Free EG03 - The Water Lily Cross by Anthony Eglin

twenty minutes, he made a snap decision to make a short detour. If he got off at the Natural History Museum stop he could walk to Old Brompton Street and Atkinson’s, the luggage shop where he had purchased the bag a year ago. A half hour later he was back at his flat, a new strap on the bag. Right away he called Martin to give him the bad news about the tape, but he wasn’t in. Leaving a message for Martin to call, he then called Becky in Shrewsbury, only to get the answering machine.
    Kingston had some thinking to do. Too many disturbing things were happening, and all in the space of a few days. But first, he had to have something to eat. He’d never been one to think too well on an empty stomach. Knowing that there was nothing in the fridge that had the makings of a half-decent lunch, he decided he might just as well do his thinking over a pub lunch and a pint of London Pride bitter. Fifteen minutes later, he was sitting in the upstairs bar of the Antelope, a genteel 175-year-old pub with oak floors and photos of the pub cricket team covering the downstairs wood-paneled walls. The room exuded an aroma that was hard to pin down—an impossible to describe or replicate coalescing of food, beer, spirits, and conviviality, aged over a century and a half. It now permeated the very bones of the room and its contents. Kingston found it comforting. He had chosen the Antelope as his “local” shortly after moving to Chelsea.
    As luck would have it, the bar was quieter than usual. An elderly couple, hunched silently in a corner over half pints, and a small group of young business types—who seemed more intent on talking than eating—were the only other patrons. Kingston took a sip of beer, looked over the menu, and made a quick decision what to order: scampi with peas, tartar sauce and lemon. It came with chips, one of his few dietary weaknesses but, like ice cream and chocolate, nowadays he only indulged once in a while.
    He leaned back, staring absently at a sepia-toned photo of legendary nineteenth-century English cricketer, W. G. Grace. In his mind, he was replaying the helicopter shooting. Not a word from the Lymington police, which he took to mean that their search and reconnaissance hadn’t turned up anything worth reporting. Neither had he heard back from Chris Norton or anybody from Henley Air about rescheduling the photo shoot. He and Chris had gone over every single detail of the shooting, first with Inspector Chisholm and afterward at the pub in Lymington, without coming up with a single clue that might shed at least some light on the case. Had they all overlooked something? If they had, he couldn’t think what on earth it could be. The other thing—and they’d belabored this, too: What could possibly be so important, worth keeping from the eyes of strangers, that would warrant taking down a helicopter at the risk of killing two people? He kept coming up with all questions and no answers.
    What with the helicopter downing, the phony “Patrick” call, and now this morning’s episode with the tape, Kingston had had little or no time to give much more thought to Stewart’s disappearance. The last thing he wanted was to give Becky the impression that he had forgotten her. And what about Stewart? So far, that was a dead end, too. He thought back to his conversation with Desmond and the idea that Stewart might have been kidnapped. Taking another sip of beer, he mulled over that scenario. If that were the case then what was the reason? A couple came to mind. The most obvious—also the flimsiest—was that someone had found out about Stewart’s discovery and had abducted him to get the desalination formula, at the same time preventing him from approaching other interested parties with his ecological breakthrough. But if Stewart was working with others—as Kingston and Desmond figured was the case—this theory became even less plausible.
    The only other reason Kingston could come up with was that Stewart had got