He reached for the folded Times and, without thinking, opened it to the crossword section, placing the rest of the paper aside. He stared at the tiny grid of black and white squares, pondering the thousands of them that had challenged his sense of logic and reasoning over so many years.
With a cryptic crossword, unlike a conventional crossword, one’s bank of general knowledge is of little help; the solver must wrestle with construing the clues correctly to extract literal meaning from clever camouflage. What makes them so challenging and often frustrating, is that all the clues are couched in varying forms of disguised anagrams, cryptograms, phonetic puzzles, and cunning plays on words. Teasing out the answers is a job for an analytical, not a fact-filled mind.
He stared at the puzzle. Not reading but just staring. He thought back to the day he first saw the rose. How beautiful it was, how seductive. And now, in such a short time, what havoc it had wrought. A twisted trail of heartache and tragedy.
After all this time, after the hours of sifting through notes, creating timelines, analysing, reconstructing conversations, they were still no nearer to finding answers. He must have overlooked something – a subtle clue, a misspoken word. Or was he simply trying too hard, overlooking the obvious? Think of the enigma of the blue rose in the same way you would a cryptic clue. No, that would be absurd, he said to himself. But his mind was already in motion, stimulated and challenged by the very idea of it.
Methodically, he started with the ‘players’. He got a notepad and wrote down their names – one at the top of each successive page. This, in part, was similar to the exercise he and Alex had exhausted yesterday but he was determined to try again and keep trying, if needs be. There were nine names in alclass="underline" himself, Kate and Alex, Vicky, Tanaka, Adell, Mrs Cooke, Graham and Wolff. Had he overlooked anybody? Not that he could think of. The police, perhaps? No, they were too busy looking for a killer to be interested in a stolen rose. Besides, they weren’t even aware that Kate was missing.
Starting from the day of Kate’s first phone call, he matched each so-called player with incidents linking them to the rose. These he wrote underneath each name. It took him nearly an hour to write everything down. When the list was complete, he went over each page, retracing every incident, cross-referencing every encounter and reviewing every known conversation. It took him the best part of another hour before he had gone through all nine pages. When he crossed off the last name, he was no wiser than he was when he started. ‘Damn!’ he muttered.
Engrossed in the task, he had completely forgotten about Alex. Where in hell was he? He would give him another ten minutes, then go and hammer on his bedroom door.
He got up and went to the sink, filling the kettle to make a fresh pot of tea. Back at the table he skimmed through his notes one more time, finally putting them aside. He got up and climbed the stairs to wake Alex.
Ten minutes later they faced each other across the kitchen table as Alex nursed a cup of coffee.
‘Sleep at all?’ asked Kingston.
‘Not much, no.’
‘We’ll see about getting you some sleeping pills today.’
‘What’s all this bumf, then?’ Alex asked, rubbing his eyes and picking up one of the torn-off pages of Kingston’s scribblings.
‘That “bumf” is the result of a good two hours’ worth of intense brainstorming, conceptualizing and deductive reasoning, I’ll have you know.’
‘Did you come up with anything?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ Kingston replied with a feeble shake of the head.
Alex regarded Kingston with bloodshot eyes cushioned with dark puffy bags. His skin was the colour and texture of putty. Even his usually shiny hair was lacklustre and straggly. ‘We’ve probably got until noon. And that’s it,’ Alex said, with the despair of a condemned prisoner praying for an eleventh-hour reprieve from the Home Office. Absently he turned over the front section of the newspaper, pushing it, aimlessly, from side to side.
Kingston watched, not quite knowing what to say. He caught a glimpse of the newspaper headline: Brighton Nursing Home Scandal Widens.
‘Brighton.’
‘What?’ said Kingston confused by Alex’s odd comment.
Alex was staring out the window. ‘That’s right,’ he muttered.
‘What?’
‘It was something that Adell said. The first time we met him. Maybe I didn’t mention it to you at the time.’
‘What, Alex? What?’
‘He mentioned that their firm represented a rose grower near Brighton.’
Kingston was on his feet. ‘God! This could be the break we’ve been hoping for, Alex. The connection is too much of a coincidence. Did he mention any names? Think hard, Alex.’
‘I don’t recall. I don’t think so.’
‘Alex, don’t you see – there’s more than a fifty-fifty chance that that’s where the rose is right now. The connection is perfect.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Think about it.’ He wagged his forefinger at Alex as he spoke. ‘All along, you and Kate, and Vicky, of course – for obvious reasons – have nurtured Sapphire like a newborn baby.’
‘That’s true,’ said Alex.
‘And we know that whoever took the rose knows of her astronomical value.’
Alex nodded.
‘That being the case, they, too, will make damned sure that she continues to receive the same kind of mollycoddling. They’re sure as hell not going to run even the slightest risk of letting her shrivel up and die, are they?’
‘No, they’re not.’
‘I can’t imagine why I didn’t think of it before. Wherever the rose is sequestered must be a location where she can get proper expert horticultural care–’
‘Like a place that specializes in roses. Adell’s client’s place.’
‘Exactly, Alex.’
Kingston paced the kitchen. ‘We’ve got to get to Adell immediately.’
Alex frowned. ‘Surely he wouldn’t have stolen the rose, would he? A solicitor?’
‘We can’t be certain, but lawyers have been known to commit serious crimes – including murder, I might add. In any case, I’m not suggesting that he stole it, that he did the whole thing single-handed. But I can almost guarantee you that he is somehow involved. It all fits.’
Alex’s expression quickly darkened. ‘If you’re right, and Adell is directly or indirectly culpable, I’ll see to it that the son of a bitch is disbarred,’ he said, through clenched teeth. ‘What a bastard!’
‘Slow down a bit, Alex. It’s only a theory, you know. Let’s not rush our fences.’
Kingston glanced at the clock. ‘If we leave right now we could be up in town by eleven. We’ll just have to chance his being there. I don’t think we want to deal with this on the phone.’
‘What if Wolff calls?’
‘He’ll have to leave a message.’
‘Why don’t we leave one?’
‘A message?’
‘On the answering machine. Record a new greetings message. Instead of saying, sorry we missed your call and wait for the beep, record a new message saying that we think we know where the rose is and that we’ll call back later this afternoon. At least we’d be buying some time.’
‘Clever idea, Alex. Let’s just hope that we’re right about Adell and his rose grower friend.’
‘We’d better be. God, we’d better be.’
Adell was clearly flummoxed when Alex and Kingston showed up at his office unannounced. ‘This is a surprise, Alex,’ he said, taking his eyes off Alex momentarily to size up Kingston. ‘What brings you two here?’
‘We need to talk about something that can’t wait. It’s serious.’ Alex turned toward Kingston. ‘Oh, this is a friend of mine, Dr Lawrence Kingston.’