St Paul’s Labyrinth: The explosive new thriller perfect for fans of Dan Brown and Robert Harris!

Someone slapped him, a bit overenthus‌iastically, on the shoulder. Van Tiegem.

‘Come on, put that phone down,’ he said, and made a playful attempt to snatch the phone from Peter’s hand.

Peter irritably fended him off. ‘Okay, okay,’ he said, putting the phone away.

‘Don’t you want a beer?’

‘Thanks Arnold, but I’m officially still working.’

‘Oh you’re good,’ Arnold said, without much conviction, ‘very good. I should follow your example.’

The mayor was standing next to the digger now. Someone had put a yellow safety helmet on his head, apparently more for show than anything else. He patiently posed in it while photographs were taken.

‘Shouldn’t you go and stand with him?’ Peter suggested.

‘That’s actually a very good idea,’ Arnold said, sounding genuinely pleased. On his way over to the mayor, he waggishly stole a helmet from a construction worker and set it at a jaunty angle on his own head. He stood next to Freylink and held two thumbs aloft as the cameras clicked.

Peter took the other phone from his pocket. It had received a message, not via WhatsApp, but another app he’d not heard of before, Wickr. He opened the message. There were just three words:

iuxta est salus

Another message arrived as soon as he’d read it.

salvation is at hand

Only then did he see the sender’s name. Paul.

This was …

Peter started to type in a reply, but then he saw that the messages had already disappeared. They seemed to be available for only a few seconds, just long enough to be able to read them.

He opened the phone’s address book. He had to check twice to make sure that he wasn’t mistaken.

It was completely empty.

3

Friday 20 March, 2:15pm

Peter looked up from the phone and scanned his surroundings, first round to the left, and then all the way back round to the right, like a security camera watching a street. But there was nothing to see. No one shiftily ducking out of sight, no man in a fedora looking at him from behind a newspaper with two peepholes cut into it.

What he really wanted right now was to go back to his office. Maybe he’d be able to uncover the joker’s identity by looking through the list of students on his course? But he also knew that he needed to be seen here. In his world, success ultimately came down to who you knew, short lines of communication, cronyism, a good network. In these times of austerity, it would do him no harm to know the right people, Daniël was right about that. You could say what you liked about Van Tiegem, but the man was a born networker who had always been very successful in raising funds for the faculty.

Peter was suddenly very thirsty. He took a bottle of beer from the table and prised off the cap. He rinsed his mouth out with the first swig before he swallowed it. The beer was warm.

Freylink was sitting in the cab of the excavator now and had closed the door. The engine purred smoothly as the mayor nervously drove it towards the hole outside the library. A group of men slowly walked alongside him on either side of the digger, like coffin bearers at a funeral. They even took a dignified step backwards when they reached the edge of the pit.

Daniël stuck both of his thumbs in the air at Freylink, who pulled a lever to move the grapple. Everything seemed to be going according to plan. It was calm and controlled, which suggested that Freylink had indeed been rehearsing for this moment.

Janna came back over to where Peter was standing.

‘I was ready at half nine this morning already,’ she said out of nowhere.

‘Ready for what?’ Peter asked, but he knew the answer before he’d finished asking the question. ‘Ah, the eclipse.’

‘Exactly, but there wasn’t much to see, really,’ Janna said, sounding disappointed. ‘There was far too much cloud cover, I’m afraid. It went on until quarter to twelve, but I missed most of it.’

‘That’s a pity.’

By now, the excavator’s arm had almost entirely disappeared into the hole. The next task was to use the large bucket to collect some sand and carefully bring it up to the surface. The task demanded great precision as there wasn’t much room for manoeuvre. After a flying start, the mayor seemed to be hesitating. The thrum of the machine’s motor grew a little louder and the exhaust belched out more puffs of smoke. The bucket appeared to be stuck. The machine listed forwards slightly. Someone in the crowd let out a little scream. A couple of spectators laughed nervously.

A construction worker knocked on the cab window to ask if everything was all right. Freylink smiled and gave him a thumbs-up, but then mopped his forehead with a handkerchief.

The hydraulic arm started to move again. Suddenly, there was an ear-splitting noise. Breaking rocks mixed with the revving sound of an overworked motor. The little puffs of smoke had now become huge, jet-black clouds; the smell of diesel filled the air, and the machine keeled over. Two men attempted to pull it back into its original position by hanging from it, but without success.

Peter could see that the mayor’s usually placid face was contorted in terror. Freylink tried to push the door open, but the machine was already toppling forwards into the pit.

As the machine became jammed, half in and half out of the earth, the spectators shrieked and jumped back, revealing the perilous position the mayor was now in. Total chaos erupted. A few people tugged at the digger’s tracks, but soon gave up. The door was jammed against the wall of the pit and there was no way to open it.

Instinctively, Peter raced over to see if he could help. He crouched down next to Daniël who was banging on the window. Freylink looked back at them with a painful grimace as blood from trickled from his eyebrow and nose and spread over his face. Nevertheless, he managed to smile.

‘We’ll get you out of there as soon as we can!’ Daniël shouted. His face was red, perhaps from exertion, or because of his embarrassment at the mayor’s predicament.

Peter looked up and saw that a group of people had gathered in a semi-circle around the hole in the ground. Many of them were taking photographs and recording videos with their phones.

‘Stop that!’ he yelled as he leapt to his feet.

Most of them sheepishly put their phones away again.

Peter was briefly dazed after jumping up so quickly and had to hold onto Daniël to stop himself from stumbling.

Just then, Janna Frederiks came running over. ‘We’ve got another digger down the street,’ she said to Daniël. ‘They’re going to get it now and see if they can pull him out with a cable.’

‘But we can’t just leave him in that cramped little box while they’re gone.’

‘Well what do you want to do?’ she asked. ‘Smash the window in?’

‘Yes, that’s exactly what we’ll do. It’s made of plastic, not glass, so there won’t be any sharp pieces. If he takes his jacket off and puts it over his head, he can protect himself from any splinters that might come loose. Look at how uncomfortable the man is. That’s the mayor in there!’

Janna thought about it for a second or two and then agreed. Winching him out would take at least half an hour, even if it all went without a hitch.

Daniël knelt down on the ground again and tapped on the window. Freylink had managed to move himself around to sit on the control panel. Although it looked like he had calmed down, his bloodied face made him look terrible.

‘Take your jacket off!’ Daniël shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth to amplify his voice. Then he took off his own jacket to demonstrate what he wanted Freylink to do. ‘We’re going to break the window!’ he yelled, over-articulating each word and miming the actions exaggeratedly, ‘so you can crawl out. They’re going to winch the machine out shortly, but we don’t want to leave you in there that long. Put your jacket over your head.’

Freylink understood. He took off his jacket and draped it over his head and shoulders.

Janna came back with large hammer, a chisel and a pair of work gloves and handed them to Daniël.

After a few well-aimed strikes of the hammer, the hard plastic began to crack. Daniël knocked the window out, leaving only a few splinters. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll get you out in no time. I’m almost done. How are you doing?’

‘More in shock than anything,’ came Freylink’s muted voice. ‘I don’t think I’m hurt.’

Daniël checked the window frame for shards of plastic. When Freylink removed his jacket, Peter was taken aback again by his bloody face and the way his hair was pasted to his clammy forehead. As soon as the mayor poked his head outside, the crowd began to applaud with relief.

He climbed onto the steering wheel and stood up a little straighter. Peter and Daniël grabbed him by his armpits and gently pulled him upwards. His trousers snagged on a hook, ripping a long tear in them as they dragged him out.

When the mayor finally emerged from the pit, there was more applause. He smiled weakly and waved. Daniël and Peter took him to the waiting ambulance. The crew started to unload the stretcher, but the mayor motioned it away and got into the ambulance himself to allow the paramedics to see to him.

The second excavator arrived, led by a group of men carrying thick cables. Daniël stuck his head inside the ambulance door. The blood had been wiped from the mayor’s face already and he sat holding a handkerchief to his nose while a paramedic wound a bandage around his head. He reminded Daniël of a footballer with a head wound, being patched up before returning to the pitch.

‘I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am, sir,’ Daniël began.

‘It wasn’t your fault … I don’t know what went wrong. I must have pressed the wrong button … It felt like there was some resistance and then I broke through something.’

‘We’re going to investigate, Mr Mayor. And again, please accept my sincere apologies.’

The paramedic finished dressing Freylink’s head wound and told him he would like to take him to the hospital for further assessment, to which the mayor agreed. Before he got into the ambulance, he gave another jovial wave to the people who stood watching from a distance. The ambulance doors were closed and it quietly drove away, without lights or sirens.

The cables had been attached to the excavator, and now the other digger reversed, growling and puffing smoke while four men stood around the pit to supervise it all. The trapped machine soon began to move and, after twenty minutes, it was back on the surface.

Daniël stood waiting impatiently with a rope ladder in his hands.

‘Do you want to go down?’ Peter asked.

‘Yes, of course! I want to see what the hell went wrong. We didn’t find anything unusual when we were digging. I inspected everything myself just an hour ago.’

They both stared down into the pit. It looked like part of the bottom of it had subsided. When the all-clear was given, Daniël carefully lowered the rope ladder. He made sure that it was securely anchored into the ground with two pegs before he put his foot on the first rung. He switched on the lamp on his helmet and began to climb down.

‘And?’ Peter called after him.

‘It smells different … like the air is damper, heavier. And …’ He had reached the bottom now. ‘There’s been a partial collapse at the bottom!’ he shouted. ‘It looks like there’s a space underneath it.’

‘Is there room for one more?’ Peter shouted. He wanted to take a look too, hoping it would take his mind off the strange text messages.

‘I knew you were going to ask that! Come on!’

Peter descended cautiously, as Janna watched, looking worried and indignantly shaking her head.

Daniël took off his hardhat and pointed the headlamp at the ground below him. ‘This is really bizarre. Look.’

Now Peter could see it too. It was obvious. The walls of the pit were clearly made of bricks and mortar. What on earth was this? A stone floor? Three metres underground?

Peter knelt down and leaned forward to see how far down the hole at the bottom of the pit went. He took Peter’s helmet and pointed its headlamp downwards.

Suddenly he heard a groan. A soft, but unmistakable groan.

He jerked his head backwards with a sharp cry. The helmet fell into the hole.

‘Have you seen a ghost?’ Daniël asked, laughing nervously.

‘I … I think there’s someone …’ Peter stammered.

The groan came again, harder now. He hadn’t imagined it. Daniël had heard it too.

Peter took a deep breath. He stuck his head back into the hole, searching for the source of the groaning. Nothing could have prepared him for what he saw.

Two bare legs poked out from underneath a pile of bricks. At the other end of the pile lay the naked torso of a young man.

The headlamp only barely lit the scene in front of him, but as soon as his eyes grew used to the darkness, he gasped as though he had been punched in the stomach. What appeared before him could have been a medieval painting of the torments of hell.

The man was covered from head to toe in blood.

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