Rijsbergen started to write an email to a colleague arranging for the files to be sent in the same way that he had received the case files from Israel.
But then he stopped typing, mid-word, and rested his hands on the keyboard like a pianist about to play a concerto.
What had Abner said?
He re-opened the chat app and scrolled back to the point he was thinking of.
As you probably know, Jerusalem is an incredibly cosmopolitan city with many different nationalities. There was a colourful mix of people from all over the world in town that evening. Many of them didn’t even live here – they were just visiting as tourists, so they were impossible to trace. Everyone who was positively identified was removed from our list of suspects.
He saved the email as a draft and played the Unsolved Murder Mysteries episode for the fourth time, concentrating on the CCTV footage of people going into the Masonic Hall.
This time, instead of sitting close to the screen, he leaned back so that he could see the whole scene.
When the footage ended, he rewound it and played it again.
Then he watched it for the third time, and then a fourth, and then …
‘There!’ he exclaimed.
He leapt from his chair so excitedly that it toppled over and crashed onto the floor.
He had finally seen it.
He rushed out of his office and went to find Van de Kooij. He didn’t just want to show his colleague what he had seen. He wanted him to confirm that it was really there.
Van de Kooij looked surprised to see Rijsbergen barge into his office without knocking. He was in the middle of a phone call, but Rijsbergen pressed a button on the phone to break the connection.
‘What the—’
‘Come with me,’ Rijsbergen said simply, and then he turned around and left the room. Van de Kooij had little choice but to follow his superior officer.
Back in his office, Rijsbergen picked up his chair and invited Van de Kooij to sit next to him.
He rewound the video to the right place and held his index finger over the left mouse button so that he could pause it quickly.
Van de Kooij, who could see that something important was happening, stared intently at the screen.
‘There,’ Rijsbergen said.
They watched the people walking calmly towards the doors of the stately lodge building. They came to a standstill now and then whenever someone left the building, or they got stuck in a bottleneck, but the general atmosphere of the scene was relaxed, and no one appeared to be in a hurry.
Then, a group of people appeared on the right-hand side of the screen. They approached the doors.
‘One … two …’
Click.
Rijsbergen stopped the video.
‘What do we see here, Van de Kooij?’
Van de Kooij leaned forward and peered at the image. His eyes narrowed in concentration and then opened wide in surprise.
‘That’s …’
They looked at each other.
‘Well spotted,’ Rijsbergen said. ‘Then my eyes weren’t deceiving me.’
Chapter 30
Peter tried to give Tony what he hoped would pass for a grin, but it was about as effective as nodding and smiling when you realise that someone you’ve not been listening to has asked you a question.
Tony wasn’t going to let him off so easily.
‘Come on, Peter,’ he said, chuckling when he saw the look of alarm on Peter’s face. ‘You can do better than that, can’t you?’
‘Your expulsion?’
‘Who showed you around? Dan? Alexander? Walter?’
Peter nodded to confirm that it had been Walter.
‘Ah, Walter,’ Tony said, in a tone that suggested he was fondly remembering a close friendship. ‘Our librarian,’ he said, but he was sneering now. ‘I’m sure he told you all about my rather unedifying removal from the lodge.’
‘Walter wasn’t the one who brought it up,’ Peter said, taken aback by the audible cynicism in Tony’s voice.
He must be bitter about it.
‘But how could he have, Tony?’ Peter asked. ‘Walter wasn’t even aware of a connection between us. I asked him if he knew you.’ Peter waited for Tony to respond, but Tony only stared blankly back at him. ‘I have to say, I thought his response was quite hostile.’
Tony snorted scornfully.
They had arrived at the modern, wood-built craft centre, where demonstrations were given on how the Pilgrims might have made things using seventeenth-century techniques. Artisans in traditional dress were weaving baskets, baking bread, and firing pots, and making cloth on an upright loom.
‘And which version of the story did good old Walter tell you?’
‘Well,’ Peter said, ‘to be honest, he didn’t tell me very much. He just said, “I would suggest that you ask him that yourself.” But I thought: maybe it’s an unpleasant episode that Tony would prefer not to be reminded of. And it’s actually none of my business.’
‘You weren’t curious about it? Curious about why a nice guy like me was expelled and given a restraining order?’
‘A restraining order?’
‘Good God, Peter,’ Tony said. He was really incensed now. ‘You’re a worse actor than I thought. Walter must have told you. He was the driving force behind the whole thing. He even used a whole bunch of false accusations to file a suit against me.’
‘I could tell from his reaction that he wasn’t pleased when he found out that I knew you, yes. He didn’t mention the restraining order, but he didn’t want to talk about it at all.’
‘So?’
‘So what?’
‘Are you going to ask me about it or what?’ Tony looked genuinely annoyed.
What does he want from me?
‘Listen, Tony,’ Peter said. ‘If you really want to tell me about it, I’m not going to try to stop you.’
Tony seemed to calm down.
They entered a room where two beekeepers stood at a long table laid out with beekeeping equipment. Arranged along the wall behind them were wickerwork hives and what looked like old-fashioned beekeeping suits.
Tony and Peter paused for a moment next to a long cabinet that was just a few centimetres wide and had glass on both sides. They could see a colony of bees inside, industriously building combs and taking care of their young. A transparent tube leading from the cabinet to the wall allowed the bees to go outside to find food. A window that looked out onto the grounds revealed three more cabinets outside with clouds of bees swarming around them.
‘I’m still proud of what I did. No regrets,’ Tony said. He looked directly at Peter like he wanted to make sure that he was listening. ‘Three years ago, our chairman, Joseph Nun died. He was an old man, and he passed away after a short illness. It could be said that an illustrious branch of the American family tree died with him. His line went all the way back to one of the first settlers, Thomas Nunn who settled in Virginia in 1635. No family, didn’t have another soul on earth. The brotherhood was his family, his life. Some of his Masonic brothers arranged the funeral and took care of everything else that needed to be done. I asked them if I could speak at the ceremony. And what I said didn’t go down well, to put it mildly.’
‘What on earth did you say?’ Peter asked aghast.
Tony smiled. ‘The truth and nothing but the truth. Good riddance, that was the gist of my message. Look, Peter …’ Tony put his hand on Peter’s arm as if he was trying to reassure him, but he appeared to be asking for understanding too. ‘I don’t know how much you know about the Freemasons. I think this was something we discussed in Leiden. There was all that talk about finding your own way, giving your own meanings to the symbols and your interpretation of them being just as valid as anyone else’s, explaining all the traditional stories in an allegorical way. But what sort of society would we have if everyone was just allowed to interpret its history for themselves?’
He looked at Peter earnestly, and then, at last, he removed his han
d from his arm.
‘History, Peter, factual, verifiable history … Historical facts. Just like the Puritan exodus from England. There’s nothing mythological about that either! There are sources, written sources, oral histories that have been handed down. Or let’s take that other exodus as an example. There was a real man called Moses who did grow up in the Egyptian court, who did lead his people out of Egypt, who did wander through the desert for forty years, who did enter the promised land, and those battles did take place. All those things … Archaeology, history, geology … They all prove the veracity of these stories. And what do these stories do, Peter?’
He didn’t wait for an answer.
‘You’re a historian. You should know this better than anyone. Stories bring people together, stories give people a common bond, and a shared history gives a community a communal past. A shared view of that past creates unity. What happens if you give everyone the freedom to decide for themselves what a story means? Look at the Protestants. At one time, we only had the Catholic Church. One leader, one interpretation. As an individual Catholic, you sometimes had to compromise, set aside your individuality for the benefit of the community, for something more significant than you could ever be, something that would live on after your death. A community that would still be there long after you were gone. But then look at the Protestants, they all have their own different interpretations … What has that led to? They’ve got as many different denominations as they have opinions. Not even God Himself can keep track of all their churches! If you disagree with your pastor, well, off you go! Just start your own church. Until eventually, everyone has their own uniquely individual truth, and everyone is alone with their own story, lonely and disconnected from everyone else. But in a real community …’
Tony pointed at the beehive.
‘Look, take these bees,’ he said. ‘I’ve been here a few times, so I know a bit about them now. Listen, each bee lives for six, maybe eight weeks. Her tasks are set out for her from her first day to her last. First, she cleans and polishes the cells to prepare them for eggs. Then, from day three to about day twelve, she feeds the older larvae. After that, she ventures outside for some practice flights … Now she can produce honey and help to build the combs. By about day seventeen, her venom glands are well developed, and she becomes a guard bee. On day twenty-one, she starts gathering food for the colony, and she’ll do that until the day she leaves the hive and never comes back … Bees don’t sleep, so for those six to eight weeks, she’s entirely devoted to the colony. I think that’s incredible. The bee colony moves as one, feeds itself as one, and reproduces as one. None of them can survive for long without their broodmates. And that’s what it’s all about for me: it’s the colony that reproduces, not the individual bee. So it’s not about you, but about your community. Sometimes you have to put your own needs and desires aside for its benefit. Isn’t that what Christ teaches us? You must know the story about his disciples fighting among themselves about which of them is the most important. Jesus beckons a little child over to him, and then he says to the disciples: “Whoever welcomes this child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me; for the least among all of you is the greatest.” It’s about making yourself less important, being humble.’
Peter looked at an enormous laminated poster on the wall. Thick arrows arranged in a circle illustrated the life cycle of a honeybee, just as Tony had described it.
‘But what did Joseph Nun have to do with all of this?’
‘In my opinion, he was the biggest exponent of the direction our lodge was taking. So, at his funeral, I said that we were better off without him. I said that I hoped that we could return to a tradition of being connected by stories again, instead of being divided by so many different interpretations of them.’
‘Then what on earth possessed you to join the Freemasons?’ Peter asked. ‘You must know that the spirit that guides the Masons is precisely that of freedom, of finding personal meaning. Why didn’t you just join a traditional church?’
‘I’m a man with a message, Peter,’ Tony said in a tone that made clear that he no longer wanted to discuss the subject. ‘There’s no role for me in a traditional church, if you see what I mean. I’m a man on a mission.’
Actually, I don’t really see what he means, Peter thought.
It reminded him of the conscious choice that some gay people made to remain – or even become – members of a church that rejected homosexuality so that they could fight the battle for acceptance from within.
‘But you’re not a Freemason any more,’ he said.
‘I still am a Freemason!’ Tony said, sounding indignant again. ‘A Freemason without a lodge.’
‘A rebel without a cause.’
‘Yes, something like that.’
‘But what about the restraining order?’
‘As soon as I’d finished my talk, they ejected me from the building where the service was being held. I have to tell you, it was pretty intimidating.’
Peter found that difficult to imagine, considering that Tony was about two metres tall.
‘There must have been about eight of them all crowded around me. The second I got down from the podium, they escorted me to the exit. I went back to the meetings many times to try to put things right. Until Walter went to a judge and accused me of all sorts of things. The judge believed him. And that’s how I got the restraining order.’
‘And the threats that were made to the Freemasons? The ones you told me about when you were in Leiden?’
‘Threats? Did I say that? I don’t recall saying anything about any threats, if I’m honest, Peter. But anyway …’
What a strange man, Peter thought. He really does have issues …
Tony turned around, signalling that as far as he was concerned, the conversation about it was over.
I’ve probably missed my chance to ask him about the Jerusalem murders and the two missing Masons in Boston too.
‘Come on. We’ll go to the village,’ Tony said breezily. ‘You’re going to find it very interesting.’
They walked into the English village that lay at the heart of Plimoth Plantation. They climbed the stairs to the top of the fort on the hill so that they could look out over the entire settlement. There were about fifteen houses built within a diamond-shaped enclosure that sloped gently down to the Atlantic Ocean.
The village had been reconstructed as it would have appeared in 1627, seven years after the first Pilgrims landed. The houses had all been built facing the street, and kitchen gardens and crops had been planted behind them.
Once they were back downstairs, they explored the village, visiting the various houses that had been set up like the homes that the Pilgrims would have lived in, with the bedroom, kitchen and living room all in one.
There was a ‘Leiden house’, full of things that were unmistakably Hollands. An information board – DUTCH OBJECTS IN THE ENGLISH VILLAGE – gave brief descriptions of the original utensils in the house. They included the ubiquitous Delft blue, a milk jug, glasses, tobacco pipes, a foot stove and chairs with triangular seats, ‘as seen in seventeenth-century paintings by artists like Jan Steen’.
A sign titled LIFE IN LEIDEN told the story of the Pilgrims’ time in the Netherlands.
In the eleven years before the Mayflower’s voyage in 1620, the Separatists lived in the Dutch city of Leiden where they were able to worship in safety. However, life in a foreign country was not without its challenges. The work available to immigrants paid meagre wages, and the standard of living was low. A twelve-year truce between Holland and Spain was due to expire in 1621, threatening a new outbreak of war in the Netherlands. Many of the Separatists were troubled by the hardships endured by their children, who were forced to do backbreaking work. Although living in exile and no longer part of the Church of England, the Separatists wished to retain their English customs. Some young people were assimilating into Dutch culture, leaving their parents and congregation profoundly
troubled. Almost half of the Mayflower’s passengers lived in Holland before leaving for America, and many of the children had lived in Leiden for most of their lives. It can be very difficult to escape the influence of an adopted home.
It gives all the usual reasons, Peter thought. But yet again, there’s no mention of why half of the original group ended up deciding to stay behind in Leiden. And what about the split that’s described in the manuscript Piet van Vliet found? You never come across it in the official history, and there’s no reference to it here either.
They spent more than two hours in the village listening to the actors who were all impressively immersed in their roles, complete with convincing English accents.
They strolled back up the hill, past the fort, and then on to the large gift shop in the craft centre.
Peter bought a few postcards to remind him of his visit. The store stocked a huge number of books, as well as DVDs, clothing, food and wooden utensils.
He was surprised to find that they also sold stroopwafels and liquorice in their original Dutch packaging. He bought a packet of each to give to Judith, comfort food that would remind her of home. He put them in his backpack, which he could feel had left a large, damp, patch of sweat on the back of his shirt.
They ate in the restaurant in the visitor centre before taking the bus back to Plymouth village. They got off at a stop on the shoreline, where large colonial houses lined the road.
‘We’ll visit Plymouth Rock first,’ Tony said.
He strode energetically off in the direction of something that looked like a Doric temple, but with its diminutive dimensions of about ten metres by five was merely a miniature version of one. It stood on a wharf on the waterfront. Peter could see a small marina in the distance.
The text on a sign next to the little temple read:
PLYMOUTH ROCK
LANDING PLACE OF THE
PILGRIMS
1620
Commonwealth of Massachusetts
Once they were inside the temple, Peter realised that it was a portico that had been built over a deep, rectangular pit, and at the bottom, on sand as neatly raked as a Japanese Zen garden, was a large boulder with the year 1620 carved into it.
The Pilgrim Conspiracy Page 32