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

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       5

       Friday 20 March, 5:55pm

      There were no more text messages. After the bizarre events of the afternoon, Peter’s unease about them faded into the background.

      The moment he had realised that someone was buried under the rubble, he and Daniël had crawled through the hole in the bottom of the pit. They had found a young man whose lower body was pinned to the ground. He was unconscious, but his breathing seemed normal. Working in the scant light provided by the helmet, they’d removed the bricks to free him.

      A putrid stench had emanated from the man and he was sticky with the congealed blood that covered him. Peter and Daniël had retched more than once.

      Getting him out of the hole had been no easy task. Another ambulance had been called for and arrived soon afterwards. After a stretcher had been lowered into the pit, two sturdy-looking paramedics had taken over. After briefly assessing him, they had put him inside a cover that looked like a body bag, then fastened him onto the stretcher and eventually lifted him up to the surface.

      Peter and Daniël had taken the opportunity to investigate further. With everyone else gone, a great silence had fallen over the site. They appeared to be in a tunnel, around two metres high and perhaps a metre and a half wide. The floor was made of stone, the walls and the vaulted ceiling that arched over their heads were constructed from red bricks.

      The tunnel ran in the direction of the Burcht one way and looked like it went towards the Hooglandse Kerk in the other.

      Peter had heard about the tunnels that were rumoured to run below Leiden’s streets, stories that did the rounds in many Dutch cities. Supposedly, some of them had been part of the original designs when the Pieterskerk, the Hooglandse Kerk and other churches were built. Others were thought to have been created to move supplies into the town during the Siege of Leiden, when it was twice besieged by the Spanish. It was said that secret tunnels led from the Burcht and the town hall to places that had once been outside the city walls.

      ‘This is just bizarre,’ Daniël had said.

      ‘How was this not discovered at the planning stage, before digging started?’

      ‘We relied on the Land Registry for information about pipes and cables. And of course, we have a good idea of where the former canals are. But maybe if you go down another layer, there are things that have never been mapped. They didn’t find anything when they were drilling either.’

      ‘That doesn’t seem possible.’ Peter still hadn’t been able to shake off his disbelief. ‘Surely this would have been discovered years ago?’

      ‘Apparently not,’ Daniël had replied testily. ‘Otherwise we wouldn’t be standing here.’

      ‘We need to hire one of those gadgets, a …’

      ‘A GeoSeeker? Yes, exactly, that’s what I was thinking.’

      Peter had worked with a GeoSeeker before, a device that detected cavities below ground. They were very expensive pieces of kit.

      ‘We’ll have to put in a request for one first. I don’t think we’ll be able to get it until Monday.’

      Daniël and Peter had walked just a few metres into the tunnel before turning around and going back to where they started.

      ‘It’s not safe to go any further,’ Daniël had said. ‘We’ll need to set it up properly with a team, decent lights …’

      They had climbed back up to the street, where the noise and activity had calmed down by now. Most of the spectators had gone home after the young man had been taken to hospital. The drinks reception had been cancelled, the tables had been collected by the catering company, and СКАЧАТЬ