Read EG03 - The Water Lily Cross Online
Authors: Anthony Eglin
Tags: #Mystery & Detective, #England, #cozy
The girl got off at Bermondsey station. Watching her clip-clop out onto the platform, Kingston couldn’t help thinking of Longfellow’s lines: “How beautiful is youth! How bright it gleams. / With its illusions, aspirations, dreams!” As the doors slid shut Kingston muttered under his breath, “Bloody hell, so much for aspirations and dreams.”
The next stop was his. He put thoughts of the adolescent Vampira and Miles Everard aside for the time being.
Kingston arrived at Bakers Landing after a five-minute walk from the Underground station. He’d learned a lot about the park-like development from the Internet search he’d done the day before, but wasn’t prepared for the size, scope and grandeur of what he saw. Standing at the top of the sweeping entrance steps, gazing around the main plaza, he stood for a minute and took it all in.
Bakers Landing, he’d found, was a 50-acre business estate, opened in 1995. In addition to a dozen high-rise office buildings, the sprawling center featured retail shops, restaurants, pubs, a conference center, and an entertainment complex, all set in a landscaped environment.
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.
T
he 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.”