St Paul's Labyrinth

by Jeroen Windmeijer

  ‘I don’t know who you are or what you’re doing. Why am I here? Why me?’

  He didn’t answer, but he looked like he might be wavering.

  Judith broke down and began to cry again. ‘Please,’ she sobbed, ‘let me go. Did I do something wrong? What did I do to you?’

  ‘It’s not about …’ the man began. ‘It’s not really about you … It’s about …’

  ‘It’s about what? Who?’ Judith shouted with renewed energy.

  ‘It’s not about you,’ he said again.

  Judith sighed miserably.

  He took a mobile phone out of his pocket. The modern gadget looked entirely out of place here. He aimed it at her, obviously about to take a photo.

  ‘Help me!’ Judith screamed as the flash went off.

  The man tapped at the phone’s screen. ‘When I get back upstairs, the phone will send the ph—’

  Before he could finish his sentence, he looked around, as though he had heard something.

  In the doorway, Judith saw a hand holding a large piece of wood. It came down with enormous force on the guard’s head. The guard dropped the phone and the torch as his hands flew to his head. As he whimpered and held his head with both hands, his invisible attacker hit him again. He crumpled to the floor like a marionette with severed strings.

  The attacker picked up the phone and the torch. He shielded his eyes with his hand as though he was looking into the sun, so that only the bottom half of his face was visible.

  Someone else must have been waiting behind him, because the unconscious man’s body was dragged away from the door.

  Judith nervously walked up to the doorway, ready to fall into the arms of her anonymous rescuer, whoever it was. But before she could take a step outside her cell, she was roughly shoved backwards.

  ‘You’re not going anywhere,’ the man with the torch said firmly.

  ‘But … you can’t just leave me here,’ she cried. ‘Please, I won’t tell anyone …’

  He slammed the door shut.

  Judith rammed her fists into the cold metal. It didn’t budge. She pressed her ear to it.

  She heard nothing. She stood in the middle of the cell and tried to focus on any sounds that might come from beyond its walls. But then she realised that the only sound she could hear was coming from inside it.

  She could hear water dripping. She looked up at where the noise seemed to be coming from. High on the wall, in the corner by the door, was a pipe that opened into the cell. She had assumed that it was for ventilation, but now she saw with dread that it was the source of the drip.

  The drip became a trickle. Then it stopped. As if someone had realised that they’d left a tap on and turned it off again. Judith heard scrabbling noises above her head, and then there was silence. She noticed she had been holding her breath and let it out again, but as she did, a powerful jet of water burst out of the pipe and into the cell.

  Judith dove to the floor to grab the candle, rescuing it just in time. Water gushed from the pipe and poured into the middle of the cell. Filthy globs of foam floated on its surface. The puddle that had gathered around the drain in the middle of the room rapidly grew bigger and deeper. She knelt on the floor, holding the candle up away from the water, and tried to prise the metal drain cover loose. But it was shut tight.

  Her voice caught in her throat as she began to scream.

  25

  Saturday 21 March, 4:40am

  ‘Raven?’ Peter said, initially stunned, but then he launched himself at Raven. ‘Raven!’ he said again, beside himself with rage now. He slammed his palms into Raven’s chest and pushed him backwards.

  Raven didn’t defend himself, but only stepped backwards to regain his balance.

  ‘Where’s Judith?’ Peter yelled, raining flecks of spit onto Raven’s jacket. Peter clutched his lapels and pulled him towards him. Raven appeared unmoved. ‘Where is Judith? This is insane!’ He let go of Raven but stayed threateningly close to him. ‘You haven’t hurt her, have you?’

  ‘We’ve been watching you for a long time, Peter,’ Raven said, seemingly oblivious to Peter’s rage. ‘I’ve already told you that you’ve been chosen. Or at least, that’s what the people above me say. They’ve put a lot of faith and trust in you.’ He put his right hand on Peter’s left arm to reassure him.

  Peter grabbed Raven’s hand and twisted his arm, forcing him to turn around until he stood with his back to Peter, making them look like two male dancers performing a violent pas de deux.

  The iPhone fell out of Peter’s pocket in the tussle. He pushed Raven’s arm upwards, and the young man arched his spine and threw back his head to lessen the pain. ‘For the last time, where is Judith?’ He pushed Raven’s arm higher.

  The young man could only squeal pathetically now. ‘It’s not …’ he said, struggling to get the words out. ‘I’m just passing the message on. Honestly. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I know who Judith is, but I don’t know where she is.’ He panted. ‘Will you please let go, I’m telling you the truth.’

  Peter loosened his grip.

  Raven sighed with relief. ‘I really don’t know …’ he said.

  Realising that he wasn’t getting anywhere, Peter let go of him completely.

  Raven turned around, his face contorted with pain. He rubbed his arm and rolled his head from side to side. ‘Look,’ he said, almost apologetically. ‘I’m only passing on the message they gave me. I don’t know anything more than what I’ve told you, on my honour.’

  ‘What the hell is going on here? Why do I have to do this?’

  ‘She’s … It’s about you, that’s all I know. They say “The hour has come.” The eclipse yesterday …’

  Just then the iPhone rattled on the ground. Peter automatically ducked down to see what the message was.

  It was another photograph. It took what felt like an eternity for the whole image to load.

  Judith looked desperate. She was staring straight into the camera. Her mouth was wide open, screaming for help. It made Peter think of Janet Leigh on the poster for Psycho.

  ‘Look!’ Peter screamed at Raven, shoving the phone in his face. But the image had already disappeared before Raven could see it.

  ‘Can’t you just take me to where she is?’ he asked, quietly now, hoping that he might soften him up by appearing to be calm and reasonable. But Raven stayed silent. ‘And what’s all this with the phone?’

  A smug smile spread across Raven’s face. ‘They see everything you do, Peter,’ he said.

  ‘And what about the police? At the synagogue?’

  ‘They wanted to put pressure on you, so they sent the police to see how you’d get out of it. So far you’ve not disappointed us,’ Raven said.

  ‘Not disappointed you?’ Peter said fiercely. ‘What sort of nonsense is this? I’ve had enough. You go to your bosses and tell them that I’m not doing this any more. I’m not the “chosen one” or whatever they want to call it. I give up. You let Judith go and then—’

  Suddenly Raven’s eyes grew wide. ‘Look out! Behind you!’ he said.

  Peter laughed and shook his head. ‘I’ve heard that one before! That trick only works once, you know,’ he said. But as he spoke, he heard the scrunch of feet on gravel behind him. Before he could turn around, someone grabbed his arms. The phone fell on the ground again. ‘Now what?’ he yelled.

  This had clearly taken Raven by surprise too. He opened his mouth, but instead of words, what came from his lips was a barely audible groan. He tried desperately to reach his arms around to his back, but failed. He fell to his knees, like an amateur actor performing a dramatic death scene. Then the rest of his body followed until he was lying at Peter’s feet.

  With absolute horror, Peter saw an arrow sticking out of Raven’s back. Before he could think about where it had come from, the man behind him squeezed Peter’s arms together until, just like Raven, he had to arch his back to try to stop the searing pain in his shoulder blades.

  A figure
loomed out of the darkness. He was carrying a bow in his hand, complete with an arrow, although he held it pointed towards the ground. He stood at a distance so that his face remained hidden.

  Peter bowed his head in defeat. He closed his eyes, waiting for the moment that the arrow would hit his chest.

  ‘As soon as you’re out of the way …’ The voice behind him was a staccato hiss and every word sounded like a spit pip. ‘… the Father will come to his senses.’

  ‘The Father? But … I didn’t ask for any of this,’ Peter said through gritted teeth. ‘Let me go. And let Judith go!’

  They stood at an impasse, their bodies almost tangled up in each other.

  ‘I’ll go home right now if you want,’ Peter forced out. ‘I don’t want any of this. All I want is for Judith …’ He tried to look behind him to see his assailant’s face, but he couldn’t. What he did make out was the man nodding to the archer who was still hidden in the shadows about twenty metres away. This time he aimed his arrow at Peter.

  He won’t shoot, Peter thought. That’s cra— Within a fraction of a second, the archer had pulled back his arm and drawn the bow. Right before the arrow left the string, Peter used all his strength to buck forwards so that the man behind him was somersaulted across his back like an acrobat. A split second after the stunned assailant had landed in front of him, Peter heard a dry thunk as the arrow pierced the man’s body. A sickening scream left the throat of the man Peter had used as a human shield.

  Peter let him fall. He caught a glimpse of the phone still lying on the ground, but left it where it was. Then he ran, zigzagging through the garden as he’d seen people in films do to avoid enemy gunfire.

  He sprinted towards the fence that formed a border between the Hortus and the grounds of the Observatory next to it. An arrow whooshed past his ear, missing him by a hair’s breadth before coming to a trembling standstill in a tree.

  He looked back nervously, but there was no one there.

  The two-metre-high fence closed off this part of the botanical garden. He put his foot on a horizontal rail and pulled himself up as fast as he could. Once he was at the top of the fence, he leaned forward until he was almost horizontal and swung his legs over the railings. Their spiky tips jabbed into his stomach and chest.

  He cleared the fence and jumped down, but his coat snagged on one of the sharp spikes at the top, leaving him dangling in mid-air. He reached up to tug at his coat with both hands, acutely aware that he was now an easy target for the archer. The problem resolved itself when the weight of his body tore the coat free and he dropped to the ground.

  Peter sprang to his feet and ran away from the fence, half crouching, until he reached the porch of the Observatory buildings. He sheltered there for a minute or so, drenched in sweat and gasping for breath.

  What had just happened?

  He took deep breaths in and out.

  With no idea what his next step should be, he closed his eyes and leaned against the window in the porch. The glass felt cool against the back of his head. He thought he heard a twig snap in the bushes behind him. He opened his eyes wide and held his breath, but when he heard nothing else in the seconds that followed, he breathed out again.

  A loud bang came from the other side of the window behind him. Someone was knocking on the glass.

  Peter filled his lungs with a huge, ragged breath and turned around. All he could see at first was his own frightened face mirrored in the window, but his reflection quickly changed into the face of a young man, not much more than a boy. The boy, who looked almost as terrified as Peter, stared at him questioningly. He was moving his lips, but because Peter couldn’t hear him, he wasn’t sure at first if he was speaking or dumbly opening and closing his mouth.

  Peter read his lips. ‘What are you doing here?’ he appeared to be asking. Good question, Peter thought. He knocked on the window and pointed to the door.

  The boy hesitated briefly, then reached for the door handle and opened the door slightly.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked, audibly this time.

  ‘Can I come in and explain? It’s a long story but you might be able to help me.’

  The boy screwed up his eyes as though it might help him to see Peter better, and then he nodded.

  ‘Okay.’

  The second the door opened, Peter heard something that sounded like tensed elastic being released. Instinctively he fell to the floor, and a fraction of a second later, an arrow ricocheted off the door while the boy was still holding it open.

  Peter crawled inside on his hands and knees. ‘Shut it! Shut it!’ he screamed.

  The boy took fright and closed the door before Peter was completely inside, jamming his ankle against the doorframe. ‘Ow!’ Peter cried, more from shock than pain.

  The boy, who was now crouching on the floor, opened the door slightly.

  Peter pulled his foot inside and the door closed with a reassuring click behind them.

  Somewhere in the building, an alarm was blaring shrilly.

  The boy sped down the hall. Peter saw him tap a code into a box on the wall next to a door and the noise was immediately silenced.

  His rescuer indicated that he should follow him. Peter took another look behind him. He thought he saw a shadow in the bushes outside, but couldn’t be sure if it was real or just his imagination getting the better of him. He knew the archer would be forming a plan to get inside the building. And Peter couldn’t stay in here forever. The archer would be waiting for him when he came out.

  ‘We’re going upstairs,’ the young man whispered, a little unnecessarily, Peter thought.

  He passed a vending machine in the corridor that was empty except for a single king-size Mars bar, and he realised he was hungry. According to the clock in the hall, it was a little after five, which meant he had been awake for more than twenty-four hours now, with nothing to eat since the two cereal bars he’d wolfed down in the morning.

  ‘We ought to call the police really,’ the boy said from half way up the stairs.

  ‘No,’ Peter said emphatically. ‘No police.’

  The boy turned to face Peter and held out his hand.

  ‘I’m Sebastiaan, by the way. And I can well imagine you’d rather I didn’t call the police, Peter.’

  26

  Saturday 21 March, 5:10am

  ‘How do you know my name?’ Peter asked suspiciously.

  ‘You’re a famous Leidener, aren’t you?’ Sebastiaan asked. ‘I’ve got your book about Leiden at home. It was a graduation present.’

  Peter relaxed a little and followed Sebastiaan up the staircase. ‘So why are you here at night?’ he asked. ‘The Observatory isn’t permanently manned, is it?’

  ‘No, no, there wouldn’t be anyone here, normally. You were just lucky.’

  ‘What should we do about the man outside?’

  ‘We’ll hear him if he tries to get in. The whole building is alarmed, as you just heard. If he opens a door or breaks a window, we’ll know straight away.’

  Peter wasn’t entirely convinced. ‘But why are you here, then?’

  ‘It was a bit of a special day today because of the equinox. We were open to the public, lots of families here with their children … I’m studying astronomy and I volunteer here, deal with enquiries, run the beginners’ astronomy courses. They return the favour by letting me stay the night sometimes so I can do some stargazing. Strictly speaking, it’s not allowed, but …’

  Peter nodded, but his thoughts had already drifted elsewhere. He had to get away from here as soon as possible. But there was an anonymous madman waiting for him outside with a bow and arrow, and he had already tried to shoot him with it. There were only two ways out: back over the fence into the Hortus, or via the main entrance on the Kaiserstrat. Both options were equally unappealing with a modern-day William Tell lurking in the bushes. ‘Do you have a computer I could use? I need to look something up, if that’s all right with you.’

  ‘There’s a computer in my
room, but don’t you think you should tell me why that man is after you, first?’

  ‘It’s—’

  ‘A long story I suppose?’

  ‘It is a long story,’ Peter laughed dolefully. ‘Where’s your room?

  They had reached the first floor now, a long corridor with rows of doors on either side. One of them was open. Peter followed Sebastiaan into a dark room illuminated only by the glow of a computer screen. He saw with relief that the blinds at the windows were closed.

  Sebastiaan pointed to the chair at the desk and Peter sat down.

  ‘It’s so quiet here at night. I can look up at the sky with the telescope, or work on my dissertation. I get more done here than I do in a normal day in the university library. But …’

  Peter had opened a browser and typed in ‘butter honey’. The search results were all recipes, even one for honey butter. Puddings with honey and butter, spare ribs with honey and butter …

  ‘Are you going to tell me or not?’ Sebastiaan asked, sounding impatient.

  Peter swivelled the chair around to face him. ‘Of course, sorry. It’s … I’m not entirely sure what’s going on myself. The short version is that my friend has been kidnapped. I don’t know why, but it looks like whoever did it has left clues that will lead me to her. At least, I’m assuming that’s the idea, anyway. So that’s the situation. I was in the Hortus because I thought there might be another clue there. And I did find something, but then that madman turned up with the bow and arrow … Someone caught me, but I managed to put him between me and an arrow. And then I ran away, climbed over the fence, but he followed me here, as you saw for yourself. He’s probably in the bushes, waiting for me to come out.’

  ‘And you want to avoid the police because of Van Tiegem.’

  ‘Van Tiegem?’

  ‘Your name and your photo are on nu.nl. It says that Van Tiegem disappeared and the police are looking for you because you were the last person to see him alive.’

  ‘I had nothing to do with …’ Peter said falteringly. He turned back around to face the computer screen. ‘Well, not in the way you think, anyway,’ he said gruffly. He wanted to try another search term, but was aware that he owed the young man a better explanation.