EG03 - The Water Lily Cross

by Anthony Eglin

  So much for the jimmy-proof deadbolt, he thought, examining the damaged lock. At least the alarm system had functioned—otherwise the police wouldn’t have been called. Or had it? It suddenly struck him—where was the police patrol car?

  Kingston looked around the dark, deserted mews. The only sound came from an unseen open window: the distant harmonies of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Scarborough Fair.” Four streetlights cast angular shadows on the narrow street, as he stood, despondent, at a loss to know what to do next. Calling the police station would have been the obvious, but in his hurry to leave, he’d left his mobile on the coffee table. Clearly nothing could be achieved by waiting. Not much choice but to go back home, he decided.

  As he turned to leave, the high beams of a passing car bounced off the rear reflectors of a car parked farther down the mews and lit up the NO PARKING sign next to him. The sudden illumination lasted barely a second or so but long enough for Kingston to see that it was his car. Either that or it was an extraordinary coincidence that another dark-colored Triumph would be parked illegally in Waverley Mews. With quickening steps, he took off down the mews, almost to its end where the TR4 was parked flush against a brick building. “What in hell,” he muttered, looking the car over, fully expecting parts to be missing or other vandalism. It was untouched. He reached for the driver’s-side door and opened it, glancing around the interior. It, too, was as he’d left it when he had parked it two days earlier. Instinctively, he looked up and down the mews, not knowing what he expected to see. A tabby cat skittered across the cobbles, up and over a wall in one graceful movement, the only sign of life.

  He was already formulating a plan. He would get the TR out of there immediately, into a secure, monitored garage where it would be safe until such time as he could replace the garage lock with something more impregnable. He reached in his pocket, took out his car keys, slipped behind the wheel, inserted the key in the ignition and turned it. To his relief, the engine started.

  In first gear, hand brake off, about to let the clutch out, Kingston glanced up into the rearview mirror. “Damn,” he muttered. A piece of newspaper was stuck to the rear window, obstructing his vision. He yanked the hand brake on, put the gearshift lever back into neutral, got out, walked to the back of the car, and started to remove the paper. It didn’t look or feel right—almost as if it had been glued on. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a sudden movement, a shadowy figure in the darkness. He turned—too late. The man had slipped behind the wheel, jammed the car in gear and, with tires screeching like banshees, had fishtailed out of the mews. Kingston stood there holding the scrap of newspaper, smelling burnt rubber. He took a deep breath, stamped hard on the cobbles and yelled “Sonofabitch!”

  Suddenly the mews was lit up like a stage set. Kingston turned to see the dazzling headlights of a car entering the mews from the opposite direction the carjacker had taken. He put a hand up to shield his eyes. If it was the police, it might not be too late to chase his car. The vehicle slowed to a stop in front of him. Stepping from the center of the mews, out of the glare of the headlights, Kingston could see now that it wasn’t a patrol car. It looked like a Range Rover or one of the big Jeeps. The passenger-side window slid down and he looked in, meeting the driver’s eyes.

  “What was that all about?” the driver asked, leaning forward, one hand on the passenger seat. Though the man was in partial shade, Kingston could see he was clean-shaven, wearing a brown leather jacket and black turtleneck. “Left a lot of rubber, by the sound of it,” he said.

  “I’ve just been carjacked,” said Kingston.

  “Jesus. Hop in,” the driver said nodding, releasing the door lock. “Maybe it’s not too late. Let’s give it a go?”

  “Thanks,” said Kingston, as he got in, closed the door, and cinched his seat belt.

  “What kind of car?”

  “TR4, green, tan top.”

  The vehicle’s big engine growled as they left the mews and slipped out onto the adjoining street in the direction the carjacker had taken. A few seconds later, Kingston glanced at the speedometer and was surprised to see that they were already doing fifty. The small green logo in the center of the steering wheel confirmed that it was a Range Rover. A newish one at that.

  “I’ll call 999,” the man said, pulling a mobile from his inside jacket pocket. “We’ll take Brompton to Cromwell Road, in the hope he’ll be heading west. It’s the nearest main road out of town,” he added.

  Buoyed by the man’s confidence, Kingston was beginning to feel that there might be a sliver of hope after all, but he realized that in the minute or so since the carjacking, the TR4 could have put a lot of distance between them. It would depend on traffic lights and the long shot that they would be following the same route, toward the M4.

  His eyes fixed mostly on the traffic ahead, glancing occasionally down side streets, Kingston caught snatches of the man’s conversation with the emergency dispatcher. He was amazed at the driver’s skill in handling the big car with one hand on the wheel, navigating the maze of streets to Brompton Road, dodging nimbly in and out of traffic, timing the lights. He’d always abhorred the use of mobiles while driving but this time he had to admit it had its advantages. The man was a damned good driver. They were now passing the Victoria and Albert Museum, heading west on Cromwell Road in heavy traffic.

  Eyes peeled for any signs of his car, it took him a few seconds before he realized that they had turned right, off Cromwell Road onto Exhibition Road, running north toward Hyde Park. Why hadn’t they continued on the main road, heading west out of London, he wondered. He saw why the minute the car slowed. Up ahead on the grass, inside the park, the TR4 was parked with no lights on.

  Curious at this amazing stroke of luck or what could have been keen eyesight on the driver’s part, Kingston unbuckled his seat belt and glanced at the driver. The driver turned to Kingston. “Wait a moment,” he said. No sooner had the words left his mouth, Kingston watched dumbstruck as the TR4’s door opened and a man got out. He slammed the door shut, walked the half-dozen paces to the Range Rover, opened the rear door, and climbed in. It had all happened in a matter of seconds.

  As he reached for the door handle, Kingston heard the “thunk” of the automatic door lock. “Don’t bother,” the driver said.

  “We’re going for a little ride, Doctor,” said an East End voice from the backseat.

  The driver did a U-turn and headed back to Cromwell Road, made a right and continued west heading out of London. Kingston’s first thought hadn’t been for his own well-being but for the safety of his car. Leaving it unattended for long anywhere in London was asking for trouble—the park might prove to be one of the worst places. Vandals and thieves would get to it in short order. He decided that he didn’t even want to think what might happen to it before the police or park officials discovered it had been abandoned. That could take days. His priority was here and now.

  He realized now that the call from Chelsea Police Station was phony, just a device to get him to the mews. Zander’s men—and it was a sure bet that was who they were—had been clever. Everything had obviously been well planned and executed. Nevertheless, it struck him as a hellishly complicated exercise just to get him into a car. The more he thought about it, the alternatives—grabbing him off the street or abducting him from the flat—invited failure or possible injury to any one of them. Despite his age, anyone confronting him would agree that, at six foot three and without an ounce of fat on him, he gave the impression of being physically powerful, a man who would not go down easily in a struggle.

  Kingston sat in the passenger seat watching the road. Not a word had been uttered since they’d left the park. He knew there was no point in asking questions. They were hardly going to tell him where they were taking him or what they were planning to do with him once they got there. Saying nothing was much more intimidating. Looking out the window, he saw they were now on the Great West Road, on the stretch just before it hooked up with the M4 motorway. He knew
the factory-lined thoroughfare well, having traveled it often since moving to London, and more recently on his excursions to see the elusive woman who was indirectly responsible for the mess he was in right now. It also happened to be the quickest route to Heathrow airport. Surely they weren’t going there?

  His thoughts were interrupted by a low voice from behind. He didn’t need to glance back to know that the man behind him was talking on a mobile.

  “We have the passenger.” A short pause followed. “Yes.” Another pause. “Almost on the M4.” Pause. “Right.” The conversation ended. Now Kingston knew others were involved, no doubt awaiting his arrival.

  Fifteen minutes later, they had passed the airport exits and were in the center lane traveling a shade under the seventy-mile-per-hour speed limit. No way would the driver risk being pulled over by the police. Kingston had read in the paper last year that speed cameras were planned for stretches of the motorway in Wiltshire. If they were to go that far, and if the driver exceeded the speed limit, the Range Rover’s license plate might be recorded. But that was miles away and at this stage of the game, what would it amount to anyway? A speeding violation would hardly be associated in the minds of the police with an abduction. From the roadside exit signs, he knew they’d now left the M4 and were on the M3 motorway in Berkshire heading in the direction of Southampton.

  After another half hour’s driving, they left the motorway onto an “A” road heading south. Ten minutes later they were on a smaller road, crossing hilly countryside. Now it was much darker and despite the occasional road sign it was nigh on impossible for him to fathom their direction, let alone location. Before long, he gave up trying. Lulled by the Rover’s smooth ride, he leaned back on the leather headrest and closed his eyes. What would the coming hours bring, he wondered? He preferred not to think about it. He’d already concluded—back in Hyde Park, when he had seen his cherished TR4 disappear from sight, perhaps forever—that whatever it was, would not be pleasant. He thought back to Walsh and Everard—and what had happened to them—and broke into a cold sweat.

  He was jarred into the present by the thud of the car’s doors closing. His door opened and a voice in the darkness said, “Get out.”

  He did so, immediately feeling the stiffness in his knees, another reminder that of late he hadn’t been exercising as much as he should. He zipped up his suede jacket, wishing that he’d put on a sweater before he left the house. It was damned cold and black as soot.

  The driver, no more than a dark silhouette, stood several paces from Kingston. “Follow me,” he said, flicking on a foot-long black flashlight, aiming it at the ground and starting to walk.

  Kingston followed, aware that the hefty flashlight could easily serve as a truncheon, if need be. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the other man—shorter but more muscular than his partner—had moved behind him as they started off.

  With the bobbing pool of light ahead, he could see that they were on a cement path edged with mown grass. Where the light dissolved into blackness he could make out tall dark shapes on either side, but he couldn’t distinguish whether they were hedges or small buildings. The silence was as brooding as the dark. He strained for sounds that might come in handy later as markers: trains, traffic noise, running water, farm sounds. But all was still.

  Soon they stopped in front of a large building, a warehouse of sorts. Facing them was a solid door that had “security” written all over it. To the left, he could make out an industrial-sized roll-up steel door. Opening the smaller door, the driver stood aside to let Kingston and the other man enter, then followed them in. The door slammed shut and locked behind them, the sound echoing around the dark interior. In seconds, a single light came on, its source not visible. The meager light was barely sufficient for Kingston to see that it was a warehouse. They continued in file across an open space, flanked by floor-to-ceiling metal racks stacked high with containers, wooden crates, and other indistinguishable materials.

  Reaching the other side of the cavernous room, they passed through another door and down a low-ceilinged corridor with closed doors on both sides. The lights in this area were also dimmed, leading Kingston to believe that it was prearranged—probably alerted by the mobile call from the car—to make it harder for him to get a good look at the two men. They stopped at what appeared to be the last door in the corridor. The driver, careful to avoid Kingston’s gaze, took out a key and opened the door. He stepped aside, motioning with the flashlight for Kingston to enter. Kingston was a few paces into the room when he heard the door slam behind him and the key turn in the lock.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Kingston rubbed his eyes and looked around the small room. It had obviously once been an office, now converted into living space. A single made-up bed was snug against the wall in one corner. A leather sofa and coffee table, piled with magazines, took up most of the space on the opposite wall. The only other items in the room were three black filing cabinets, an empty bookshelf, a steel desk, and a bottled-water cooler. Kingston was comforted to see another door, hoping it was a bathroom. He crossed the room and opened the door. It was as expected: a loo, a small sink, and a wall rack with two fresh towels. Two minutes later, relieved and refreshed, he was back in the room.

  He hadn’t noticed it when he had first looked around, but next to the bed, alongside a brass table lamp—the only light in the room—was a plate with a cling-film wrapped bagel, a napkin, and a Mars bar. Next to it stood a bottle of water and, of all things, a small bottle of white wine, a glass, and a corkscrew. He went to the table and picked up the bottle: a Bordeaux Entre-Deux-Mers. How odd, he thought. Paradoxical.

  He uncorked the wine, put it on the coffee table with the glass and slumped onto the couch. Filling the glass partway, he took a healthy sip. A morbid thought crossed his mind. Was this akin to the prisoner’s last meal? He dismissed the idea immediately, savoring the young fruity wine. It wasn’t chilled, but went down well anyway.

  Why bring him to a warehouse, he wondered, looking up at the waffled ceiling panels. On the drive, he’d tried to construct a plausible explanation by connecting tonight’s events to everything that had happened in the preceding weeks. Kingston was sure now that Viktor Zander was the man behind it all. Zander, Stewart, Walsh, Everard, Marian Taylor alias Alison Greer—they were all intertwined in the conspiracy like a girdling of old wisteria vines. The more he tried to unravel the tangle, the more snarled it got and the more frustrated he became.

  He went over it again, as he had on the bench at Chelsea Physic. Stewart enlisted Walsh’s help, who in turn, according to Marian Taylor, brought in Everard as a partner. Gavin Blake worked for Everard and was also, as he claimed, a friend of Viktor Zander. But how were Everard and Zander connected, or were they? Marian Taylor, an inveterate liar and impostor, had insisted that Everard was at Walsh’s house, yet Everard—if that’s who it had been whom Kingston talked to on the phone—swore that he knew neither Walsh nor Alison Greer or anything about the desalination project. Yet Alison Greer’s visit to Everard’s office at Bakers Landing contradicted that. Was it just coincidence that both she and Kingston were there on the same day? And was it Everard she was meeting or someone else? If it turned out that Everard was murdered, what was the motive? And who had done it? Far too many questions.

  It seemed so long ago now that Kingston had almost forgotten about the helicopter incident—not that he ever would. Given everything that had transpired since, speculation on how it happened wasn’t hard to figure. The helicopter had merely been in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was just bad timing. If he hadn’t made the snap decision to go back and videotape the village it would never have happened. Seeing it circling at low altitude and then spotting the video camera suspended under the nose like a red flag, one of Zander’s men had panicked and taken a pot shot at it from somewhere near the house. Kingston imagined the man getting all kinds of hell from Zander for doing something so senseless and dangerous that it could have shut down the whole
operation right there and then. As if trying to down the helicopter hadn’t been enough, Zander had to worry that revealing video footage might have been taken of the reservoir. If it had, and the videotape fell into the wrong hands—namely, the police—it could spell trouble. There was the chance that people on the ground might be identified, hence the phone call from “Patrick” and the video snatch in Hammersmith.

  It was Marian Taylor who perplexed Kingston the most. He couldn’t for the life of him figure out why she had stepped forward to help him in the first place, then gone purposely out of her way to deceive him in such a convoluted way. For reasons he couldn’t explain, he couldn’t see her mixed up in a kidnapping and a possible murder case. Then again, he’d never prided himself on being the greatest judge of character.

  He took a long sip of wine and topped up the glass. Zander, or whoever had selected it, had good taste. It didn’t come as much of a surprise though, given the eclectic library and expensive furnishings at Foxwood House.

  He kicked off his shoes and stretched out on the couch, arms folded. What about Stewart? Was he still alive? Kingston prayed he was. If so, how much did he know about what was going on? Was he aware of the kind of people he was dealing with? Kidnapping was one thing but for the person kidnapped to be useful in one form or another—as with Stewart—all manner of round-the-clock care, support systems, constant surveillance, and security had to be enforced. Kingston couldn’t help thinking of Kate Sheppard, the young woman who had been kidnapped five years ago and held hostage for two weeks. She and her husband had discovered a rare and valuable blue rose in their garden and had asked Kingston to help them. In a series of bizarre incidents, the rose was stolen, her husband Alex became a murder suspect, and Kate was held ransom for the rose. In her case, her captors had taken good care of her and she had finally managed to escape, only to be recaptured by them. She had told Kingston, when he had last visited the Sheppards at their lovely home and garden in Wiltshire, that, to this day, she was still haunted by recurring nightmares of that experience. Thoughts back in the present, he reached over, picked up his wineglass, and drained the contents.