Jeroen Windmeijer - St Paul’s Labyrinth

Deep furrows appeared on his brow. ‘Even so,’ he continued, ‘I have a message for you.’

Peter opened his mouth to say something, but the man cut him off before he had a chance.

‘You’ve been chosen,’ the young man said abruptly, as though he was keen to avoid any discussion.

‘Chosen?’

‘Yes, chosen. A great honour.’

‘Now listen,’ Peter said with irritation, ‘I don’t have time for this now. My colleague has just disappeared and I—’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t know anything about your colleague.’

There was a short, awkward pause.

‘I’ve been … chosen?’ Peter asked, confused by the direction the conversation had taken.

‘Yes, that’s right.’ The young man sat up straight. ‘Have you seen The Matrix ?’

Peter nodded impatiently.

‘With the red and blue pill …’ the man continued. ‘Neo is given a choice: if he takes the red pill, he’ll wake up and experience the world as it really is. If he takes the blue pill, nothing changes and he carries on as before …’

‘And that would make you Morpheus, I suppose?’

The man scoffed. ‘Peter …’

Peter was unpleasantly surprised that the young man knew his name.

‘Listen,’ the man said, getting up from the bench. They were standing no more than a metre apart now. When he spoke again, his voice was very calm. ‘Just like the prisoner who escapes Plato’s cave and discovers the truth, you can … be set free, disconnected … like in The Matrix .’

‘So I need to choose the red pill?’

‘You don’t need to understand everything now. You will, eventually. “The hour has come.” That’s the message.’

‘The hour has come?’

‘ Hora est .’

‘ Hora est . This is …’ Peter let his arms fall to his sides, nonplussed. ‘How do you know who I am? And who are you? Do you have a name?’

‘You can call me Raven.’

Peter had run out of patience. He was exhausted from the chase, from the adventure in the tunnel, from worrying about what might have happened to Arnold. ‘You know what, I’m done here—’

‘Look out! Behind you!’ the man said suddenly.

Peter turned around. As soon as he did, Raven pushed him backwards and he fell to the ground, hitting his head hard on the edge of the bench. He felt his skull explode with pain.

The oldest trick in the book.

The man sprinted off but then he stopped a few metres away and shouted: ‘Salvation is at hand!’

Friday 20 March, 7:30pm

Peter rubbed the painful spot on his head. What sort of idiot was he to fall for that ? ‘Look out! Behind you?’ That was what children shouted to distract their friends in playfights.

He walked in the same direction that Raven had run, out of the park, over the Steenschuur canal. He crossed the Breestraat and went along ‘t Gangetje onto the Nieuwe Rijn. The street was quiet and empty. The light from the streetlamps sparkled in the canal.

What should they do? The police had clearly given Van Tiegem’s umpteenth vanishing act a low priority, but everything was different this time. Perhaps one of them should go to the main police station on the Langegracht canal to explain the situation properly. The story about him suddenly going missing while exploring a secret tunnel must have sounded quite absurd.

As soon as he got back to the pit, he would talk to Janna and Daniël about what to do next, he decided.

But when he turned into the Beschuitsteeg, he saw blue lights flashing on the walls of the Hooglandse Kerk ahead of him.

He took a few careful steps forward, staying close to the houses on the left-hand side of the alley. Now he could hear the crackle of radios too. So the police had come after all. How was he going to explain his sudden disappearance? The way he’d run off earlier would make him an obvious suspect in Arnold’s case. And what could he say? That he’d had a discussion in the park with a man calling himself Raven who wanted him to choose between a red pill and a blue pill? Oh yes, and that the same man had said that the hour had come and salvation was at hand?

They’d arrest him there and then and detain him until they knew what had happened to Arnold.

Peter stopped next to the last house on the street and peered around the corner. There were two police cars, and some police officers were standing around the hole with Daniël and Janna. They appeared to be discussing something urgently while one of the officers spoke into a radio. When one of the policemen looked in his direction, Peter ducked back around the corner and decided to walk the other way. I need to find out what’s going on here first , he thought. I want to investigate. Need to investigate. Who knows how much precious time will be lost if they arrest me?

He retraced the route he’d taken earlier that afternoon.

The faculty was deserted by the time he got there. He opened the door with his key card and walked down the hall to his office.

Once he was in his room, he took off his dusty clothes and put his wallet and the two mobile phones on his desk. He took a clean shirt, trousers and socks from the cupboard. As he got dressed, he wolfed down two of the cereal bars he kept in his desk drawer as afternoon snacks.

He went to the toilets and craned his head under the tap as best he could. The water that streamed into the sink was grey. He dabbed his face dry with paper towels, studying himself in the small, round mirror. He looked tired. The whites of his eyes were shot with red, and there was a scratch on his nose. He ran his hands roughly through his hair, releasing a dusty shower of grit that made him look like he had a severe case of dandruff.

And there was a clearly visible piece of lettuce stuck between his teeth. He dug it out and rinsed out his mouth.

Now that he had calmed down, he could see that walking away had been a bad idea. He’d been so taken aback by the strange encounter with Raven, the messages, and Arnold’s disappearance that he’d wanted to go off and investigate on his own. But where would he start?

He went back to his office and took the folder from that afternoon’s lecture out of his bag. The students were required to turn up for least eighty percent of their lectures and he was required to keep accurate records of their attendance. Reading out a roll and ticking off every name individually took much too long, so he usually passed the register around the class. Of course, this sometimes meant that there were more people present on paper than were actually in the lecture hall. He usually brushed it off with a joke. (‘Once again, it appears that, just like a Russian election, we have more votes than voters.’)

He ran his finger down the list of names, trying to remember their faces. He only succeeded in one or two cases. He soon realised that this was utterly useless. What had he hoped to find? A student called Raven Ravensbergen? Or a red arrow pointing to a name and the words ‘ hora est ’?

He grumpily folded the list up again. As he slotted it back into the folder, his eye fell on the little book that he had been using on the course. More of a thick pamphlet than a book, its cover was printed on the same paper as the contents. Written on the front were the words: GEDEMPTEGRACHTENWANDELING or A WALKING TOUR OF INVISIBLE CANALS, published by the Leiden Canal Society and the Old Leiden Historical Society. It was a route around all the canals in Leiden that had been covered over or filled in.

He picked it up distractedly. How was it possible that the tunnel had never been discovered before?

He spread it open and began to read random pages, looking for answers.