EG03 - The Water Lily Cross (31 page)

Kingston remained stock-still, holding his breath as long as he could, letting it out slowly and silently. When he saw one of Blake’s feet shift he tensed, ready to leap forward. Then he saw the dancing light.

Someone holding a flashlight was running across the lawn toward Blake. Close behind was another person. Kingston realized that it was the two policemen but stayed put. He was aware that they carried only batons and sometimes CS spray, to incapacitate aggressive customers. The first policeman stopped thirty or so feet from Blake. “Drop the gun, sir,” he ordered, his voice calm and steady. It was if Blake hadn’t heard him. “Once more,” he said, louder this time, “drop the bloody gun.”

The other policeman, taller and heavier, had circled to the left, leaving twenty feet between him and his partner. The flashlight was pointed directly at Blake as if he were standing center stage in a darkened theater, transfixed in the spotlight. The policeman gave another order. “It’s over. Drop the gun, keep your hands above your head, and walk toward me.”

The gun dropped on the grass within three feet of Kingston and Blake started walking. Only then did Kingston scramble out of the ha-ha, wiping his hands on his jacket. The burly policeman who had walked over to help him had a bemused look on his face. Then Kingston realized what a bizarre spectacle he must present, resembling the Creature from the Black Lagoon, covered head to foot in liver-colored sludge.

The policemen handcuffed Blake and took him into the house while Kingston headed for the bathroom to rinse the mud out of his hair and off his face, and to make himself look as presentable as possible. Later he would shower and look through Stewart’s wardrobe and borrow a couple of items. After several minutes, he entered the living room, not knowing what to expect or who to find there. The room was empty. He pulled aside the curtain and looked outside. He saw the rear of the blue-and-yellow police car and the back of Blake’s head through the rear window. No sign of either policeman. He was about to leave the room, to see where everybody had gone, when the shorter policeman entered. Awfully young for the job, was Kingston’s first impression. But people were looking younger to him every day.

“Looks like you had a close call, sir. I’m Constable Baverstock, by the way.” He pulled out a notepad and pen. “Why don’t you sit down and I’ll ask you a few questions—if you’re up to it, that is.”

“I’m fine,” replied Kingston, sitting in the wingback that Marian Taylor had occupied, trying not to muddy it up too much. Where was she, he wondered? They apparently hadn’t arrested her. But why would they have let her leave the scene?

For the first two minutes, Kingston described his relationship with the Hallidays, telling Baverstock about Stewart’s kidnapping and what led him to The Willows. Then, step by step, he recounted what had occurred at the house since he’d arrived. When he was finished, Baverstock wrote down Kingston’s contact information, and informed him that a second patrol car would arrive shortly to drive him to a nearby hotel if he wished. Kingston declined, saying that he would stay at the house, and that if Becky hadn’t returned by midday the following morning he would take a train back to London.

The constable stood, about to leave. “You’ll be contacted soon to submit a full statement, which may require your coming down to Hampshire.”

Kingston smiled. “Wouldn’t be the first time,” he said.

Baverstock returned the smile. “Well, good luck sir, I’m glad—”

Kingston cut him short. “Where is Marian, the woman who answered the door?”

“We just did a thorough search and it appears that she’s gone.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt. What exactly happened, then?”

“Like you, Dorset Police were unable to reach Rebecca Halliday and we were responding to their request to make a routine check of the property.”

“No, I mean when she answered the door.”

“She gave us her name and told us that she was housesitting for Mrs. Halliday and that she was alone in the house.”

“Did you believe her?”

“Well, yes.”

“She was lying, you know. That’s what Blake told her to say.”

“All I can say is that she’s a damned good actress.”

“You’re right about that.”

“She was well dressed and polite—the type of woman that would be housesitting—not like some squatter, that is. We asked if she was okay. Calm as a cucumber, she assured us she was, so we left. Outside, in the car, my partner, Graham, suggested we run a computer check on the BMW. It was a 2005 number plate, seven series—pricey set of wheels. He couldn’t picture her driving that kind of car, somehow, unless it were her husband’s.” He grinned. “A bit macho, old Graham. We waited a bit, then drove off. We were halfway down the street when the info came through. It wasn’t registered in her name, but to a leasing company in London. It was then that we heard the gunshot. We whipped around and came back.”

Kingston stroked his brow. “Not a moment too soon—thank God.”

“Right. We rang the doorbell and hammered on the door, with no joy. So we went round the side of the house, out to the garden.” The constable shrugged. “You know the rest.”

Kingston frowned, nodding to himself. “Seeing you come back, she must have hidden in the house until you went into the garden, then took off.”

“The only explanation, really. Probably walked to Fordingbridge and got a cab.”

“What will happen to her?”

“We’ve already reported her as missing and wanted as a material witness, so there’ll be a warrant issued for her arrest. I would imagine that Blake should corroborate what you told us about her killing Adrian Walsh. By the sound of it, she’ll need a good lawyer. So will he.”

The following morning, feeling conspicuous wearing a polo shirt, slacks—a couple of inches short—and a yellow golf jacket belonging to Stewart, Kingston took a cab to Salisbury station, where he bought a newspaper, coffee, and a ham and cheese sandwich. Ten minutes later he boarded the 10:45 two-coach train to Waterloo and home.

TWENTY-SIX

B
ecky’s message was the first on the answering machine. She sounded breathless, her words coming a mile a minute: “Wanted you to know I just got your message, Lawrence. Bless you. I’m leaving Sarah’s in the next five minutes for Poole. I still can’t believe it. Stewart’s safe, thank God. I called the hospital and they said he’s doing fine.”

Kingston detected a quiet sob of joy as she paused, then went on: “I’ll call you later, when I get to the hospital, after I’ve seen Stewart. I have to go now. Sarah’s waiting for me outside. I love you. Bye.”

He sat back on the sofa trying to imagine what it must have been like for her getting his message. She was so overjoyed that she hadn’t even questioned how it was that Stewart ended up in Poole General Hospital. What did it matter anyway, right now? He was safe and in good hands and, from what she’d said, going to survive his ordeal. When they next met she was going to be flabbergasted to learn what had happened in her very own house and garden, of all places. He smiled and listened to the next two messages.

The first was unimportant, the second from Carmichael. The inspector could wait, Kingston decided. He was famished, the only food he’d had in the last twelve hours was the stale sandwich he’d bought at Salisbury station and eaten on the train. As far as Carmichael was concerned, he must have been informed by now about Stewart’s release and was no doubt preoccupied helping other law enforcement agencies chase down Viktor Zander and Marian Taylor on top of maintaining the peace in Ringwood. Maybe he was calling to say that they’d been apprehended. No, too early for that, he decided.

Marian Taylor? Kingston had spent most of the train ride thinking about her. If what she had said was true—that she had shot Walsh accidentally—why wouldn’t she have surrendered to the police at The Willows? The police now had the gun with her fingerprints on it—that is, providing Blake hadn’t been bluffing. There had to be more to it. She had clearly been terrified of Blake, to the point of doing whatever he asked. Could it be that he knew more about her than he was telling? Kingston tried putting himself in her position. Having done a runner from The Willows she wouldn’t be aware that Blake had been arrested or that he himself was very much alive. For all she knew, Blake might have carried out his threat. Kingston got cold shivers at the thought. He would never be able to expunge Blake’s words and the soulless look on his face when he had spat them out: “If you screw up, Kingston’s dead!”

What was Marian Taylor running from—something else from her shadowy past? He knew so little about her and in a perverse way that bothered him. Why should he be so concerned about her well-being? And how about Zander? Somehow Kingston couldn’t picture him and Marian in cahoots. Were that the case, however, it wouldn’t surprise him—nothing would anymore. Would that be the last he would ever see of her? Somehow he doubted it.

Conscious of still wearing Stewart’s ill-fitting clothes, he showered and changed into comfortable clothes. A half hour later he was seated in the Antelope’s downstairs bar savoring a pint of Fuller’s London Pride.

The next morning, rested and looking forward to getting his life back to normal, Kingston finally caught up with Carmichael. The inspector was in one of his standoffish moods. No sooner had Kingston uttered good morning, than Carmichael started castigating him for going to The Willows alone, never mind that Becky’s life was being threatened. “Damned foolish thing to do,” he said. When pressed, he conceded that Blake was being turned over to the London Metropolitan police in connection with the murder of Miles Everard and the kidnapping of Stewart Halliday.

“Everard
was
murdered then?” said Kingston.

“That’s what the Met are saying. From what little I know, telling the difference between ‘did he fall’ or ‘was he pushed’is a tough call. Not to say that it can’t be determined sometimes.”

Kingston decided not to ask how. It was irrelevant and given Carmichael’s stroppy attitude, he probably wouldn’t explain anyway.

When Kingston inquired about Viktor Zander and Marian Taylor, he was less forthcoming. The only information he proffered was that neither had been located.

In the days following, Kingston’s abandoned TR4 was discovered by a Royal Parks patrol car. It had been towed to a Chelsea Police garage and stored until the owner could be located. When Kingston picked it up, much to his surprise and relief, the car had not been vandalized as he had feared it might be, and was none the worse for wear. Two days later, he found an unexpected bonus—an expensive pair of sunglasses wedged in the crease of the passenger seat.

Stewart Halliday was discharged from Poole General Hospital eight days after he had been admitted. Ironically, Kingston’s diagnosis had been remarkably accurate: Stewart had suffered a mild stroke from which he was expected to recover fully. Additionally, blood and urological tests had revealed traces of an anxiolytic drug commonly used for sedation. On the phone, Becky had told Kingston that Stewart’s physician confirmed that a regular dosage of such a sedative would be consistent with the objectives of Stewart’s captors. Moderate sedation, he’d said, would induce depressed consciousness in which the patient could respond to external verbal or tactile stimuli. In this state, normal airway reflexes, spontaneous ventilation, and cardiovascular function would be maintained.

After Stewart’s discharge, he and Kingston spoke on the phone often. At first, for obvious reasons, Kingston was careful not to press Stewart too hard, and resisted quizzing him about his experiences at the hands of Blake and company. But inchmeal, like pixels falling into place on a slow-loading computer image, a chronology of Stewart’s weeks in captivity unfolded.

Stewart started by telling Kingston about his experiments—first on his own, then with Adrian Walsh—cross-hybridizing water lilies at Walsh’s lake at Swallowfield. It had all begun as an amusing pastime, he said, after reading an article on desalination, which postulated that future wars would be fought over water, not oil. He told Walsh about his “zany” idea of a water plant capable of desalination. Walsh, who was well-off, was intrigued and agreed to go along for the ride and help underwrite most of the costs.

Introducing salt into the lake at Swallowfield led to many failures, wasted time, and money. The toll of dead lilies kept mounting. The two men were about to admit defeat and give up their crackpot scheme when Stewart suggested they give it a last try by cross-hybridizing the giant water lily
Victoria amazonica
. The only drawback was that this genus of water lily was native to equatorial Brazil, growing in calm waters along the Amazon River. This required their building a makeshift greenhouse environment. Hundreds of crosses and eighteen months later, they hit pay dirt.

Aware of the inevitable fallout, should the press learn of their discovery, Stewart and Adrian decided to keep it secret until they were certain that it worked on a sustained basis. They also knew that if the process were to be industrially viable, larger scale trials under more rigorous and controlled conditions would have to be conducted. That meant finding a much larger expanse of water—ideally in a secluded location—the right people, and the substantial funding needed to mount such a project. Walsh told Stewart that he knew a man named Miles Everard, the owner of a large construction and engineering company, who might be persuaded to participate and take the experiments to the next big step. Walsh had never met the man but had once performed as subcontactor in one of Everard’s big projects. Soon thereafter, Walsh contacted Everard’s company in London by phone and spoke to Everard personally.

According to Stewart, Everard visited Swallowfield twice. After those and subsequent meetings, Everard agreed to partner with them on a full-scale biological desalination project. Under the terms of the agreement, both Walsh and Halliday would receive substantial “sign-on” payments and generous royalties from future sales, once the project was up and running and proven to be viable. It wasn’t revealed until much later that the person Stewart and Walsh were dealing with was not Miles Everard, but his personal assistant, Gavin Blake, posing as Everard. Neither were they aware that, by then, Blake was on Viktor Zander’s payroll, nor that the wealthy Zander, who had migrated to Britain in the eighties, had ties to the Russian “Mafia” and was always just one step ahead of the law.