The Pilgrim Conspiracy

by Jeroen Windmeijer

  ‘Ah, but …’ Peter began carefully. ‘History …’

  Abruptly, Tony stopped walking.

  ‘Surely you’re not about to tell me that you’re one of those people who believe that the Exodus story isn’t historical fact, are you?’ Tony snapped in a tone that conveyed a mixture of surprise and indignation.

  Religion and politics. The two topics you were better off avoiding in America. Judith warned me about this on my first day here.

  ‘I think that …’ Peter said tentatively. ‘I think it’s more like a heilsgeschichte, a salvation history, which describes things as if they really did take place, even though they might not have done. There might be a grain of truth in it, but a bigger story ended up being created around it. Whether or not something happened isn’t the most crucial element of a story, at least not for conveying the intended message of the story anyway. I mean, stories by Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm can still teach us something about life, about how to get along with each other, about good and evil, even though we all know they aren’t true.’

  They walked on.

  Tony looked like he was conflicted about whether to let this subject lie or continue the discussion. He chose the second option.

  ‘Listen, Peter,’ said Tony. ‘I respect your opinion, I really do, but the problem for me as a Christian—’

  ‘Christian?’

  ‘Christian, yes. Does that surprise you?’

  ‘I thought that, as a Freemason …’

  ‘You do know that Freemasonry can be combined with any other faith you choose?’

  ‘Yes, I do know that but—’

  ‘Peter, isn’t there actually something else that you want to ask me?’

  Now it was Peter’s turn to be stopped in his tracks. ‘What do you mean? What would I want to ask you?’

  ‘Why I was thrown out of the Freemasons.’

  Chapter 29

  The day after Van de Kooij had visited Rijsbergen at home to show him an episode of Unsolved Murder Mysteries, Rijsbergen had contacted the police in Jerusalem.

  The detective who had been in charge of the case at the time was a man called Abner Cohen. He was featured heavily in the documentary – notably, his moustache was the only hair on his head – talking about how the case had developed, the promising evidence they had followed up on, the suspects who had been wrongfully accused, and the leads that had all turned out to be dead ends.

  The episode ended with a scene in which the former detective was sitting at a computer in what looked like his home. He had confessed that he often read the entire case file from start to finish, hoping that he would have a sudden flash of insight. But, in the end, he’d had to admit that this was one of those cases that would remain unsolved forever.

  But that was about to change.

  Rijsbergen had been unable to speak to the detective from the documentary initially. Instead, he’d talked to someone much younger who wasn’t familiar with the case. He told Rijsbergen that they were in the throes of a lengthy process of digitisation and were scanning in old case files. They were almost up to date now, so the files from this particular case were available in a digital format.

  The man told Rijsbergen that he would send the Israeli police files over and promised that Abner Cohen would get in touch.

  Rijsbergen had received an email from Peter in America. At almost exactly the same time that Rijsbergen and Van de Kooij had been finding out about the double murder in the Masonic world in Jerusalem, Peter de Haan had been making the same discovery in Boston.

  Peter’s email also mentioned two Boston men who had gone missing, the chairman of a lodge and his pupil. The police were treating it as a normal missing persons case for the time being, but this assessment was likely to change once Rijsbergen had called his American colleagues. The link between the cases in Jerusalem and Leiden was still unclear, but it was obviously there: the extreme violence used in the killings and the skin removed from near the victim’s armpit. Because the victims in both Boston and Leiden had been an older chairman and his younger pupil, it was easy to conclude that they were linked too.

  There’s too much here to just be coincidence, Rijsbergen thought.

  Although he didn’t come from a devoutly religious background, sometimes when he faced a bizarre set of coincidences like this, he almost felt the presence of a ‘guiding hand’. It was as though ‘something’ or ‘someone’ was leading him in a particular direction. He couldn’t think of another way to describe it.

  By the time Rijsbergen had replied to Peter’s email, it had been 9 a.m. in Leiden, but three o’clock in the morning in Boston; it would be a few hours before Peter would read Rijsbergen’s message and learn that the Leiden Police had made the same discovery about Jerusalem that he had made in Boston.

  Rijsbergen sat quietly in his office, drumming his fingers on his desk. As he watched the episode for the third time, he added comments to the notes he had made during the first two viewings, jotting down the differences and similarities between the cases and anything else that stood out to him.

  He had reduced the size of the media player window so that he could keep an eye on the messaging software that he had been told Abner Cohen would use to contact him. Rijsbergen understood that it employed end-to-end encryption to scramble messages so that they could only be read by the recipient they were meant for, but he had no idea how it actually worked. When Van de Kooij had tried to explain how the messages were sent via multiple computers and servers, Rijsbergen’s eyes had glazed over, and he’d had to resort to nodding at what he had hoped were appropriate moments. In short, what it boiled down to was that the software was so secure that it was impossible for third parties to somehow access the messages.

  He turned to a blank page in his notepad and made a list of the similarities and differences between the cases:

  Similarities

  – two murders in quick succession

  – severe blunt force trauma to skull

  – Freemasons – first victim older man

  – second victim younger man

  – single men, no family

  – murdered on busy evening but no witnesses (except Yona F.)

  – multiple people with opportunity but no motive

  – murderer(s) still not found

  – motive???

  Differences

  – skin removed instead of tattoo

  – heart/hands not impaled

  – Yona not (?) Freemason

  – Yona asphyxiated

  – Yona killed somewhere other than where body found?

  Rijsbergen stared at the three question marks he had written after the word ‘motive’.

  Something in the documentary was bothering him, something he had noticed on the first viewing with Van de Kooij the night before.

  He was reminded of the famous psychology experiment in which the subjects were asked to watch a video of a group of people throwing a ball to each other and count how many passes were made. The test subjects were so focused on counting that two-thirds of them missed the appearance of a man in a gorilla suit about halfway through the video, who beat his chest for a few seconds and then disappeared again.

  Am I missing something by focusing on something else?

  He heard a ping! from his computer.

  A window popped up on the screen with a profile photo of a bald man with a moustache. Rijsbergen had watched the documentary so many times now that he recognised him as the former detective from the Jerusalem police.

  The last time he had watched the video, Rijsbergen had sat with his face just centimetres away from the screen, as though staring deep into the eyes of a suspect, trying to get a confession out of them.

  Abner Cohen

  You wanted to talk to me about the Freemasons case?

  Willem Rijsbergen

  Yes, that’s right. I appreciate you getting in touch.

  Abner Cohen

  Happy to help!

  Willem Rijsb
ergen

  We happened to see you in an episode of Unsolved Murder Mysteries yesterday.

  Abner Cohen

  Ah, yes. My fifteen minutes of fame …

  Willem Rijsbergen

  Something similar happened here in Leiden about a month and a half ago: two murders within a short space of time. The older victim had a tattoo in the same place – I’ll send you a photo shortly – and the skin had been excised from the same location on the younger victim. Very similar to your two victims. The first victim suffered a fatal penetrating head injury. There was a Masonic square stabbed through his heart, and a pair of compasses skewering his hands. The second victim was asphyxiated before being dumped in a canal.

  Abner Cohen

  Wow! That’s … I’ve been working on this case for so long! You’ve no idea how frustrating it’s been for me. But this could breathe new life into it. Do you have any leads yet? This is very exciting!

  Willem Rijsbergen

  Yes, I can imagine! We’ve had someone in custody for six weeks. He knew things that only the killer could know, but he’s been refusing to talk since we brought him in.

  Abner Cohen

  Has he ever been to Jerusalem?

  Willem Rijsbergen

  We’ll be interviewing him again later today and confronting him with this new information. But, to be honest, my gut feeling is that he can’t have done it. I haven’t said this to anyone else because, apart from his arrest, we’ve made no further progress in the case.

  Abner Cohen

  Gut feeling shouldn’t be underestimated.

  Willem Rijsbergen

  Yes, but the problem is … he knew things that he couldn’t or shouldn’t have known, but he’s refusing to say how he knows them. The theory is – and this is the best we’ve been able to come up with so far – that his wife wanted to be the chair of their lodge, so he killed the current chairman either as revenge for her not being chosen, or to clear the way for her to be chosen.

  Abner Cohen

  What about the other victim?

  Willem Rijsbergen

  Ah, yes, exactly. The other victim. There doesn’t seem to have been any motive there. It appears that nobody knew him. We’ve not found a single thing connecting him to the suspect we have in custody. As long as he refuses to talk, we’ll never know. But I think it would be very difficult to connect him to your cold case.

  Abner Cohen

  We’ll see. We’ve not been able to identify any plausible motives either. Both men appeared to be well-liked. There were no tensions or conflicts with anyone, at least not as far as we’ve been able to determine.

  Willem Rijsbergen

  But both victims were men with no family, just like the victims in your case. Parents deceased, no siblings. Both unmarried, no children.

  Abner Cohen

  Yes.

  Willem Rijsbergen

  Most of our team have been pulled from the case now, but perhaps this will change if the Jerusalem murders can be linked to it.

  Abner Cohen

  Yes. I’ll get in touch with some of my former colleagues here. It seems to me that we have enough grounds to reopen the old case.

  Willem Rijsbergen

  Great.

  Abner Cohen

  Can I see that photo of the tattoo?

  Rijsbergen looked through his files for the images. It took him a while to work out how to upload them with the messaging software, but he eventually succeeded.

  Willem Rijsbergen

  This is an illustration of the tattoo. It vaguely resembles the All-Seeing Eye … We’ve shown it to quite a few people, but no one has been able to tell us what it is. We just don’t know.

  Abner Cohen

  This is very interesting, Willem. We never knew what it was that had been cut away. We don’t know anything for sure yet, of course, but it seems highly likely that our victims originally had similar tattoos. I don’t recognise it, but I’ll ask around. The triangle is a universal symbol, of course.

  Willem Rijsbergen

  We’ve had experts from the University of Leiden look at it. They circulated it in their network, but nothing came of it. It must be a particularly obscure symbol.

  Abner Cohen

  Ask Robert Langdon …

  Willem Rijsbergen

  Yes, if only we could …

  Abner Cohen

  Keep me posted, Willem. As you can see, this is a case that has haunted me. I’ve not been able to let it go. I sincerely hope that the same does not happen to you. And who knows, maybe the progress you make in your case will lead to new insights in the case here in Jerusalem. We’ll get things moving again here too.

  Willem Rijsbergen

  I’ll definitely keep you posted. We had assumed – mistakenly, it seems – that our case was unique. It simply hadn’t occurred to us that there might be a parallel case elsewhere.

  Abner Cohen

  These two cases must be connected. They’re far too similar for this to be pure coincidence – in my opinion.

  Willem Rijsbergen

  There was video footage in the episode.

  Abner Cohen

  Yes, that’s right. CCTV images. There are surveillance cameras all over Jerusalem, a sad necessity here. There are lots of people walking in and out of shot, but that can’t be helped. We’ve scrutinised the footage endlessly – I still watch it occasionally, despite knowing how futile it is – but we’ve only been able to identify a handful of people. 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.

  Willem Rijsbergen

  Let’s stay in touch. I’ll keep you informed of any new developments. Actually, I just remembered as I was typing that: there already is a new development. I’ve been so focused on our two cases … I got a message from someone in Boston saying that two men disappeared there yesterday while they were on a fishing trip. One of them was the chairman of a lodge, and the other was his young pupil.

  Abner Cohen

  That’s shocking news.

  Willem gave him a summary of what he knew about the case so far.

  Willem Rijsbergen

  As we all know, similarities between cases don’t necessarily indicate that they’re connected.

  Abner Cohen

  No, that’s true. Let’s not jump to any conclusions … But it is very strange. Anyway, let’s keep each other in the loop. Good luck with the case. Mazel tov, as we say here. I hope I can close this case one day. My poor wife is always chiding me that I spend too much time living in the past when I can’t let go of these old cases.

  Willem Rijsbergen

  Speak soon, and best wishes from Leiden.

  Abner Cohen

  Best wishes from Jerusalem, too.

  Abner Cohen

  has left the conversation.

  Rijsbergen closed the chat window.

  It was almost three o’clock. Tomorrow was Saturday. Officially, he had the next two days off, but it wasn’t unusual for him to give up his free time to work on a case.

  A message from Jerusalem appeared in his inbox. It was a link to a secure website where he could download the case file. The code needed to access it arrived in a text message. Due to its large size, the file downloaded very slowly.

  Rijsbergen was unable to read most of the documents in the file because they were written in Hebrew, but fortunately, it contained regular summaries in English – made for the Discovery Channel programme, as Rijsbergen learned from the notes in the margins. They included tips and pointers for the producers about where the police thought the emphasis should be placed.

  The text in the file provided no insights other than what he had already gleaned from the documentary and his conversation with Abner Cohen. He s
pent a long time studying the photographs of the victims. Some photos were of their entire bodies, while others were only of their heads. They showed that barely half of their skulls had been left intact.

  The first victim, the older man, had been killed during an evening event at the Masonic Hall that had been attended by many non-members, Abner had told him. The parallels were abundantly clear: a chairman killed with extreme violence in the presence of a large number of people, which had resulted in a crime scene so contaminated that it had been difficult to make sense of the physical evidence.

  Rijsbergen was shocked by the similarities between the photographs of one of the Israeli victims and the photos of Coen Zoutman: both bodies lying on a black and white tiled floor, their heads surrounded by enormous pools of blood.

  The second victim had been found in a remote location near the Mount of Olives. The police suspected that he had either been lured there or taken there against his will because no one could think of any reason for him to be in that location so late at night. The murderer had left his body where he had killed him just a few days after the Worshipful Master had been murdered.

  Rijsbergen concentrated on the close-up photographs that had been taken of the skin. It had obviously been cut with something like a surgical scalpel because the edges of the wound were clean rather than jagged.

  When he compared these photographs to those taken of Yona Falaina, it was immediately apparent that this was the work of someone with the same modus operandi.

  It’s either the same person or a copycat, Rijsbergen thought. Perhaps whoever murdered Coen Zoutman didn’t have enough time to cut out the tattoo. Were they disturbed before they could finish the job?

  Rijsbergen had promised Abner that he would send him all the material they had gathered so far. Obviously, he would also be dealing with files written in a foreign language, so he would need to have the documents translated.