Laurence O’Bryan - The Jerusalem Puzzle

I checked my email.

My mind was put to rest. There was an email from Dr Hunter. I opened it quickly. ‘Sean, I’m in Jerusalem. I’ll be back in London on Friday. Will call you then. There’s something we need to talk about. SH.’ It had been sent on Sunday afternoon.

I thought about replying, asking her what was so important, but I decided not to. I would find out soon enough. And I had to work on being patient.

I kept my mobile at hand all day on Friday, even though Isabel said I was losing the plot. I even left it on vibrate in a management meeting. Finances have been the main issue in these meetings for the past year, and we’ve all taken a pay cut. Our survival is not in question but what we spend our money on is. That evening I checked my junk mail to see if a new email from Dr Hunter had ended up in the wrong place. It hadn’t. I wasn’t overly concerned, but I looked up Dr Hunter on the internet. What I found out disturbed me.

Five minutes’ walk from Amsterdam’s flea market in Waterlooplein there is a side street with a bricked-up end wall. The red brick building at the end of the street had been a squat for a long time. Recently it had been converted into small apartments, rooms really, and let out by the week.

The two young men who had taken the top floor room ten days before had the appearance of derelicts. They were unshaven and dressed in dirty jeans, t-shirts and thin jackets when they arrived, though the sun in February in Amsterdam is a cool affair.

The fact that they didn’t appear out of their room for a week attracted no notice. It was only when the manager of the building, a big mousy-haired woman, knocked on their door that their existence came into question. That was because of the pungent smell that filled the tiny area between the door and the rickety stairs. When she opened the narrow door using her key the sight that greeted her was one she had never seen in all her sixty-six years. And she’d seen a lot, especially in the old days in the red-light district.

Both young men were tied to the bedstead. The mattress had been stripped from it and the iron frame had been upended. Both were naked. That wasn’t what upset her.

Their skin was black and shrivelled to the point where they resembled burnt wooden sculptures rather than humans. The window behind them was open and the room was freezing.

The Amsterdam Medical Office would later determine that local pigeons must have spent many hours feasting on the bodies, particularly the faces, before they were found. The cause of death was obvious. Both of them had suffered one hundred percent burns. But not in one go.

They had been burnt by a blowtorch or some other flammable device on each part of their body, without damaging the room, except for scorch marks on the bedstead. The cloth that had been stuffed into their mouths to keep them quiet must have caught alight, as in each case all that remained of it was a black mulch.

The coroner confirmed that one of the men had died five days before, the other four days before. It was likely that the torture of one of these men was used to encourage the other to talk. Whether he did or not is hard to know. He certainly didn’t benefit.

It would be another twenty-four hours before the National Criminal Database in the United Kingdom would tell the authorities who these men were and what they had been involved in.

Dr Hunter’s house had burnt down and her husband had died in the fire.

Even worse, Dr Susan Hunter had gone missing from where she was staying in Jerusalem. It was only a small article, an interview with an Israeli policeman looking

for anyone who might have seen her. But the article said she hadn’t been seen since Sunday night, just about when she’d contacted me. And the police were now looking for her.

I sent an email to Beresford-Ellis. Things had been tricky between us for a while, but I knew what I had to do. I wasn’t going to let the rumours about the collapse of our project in Istanbul impact on what I’d decided, even for a second.

I checked the visa requirements for visiting Israel and booked a flight. I heard Isabel calling me from the kitchen as I was staring at my itinerary. ‘I’m coming,’ I shouted.

Over dinner we discussed what I’d found.

I told her about my flight plans.

‘You really think it’s a good idea to go to Jerusalem?’ she said. Her right eyebrow was raised.

‘Yes.’ I said it softly.

‘You are crazy. You know that, don’t you?’ She leaned towards me. She had her serious expression on.

‘Getting burnt to death is an especially bad way to go,’ she said. ‘Way too many people have died that way.’ Her eyes gave away how worried she was. ‘Bloody hell, even God does it to the Innocents in the Bible.’

I put my knife and fork down. I’d been eating slowly. Rain was lashing at the door out to the balcony. I stared into the darkness, my appetite gone.

‘I feel responsible,’ I said. ‘That manuscript we found in Istanbul, it’s like a bloody curse. Now Kaiser’s dead. And Susan’s missing. I don’t like coincidences.’

She put her knife and fork down too. ‘It’s not your fault Alek died,’ she said. Her powers of perception were one

of the things I liked about her, even when they made me uncomfortable.

‘I could have gone with him.’ I said it forcefully.

‘You told me he insisted on going alone.’

She was right of course, but I could have stayed in contact with him more. He might have told me that he’d found that cavern under Hagia Sophia. I could have gone out there, intervened. He might be alive if I had.

‘You’re not going to wait and see if they find her?’

I shook my head. ‘I can’t.’

‘I have to go out there.’ I spoke fast. ‘Waiting’s not an option. Nobody in Jerusalem will know anything about what Susan might be caught up in, her connection to the book.’

‘Well, I’m coming too,’ said Isabel. ‘It’ll be fun.’

I looked at her. Her loyalty impressed me, and if I was to be honest I was pleased she wanted to come. Her intelligence and wit were an asset – she’d already saved me from being kidnapped in Istanbul. ‘You need me, Sean. Admit it.’ She smiled.

I leaned and reached for her. She pulled away.

‘Have I ever denied it?’ I pushed the plates aside, leaned further and pulled her gently to me.

The following day I called Beresford-Ellis.

‘The authorities can do this a lot better than you, Sean,’ he said.

‘I want to see what’s going on for myself.’

He snorted. ‘This is not your business.’

‘It is my business. She’s been translating the book we found. Now she’s missing and her husband is dead.’

He made a honking noise, like a startled pig. ‘Have you gone stark raving mad, Ryan? You’re a research director, not a private investigator. This sort of stuff is not in your job description. Not in it at all.’ Mr Nice was long gone now. ‘Do you know anything about the situation out there?’ He didn’t wait for me to answer.

‘It’s a bloody powder keg waiting to go off. Think about it, Ryan. This is crazy. You’re crazy even talking about it.’

That made me more determined than ever.

‘Crazy or not, I’m going. And I’m doing it on my own time too, so it doesn’t have to be in my job description.’ I breathed deeply, working on keeping cool.

Now there was a bonus to going. I could enjoy Beresford-Ellis’s discomfort.

‘I’ve quite a lot of holiday time coming up and I can’t think of a better way to spend it. You told me yourself that I hadn’t taken off enough time after Istanbul.’ Check, mate.

‘Your contract is something we need to talk about, actually.’ The frustration in his voice told me everything I needed to know about what he thought of my contract.