EG03 - The Water Lily Cross (17 page)

“As I recall, she said that she’d met Stewart at another man’s house—his name escapes me right now—he’d recently died in a fire at his home. She wanted to know if I had met him or knew him.”

“Adrian Walsh.”

“Walsh, that’s right.”

“According to her you hadn’t.”

“That’s true. I’ve no idea who he is—or was, I suppose.”

“Why call you?”

“Apparently she’d read about Stewart’s disappearance in the papers and wondered if the two events were connected in any way.”

“It all seems rather odd. I’m surprised you didn’t mention it at the time.”

“I’m sorry. If I’d thought for one moment it might be important, I certainly would have. At the time, it seemed innocent enough.”

Kingston sighed. “It probably is, Becky. Don’t worry about it.”

The conversation ended with his promising to call her on the weekend to arrange for another visit to The Willows.

Tired and still hurting after the drive back to London, made interminable by road works on the M3, he got back to his flat around six.

Sitting on the sofa, he sorted the mail, a glass of Macallan at his side. Separating the bills from the junk mail, he was glad to find a postcard from his friend, Andrew, who was holidaying in New Zealand. Kingston was beginning to wish he’d taken up Andrew’s offer to accompany him. “Wish you were here,” Andrew had written in jest.

Putting the postcard aside, Kingston leaned back, thinking back on his conversation with Becky and on Alison Greer’s lie about Becky having suggested calling him. What was the woman up to, he wondered. The medication had helped his headache, but the occasional dull throbbing reminded him about his trip to the reservoir and the warning—not that he would ever forget it. On the drive home he’d concluded that whoever attacked him must have been at the reservoir when he’d arrived and had been watching him all that time. No cars in sight probably meant that a motorcycle was tucked away somewhere on the grounds. It seemed the most logical explanation. The circumstances—particularly the more-dead-than-alive water lilies—led him to believe that the reservoir trials were finished and the place was now being put to other use. Despite having paid very painfully for it, the visit was not wasted. He was convinced that the “Hal,” written on the chalkboard, was no coincidence, meaning that Stewart could have been living there all or part of that time. He wished he could go back and see if there was any further evidence or clues that would confirm his suspicion.

Assuming that the trials—or experiments, or whatever they should be called—had been successful, what would Everard’s next step be, if indeed he were the mastermind behind the scheme? Logical reasoning suggested that if Everard was selling the waterlily hybrid or setting up a joint venture to build a more sophisticated desalination plant, he’d have to prove that the process not only worked but would function efficiently when scaled up. To achieve that, interested parties would have to have seen a demonstration of the system at work to make such a consequential decision. Documentation, statistics, charts, photographic examples, and samples of purified water would not be enough.

So if the results had been positive and the project was near completion, where did that leave Stewart? And where was he now? Kingston picked up Andrew’s postcard and looked at the photograph of the mirror-like surface of an azure lake with a backdrop of snow-dusted mountains—one of the National Parks. It was all so tranquil and far removed from everything that was happening in Kingston’s world. He sighed, wishing he
were
there.

Since that very first phone message from Becky’s daughter—it seemed so long ago now—Kingston’s life had been upended. Now he had become a target: That changed everything. At his time of life, self-preservation trumped heroism every time. He swirled the amber liquid in his glass, inhaling the peat-smoky aroma. Fitzgerald had it right, he mused, when he penned: “Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy.” Stewart’s disappearance and Walsh’s murder had brought tragedy enough already. How did he manage to get entangled in these unlikely situations, and why was he always the one singled out to help solve other people’s problems? Of course, he knew why. He took another sip of the single malt and reached for the phone. He’d call Desmond and tell him about the latest episode. Kingston could hear him now, when he told Desmond he’d been mugged: “Can’t say I didn’t warn you, Lawrence. I told you not to mess with those people.”

Kingston was about to hang up when Desmond answered after the umpteenth ring.

“It’s Lawrence. How are you?”

“Fine. Looks like the Finchley nursery will happen. Nip and tuck for a while but I finally managed to convince the bank that there really was gold in goldfish.”

“Not to mention water lilies.”

“Right. How’s all that going?”

“That’s why I’m calling. Not too well, I’m afraid.”

Kingston went on to tell Desmond everything that had happened since they last met, ending with the incident at the reservoir.

“Jesus! You can’t say I didn’t warn you, Lawrence. I told you not to mess with those people.”

Kingston smiled. “You were right, Desmond. I still have the lump on my head to prove it. The rotten thing is that I’m nowhere nearer to finding Stewart than I was on day one. I’m starting to get a sickening feeling that we may never see him again.”

“What about the police?”

“Zip. Nothing. In fact, I got a call from the inspector at Ringwood who’s handling the case asking
me
if I had any further ideas. That says it all. I’ve done the best I can, Desmond. I don’t know what more I can do.”

“For God’s sake, just let it go, Lawrence,” Desmond yelled. “How many times do I have to tell you?”

Kingston heard a sigh, then a calmer voice. “Tell Stewart’s wife—what’s her name?”

“Becky.”

“Tell Becky what you just told me and I’m sure she’ll understand. If the truth be known, by now she no longer has her hopes up too high, anyway.”

“We’re not going to give up hope, Desmond, if that’s what you’re saying.”

“That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying just knock off the detective work.”

“All right, all right. I hear you.”

“By the way, I’m coming into town next Monday. Want to do lunch? My treat this time.”

“Monday’s fine.”

“Great. I’ll call you over the weekend and we’ll set it up. No more nice guy, okay?”

Kingston put the phone down. Desmond was right. It was time to end his investigation. However, he hadn’t told Desmond that, before closing the book on his search, he was about to do one more thing: check on Google Earth, the Internet satellite imagery and mapping site, to see if he might be able to obtain an aerial view of the reservoir.

If the phone were to ring only once a day, Sod’s Law would have it that the call would be in the middle of either lunch or dinner. In this case Kingston had just sat down at the kitchen table with a bowl of last night’s leftover fettuccine al pesto and a glass of Chianti Classico Riserva—also from the previous night. At first, he considered letting the answering machine take the message but instead he took a quick sip of wine, got up, and picked up the phone.

“Doctor Kingston?”

The man’s voice was cultivated and unfamiliar.

“It is,” Kingston replied, looking across to his cooling pasta.

“This is Miles Everard. I understand you were in our offices last week, asking for me.”

Caught off guard, Kingston hesitated. “Yes—yes, I was,” he said. “Thank you for getting back to me.”

“I understand that you talked to Gavin Blake, one of our vice presidents—he usually subs for me when I’m gone. My secretary was out that day.”

“That’s right,” said Kingston, playing for time, figuring how he should broach the question of Stewart’s disappearance. Everard saved him the trouble.

“Blake said you wanted to talk to me about a friend of yours who’s gone missing. He said that you felt sure I knew him and thought that I might be working with him on a project of some kind.” Everard’s tone was cordial, not at all businesslike.

“In a nutshell, that was the purpose of my visit, yes.”

“What’s your friend’s name?”

“Halliday. Stewart Halliday. He was a colleague of Adrian Walsh, whom I’m told you also knew.”

A lengthy pause was followed by Everard’s answer: “I’m sorry, Doctor, I’m not familiar with either of those names.”

This was not at all what Kingston had been expecting. The idea of Everard’s denying knowledge of Stewart and Walsh had never crossed his mind. Before he could reply, Everard spoke again.

“May I ask what made you think I knew these people?”

“The information came from a woman named Alison Greer. She maintained that you, Halliday, and Walsh were involved in a project to develop a new type of desalination process. She believed you were partners and had met at Walsh’s house in Hampshire.” Kingston was about to tell him that Walsh had been murdered but thought better of it—for the moment, anyway.

Everard laughed politely. “First I’ve heard of it,” he said. “If it works and it’s more cost-efficient than conventional methods, I might like to know more about it. But it’s not really our kind of business. Essentially, we’re an engineering and construction company. So if we
were
to be involved in such a project, it would most likely be as a subcontractor.”

Kingston was getting a sinking feeling that Everard was telling the truth. Nothing in his answers, or the straightforward manner in which he had phrased them, gave Kingston any reasons to think otherwise. He had run out of questions—almost.

“You’re saying you don’t know Alison Greer either? You’ve never met her?” he asked.

“Absolutely not.”

“Well—”

“Sounds like she’s led you up the garden path, Doctor.”

Kingston wanted to say, You don’t know how true that is, but instead replied, “It rather looks that way.”

“Sorry I couldn’t help,” Everard said, as if he meant it.

“Thanks for taking the time to call. I appreciate the courtesy, Mr. Everard—rare these days.”

“No problem.”

“This is going to sound like an odd question, but would you mind if I asked you your height?”

“My height?”

“Yes.”

“That
is
a strange question.”

“I know.”

There was a pause, after which Everard replied, “Five-nine.”

“Thanks,” said Kingston. “Thanks very much.”

They said good-bye and Kingston put down the phone.

Alison Greer was lying. What other explanation was there? Why would she concoct such a story to mislead him so duplicitously? She had been so convincing. Not only convincing, he had even taken a liking to her. He laughed to himself. On the drive home from her cottage he had toyed with the idea of finagling a way to see her again under more sociable terms. Such stirrings had been rare, almost nonexistent during his many years as a widower.

Oddly, he wasn’t furious about what she had done. He was more at a loss as to her motivation to have gone to such lengths to deceive him. In a perverse way, it was an admirable performance. Nevertheless, he’d made up his mind, regardless of Desmond’s admonitions, that he would confront Alison Greer to find out who had put her up to it and what was going on. He wasn’t going to let her get away with it. Now was as good a time as any. He picked up the phone and punched in the number she had given him.

It rang for some time before he heard the message: “Sorry we missed your call …” Kingston put the phone down, not too gently, and looked up at the ceiling. “That’s odd,” he said under his breath. “
We
missed your call.” Was someone living with her? Wouldn’t she have said so? Or was it the editorial “we” again?

Kingston lay awake half that night, thoughts and visions of Alison Greer coming and going as he tried to rehash their conversation of that morning at the cottage. By the time first light sliced through the shutters, projecting an abstract light show on the wall, his mind had long since been made up. Today was Saturday and if the weather was half decent, he would take a spin down to Hartley Wintney with the intent of surprising Miss Greer and having it out with her.

Dressed in his navy terry robe, he went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. Waiting for it to boil, he called her again, just in case he had mistakenly dialed the wrong number yesterday. He heard the same message.

Several minutes later, a cup of tea and a bowl of steaming Scott’s Porridge Oats on the table, and Alison Greer off his mind for a while, he cast his eyes over
The Times
crossword and read a few clues. Cleverly concealed anagrams—some eleven- and twelve-letter words or longer—often appeared. He had become a whiz at ferreting out and solving them. Now and then, just for fun, with nothing better to do, he would look at words in magazines, on packages, in waiting rooms—wherever—and make anagrams of them. By shuffling the letters of “Alec Guinness” he’d made
Genuine Class
. “Marriage” became
A Grim Era
. One of his all-time favorites, though not of his making: “Eleven Plus Two” translated to
Twelve Plus One
. He’d been staring at the Scott’s Porridge Oats package for many years before thinking of turning it into an anagram:
Go stir paste, doctors
, was the best he’d been able to come up with. Other clues in
The Times
were even more difficult. One that he’d finally solved yesterday was particularly ingenious. The clue read:
Try to measure speed of arrow? You must be patient (4,4,4)
. The answer was three words, each four letters.
²

Two hours later, under a mackerel sky and with the top down, Kingston turned left off the A30 to the village green at Hartley Wintney. He stopped outside Pennyroyal Cottage, looking at the leaded windows as he got out of the TR4 and stretched. They were all closed—unusual for such a warm day, he thought. He knocked on the door and waited, wondering how Alison would react, what she would say, when she opened the door and saw him. After a minute or so he knocked again, this time harder. He knew it had been a gamble to drive down unannounced but, it being Saturday, he’d figured there was a greater than fifty-fifty chance of her being home. Now he was beginning to think he might have acted too impulsively, blinded by the slap in the face he’d received—and it still stung. The damned woman was probably away, that’s why he’d got the answering machine. He was about to give it one last try when he heard a voice calling. He turned to see a stumpy white-haired lady wearing an apron approaching the gate. She had busybody written all over her.