EG03 - The Water Lily Cross (5 page)

In all cases, pure product water recovery ranges from 15 to 50 percent For every 100 gallons of seawater, 15 to 50 gallons of pure water is produced. Based on 1992 figures most seawater desalination plants produce pure water at costs ranging from $1,000 to $2,500 per acre-foot (326,000 gallons). This is equivalent to the amount of water that two to three households would consume in one year. Comparable costs for the same period in the Western United States for untreated domestic use water from conventional sources (reservoirs, wells, etc.) range anywhere from $27 to $270 per acre-foot. The cost of desalinated water remains substantially higher; however, over recent years with technological advances, the gap is narrowing.

Among the Web sites Kingston had visited was one describing London’s Thames Water Utilities’ investment of £300 million to build the city’s first reverse osmosis desalination facility. The new plant, expected to be up and running in 2008, will have a capacity to desalinate 150 million liters per day and provide water for nearly 900,000 people. Kingston made a note to call Thames Water’s public affairs office and see if they could update his figures.

He took his last sip of tepid tea, leaned back in his ergonomic leather chair—an impulse buy that had set him back £500—and thought about Stewart. What could possibly have happened to him? Every once in a while stories cropped up in the newspapers about elderly people who wander off, though in most cases they are found a day or so later, often miles from home. But Stewart wasn’t
that
old and, as far as Becky was concerned, his
compos mentis
was never in question.

Another thing: What would happen if the news media got wind of the story? He made a mental note to call Becky and tell her not to talk to anyone outside the family for the time being. Of course, this all hinged on whether his interpretation of Stewart’s cryptic message was right. He needed a second opinion and he knew just the right person to give it.

He looked in his address book and found Desmond Scott’s telephone number, the chap who owned a large water garden nursery just outside St. Albans, called Across the Pond. In the ten years or so that Kingston had known him, he had never had the courage to tell him that he found names like that just too fey. What on earth was wrong with Desmond’s Water Gardens? Really?

Desmond Scott was in his late fifties, tall and slim. Considering that he spent most of his time in the fresh air, he had an unlikely gaunt face that appeared even more pallid under a circle of dark curly hair that, on closer inspection, was becoming grizzled. With his long musician’s fingers and wire-rimmed glasses he looked the least likely person to be running a nursery.

Kingston had arrived at Across the Pond midmorning after giving his TR4 a good airing out on the M1. After a minute or so of nosing around, Kingston spotted Desmond in a far corner bending over a large galvanized tank, fishing something out of the water. At the crunching sound of size-twelve shoes on the gravel, Desmond turned his head and looked up. “Hi, Lawrence,” he said. “How’ve you been?”

“Fine,” Kingston replied, looking down at the cherry-red and white koi swimming around. Some were almost two feet long. “Big buggers,” he said.

Desmond grunted and, with arms up to his elbows in water, went back to thinning out a tangle of submerged plants that Kingston guessed to be water wisteria. Aquatic plants were not his strong suit.

“I somehow expected a more enthusiastic welcome,” said Kingston, addressing Desmond’s back. “It must be at least eighteen months since we last saw each other.”

Desmond stood, turned, and ceremoniously wiped his hands on a towel that was draped over the tank. “Sorry, old chap,” he said, smiling and shaking Kingston’s hand. “So what have you been up to?”

“Among other things, I spent the best part of those last eighteen months down in Somerset, helping a young American woman jump-start a garden that’d been out of commission for about sixty years.”

“Heligan revisited, eh?”

“Damn right.”

Desmond eyed him closely, frowning and scratching his chin. “Didn’t I read something about that? Weren’t some valuable paintings found there?”

“There were,” said Kingston. “French Impressionists. I’ll tell you all about it some other time, it’s a three-drink story.”

“What brings you to these parts, then? Not just to see my smiling phizog, surely?”

“It’s about something that happened a couple of days ago—to a friend of mine. I need to ask you a few questions.”

“Same old Kingston,” he grinned. “You’ll never learn. So whose life are you trying to straighten out this time?”

Kingston didn’t think a response was warranted and refrained from any comment.

“Okay, why don’t we go to the office?You want a cup of tea?”

“No, don’t trouble yourself, I won’t be staying that long.”

The office was unexpectedly tidy. Far from your typical nursery office, which more often than not is no more than a storage shed with a desk wedged in it. Desmond gestured for Kingston to take a wobbly-looking kitchen chair while he sat down behind his desk. “So, what is it, pray tell, that’s important enough to drag you all the way up here? Away from that Belgravia love nest of yours?” asked Desmond picking up a pencil and tapping it on his knee.

Kingston looked up to the galvanized roof and shook his head in derision. “I’ll get right to the point,” he replied, shifting on the hard wooden seat. “A friend of mine—Stewart Halliday, a former colleague at Edinburgh—has gone missing. His wife, Becky, called me a couple of days ago. Naturally, she was distraught so I went down to Hampshire to see her, to offer whatever help I could. Nice comfortable place with a big garden on the edge of the New Forest, called The Willows.”

Desmond rested his head against the back of the chair, content to listen.

“It seems he was planning to attend a conference in Bristol,” said Kingston, pausing. “But he never made it. No notes, phone calls, nothing. He’s completely dropped out of sight.”

“She’s informed the police, I take it?”

Kingston nodded. “Yes, of course. They questioned her and went through his office looking for clues but so far, they’ve come up empty-handed.”

Desmond tapped the pencil on his lower lip. “So, where do I fit into all this, Doctor Watson?”

For the next five minutes, Kingston explained how, in the old days, he and Stewart used to do
The Times
crossword puzzles and how he’d found and solved the encrypted entry in Stewart’s datebook. Following that, he described the second coded message, concealed in the stapler, the one that had led Kingston and Becky to St. Mary’s.

In the beginning, Desmond listened patiently, without comment. But as Kingston went on it became more and more apparent that Desmond was losing interest in what was sounding—the way Kingston was telling it—more and more like a recitation from a forties British spy novel.

When Kingston got to the part where he opened the envelope and withdrew Stewart’s formula, it was clear that Desmond had had enough. “Lawrence, I hate to be a bloody bore, but where the hell is this all going?” he said, shaking his head.

“This is where it’s going,” said Kingston, reacting sharply. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a photocopy of Stewart’s original that Kingston had left with Becky to give to the police. “Here,” he said, thrusting it across the desk. “You won’t be so damned blasé when you read this!”

Desmond studied it for a moment and then, to Kingston’s chagrin, he leaned his head back and started laughing. “You must be joking?” he said between the peals of laughter.

Although he’d anticipated some degree of skepticism from Desmond, Kingston wasn’t quite prepared for such a spontaneous outburst. For a moment he couldn’t decide whether to simply let it pass or tell Desmond where to get off.

“What’s so damned funny?” he asked, when Desmond had calmed down.

“If I’m interpreting this correctly, Lawrence”—he had put the pencil down and held his hands in front of him as if framing his words—“somehow this water lily cross is capable of taking salt out of—presumably, seawater. Is that right?” The grin on his face was aggravating Kingston.

“That’s how I interpreted it,” he replied curtly. “And give me some bloody credit, Desmond, I know as well as you that botanically it would be considered impossible.”

“You’re right there, chum. Who did you say this friend of yours is?”

Kingston shook his head. “That’s the whole
point
, Desmond. The chap’s a professor of botany, for Christ’s sake. I taught with him at Edinburgh for ten years. He, of all people, would know it’s a million-to-one chance of something like this happening.”

A short silence followed while Desmond weighed the implications of what Kingston had just said.

“So, let’s get this right,” said Desmond. “What you’re suggesting is that this friend of yours who’s gone missing, has by some freak chance, accident … whatever, created a water lily that can desalinate seawater and that you think the two incidents might be connected, right?”

Kingston nodded. “That’s what I think, yes. It strikes me as a perfectly reasonable assumption.”

“And you’ve come to me to get
my
opinion on the whole thing?”

“Mostly the botanical part.” Kingston paused, choosing his words. “Far-fetched as it sounds, why should we summarily reject the concept? Think about it, Desmond, you know that all plants absorb nutrients from soil and other sources through their leaves and roots. And we know there are plants capable of consuming insects and small animals.” He shifted on the hard seat, scraping the legs of the chair on the stone floor and continued. “What about ant plants that absorb insect parts and other debris dumped by the ant colony that they host?”

Not surprisingly, Desmond didn’t look impressed. He was a horticulturist and hadn’t heard anything that he didn’t know already. However, Kingston wasn’t finished.

“And what about all the epiphytic plants, the air plants like the orchids and bromeliads, the ones that require no soil whatsoever to grow, that derive their nutrition from the air, rainwater, and decomposing matter that gets tangled in their roots or leaves?” He drew a breath and got up. Had there been room to pace, he would have. As it was, he stood with hands gripping the back of the chair as if it were a courthouse rail and Desmond was a one-man jury. “If I walked out of here and told the first person that I met that I’d once seen a plant over thirty feet long that had eaten and digested a rat what do you think they’d say, Desmond?”

Desmond shrugged. “Oh, come on, Lawrence. I know what you’re trying to get at. Let’s not summarily reject the idea that a plant can absorb sodium chloride—right?”

“Exactly,” said Kingston, snapping his fingers. “I forgot to mention the fern,
Pteris vittata
. You know about that greedy little bugger?”

Desmond shook his head. “Can’t say as I do.”

“It consumes arsenic—in staggering amounts. It extracts the heavy metal from soil or water and concentrates it in its leaves. I understand it’s being used in some countries to filter arsenic out of water supplies. Convinced?”

Another short-lived silence followed while Kingston sat down again and let his point sink in, then Desmond spoke. For the first time, he looked a little more earnest.

“So, how can I help?”

“Considering your skepticism, I’m not sure,” said Kingston. “You could start by telling me what kind of aquatic plant Stewart might have been tinkering with.”

“What kind of question is that? Didn’t you say it was a water lily?”

“Let me rephrase it.” Desmond could be annoying at times.

“Among the varieties of water lily, which in your opinion would be the most likely candidate to cross. Think in terms of size, hardiness, growth, reproductive ability—those kinds of things.”

Desmond’s eyes moved around the room as he pondered the question. Kingston waited, arms crossed, and then Desmond finally spoke.

“I suppose
Victoria cruziana
would be my first pick.” He nodded, as if agreeing with himself, that he’d made the right choice. “Yes,
cruziana
.”

“Why?”

“Well, in the first place, it’s large. The foliage—pads—can be as much four to five feet across. It’s hardy and very vigorous—aggressive might be a better word. It’ll take over a pond before you can say Bob’s your uncle!”

“The right qualifications,” said Kingston, noticing that Desmond was frowning, perhaps rethinking his choice. “There’s a problem?” he asked.

“I forgot about
Nelumbo lutea
, the American yellow lotus. I seem to recall reading an article about it some time ago. Its leaves are not quite as big but it will thrive in cooler water. I think it can also tolerate both acid and alkaline water.” He paused, scratching his head. “Come to think of it, I believe the article said that it’s also been grown in swimming pools to purify the water naturally, without the use of chlorides—and I’m almost sure it mentioned something to the effect that
lutea
can also absorb heavy metals from water and has been planted in ponds as a method of discharging industrial effluents—pollution management, that sort of thing. In India, I think it was.” He paused again and made a poor excuse of a smile. “So I take back what I implied earlier, Lawrence. But I still think it’s a stretch of the imagination that a lotus or water lily could ingest or process salt in some way or other—particularly in large quantities—but hey, with nature, we both know that anything’s possible.”

Kingston looked considerably more pleased than he had at any time since arriving. “This is more like it, Desmond. What I was hoping to hear.”

Desmond shrugged. “My pleasure,” he said, looking away.

Kingston could see that he was thinking hard, so didn’t interrupt. Then Desmond looked back at him, puzzled.

“Lawrence, if the whole idea of botanical desalination is to be practical, surely it has to be done on a large scale, millions of gallons at a time. Those bloody water lilies are going to have to be working overtime and it would require enormous expanses of water.”