EG03 - The Water Lily Cross Page 12

  Checking and orienting the site map in the brochure he’d picked up at the station, he headed up the central path. All around were public parks with full-grown shade trees, gardens, fountains and colorful plantings. After five minutes he arrived at Devon Place, the building that housed Paramus Partners. Devon Place was one of the smallest office buildings in Bakers Landing and one of the earliest. Unlike most of the other high-rise buildings, that had glass and steel exteriors, it had a gracefully curving ivory-colored stone fascia. Kingston entered the lobby to find that it echoed the outside curve. He approached the security desk, and signed in, telling the guard who, and which office he was visiting, and the purpose of his visit, making sure that his title “Doctor” was repeated more than once. After a brief call to Paramus’s office, the guard gave Kingston a visitor’s badge. “Wear this at all times. Paramus is on the ninth floor,” he said. Kingston clipped the badge on his lapel and strode to the bank of lifts where he pressed one of the buttons and waited. Seconds later, at the ninth floor, he stepped out of the elevator into a spacious, Berber-carpeted reception area.

  Modern paintings in the manner of Rothko and Diebenkorn all but covered the walls—walls that looked remarkably like gray suede. Kingston stopped to study one of the abstracts. The Rothko signature was clear. A long oriental runner that Kingston pegged as a tribal Serapi led down the center of the vestibule ending at a massive ebony-colored desk. There sat an attractive platinum-haired woman of indeterminate age, wearing a silky black blazer with lilac-colored blouse. As he approached, she looked up over her rimless glasses and gave him a thin Botoxed smile. “Good morning, how may I help you,” she asked, a little too haughtily for Kingston’s liking.

  “I’m here to see Miles Everard.”

  She reached for a black book, one of the few things on the desktop. “Do you have an appointment? I don’t recall—”

  “I don’t. No. I didn’t think it necessary, given the circumstances.”

  “And can you tell me what those ‘circumstances’ might be, Mr.—”

  “Kingston, Doctor Lawrence Kingston.” He let his name and title sink in then said, “I’m helping the police with a missing persons case.”

  His answer had the required effect. The supercilious look vanished. She was clearly muddled and trying to think of an appropriate response.

  “Mr. Everard is familiar with the person in question,” said Kingston, pressing the point, articulating the words for effect.

  She gestured with an open hand to several black-leather-and-chrome Corbusier-style chairs placed around a low round glass-topped table. “Why don’t you sign our guest book and take a seat, Doctor, and I’ll see what I can do.” Her tone was now much more deferential.

  Kingston thanked her, signed in, and then sat down. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her talking on the phone. Retro chairs were not his style but this one was surprisingly comfortable. He picked up a magazine from the neatly fanned stack that lay alongside a crystal bowl containing a white flower arrangement. Not silk, he noticed.

  He’d been reading for a few minutes when she called his name. “Mr. Blake, one of our vice presidents, will be out to see you shortly,” she said.

  Here comes the next “wall,” he said to himself. “Thank you,” he nodded.

  A few minutes later, the door across from Kingston opened and a tallish man walked into the reception area—mid to late forties, Kingston guessed. He was wearing a navy pinstriped double-breasted suit with a red polka-dot tie and had a spare physique, the kind on which clothes hang well. As he approached, Kingston stood to meet him. His face went with the clothes: dark, neatly combed hair, angular features, and a square jaw. He looked like a man one could trust. They shook hands and sat facing each other. Blake crossed his legs, careful not to rumple his sharp trouser creases. “Gavin Blake,” he said with a wide smile, crossing his arms. “Mr. Everard is not here today. Perhaps I can be of help? A missing person, Eve said?”

  “Yes. A friend of mine, actually—Stewart Halliday.”

  “And what brings you here? Does Miles Everard know your friend?”

  “That’s what I’m told. They were working on a project together.”

  “A Paramus project?”

  “That I can’t say. It could have been.”

  Blake unfolded his arms, rested his chin on his closed fist, and looked aside, frowning. “Halliday?” he said, looking back at Kingston again. “Sorry, the name’s not familiar. If he were involved with one of our projects in any way, I would almost certainly know about it. Perhaps their relationship was of a personal nature.”

  “That’s a possibility,” said Kingston, knowing that further questions about Everard would be pointless. “When is he expected back?”

  “Not until next Monday.”

  “Well,” said Kingston, standing. “There’s not much point in taking up any more of your time.” He reached inside his jacket and produced a card, which he handed to Blake. “Perhaps you’d be good enough to tell Mr. Everard about my inquiry and have him give me a call when he returns.”

  Blake smiled again. “I’ll make sure he does.”

  “Thanks for seeing me,” said Kingston, as they shook hands again.

  “No problem at all. I’m sure Miles will be of more help, Doctor.” Blake turned and headed for the door.

  Kingston thanked the receptionist, and walked back to the lift.

  He got off on the ground floor and headed past the row of lifts into the lobby. Why he turned at that moment to glance at the last lift, he would never know. The doors were closing as he did. But it was not too late to see the woman standing alone in the lift. It was Alison Greer.

  He watched the floor numbers light up as the lift ascended. He knew what the first stop would be. He was right—the ninth floor.

  THIRTEEN

  The twenty-minute Underground journey back to Sloane Square was taken up with Kingston’s trying to figure out why Alison Greer would be visiting Paramus. If Everard was not at the office, whom would she be visiting? More important, why? Perhaps she knew more about Everard than she had implied and had other business there. Furthermore, if he had misread her and she was hand in glove with Everard, why would she have phoned and dragged him all the way down to Hampshire? Why would she expose Everard as one of the players—maybe a key one—in a possible deal involving Walsh and possibly Stewart? It made no sense.

  Though nothing could be seen outside the train compartment except a dark wall flashing by, he stared abstractedly at the window opposite, oblivious to the monotonous clickety-clack of the wheels. Perhaps she knew more than she was telling, about Walsh’s death. Come to think of it, she had hardly talked about it. Harking back to their conversation, neither had she sounded like the grieving girlfriend, either—if indeed she was. Then again, perhaps it was all speculation on his part and she was really nothing more than Walsh’s secretary. If so, her reaction to his death would be much as expected.

  The train was slowing and Kingston grabbed the handrail next to him and got up. It was all too confusing. He’d think about it later. It was past noon and he was getting a little peckish. Like Jonathan Swift, his stomach served him as a clock. Walking out of Sloane Square station, he headed for Partridge’s, one of London’s best delis. Like a smaller version of the Harrods food halls, it was yet one more good reason for living in Belgravia. What would hit the spot? A Cornish pasty or a bacon, egg, and sausage pie sounded awfully good.

  Back at his flat, the light on the answerphone was flashing, registering one message. He put the Partridge’s bag on the kitchen table, went back to the living room and pushed the PLAY button. It was Detective Inspector Chisholm. He had a declassified copy of the aerial footage at Lymington police station and was asking Kingston to call to set up a viewing time. Kingston reflected for a moment. The timing was good—he had nothing planned for the next couple of days. If he went down to Lymington early tomorrow, he should have time to drive up to Fordingbridge to see Becky on the way home. He would
call her when he got down to Lymington to make sure she was home. Between the hospital auxiliary and her bopping off to Sarah’s, it made no sense to drive the twenty-five miles or so all the way up to The Willows on the off chance she might be home.

  At eleven thirty the next morning, Kingston sat at a desktop computer in a back room at Lymington police station. He was watching the Air Support footage that, according to Chisholm, had been taken with a Sony high-definition camera with a 32x zoom capability. This, he had said, allowed the operator to identify a vehicle number plate from at least a 500-foot altitude in good daylight. To show Chisholm he was impressed, Kingston had faked incredulity. On his photo shoot, he’d been using a comparable camera.

  Rubbing his eyes, he slipped another tape into the videocassette recorder and pressed PLAY. This was the fifth and last tape and he was tiring quickly. When he’d arrived at the station, Chisholm had also told him that Air Support had reviewed the tapes and had found nothing on them that they felt warranted further investigation.

  So far Kingston had sat through two hours of police video surveillance covering roughly fifty square miles of the Hampshire countryside on the west side of the New Forest, from Fordingbridge in the north to Christchurch and Milford on Sea on the south coast. Most of the footage was of open fields and farmland. Not familiar with the area, he recognized none of the towns or villages, not that it would have made any difference. All he was looking for was any inland expanse of water that might serve, or have served, as a site for larger-scale experimentation with botanical desalination.

  Hearing a knock on the door, Kingston stopped the tape and turned around. The door opened and a young policeman entered, carrying a tray with tea and biscuits. “Thought you might like to take a break, guv,” he said, smiling. He put the tray down on the table next to Kingston. “Any joy with that lot?” he asked, nodding to the tapes.

  Kingston sighed and shook his head. “So far, not a damned thing. Only twenty minutes left, though. So I’ll be out of your hair soon.”

  “Don’t worry on our account, sir,” he said, about to leave. He stopped by the door and looked back. “By the way, the sergeant’s missus made the biscuits,” he said, closing the door behind him.

  Kingston poured a cup of tea and restarted the tape. More fields, more farms, nothing but bloody countryside. Now he was giving up hope of finding anything. He broke off a piece of biscuit and munched on it. It was remarkably good. He took another sip of tea, taking his eyes off the screen for a few seconds. When he looked back he caught the tail end of what resembled the edge of a berm, a level mound of grass-covered earth that appeared to be about five feet high. He rewound the tape ten seconds and restarted it in the frame-by-frame mode. A second or so, and there it was again—the berm and next a sweep of a large rectilinear reservoir. He reversed the tape and played it again. From the altitude the video was taken, it was impossible to tell whether there was anything in the water. Pity the operator hadn’t zoomed in, he thought. The reservoir was only on the screen for a few seconds but it was sufficient time to also show several quasi-industrial buildings and what could easily be a pump house. With no signs of people or vehicles, the area looked deserted. As the tape continued to run in the jog mode, Kingston saw an unpaved lane leading away from the reservoir that ran for what looked like about a half mile and eventually joined a road lined with a row of tall conifers. He made a written note of the time-codes on the bottom of the screen. This way he or the police could select the relevant frames when rerunning the tape. He wasn’t to know that if he were viewing the original tape, the screen would have shown all kinds of data and symbols: GPS positioning, latitude and longitude, date and time, camera angles, camera settings and more. For security reasons, these had been deleted.

  Kingston let the tape run to see if he could spot a landmark—a building, pub, or church—anything that could help pinpoint the approximate location of the reservoir on an Ordnance Survey map. About twenty seconds further into the tape, he saw a small village with a Norman church that had an unusual bell-turret. That might help, he thought. He made a note of that time-code also. He needed to talk to Chisholm and have him ask the Air Support police if they were able to correlate the time-code with map coordinates. If so, it would save him a lot of time making local inquiries and running around trying to locate the reservoir. The rest of the tape showed nothing of further interest. Kingston rewound and ejected it, and placed it neatly on top of the others. Then he turned off the computer.

  Kingston went to the front desk to let Chisholm know that he was leaving. The constable on duty—the one who had brought the tea—said that Chisholm had left some time ago and that he would pass on Kingston’s question regarding the time-code and map coordinates when Chisholm returned. Kingston thanked him again for the tea, saying that the biscuits were exceptional—“worthy of Harrods.”

  The constable smiled. “I’ll tell the sergeant, his wife’ll be right chuffed,” he said.

  In the car, Kingston called Becky at The Willows but there was no reply.

  Two days later, with the top down, Kingston drove through the New Forest headed toward the village of Woolstead on its southwest edge. This was the village with the Norman church that he’d seen on the videotape.

  Much to his surprise, he’d received an e-mail from Inspector Chisholm the day after he’d viewed the tape. Air Support had come up with answers to Kingston’s questions. The Sony 3-chip digital camera, they said in their forwarded e-mail, was linked to an onboard GPS tracking system that interfaced with all the other data on the tape including the time-code. This meant that Air Support had been able to provide latitude and longitude and GPS coordinates for the two time-codes Kingston had given to Chisholm. He now knew exactly where on the Ordnance Survey map sitting beside him on the passenger seat the reservoir and the church were located.

  It was a day that sports car owners lust after: blue skies with Constable-like clouds, not a breath of wind, and a steady 22 degrees. With the balmy weather and no need for haste, he had chosen a leisurely route to get to Woolstead. The small roads of the New Forest crossed great stretches of heath, covered with gorse, purple-flowered heather, hawthorn, and blackthorn; winding their way through grazing lands and farms, past bogs and ponds, thatched cottages and little old churches. The forest was home to several varieties of deer, wild ponies, and donkeys, and it was a rare pleasure having to stop now and then to watch the native ponies amble across the road in front of him. Here the animals had the right of way.

  Just before leaving home, he’d called Becky but there was no answer. He would try a little later after he’d checked out the reservoir. Being in that part of Hampshire made him think about the garden at Cranborne Manor, which in turn reminded him about the aerial videotape they’d shot of the other two gardens, Leven’s Hall and Powis Castle. That was some time ago, and he was surprised that he hadn’t heard from Martin at New Eden. There was obviously some explanation for it. Perhaps it was a good sign. If the video had been bad, he would have undoubtedly heard about it right away. He made a mental note to give Martin a call in the morning.

  Fifteen minutes later, he was out of the forest passing through Woolstead. The village was remarkably pretty, a mixture of Norman and Early English architecture. Kingston had found out that the church, named St. Andrew’s, was the oldest documented building thereabouts—mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086. It also had “pretty gardens,” according to one of the guidebooks. Kingston decided that he would stop on the way back for a pit stop and a cup of tea. Afterward, time permitting, he would take a walk around the village and visit the church. Once out of Woolstead, he pulled over to check the map again. If his map reading was right, the reservoir was only six miles away.

  A few minutes later, he spied the row of conifers he’d seen on the tape. He slowed down, aware that the lane leading to the reservoir was small and it would be easy for him to overshoot it. He couldn’t remember from the tape if it was gated or not. With no cars behind him, he st
opped alongside the lane. There was a gate. It was metal and looked new. He pulled over onto the grass verge, left the engine running, got out of the car and walked across to the gate, which he fully expected to be padlocked. To his surprise, it wasn’t. Lifting the iron strap, he opened the gate, went back to the car, and drove through. Remembering the countryside code—leave gates as you found them—he stopped, got out again, and closed the gate behind him. Passing a sign warning against trespassing, the reservoir came into view. The site was bigger than it appeared from the air, with five buildings of varying size, the largest a double-door barnlike structure of galvanized metal. Farther along, he could see the pumping station. He pulled up alongside one of the buildings and got out, standing for a moment, sizing the place up. No vehicles in sight, which he assumed meant that there was nobody around. It certainly looked deserted. He walked toward the bank of the reservoir. The long side facing him was at least the length of a football field. Looking around, he could appreciate even more why it would be the ideal place for Stewart and his partners to conduct their experiments at industrial-strength level.

  The sky was now clouding and a slight wind was picking up. For the first time, he sensed an eerie silence about the place. He headed toward a flight of steps cut into the reservoir bank. Gripping the rail on one side, he climbed the eight or so metal steps and reached the top. What he saw made him smile.

  Two feet above the surface of the water, metal tracks spanned the reservoir about every twenty feet. On closer inspection of the inside wall, Kingston could see the edges of glass-covered frames that were designed to run on the tracks. Without question, they were operated electrically, much like a garage-door opener, turning the reservoir into a huge retractable greenhouse. Just below the water level, gauges set in the wall measured the water temperature. He kneeled to get a closer look into the water. There they were, approximately a foot beneath the surface: the spent leaves of Victoria hybrid water lilies.