‘And what were you thinking then, Herman?’ Rijsbergen asked. ‘What was going on in your head?’
‘Can I be frank with you?’
‘This would be the time to do just that, Herman.’
‘To be very honest, I felt relief.’ Van der Lede’s face flushed pink. ‘This is the man who saw to it that Jenny could never be chairwoman. If you knew how much that hurt her! I don’t know how often I’ve had to hear about it, about how frustrating it was for her. Yet another man in the chair, and in a co-Masonic lodge! As if that wasn’t already bad enough, it was someone whose ideas about interpreting the symbols and the stories and everything else that Jenny told you about were far too liberal. I saw him lying there, and I thought: now the way is clear for Jenny. Sorry, but that’s what I thought. I backed away from his body, but I kept looking at him, and then …’ he looked at Rijsbergen and Van de Kooij in turn, as if he was telling an exciting story to his mates in the pub.
Rijsbergen slammed his hand down hard on the table. ‘Come on!’ he bellowed. ‘We don’t have time for this!’
‘I heard footsteps behind me, someone leaving the room. They were very quiet, but I definitely heard footsteps. I stood there for about ten, maybe fifteen seconds until I heard the function room door close. I didn’t turn around, partly because I was scared and partly because I thought: what you don’t know can’t hurt you … Then I went downstairs, got my coat, got on my bike and went home. Peter de Haan and Fay Spežamor must have gone upstairs shortly afterwards.’
‘He’s not off the hook yet,’ Van de Kooij said to Rijsbergen.
Rijsbergen nodded. ‘Why didn’t you tell us about this weeks ago?’ he asked. ‘My colleague here is right. This doesn’t let you off the hook – you still had the opportunity to murder Zoutman, and you had a motive as well. So why did you stay silent for so long?’
Van der Lede’s bottom lip trembled. His face contorted into the ugly grimace of someone trying very hard not to cry. But he couldn’t stop himself. ‘I was so ashamed!’ he managed to blubber before he lost his resolve and gave into uncontrollable sobbing.
All traces of his cool indifference and good-riddance-to-bad-rubbish attitude had vanished.
The two detectives gave him time to pull himself together.
He wiped his teary eyes and runny nose on his shirt sleeve and then spoke again. ‘I was just so terribly ashamed,’ he said. ‘And I’m still ashamed. Because his death made me happy. Because I didn’t have the courage to turn around. Because I didn’t tell anyone about it afterwards. Because innocent people might have been arrested for it. Because I obstructed the case … and it was all because of the stupid chairmanship …’ He started to cry again.
Rijsbergen heaved a deep sigh.
All the time we’ve lost … The investigation being put on the back burner after he was arrested … On the other hand, the investigation had stalled anyway. It only got moving again because Van de Kooij discovered the Jerusalem connection.
‘Well,’ Rijsbergen said, ‘even if you are telling us the truth, we can’t let you go now, as I’m sure you’ll understand. But that’s no longer up to us. Someone else will have to make that decision. They’ll also be looking into what sort of consequences you’ll be facing for withholding such crucial information.’
Van der Lede buried his face in his hands.
Rijsbergen and Van de Kooij got up and left the room. The guard was still standing outside.
‘What do you think?’ Van de Kooij asked when they were back in the car park.
‘I think it all happened just the way he says,’ Rijsbergen said. ‘What a fool … He’s never been to Jerusalem, he says. We’ll have to see if that checks out. But if he’s right, and he did hear someone leave the temple and go downstairs to the function room, it leaves us with a much smaller pool of suspects. There were only about twenty-five, possibly thirty people left at the end of the evening, and we have all of their names.’
‘And it means that De Haan and Spežamor probably did go upstairs shortly afterwards and find the body.’
They drove back to Leiden.
‘I think it would be a good idea to contact the Freemasons in Boston,’ Van de Kooij said. ‘Peter de Haan took a tour of their building, didn’t he? They might be able to tell us more about Vanderhoop.’
‘I was already planning to,’ Rijsbergen lied.
When he turned on his computer back in his office, he saw that he had a message from his contact in the Boston Police Department.
Dear Inspector Rijsbergen,
We briefly interviewed Mr De Haan at Logan airport, but unfortunately, he was unable to provide any further information about Mr Vanderhoop’s intended plans after they left Pilgrim Hall Museum. Matters have been complicated by the fact that Mr Vanderhoop appears to have vanished into thin air. The last sighting of him was 24 hours ago. So it looks like we might have a missing person case on our hands. He has a boat moored in Boston, The Pilgrim, but we have been able to confirm that it has not left its usual berth. A motorboat called Sea Breeze was reported stolen from Plymouth Harbor, but we are so far unaware of a potential connection to our case. No reports have been made of Tony’s disappearance. It would appear that nobody is missing him – he is unmarried, has no brothers or sisters and both parents are deceased. There is no other family. We are stepping up our efforts to find him.
We’ll keep in touch.
Inspector Luigi D’Amico
Rijsbergen replied with a short email thanking Inspector D’Amico for keeping him informed. Then, he entered the search terms ‘Freemasons’ and ‘Boston’ into Google. The top search result was precisely what he was looking for: massfreemasonry.org.
Rijsbergen clicked on the ‘Contact Us’ link, and a form appeared. But with those things, you never knew where your message would end up and how long it would be before you got an answer. There was a tiny search box at the top of the page. He typed in ‘Walter Lunt’, the name of the man Peter de Haan had mentioned in his email. This produced a few results, mostly the minutes of the lodge meetings in which Lunt had been involved.
Then, he noticed a telephone number, with the words ‘within MA’ after it in brackets, meaning that it could only be called from numbers within the state of Massachusetts. It took him and Van de Kooij a while to work out how to call the number from the Netherlands, but once they knew how, they managed to get Walter Lunt on the line surprisingly quickly.
As a librarian, he was, of course, likely to be somewhat tied to his place of work and quite easy to find.
‘Walter Lunt speaking.’
In a few short sentences, Rijsbergen explained who he was, that he had been given his name by Peter de Haan, and his reason for calling. When he mentioned Tony Vanderhoop, Rijsbergen could almost feel the frostiness coming through the wires from the other side of the ocean.
Walter Lunt said that he would only be prepared to talk to Rijsbergen after he had sent him an email with his own telephone number, his police identification number and the name, address and telephone number of his contact person in the Boston Police.
Rijsbergen had no choice but to oblige him. He hung up and immediately sent Lunt an email with all the information he had asked for.
Within seconds, he received a reply from Lunt informing him that he would check the details and get back to him.
‘Pfff,’ was all Van de Kooij could say.
‘Indeed,’ Rijsbergen said. ‘He, uh … He wants to make sure it’s safe to talk to us, apparently.’
While they waited for him to respond, Rijsbergen googled ‘Walter Lunt’ and found out that he was an author who wrote science fiction and thrillers about secret societies and unsolved mysteries.
His most recent book, A Song in Stone, was about ‘the mystery of Rosslyn Chapel and the demise of the Knights Templar’.
‘Ah,’ Rijsbergen said. ‘He’s a thriller writer. That explains it. Maybe he thinks he’s somehow got himself mixed up in one of the conspiracies that he writes about.
’ He clicked on some of the links in the search results.
Ten or so minutes later, the phone rang, making Rijsbergen jump. He turned the speaker on so that Van de Kooij could listen in.
‘This is Walter Lunt,’ the voice on the other end of the line said, sounding much friendlier now. ‘I understand that you would like to ask me some questions.’
‘That’s correct, Mr Lunt.’
‘Call me Walter.’
‘Excellent, thank you. My name is Willem Rijsbergen.’
‘A pleasure to make your acquaintance. How can I help you?’
‘As I told you earlier, we’re investigating two murders that took place about a month and a half ago in Leiden. Two local Freemasons were murdered within a very short space of time. One of them was an older man, a lodge chairman, and the other was a younger man.’
‘Yes, Peter told me about it. Did he also tell you that two members of our lodge have gone missing?’
‘Yes, we’re aware of that case. It’s all very troubling.’
‘It certainly is,’ Walter said. ‘I’ve already called the Boston Police to inform them of the cases in Jerusalem and Leiden. At the moment, they don’t have any reason to suspect foul play in Sam and George’s disappearance, but it is remarkable that all three cases concern a chairman and his young pupil.’
‘The obvious conclusion would be that the three cases are connected in some way.’
‘I would be inclined to think so too, yes. But right now, all we can do is wait.’
‘The Boston Police have promised to keep me informed of any developments.’
‘Peter drew a picture of a symbol and asked me if I recognised it. I do have some knowledge of symbols, but I can’t make anything of this one, I’m afraid.’
‘That’s quite all right. That’s not actually what I wanted to speak to you about. I was calling about some similar murders in Jerusalem.’
‘All I know about that,’ Walter said, ‘is that two of our brothers were killed there. Needless to say, I don’t know the details of any other similarities. We assumed that you would be aware of those.’
‘We are now, yes,’ Rijsbergen said. ‘But Tony Vanderhoop’s name came up during our investigation, and that led us to you. We’ve found out that Tony Vanderhoop was in Jerusalem at the time of the murders there.’
‘That’s correct. I was with him.’
‘You were there too?’
‘Yes. That’s not a secret. We were part of a small delegation visiting our brothers there. We travelled quite extensively in Israel.’
Rijsbergen digested this new information. ‘But the point is,’ he said, growing slightly nervous under the watchful eyes of Van de Kooij who had been staring at him throughout the entire call. ‘that Tony Vanderhoop was also visiting Leiden with a delegation when the murders were carried out here.’
‘Yes, that is rather curious.’
‘The police in Boston are looking for him, but there’s been no sign of him since yesterday afternoon.’
‘Would you like me to make some enquiries in my network?’
‘If you would, yes. Thank you. But I was hoping that you could tell me more about Tony. Was he a member of your lodge?’
‘He was a member, yes,’ Walter said. ‘But he was expelled three years ago. He’s no longer a Freemason.’
‘Expelled?’
‘Yes, expelled. What can I say? Vanderhoop is a rude … Actually, it might be best if I don’t finish that sentence.’
‘So what happened?’
‘That’s a very long story and also a very short one.’
‘Then tell me the short version.’
Walter let out a mirthless laugh. ‘Tony spoke at our chairman Joseph Nun’s funeral. He’d died of cancer … It was dreadful. Tony gave the most appallingly inappropriate speech. He told us how fortunate we were that our chairman had passed because it gave us the opportunity to go in a new direction and other such nonsense. He said that the stories and symbols should bring people together rather than divide them, which is what he felt would happen if people were allowed to find their own meanings in them.’
‘Wow. That’s—’
‘He didn’t get to finish his speech. Let’s just say that a few people stopped him and escorted him outside. Afterwards, he came to the lodge on numerous occasions, trying to seek redress. That became very unpleasant. Intimidating, even. I reported him to the police, and it went to court, which resulted in a restraining order.’
‘Wow.’
‘You know, people like Tony Vanderhoop have no place in our fraternity. The whole purpose of our meeting together is that we can exchange views with each other, openly and freely. Someone gives a lecture, and we discuss it. Nothing is set in stone, and we don’t judge anyone whose interpretation deviates from the one that’s generally accepted. Although “deviate” isn’t really the right word because we’re non-dogmatic. We have no orthodox interpretations, so there’s nothing to deviate from. Heterodoxy, holding unorthodox opinions, can only be possible when there’s a single interpretation imposed by a higher authority, and it’s seen as the only correct interpretation by the entire organisation. So if one’s opinion differed from that, then it would be a deviation. But we don’t have anything like that.’
If this is the short version of the story, what’s the long version like?
‘Anyway, Willem … What I mean to say is that people like Tony can’t cope with this, with such fluid interpretations of the symbols and stories. Of course, the rest of the world has trouble with it too. The churches are full of people who want their priest or pastor to tell them what to think. Here’s what happened in this Bible story, and this is what it means. There are a lot of people who prefer not to think for themselves, let me just put it that way.’
‘But Tony’s speech …’
‘Oh yes, exactly, his speech. Our chairman thought that the emphasis in Freemasonry should be on the “free” and that nothing should be set in stone. In contrast, Tony’s view was that there could be no fraternity, no society, if you didn’t commit to a set of agreements about how certain things should be understood. Of course, he had a Christian background – or has, I should say – which is usually a good combination with Freemasonry. But, in the end, he simply didn’t belong here.’
‘What do you think, Walter? Is a man like Tony capable of murder?’
‘What can I say? I think that everyone is capable of murder. To be honest, I’ve felt like murdering people myself at times. On TV shows about serial killers, they interview the murderer’s neighbours and colleagues, and they always say that he was “such a nice, ordinary man”, and that they never noticed anything unusual about him. Tony is a man with a great deal of anger inside him. And yes, he was in Jerusalem, he was in Leiden, and he was in Boston. He had the opportunity in every case, but did he have a motive? He didn’t even know those people in Leiden and Jerusalem. And I can’t imagine that he would have killed Sam and George simply because they didn’t share his views about the stories in the Bible.’
‘I see your point, Walter.’
‘So …’
He’s right that the likeness between the cases doesn’t necessarily indicate a link. But one plus one is increasingly starting to look like it adds up to two.
‘I’d like to thank you for taking the time to talk to me, Walter,’ Rijsbergen said, bringing the call to a close.
And I’d also like to organise a welcoming committee at Schiphol airport for Peter de Haan.
‘My pleasure,’ Walter said.
After exchanging a few more polite pleasantries, they ended the call.
‘Six murders,’ said Van de Kooij.
‘Well, four deaths, in any case,’ Rijsbergen corrected him, although he was inclined to think the same thing.
‘You’re right,’ Van de Kooij admitted. ‘Four dead, two missing. Although the chances of them being found alive get smaller by the hour. The two men in Jerusalem were bludgeoned to death, just like Coen Zoutman. But Yona Fa
laina was suffocated with a cushion or something similar, and the two missing men were probably drowned. If they were all killed by the same person, then the murderer doesn’t have a modus operandi.’
Van de Kooij rolled the ‘r’ of the word ‘operandi’ in his thick Leiden accent.
‘I’ll send the Boston Police an email now,’ Rijsbergen said, ‘and give them an idea of where our thinking is headed.’
Fifteen minutes later, he had typed up a concise report on the latest developments and sent it to his opposite number in Boston. He copied the text into his own case file.
‘Well,’ Van de Kooij said, ‘it’s starting to look very clear to me that all signs point to Vanderhoop, don’t you think? And Tony Vanderhoop apparently doesn’t want to be found.’
‘Yes,’ Rijsbergen said pensively. ‘Or he could have been involved in an accident. But if not …’
‘Then?’
‘Then we’ve got nothing.’
‘Hmph. If he really wanted to disappear … Well, that’s a piece of cake in America. You just assume another identity, move out of state …’
The telephone rang.
‘Rijsbergen.’
A voice came over the speaker. ‘Hello, this is Fay Spežamor.’
‘Mevrouw Spežamor, I’m so glad you called.’
‘I’ve just had a very odd message from Peter,’ she said. ‘He sent it just before his flight left New York. I’ve tried calling him, but I couldn’t get through.’
‘An odd message?’
‘Yes. He’s not coming back to the Netherlands tomorrow at all. He’s taken another flight.’
‘Another flight? Where to?’
‘To Egypt. To Sharm el-Sheikh.’
Chapter 34
The Boeing 737’s tyres hit the runway with a loud thud. Peter had watched Sharm el-Sheikh airport come into view as the plane was landing. It was a surprisingly modern complex with two enormous terminal buildings but just two runways; they curved around to meet each other at either end like an enormous karting track. There were drifts of sand here and there, blown onto the runway from the desert that surrounded the airport. Two aeroplanes were waiting on the tarmac with their noses pointing at the terminal, both about the same size as the plane that Peter had boarded more than an hour ago in Cairo. Three small Cessnas stood nearby.
The Pilgrim Conspiracy Page 40