headquarters’ in London. They had successfully petitioned the grand lodge in England for authorisation to become a grand lodge themselves and set up other lodges.
‘I come from an evangelical background myself, Peter,’ Walter said. ‘I’ve struggled to break free from it for many years. The times we live in … I think it’s more important than ever that we live according to our motto, “Follow Reason”. We increasingly see the development of a bunker mentality among groups here in the USA. They’re entrenched in the belief that they’re right, clinging onto ideas that go back to their grandparents’ time. For many people, the fact that an idea has been around for a long time is enough proof of its validity. But we Masons believe that we should test all things and hold fast to what is good. I’d be worried if I was still clinging onto the ideas I have now in ten years!’
They left the library and entered a long corridor. Doors on either side led to two enormous rooms, one even more opulent than the other. Peter felt like he had stepped back in time and that, at any moment, an eighteenth-century Freemason in full regalia might walk into the room.
Walter proudly pointed out various details like the walls which, at first glance, appeared to have been wallpapered, but which had in fact been meticulously painted. The intricate patterns had been painstakingly applied by hand.
‘Several lodges meet in this building,’ Walter explained in the third room after they had taken the stairs up to the next floor. ‘I’m a member of the lodge that meets in this room.’
It was an extraordinarily stylish space. The Worshipful Master’s tall, ornately carved dark wooden chair was flanked by two lower, but equally beautifully carved, seats. On the wall behind them was a golden letter ‘G’, surrounded by rays of sunlight. The semi-circular set of steps that led to the chairs looked like the rice paddy terraces on an Indonesian mountain.
One of the long walls was decorated with four paintings. Walter explained that they were allegorical representations of Solomon’s Temple.
Each of the four paintings depicted the copper pillars of Boaz and Jachin. Boaz was one of the main characters in the Book of Ruth in the Old Testament, and Jachin was the first high priest of Solomon’s Temple. The indomitable-looking pillars stood on a square in front of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, and the viewer looked through them onto the Holy of Holies.
On the opposite wall were paintings of men who were obviously previous chairmen of the lodge.
‘This is where we perform the rituals of our Craft,’ Walter said.
He took a seat on one of the chairs that had been arranged just as they were in the Masonic Hall on the Steenschuur with their backs to the wall so that everyone faced the large, open space in the middle of the room.
The relaxed way in which Walter sat down suggested that he was settling in to tell a long story.
‘Sometimes, we refer to this room as a temple. That makes sense, of course, when we realise that we’re endeavouring to work on the symbolic Temple of Humanity. Our temple here is an allegorical representation of King Solomon’s Temple. That’s why these paintings of Solomon are displayed so prominently. The way we set the temple up depends on which degree the lodge is working in. We have a meeting tonight where we’ll be using the symbols for the first degree, Entered Apprentice. What you see here is only a partial layout, by the way. Our work in this degree involves other tools, but we only bring them out when we’re about to use them.’
Peter decided to sit down too, and just then, he noticed that the floor here had been laid with large, alternating black and white tiles, just like the temple in Leiden.
Walter looked at Peter expectantly in a way that suggested that he was waiting for Peter to ask him a good question.
Is Walter aware of what’s happened in Leiden, Peter wondered. Should I ask him about it later?
‘As well as the Three Great Lights, we have the Three Lesser Lights,’ said Walter, impassively continuing his monologue.
His tone gave away the fact that he had given this talk many times before. Even the way he paused at certain moments seemed to be part of his performance.
‘And we wear these …’ he picked up an apron and a pair of gloves and gave them to Peter ‘… whenever we labour here together. How the apron is worn corresponds with the degree the member has achieved. An Entered Apprentice wears it in a
different way to a Fellowcraft or Master. We tie the apron around our middle, and it symbolically separates the higher and lower parts of our natures. The white gloves signify that we want the work of our hands to be pure and unsullied.’
Peter handed the apron and gloves back.
‘And finally,’ Walter said, winding up his presentation, ‘I’d like to draw your attention to the pattern of black and white squares on the floor. The chequerboard floor is sometimes called the mosaic pavement. This floor could represent the continuous chequered path of our lives in which opposites – good and evil, light and darkness, positive and negative and so on – exist alongside each other or combined with each other. It’s also a floor that doesn’t allow us to easily draw clear dividing lines. A floor, then, that forces us to see nuances, makes us come to the realisation that dividing the world into simplified boxes is probably not going to help any of us …’
Walter walked over to the edge of the floor.
‘Around the outside of this challenging, confrontational and thought-provoking floor,’ he said, pointing with his finger to make sure that Peter’s attention was drawn to the detail, ‘is a tessellated border with a toothed pattern. We Masons promise each other that everything we do, say and share will remain within this border, which is to say that we place mutual trust in each other, and we never betray that trust. Why? Not because we want to be part of a secret society but because we need to feel that we have a place where we can become – and be – our true selves. A sanctuary for self-reflection where we can be certain that whatever we share will stay inside this place so that we can be open with ourselves and with each other.’
Walter looked at Peter, visibly pleased with himself for having delivered yet another successful tour that covered all the core elements of Freemasonry.
They walked through the rest of the building, which appeared to contain several halls for other lodges, each decorated in a different way.
The Pilgrim Conspiracy Page 27