The Blue Rose

Nature soon takes over if the gardener is absent.

Penelope Hobhouse

Gripping a large suitcase in one hand, a holdall in the other, a bulky camera case dangling from his shoulder and a wooden tennis racquet tucked under his arm, Kingston returned to The Parsonage late on Wednesday evening to find Alex more despondent than ever.

The moment Alex had opened the door, Kingston could see that the events of the past days were starting to have a marked physical effect on him. His eyes were dark-circled and lacklustre from worry and, no doubt, loss of sleep. Even his posture seemed to be bowing under the weight of his frustration and despair. His clothes reflected his resignation, too. He was wearing a badly stained Oxford University sweatshirt, blue jeans frayed to the point of exposing one of his kneecaps, and no shoes.

In the sitting room, Kingston poured himself a generous scotch, then walked over and settled his tall frame into the ample seat of his chair. Alex was slumped on the sofa opposite. Asp was curled up next to him. Only one lamp was lit, making the mood even more gloomy.

‘So, how are you holding up, Alex?’ he asked.

Alex’s answer was slow in coming, his voice listless. ‘Not very well,’ he answered.

Kingston looked into Alex’s red-rimmed eyes, then across to the side table and the amber dregs in a heavily fingerprinted crystal glass. ‘You’re not overdoing it on the sauce, are you, Alex?’

‘No, don’t worry, Lawrence, I’m not drinking myself into oblivion – if that’s what you’re thinking. Not yet, anyway.’

Alex looked down for a long moment, then back to Kingston. ‘Wolff has given us forty-eight hours to come up with the rose or the bastards are going to hurt Kate.’ He let out a long sigh. ‘I don’t think I can take it much more, Lawrence.’

Kingston swirled the ice in the glass held in his lap. The sound heightened the tension in the room. ‘Maybe there’s a way we can prove to Wolff that we don’t have the rose, that you’ve been telling the truth.’

‘How do we do that?’

Kingston took a sip of scotch. ‘I don’t have a quick answer but anything’s worth a try right now.’

Alex got up. ‘Come on, Asp, I forgot to feed you again. Sorry, old chap.’ Asp followed Alex into the kitchen.

In a couple of minutes he returned and sat down opposite Kingston.

‘So, tell me more about what happened in Oxford,’ Kingston inquired, sipping his scotch.

‘There’s not much to tell. It was just as we thought. I ended up signing an agreement transferring ownership of the rose.’

‘A rose you don’t have.’

‘Exactly.’

‘You did tell them that you didn’t have it – that it was questionable whether you even owned it?’

‘Christ, Lawrence, of course I did. And it didn’t make a bloody bit of difference. The guy went ballistic when I told him. The bastard shoved me into the door.’ He rubbed his shoulder. ‘It still hurts,’ he said, grimacing.

‘I should have come with you,’ Kingston said, more just for something to say.

Alex said nothing, plainly lost in agonizing thought.

‘So, this man – was he a lawyer?’

Alex sneered. ‘Lawyer? He looked more like a pimp.’

‘Well, whose office was it, then?’

Alex bowed his head and massaged his temples. ‘Some solicitor’s called Lithgow.’

‘Well, you can be damned sure they borrowed the place for a couple of hours. Wolff would never leave tracks like that. Easiest thing in the world to get somebody out of their office for a few hours.’

‘Lawrence, these people are evil. It wouldn’t surprise me if they had Lithgow locked and bound in a closet somewhere in the back.’

A drawn-out silence suggested that Alex wanted no further discussion about the morning’s encounter.

Kingston got up, stretched his legs, went over to the standard lamp by the windows and turned it on. He wanted to talk more about the rose, only in the hope that by doing so it would offer up even the slenderest clue as who might have taken it or where it may be. But he could see that Alex had had enough for one day. ‘Oh, I meant to tell you,’ he said, in an upbeat tone, hoping that it might help lift Alex out of his despondency. ‘I got a call from Cardwell today.’

‘Cardwell?’

‘Yes, you know – the head cryptographer, the chap at DSSS Chicksands. He phoned to let me know that he’d made some more inquiries on the matter of Graham’s journal that they decrypted. Well, it turns out that the cryptographer did make file copies of the decoded pages after all, but Graham must have quietly snaffled them while the chap’s back was turned.’

‘Makes sense. The crafty sod certainly wouldn’t want extra copies of the formula lying around, would he? I’m surprised he was able to pull it off at all.’

‘Not when you think about it. Apparently, the name Major Jeffrey Cooke still opens doors there, even fifty years later. It seems that he’s in the same league as Alan Turing, Sir Harry Hinsley, and some of other top wartime Bletchley cryptoanalysts. When the people at Chicksands learned that Graham was his nephew, they were only too happy to oblige in deciphering the missing journal.’

‘Well, it all becomes moot now, I suppose. I doubt very much that we’ll ever see that rose again. We might as well face up to it.’

‘I wouldn’t count it out altogether, Alex. Not just yet.’

‘I only wish I could believe that,’ Alex mumbled.

Kingston tried another tack. ‘Did Adell ever get back to you – on Graham’s claim?’

‘Damn! I meant to call him today. I’ll do it tomorrow – the answer is no.’

‘About tomorrow, I take it you’re not going in to the office?’

‘I don’t think so. But if I sit around here all day long I’ll go raving mad.’

‘From now on, Alex, we have to start brainstorming around the clock. We must find that damned rose. We’ll start first thing tomorrow and we’ll continue over lunch.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Alex protested. ‘Not lunch, that is. I really don’t have the stomach for it right now.’

‘Come on, Alex. You haven’t eaten a decent meal in days, I’ll bet. It’ll do you good. It’s only an hour out of the day.’

Alex shook his head. ‘Lawrence, how can you be thinking of food at a time like this?’

Kingston held his hands up, palms facing Alex. ‘I’m going to insist on it,’ he said. ‘What difference does it make where we are as long as we’re trying to figure this bloody mess out?’

Alex sighed. ‘All right, Lawrence. Only an hour, okay?’

‘That’s a promise?’

‘I suppose so,’ Alex mumbled, with a limp shrug.

‘We have to keep trying, keep talking, that’s all,’ Kingston said in as comforting a tone as he could muster. He looked away from Alex to the leaded windows and beyond into the darkness of the gardens. He thought of the rose. Where was it, he wondered? For all they knew, it could be out of the country by now.

What an extraordinary discovery it was, and what misfortune it had brought with it. Like King Tut’s curse. Had Major Cooke anticipated this sort of thing happening? He and Farrow – if, indeed, he was involved – must have thought a lot about the impact a blue rose would have globally on horticulture. Was it possible that they had the foresight to predict that there could be a dark side to such a beautiful creation? That greedy, unethical, even corrupt individuals and interests would try to acquire it by whatever means possible? Was this why they had used codes and not told a soul – even Mrs Cooke – of what they were doing? Did they intend all along never to reveal their secret? That appeared to be the case.

‘What are you thinking about, Lawrence?’

Kingston turned to see Alex standing by the sofa holding the two empty glasses, as if ready to leave. ‘Oh, just about Cooke and Farrow – trying to visualize how they must have reacted when they found out they’d achieved