EG03 - The Water Lily Cross (4 page)

Kingston took his eyes off the road and glanced at Becky. She had hardly spoken since they left St. Mary’s five minutes earlier. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“This formula thing—it’s why Stewart’s disappeared, isn’t it?”

“It certainly looks that way.”

“I think we should call the police when we get home.”

Kingston nodded in agreement, as he downshifted, slowing for an approaching traffic light.

Neither spoke for a moment. Then, back on a straight stretch of road, he looked at her again. The puzzled look on her face had turned to one of apprehension. She pursed her lips. “It doesn’t look good, does it? I mean, with Stewart making this big discovery and immediately disappearing?”

He took a long time in answering. “I don’t know, Becky,” he said, finally, shaking his head and looking away. “I just don’t know.”

A few miles slipped by, then Kingston glanced at her again. As their eyes met, she was about to say something, then stopped, as if what she was thinking was too unbearable to utter.

“What is it, Becky?” he asked quietly.

“Stewart’s been kidnapped, hasn’t he?”

Her question came at a propitious moment, just as they were in the middle of a roundabout, surrounded by cars jockeying for their respective exits. The maneuver required full concentration, allowing him time to think before answering.

“I don’t think we can rule it out, Becky,” he said. “But let’s not jump to conclusions. Let’s face it: As of now, we know very little and I think that sooner or later, the police will be able to answer that question.”

Becky slumped back in her seat. His answer didn’t appear to have comforted her any.

They arrived back at The Willows shortly after one o’clock.

Before leaving for St. Mary’s that morning, Becky had prepared a plowman’s lunch: crusty fresh bread and a selection of three cheeses with chutney and pickled onions. They ate it in the conservatory, each with a glass of shandy, going over the events of the morning. An hour later, after coffee, Kingston helped Becky clear the table and they went into the living room.

Seated in a wingback across from Becky, Kingston couldn’t help noticing how much she had changed since he’d arrived. Her usual poise was gone. She looked vulnerable and afraid. It was as though the awful reality had just dawned on her: the fact that Stewart really
was
missing and the likelihood of his having been abducted, no longer a question in her mind. Earlier, before Kingston had deciphered Stewart’s message about his botanical discovery, she had been able to cling to the idea that it was all some kind of mistake and that any moment Stewart would breeze through the door demanding to know what all the fuss was about.

“I’d better call the police, I suppose,” she said, as if she wanted to separate herself from the reality of it all.

“You should, yes. But let’s talk about it for a moment.”

She brushed a strand of hair from her forehead but Kingston caught the disguised attempt to wipe a tear from her eye. “What is there to talk about?” she asked.

Plenty, he was about to answer. What he actually said was, “You’re right—at this point, not a lot, I suppose.” He nodded his head silently, thinking. No point whatsoever in his rattling off a laundry list of all the things that might happen as a result of Stewart’s discovery. That would serve no purpose. Becky was already distraught enough. Nevertheless, the implications of Stewart’s message were starting to sink in and he needed time to think about it. He had to choose his words carefully.

An awkward pause followed while Becky waited for him to continue.

Kingston drew in a breath. “If—and let’s face it, it’s a big ‘if’—Stewart has stumbled upon a million-to-one shot of breeding an aquatic plant that can actually extract salt from seawater, a lot of people would want to know about it.”

She frowned, obviously trying to fathom what he was inferring. “And you’re suggesting that somebody already does?”

“No, I’m not. That would be pure speculation. To start with, we don’t know how long Stewart’s known this. I take it he’s never mentioned anything to you?”

“No, not a word. But that’s not unlike him. Like I said, he hardly ever talked about his work. When he told me that he was going to the conference I didn’t pay too much attention to it at the time. Why would I?” She looked away for a moment, deep in thought. “A bit late in the day now—I suppose I should have asked him more about it, taken more of an interest.” Another pause, then she said, “Would you like me to look for that piece of paper? I wrote it down, you know.”

“Don’t worry about it right now, I’m sure I can find out easily by calling the Bristol Chamber of Commerce.”

“If it’s true—?” She paused and looked up to the ceiling. “If, for argument’s sake, Stewart really
has
discovered a way to desalinate seawater, well—just how significant is it, Lawrence?”

Kingston rubbed his chin with thumb and forefinger. “It depends on several factors. Mind you, I’m no expert. I’m only going on what little I’ve read. There’s more than one process of desalination, but distillation, while not necessarily the most common, is perhaps the easiest to understand. In theory it’s remarkably simple. All one has to do is boil seawater until all the water is gone and only the salt and other residues remain. In the meantime the steam has condensed back to water and is no longer saline. All ships use the process as their basic source for drinking water—have for years.”

Becky interrupted. “If it’s such a simple process, why is its use so limited?”

“It’s not the process that’s the problem, it’s the expense. The cost of the energy required to heat the massive volume of water needed to make it worthwhile is astronomical. I don’t recall the exact numbers but I do know that projections for a pilot plant that I read about called for roughly a hundred million gallons of seawater per day in order to produce 15 million gallons of purified water.You can just imagine how much energy it would take to heat that much water to boiling, let alone keep it going until it’s all evaporated.”

“I can, yes,” said Becky, looking at Kingston. But her thoughts were clearly elsewhere. “The conference had to do with global warming,” she said, after a lengthy pause. “Is that what it’s about? Why Stewart went?”

“Not directly, no. It’s not so much about climate change but rather population growth. Some nation’s water supplies won’t be sufficient to keep up with the demand. It’s a serious problem right now, but in the coming years it will become a worldwide crisis. More so than the shortage of oil, one could debate.”

Becky said nothing so Kingston continued.

“So, if Stewart has indeed discovered how it can be achieved botanically, it would be considered an important scientific coup, at least on the surface.” He paused, in thought. “Though in practical terms it would certainly present quite a few problems, one would think—quite a few.”

“I’m a little surprised he didn’t confide in you, Lawrence.”

“Maybe he planned to, at one point. Who knows? Didn’t you say that he intended to call me?”

“Yes. I wish he had.”

Kingston nodded. “All we can do right now is pray that Stewart shows up or that the police find him unharmed.” He forced a smile. “Look,” he said, “there are probably any number of explanations. We’ll know, soon, I’m sure.”

“God, I hope you’re right, Lawrence,” she murmured. “It’s the not knowing that hurts the most.”

Turning away, Kingston thought for a moment. “Did Stewart have any help with the garden? A gardener or handyman?”

“He did, yes. A young man called William. I don’t think he was a gardener, though. He did all the heavy lifting stuff, so to speak. The things that Stewart had given up doing himself.”

“Local fellow?”

“From Verwood, I believe. Some days he would bike over.”

Kingston made a mental note to talk to William. “You mentioned a garden club?”

“Right.”

“A local one, I take it?”

“Yes. The Sarum Garden Club in Salisbury. We get the newsletter every month.”

“Do you have one, by chance?”

“I’ll take a look. I believe it’s in the pile of papers in the mud room, for recycling.”

“If not, I can always give them a call.”

“You think someone at the club might know something?”

“It’s a long shot but you never know.”

Becky nodded. “I suppose so,” she said resignedly.

“Will you be all right tonight? I mean, would you like me to stay longer—a couple more days, perhaps? I was to attend a friend’s birthday party tonight. But I can easily make a call and tell them that I can’t make it. Andrew will understand,” Kingston said, standing and smoothing his trouser legs.

Becky got up and walked over to him. “No,” she said, looking up into his blue eyes. “You’ve done enough for now, Lawrence. Don’t let your friend down. You go back home and enjoy yourself tonight. And don’t worry, Sarah will be here tomorrow. I’ll be just fine.” She summoned a tiny smile. “At least we know a lot more now than we did yesterday.” Then she stood on tiptoe, leaned forward and gave him a peck on the cheek. He could feel the contours of her slender body. “Thank you for coming down, Lawrence—for today and the other day,” she said. “It’s meant an awful lot to me.”

Kingston looked into her doleful eyes. “Promise to call me immediately if you hear anything. Sometimes I’m not too good about answering my mobile but I’ll make sure I check the messages.” He took her hand and held it tightly. “Meantime, I’ll read up on that water lily. I know a chap who runs a nursery and water garden in St. Albans. I think a chat with him might be in order, though I doubt seriously he’ll know anything about plants that consume salt,” he added, with a shake of his head. “He’ll probably think I’m a few bricks short of a full load.”

She managed another thin smile then said, “You’ll convince him, I’m sure.”

“As far-fetched as it is, there’s no mistaking Stewart’s message,” he said, letting go of her hand.

Becky touched his arm. “Wait here a minute, I’ll look for that newsletter,” she said.

In less than a minute she was back, newsletter in hand.

“By the way,” she said, as they reached the front door, “I forgot to ask you. “You didn’t say what ‘Fork’ meant. And how on earth did you know the message was hidden in the stapler?”

“That’s right, I didn’t tell you, did I? Well, once I figured out that Stewart was leaving a clue, that was easy. It meant ‘For K’—for Kingston.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Who would have guessed,” she said. “And the stapler?”

“It’s an anagram.”

“An anagram?”

“Yes. ‘Stapler’ is an anagram of ‘plaster’ As part of a cryptic crossword clue, ‘fix plaster’ would be a dead giveaway. Stewart would know damned well I would figure it out. At one time we used to compare notes every week on the crossword puzzles, remember?”

Becky shook her head. “I don’t know about you two,” she said, as Kingston hugged her briefly and then strode off up the path.

For the second time in as many days, Kingston waved farewell from the TR4 and headed back to London.

FOUR

A
ndrew’s birthday party was a drawn out and boozy affair. Starting with drinks in the lounge at Benihana in the King’s Road, their party of ten was ushered into a private dining room. Seated on three sides of a large wooden table, with a
teppan
—a flat stainless-steel grille—occupying the fourth side, they marveled at a dazzling knife-skill performance by their good-humored Japanese chef, Toshiro, who orchestrated a
teppanyaki
banquet that stretched over nearly three hours. By the end of the first hour, Kingston had lost track of the number of sake bottles that had come and gone.

The following morning, nursing a milder headache than deserved, all things considered, he phoned the Bristol Chamber of Commerce, inquiring about the June 9 conference. He was told that it was held at the At-Bristol Complex and was given the appropriate phone number to call. In the following minutes, talking with the Complex’s press officer, he learned that the event that took place on the three days in question was the tenth annual conference of the World Desalination Institute. The lecture given on Friday, June 9, was titled “New developments in the biological treatment and desalination of effluents and other marginal waters.”

Kingston put the phone down and thought about the implications. This new information left little doubt that Stewart had indeed been dabbling, in one form or another, with a biological method of desalination, using water lilies. Turning to his iMac, he logged on to the Internet and, after a Google search, bookmarked a half dozen sites with information on desalination. After an hour of scrolling through pages that described the background, different technologies, technical drawings, charts, diagrams, energy usage, waste discharges, and costs, he was much enlightened on the subject. Along the way he had compiled three foolscap pages of notes.

With a cup of tea, he sat back and read over his notes.

Seawater in the world’s oceans has a salinity of ~3.5 percent. Every liter of seawater has 35 grams of salts dissolved in it—mostly, but not entirely, sodium chloride. Other elements can include magnesium, sulfur, and potassium.

The two principal technologies for extracting salt from seawater are reverse osmosis and distillation. With reverse osmosis, high pressure is applied to the intake seawater forcing the water molecules through a semipermeable membrane. The salt molecules will not pass through the membrane but the water does, and becomes potable product water. In distillation, the intake water is slowly heated to produce steam. The steam is then condensed to produce product water with low salt concentration.

Of the two, reverse osmosis is more energy efficient but distillation plants offer a greater potential for economies of scale. Unlike RO plants, they are not required to shut down a portion of their operations for cleaning and replacing equipment as frequently as RO plants and generate no waste from backwash or treatment filters. The principal operational costs of desalination plants are from energy usage and disposal of waste discharges.