opened another bottle of beer, and poured it down his throat in a couple of gulps. Then he smoothed his long, grey hair back with a small comb, a nervous tic that he performed countless times each day. He probably thought the little flick of a mullet that this made at the back of his neck was terribly bohemian. Combined with his enormous paunch and spindly legs, he reminded Peter of a circus ringmaster. Put a top hat on his bloated head and he’d look just the part.
‘He just lives for these moments, doesn’t he?’ Peter whispered to Daniël.
‘He’ll post the photo of himself with the mayor on Facebook as soon as it’s over,’ Daniël added, laughing. He gave Peter a sideways look. ‘It was good of you to come, Peter. I really appreciate it.’
‘You don’t need to thank me. I’m happy to be here. I wanted to come and wish you luck. I’m here for you and Janna, not for myself, like Van Tiegem.’
‘He’s a great networker though, you have to give him that. And your department needs one of those, right?’
Peter was about to say something cutting in reply, but a round of applause interrupted him. Mayor Freylink had arrived in full regalia with the chain of office around his neck.
‘What’s the plan, exactly?’ Peter asked.
Daniël carried on looking straight ahead and clapping for the mayor who was walking past close to where they were standing. ‘I’ve dumped a bit of sand in the hole,’ he answered. ‘He’s going to take it out with the digger. And that will be the project’s symbolic launch.’
‘Not very elegant, is it?’
‘Well we could have sent him down there with a bucket, but I thought this would be more refined. Freylink was enthusiastic about it anyway. And he used to be a historian, as you know, so he’s glad to be closely involved. He’s even been to a building site to practise.’
The applause died out.
A small excavator came towards them. Little black clouds of smoke escaped from the long, thin exhaust pipe on its roof.
‘I’d better get over there,’ said Daniël. Janna followed him. He turned around to look at Peter. ‘We’re going for dinner at El Gaucho tonight with the team. You’re very welcome to join us if you’d like to come along.’
Peter gave him a thumbs-up. Maybe I could ask Judith to go with me, he thought.
He took the opportunity to take a quick look at his phone. He skimmed through chapter 13 of Paul’s letter to the Romans and recognised the contents straight away. It was about allegiance to the authorities who had been placed above you. A text which had often been misused throughout the course of history, and for which Paul had been heavily criticised. Pay your taxes, do as you are told, don’t be rebellious, ‘for there is no authority that does not come from God’. Whoever opposes authority opposes one of God’s agencies, and thereby opposes God.
Little wonder, then, that the people of Leiden suddenly found themselves drawn to Calvin when the Spaniards were at the city’s gates. He said that you could rebel against your rulers. People were often inclined to choose the convictions that best suited their own interests …
Suddenly, the student’s phone began to vibrate. Peter was surprised that it hadn’t happened before now; youngsters spent more time in conversation with people they couldn’t see than with the people who were right next them. But first, he wanted to read the specific verse that had been written on the note. ‘Let no debt remain outstanding,’ he read, ‘except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law …’ Here it was, verse 11:
And do this, understanding the present time: the hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.
The hour has already come …
‘Hora est,’ Peter repeated, absent-mindedly making quiet, smacking sounds, as though trying to taste the words on his tongue.
He read the rest of the scripture aloud to himself in a staccato mumble, as though this would help him to decipher a message hidden in the words.
The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armour of light.
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.
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,
