The Pilgrim Conspiracy

by Jeroen Windmeijer

  Peter had told them that he had met Coen Zoutman a few times. These occasions had always been chance encounters on the street when he had been with Fay Spežamor.

  He had spoken calmly, telling them that he’d gone to the open evening with his girlfriend. That Coen Zoutman had given a talk about Freemasonry. That after the presentation, he and most of the other people present had gone downstairs to the drinks reception.

  He had told them about everyone he had seen or spoken to that evening: his student Sven who was there with his friend Erik, and the American man, Tony Vanderhoop, who had come to Leiden with some other Americans who were making preparations for Mayflower 400.

  It was estimated that between sixty and seventy people had been in the lodge building when Coen Zoutman was murdered, and moreover, the front door had been unlocked the entire time.

  We must put the little grey cells to work, Rijsbergen had thought. Despite the horrific nature of the murder, he was looking forward to solving the puzzle before him.

  They had taken Fay Spežamor’s statement next, and her account had been almost identical to that of her co-suspect except that she showed no trace of irritation at being questioned at all. She had appeared to accept the situation she had found herself in.

  But a veil of immense grief had seemed to hang over her, a sadness that had spoken silently from her red-rimmed eyes. She’d sat in the interview room like a pitiful little bird, sometimes speaking so softly that Rijsbergen and Van de Kooij had barely been able to make out what she was saying.

  She had talked about Coen Zoutman only in superlatives: he was the wisest man she had ever met, with the strongest and most loveable of characters and a great sense of humour. She had praised his encyclopaedic knowledge that he had gained not only from books but also from his many travels all over the world. Fay had told them about his retreats to a monastery where he often went to study and meditate for weeks at a time.

  She had burst into tears several times during her interview.

  These were either the two most cunning villains that Rijsbergen had ever encountered – so cunning that they had managed to perfectly align their stories in the short amount of time between committing their heinous crime and being bundled into separate police cars – or they were completely innocent citizens who had had been in the wrong place at the wrong time but had done the right thing by immediately calling the police.

  Strictly speaking, there were insufficient grounds to hold them any longer, so they were both taken home after midnight, this time in the same car. It had been made very clear to them before they left that they were not to reveal to anyone the details of their discovery of Coen Zoutman’s body.

  Rijsbergen shut down his computer. He’d only had a couple of hours’ sleep. His wife Corinne had still been sleeping when he’d left the house to come back to work this morning. But, strangely, he didn’t feel tired at all. There was a large, steaming mug of coffee next to his keyboard, already his second one of the day.

  He drank his coffee pensively, blowing over the edge of the mug before each sip to cool it down.

  Peter de Haan and Fay Spežamor’s interviews had not yielded much.

  Mevrouw Spežamor’s white blouse and Meneer De Haan’s pale blue shirt had been spotless, as if they had just come from the dry cleaners. Their hands and nails had been clean with no lingering scent of soap – although they had both looked at Rijsbergen strangely when he’d asked if he could smell their hands.

  The only possible lead is Fay’s casual comment about Coen Zoutman’s election to the chair, Rijsbergen thought. Might the election have created bad blood between Zoutman and one of the other candidates?

  Rijsbergen planned to speak to both her and Peter de Haan again later that day to see if a night’s sleep had helped them to remember something they hadn’t mentioned in their interviews.

  A forensics unit had been at the scene all night taking photographs and collecting evidence. They hadn’t finished their work until the early hours of the morning. Rijsbergen expected the report of their findings to appear on his desk at any moment.

  He wanted to visit the Masonic Hall again before the body was removed from the temple and taken to the morgue. After that, a team of specialists would move in to clean up the crime scene.

  There was a knock on the matte wired glass window of his office door.

  The door opened before he’d had a chance to say ‘Come in.’

  ‘Are we going out?’ Van de Kooij asked eagerly, as though they were about to go on a staff outing.

  Detective Sergeant Van de Kooij, his right-hand man, was a balding thirty-something, a whole head shorter than the oak-like Rijsbergen.

  ‘Yes, all right, Goldilocks,’ said Rijsbergen, draining his mug in two overlarge gulps. He enjoyed teasing Van de Kooij about his premature baldness, mostly because his colleague’s usual easy wit always failed him at such moments, and he seemed to resign himself to being the butt of Rijsbergen’s jokes.

  They went out to the car park behind the police station and got into Van de Kooij’s car. Van de Kooij was a keen driver, and they often took his car whenever they went anywhere together. It was a somewhat oversized SUV that resembled a small Hummer. Rijsbergen always felt a bit silly sitting in it as it drove smoothly over the well-maintained Dutch roads, but he had to admit that it was comfortable. Its height meant that you could look down on the other motorists around you with a certain feeling of superiority. In Rijsbergen’s opinion, that was the real reason his colleague had bought it.

  ‘I want to go and see De Haan later, and that woman with the unpronounceable name, Fay,’ Rijsbergen said as they arrived at their destination.

  ‘Fay Spežamor.’

  ‘Precisely. She said something yesterday about Zoutman being elected chairman of the lodge. There might be something in that. We need to find out who the other candidates were, what happened, who supported who … That sort of thing.’

  With the street blocked off, they were able to park right in front of the door.

  ‘Inspector.’ The officer who was guarding the door greeted them and tapped his hat in a salute. He held up the red and white tape that was blocking the entrance so that Rijsbergen and Van de Kooij could step under it and into the building.

  They took the winding staircase upstairs. The door to the temple was closed but not locked. Inside, they found the room exactly as they had left it.

  But now, Zoutman’s lifeless body lay under a white sheet.

  They approached the victim but stopped a few metres away.

  Rijsbergen crouched down, and Van de Kooij immediately crouched down next to him.

  ‘They’ll never get those bloodstains off the white tiles, you know,’ Van de Kooij remarked.

  Rijsbergen nodded absently, as if he hadn’t heard what his partner had said. ‘It’s not …’ he began. ‘This murder wasn’t committed in the heat of the moment. I think someone came here intending to take his life. It wasn’t done on impulse or in a fit of rage. It wasn’t an argument that got out of hand. The blow to his skull alone would have been enough to kill him. They didn’t need to put that set square through his heart or the compasses through his hands.’

  ‘Dexter said that Zoutman was already dead when that was done,’ said Van de Kooij.

  ‘Dexter’ was the blood spatter analyst attached to the forensic investigation unit. His real name was Martin Garens, but everyone called him ‘Dexter’. Few people in the force actually knew what he was really called.

  Rijsbergen himself had never watched Dexter, the American TV show about the FBI blood spatter analyst who moonlighted as a serial killer.

  ‘I just called Dexter for an initial update,’ Van de Kooij said. ‘Zoutman was hit on the back of the head with a huge amount of force. He would have been killed instantly.’

  ‘Exactly what Dalhuizen concluded,’ said Rijsbergen. ‘So to ram the set square into his chest afterwards … And then go to the trouble of forcing those compasses through his hands. Making t
he incisions with a knife beforehand … Those were all gratuitous acts. Or at least, they weren’t necessary to make him deader than he already was, and they weren’t used to torture something out of him either.’

  Rijsbergen stood up, stroking his chin with his right hand. ‘It must be something symbolic,’ he thought out loud. ‘Maybe there’s someone in this club who can tell us more about it. Have you heard anything else?’

  ‘Yes, that it’s not looking good evidence-wise. They said there were no fingerprints on the gavel or the compasses or the square. Looks like they’ve been wiped completely clean.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Rijsbergen muttered. ‘That was to be expected. Or the murderer wore gloves. Or murderers, of course. One keeps him talking, the other one sneaks up behind him.’

  ‘And something else …’ Van de Kooij said. ‘They found loads of shoeprints, obviously, but they’re essentially useless because there were dozens of people walking around in here yesterday. It’s completely impossible to get anything from them. The murderer’s prints are bound to be among them, but they can’t identify them. There were no hairs found in the blood and no accidental footprints left in it either, so none of it leads anywhere.’

  ‘No cameras, obviously,’ said Rijsbergen. ‘No photos taken … Nobody who knows who was in the building when, or who spoke to Zoutman last. We don’t actually know who was in the building at all. So all we can do now is talk to everyone whose name we have. See if anyone noticed anything.’

  They returned to the landing as two men and a woman came up the stairs carrying a stretcher.

  ‘Is it all right if we take him now?’ the woman at the front asked.

  ‘Go ahead,’ Van de Kooij said. ‘We’re finished here.’

  They manoeuvred the stretcher past them and into the temple.

  Rijsbergen and Van de Kooij watched from a distance as they removed the white plastic sheet, coldly exposing the dead man’s corpse.

  There was no privacy in death.

  The woman closed Coen Zoutman’s eyes, but his mouth still gaped half open. He looked like a drunkard who had passed out on the floor.

  They carefully moved his body onto the stretcher. Left behind on the tiles where his head had lain was a semi-circle of blood spatters, like a diabolical halo.

  To meet your end like this, Rijsbergen thought. To have gained all that wisdom, studied all those books, travelled half the globe, only to end up in a little hall in Leiden with your brains smashed in.

  ‘Chief Inspector!’ A shout came from downstairs. ‘Could you come here a moment, please?’

  ‘We’re on our way down!’ Van de Kooij replied on his behalf.

  The two men and the woman zipped up the black body bag containing Coen Zoutman’s body. They strapped it onto the stretcher and carried it out of the temple with careful, shuffling steps.

  Rijsbergen took a last look at the body shrouded in black.

  It looked like they were carrying the giant cocoon of some strange insect. An insect that would eventually hatch out and reappear in an entirely new form.

  Chapter 7

  Peter let the heavy door of the Jean Pesijnhofje fall closed behind him, something that always made him feel like he was leaving an oasis of peace and calm. The original meaning of the word ‘paradise’ came from the old Iranian word ‘pairidaēza’ – ‘walled garden’ – and this small, enclosed courtyard illustrated that perfectly. Beyond its walls was the big, bad world, the West, as the Freemasons called it, with all its problems, jealousy, greed and deceit.

  Occasionally, he managed to hold onto the feeling of serenity for a while, but more often than not, it vanished before he reached the end of the street. Either a cyclist brushing past him, furiously ringing their bell, or an idiot on a noisy moped barely avoiding mowing him down, or sometimes just a cold, miserable drizzle would bring him abruptly back to the here and now.

  He went left and walked around the Pieterskerk.

  After the police had brought them home, Peter and Fay had sat on the sofa for a while. They had sipped at their tea without saying very much to each other.

  Fay and her twelve-year-old daughter Agapé shared their home with Fay’s mother, Alena. She had come downstairs in her old-fashioned nightdress and sleepily asked them what they were doing up so late. Fay told her she would explain everything in the morning.

  Coen Zoutman’s murder had naturally affected Fay more than it had Peter. She had spent so much time in his company, had so many conversations with him, and heard him speak so often at the lodge’s fortnightly meetings. He had been her mentor.

  ‘Who would do something like this?’ she’d asked herself out loud, again and again. ‘Such a lovely man. Such a lovely man.’

  When they’d gone to bed, Fay had lain awake in Peter’s arms for a long time. Her tears had left a large damp patch on his T-shirt. Peter hadn’t been able to erase the image of Coen Zoutman’s shattered skull from his mind, nor that of the man’s hands, pierced clean through like a modern-day Christ.

  Peter had been woken by the familiar sound of Alena pottering in the kitchen. As usual, she had been up early, making coffee and setting the table. Very carefully, so as not to wake Fay who was still fast asleep, he had crept out of bed and gone downstairs.

  He had told Alena about the dramatic events of the previous night. As he spoke, unfolding the story of their grisly discovery in the temple, she’d had to sit down. She had perched on the edge of the sofa, fidgeting with the tea towel in her lap, and suddenly, she’d looked very old, as though the lines around her mouth had grown deeper.

  Agapé had come downstairs too and soon lightened the mood with her cheerful chatter.

  While Peter was drinking his coffee, a message arrived from Jeffrey Banks, the director of the Leiden American Pilgrim Museum, asking if he had time to come to the museum that day. He was expecting a visit from a delegation of Americans who were organising events around the upcoming four hundredth anniversary of the Pilgrims’ arrival in America.

  That must be Tony Vanderhoop and his group, Peter thought. Who else would it be?

  In a small place like Leiden, coincidences like this happened all the time, and paths crossed with surprising frequency. During the forty years he had lived in the town, Peter had found that, sooner or later, every new person he met would reveal that they had an acquaintance in common.

  There was just one lecture on his schedule that afternoon, so he had sent a message back to say that he would be happy to drop by.

  Even if it’s just to take my mind off last night, he had thought to himself.

  Peter walked along the Pieterskerkhof and into the narrow alleyway of the Pieterskerk-Choorsteeg.

  My God, I’m so tired, he thought.

  He’d had very little sleep, understandably, but he never really felt fully rested after spending the night at Fay’s anyway.

  Fay’s bedroom was too small for an actual double bed, so they’d bought a trundle bed at IKEA in Delft. It had turned out to be so uncomfortable that staying at Fay’s always felt like being at a teenage sleepover.

  Fay’s mother, who had spent her entire working life teaching classical languages at a high school, also had a room in the little almshouse. After the death of Fay’s husband, Alena had moved in with her and Agapé, making it a household of three generations of women.

  They had worked out the perfect arrangement with each other. Alena was there when her granddaughter came home from school. She cooked dinner and made sure the house was clean and tidy when Fay finished work at around five. And if Fay spontaneously decided that she wanted to go out, she never had the hassle of trying to find a babysitter at the last minute.

  The third bedroom in the house belonged to Agapé. Her name was the Greek word for ‘love’. But hardly anyone ever pronounced her name correctly and most people simply shortened it ‘Aggie’ or ‘Aagje’ – ‘little Agatha’. She was a bright, lively girl who had inherited her mother’s beauty and intelligence.

  Peter walked along t
he Breestraat, past the imposing Stadhuis. The town hall’s façade was bathed in golden, springtime light.

  He turned left into Koornbrugsteeg and crossed the Nieuwe Rijn canal via the roofed bridge. Then he immediately turned right and took a left into the Beschuitsteeg.

  As soon as he rounded the corner into the lane, he saw a group of people gathered by the museum door. Among them, he spotted the tall form of Tony Vanderhoop wearing his ever-present baseball cap.

  Jeffrey was there too, standing between the group and the front door like a bouncer who hadn’t yet decided if he was going to let people inside.

  Peter and Jeffrey never socialised with each other outside the museum, but they had developed a good rapport. While not quite friends, their relationship was something that resembled a friendship.

  Jeffrey had once confessed to Peter that, although he welcomed the increasing interest in the Pilgrims and Mayflower 400, he had strong objections to the way in which the English colonists’ history had been mythologised. He was a scientist and preferred to concentrate on the verifiable facts. True, they weren’t the stuff on which nations were usually built, but they were closer to what had actually happened. He rejected the oversimplified image of the Pilgrims as courageous men and women who had left Leiden and gone to America because they were afraid of losing their identity, heroes who started out with nothing and built their ideal of a pure, Christian community from the ground up.

  Tony raised his eyebrows when he saw Peter coming towards him, but he smiled and looked genuinely pleased to see him again.

  Up close, Peter recognised some of the other members of Tony’s group, two men and three women, but none of them gave any indication of remembering having seen him at the Masonic Hall.

  Jeffrey’s face lit up. He was clearly relieved that he wouldn’t be giving the tour on his own.

  Peter shook hands with everyone.

  ‘What a terrible business that was yesterday,’ Tony said. ‘Coen’s death … Please accept my condolences.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Peter. ‘I didn’t know Coen very well myself, but my girlfriend Fay is a member of the lodge, and she’s devastated.’