Читать книгу St Paul’s Labyrinth: The explosive new thriller perfect for fans of Dan Brown and Robert Harris! - Jeroen Windmeijer - Страница 14

Friday 20 March, 8:30pm

‘This is very strange,’ Janna said, her austere face looking sterner than ever. She also seemed to be even more stooped than usual, as though she was standing in a room with a low ceiling and was afraid to bump her head. ‘Very strange,’ she said again, more to herself than to Peter.

Twenty minutes had passed since the police had called Peter. The officer who had made the call had contacted the main police station several times, but when it had become clear that Peter hadn’t presented himself there, a warrant had been issued for his arrest.

After the emergency services operator had hung up on Janna the first time, she had called again and been able to convince them of the gravity of the situation. This wasn’t just another Arnold Van Tiegem vanishing act that would resolve itself in a day or two. Eventually Janna and Daniël had been persuaded not to take action themselves, but to wait for the imminent arrival of a police car.

When the police had arrived, Daniël and Janna had given them a brief report of everything that had happened since Peter and Arnold had gone into the tunnel. It would have been impossible to accuse the police of acting in haste; when Janna and Daniël had finished speaking, the officers had tucked away their notebooks and then stood shuffling their feet.

‘What now?’ Daniël had eventually asked.

‘Let’s …’ one of the officers had said uncertainly. ‘Let’s call for backup.’

Not long after he’d made the call, two more officers, an older man and a younger woman, had arrived in another police car. They had taken two lighting units from the back seat, small silver-coloured cases that were protected with an armour of metalwork. They had switched on the lamps and shone two powerful beams into the tunnel.

The two officers who had arrived first had decided to stay above ground. The two new arrivals had gone into the tunnel with Daniël and Janna.

Once they were underground, the improved lighting allowed them to really see how impressive the tunnel’s construction was.

Even the two police officers were impressed. The female officer whistled in amazement. ‘This is quite bizarre, isn’t it, right under the city?’ she asked. Her radio crackled slightly and then grew silent about ten metres into the tunnel.

‘Nothing can happen to us here, right?’ her colleague asked nobody in particular. It wasn’t clear if it was a casual observation or an attempt to quell his own fear.

When they reached the point where the tunnel split, they turned right then quickly hit the dead end and went back the other way.

The officers held the lamps in front of them and swept them from left to right over the ground and above their heads. The tunnel appeared to be solidly built, like a well-maintained wine cellar in a big castle.

‘By the way,’ the older officer said, standing still, ‘the young man who was found in the tunnel this afternoon … he’s escaped.’

‘What?’ Janna exclaimed.

Daniël clenched his fist, like a sports fan watching his team miss a huge opportunity.

‘Yes, escaped,’ the officer said again, as though it was nothing out of the ordinary. ‘He just got up and walked away. The stupid thing is he was so covered in blood that we didn’t get a chance to take any photos of him. His interview was planned for tomorrow, assuming he’d come round by then. But, there you go. Things don’t always go the way you plan them.’

‘The mystery deepens …’ Janna whispered to Daniël.

‘Whereabouts do you reckon we are now?’ the female officer asked. She took out her mobile phone, then immediately put it away again. ‘I thought as much. No coverage down here. I thought we might be able to look at a map …’

‘I think,’ her colleague said, ‘I think that we’re somewhere past the Hooglandse Kerk, under the Hooglandse‌kerkgracht, but …’ He stood still. ‘That’s odd.’

Daniël and Janna stood next to the officers so that they could see what he was looking at.

He took a few steps forward and swung the lamp back and forth. Now they could all see that the tunnel didn’t go any further.

‘But how is that possible?’ Janna said, raising her hands in disbelief like a bad amateur actress.

The younger police officer crouched down to examine the wall more closely. Then she pointed the lamp at the wall as she slowly stood up.

‘I don’t know what you’re searching for, Indiana Jones,’ her colleague said, ‘but I think moving walls and secret passages are more of a Hollywood thing.’

‘This whole tunnel is a Hollywood thing,’ his colleague replied curtly, not taking her eyes off the wall. She studied the point where the wall and the ceiling met, then crouched down to look at the other corner.

‘Nothing unusual here,’ she said, finally.

The older officer turned to Janna and Daniël. ‘Ladies and gentleman, whichever way you look at it, what we have here is a mystery.’

They nodded in agreement.

‘We need more equipment.’

‘A GeoSeeker,’ Daniël said.

The man grunted in a way that was entirely open to interpretation.

‘We’re definitely under the Lutheran church,’ said Daniël.

‘Could I have that lamp for a second?’ Janna asked the female officer, who passed it straight over to her.

Janna moved the lamp back and forth over the ground with a broad, systematic sweeping motion, as though she was clipping a lawn with a strimmer.

‘What are you looking for, Janna?’ Daniël asked.

‘Didn’t Peter say Arnold had wounded his head? So that means there must be blood somewhere, right?’

‘I don’t think it was a gaping wound. He just bumped his head. Most of the blood ended up on Peter’s shirt.’

Janna ignored him and started slowly walking backwards.

The others followed along behind her, scanning the ground inch by inch.

‘Here!’ Janna shouted triumphantly, after she had shuffled another ten or so metres. She put down the lamp with a thud, then got down on her knees and held her nose to the ground.

The others squatted near the area where Janna thought she had seen something.

She circled a spot in the sand with the index finger of her right hand. It was slightly darker than the area around it, like something damp and red had mixed with the sand.

The younger police officer wiped her little finger over the stain and sniffed her fingertip. ‘Hmm,’ she said, ‘that’s blood, without a doubt. That metallic smell …’

‘But it doesn’t look like it’s dripped here,’ her colleague said, ‘otherwise it would look like more like a splashed raindrop. It looks like someone fell here.’

‘Arnold,’ Janna concluded.

‘We can’t say that for certain, although I can see why you think that …’ the older officer said, a little too gravely. ‘But all we can say is that someone was here recently, that they were wounded and very probably fell, but other than that—’

‘We need to go back,’ the other officer said urgently. ‘We can leave one of the lamps here. We need to close this place off for forensics and we need a kit to collect the blood …’

Daniël didn’t move.

‘Are you okay?’ Janna asked him.

‘Not really …’ he replied. ‘This wasn’t what we …’

Janna put a hand on his shoulder. ‘No, this isn’t what we were expecting this afternoon. It was supposed to be a celebration.’

Daniël nodded.

‘Come on, let’s go.’ She gave him a gentle push.

The four of them walked back, leaving a lamp behind them in the middle of the tunnel, like a beacon out at sea.

When they reached the tunnel entrance, the younger officer walked a few metres ahead of them.

‘Does it continue along here?’ she asked, shining the lamp down the passage. But the light fell on a wall about ten metres away. ‘Looks like another dead end.’

‘Peter and I walked a little way down there earlier today,’ Daniël confirmed.

‘Go and have a look,’ the older officer grunted, with a note of cynicism in his voice. ‘Maybe you’ll find another secret passage.’

They helped each other climb back up to the surface. Stones came loose as they went and tumbled to the ground in a scud of gravel.

‘We’ll bring a ladder next time,’ the older officer wheezed.

Only one police officer was waiting for them on the street. The other sat in the front of the police car with his feet hanging out of the door and a radio in his hands.

‘A report’s just come in,’ the officer said, holding out a hand to help them up.

The man in the car barked short sentences into the microphone, but from this distance, all they could hear was beeping and static.

He eventually put the radio back in the cradle and sat for a while, with his hands on his knees and palms facing upwards. Then he stood up and walked towards them. ‘It looks like there won’t be any need to continue the search down there,’ he said hesitantly.

‘Whatdoyoumean?’ Daniël asked, the four words coming out as one.

‘I’ve just been told that they’ve found a body floating in the Nieuw Rijn, under the bridge next to Annie’s Verjaardag.’

Daniël covered his face with his hands.

The officer continued in an official tone: ‘There’s every indication that it’s Mr Van Tiegem.’