The Constant Gardener (18 page)

Now it is Lesley's turn to be cautious. “Did she take a special interest in TB for that reason?”

“Special I don't know. As you have just said, her work in the slums gave her an interest in a range of medical matters. Tuberculosis was one of them.”

“But if her grandfather died of it, Justin—”

“Tessa particularly disliked the sentimentalism that attaches to the disease in literature,” Justin goes on severely, talking across her. “Keats, Stevenson, Coleridge, Thomas Mann—she used to say that people who found TB romantic should have tried sitting at her grandfather's bedside.”

Rob again consults Lesley with his eyes, and again receives her silent nod. “So would it surprise you to hear that in the course of an unauthorized search of Arnold Bluhm's apartment we found a copy of an old letter he had sent to the head of ThreeBees' marketing operation, warning him of the side effects of a new shortcourse, antituberculosis drug that ThreeBees are peddling?”

Justin does not hesitate for a second. The perilous line of questioning has reactivated his diplomatic skills. “Why should it surprise me? Bluhm's NGO takes a close professional interest in Third World drugs. Drugs are the scandal of Africa. If any one thing denotes the Western indifference to African suffering, it's the miserable shortage of the right drugs, and the disgracefully high prices that the pharmaceutical firms have been exacting over the last thirty years”—quoting Tessa but without attribution. “I'm sure Arnold has written dozens of such letters.”

“This one was hidden away by itself,” says Rob. “Rolled up with a lot of technical data that's beyond us.”

“Well, let's hope you can ask Arnold to decipher it for you when he comes back,” says Justin primly, not bothering to conceal his distaste at the notion that they had been foraging through Bluhm's possessions and reading his correspondence without his knowledge.

Lesley takes over again. “Tessa had a laptop, right?”

“Indeed she did.”

“What make?”

“The name escapes me. Small, gray and Japanese is about all I can tell you.”

He is lying. Glibly. He knows it, they know it. To judge by their faces, an air of loss has entered the relationship, of friendship disappointed. But not on Justin's side. Justin knows only stubborn refusal, concealed within diplomatic grace. This is the battle he has steeled himself for over days and nights, while praying it may never be joined.

“She kept it in her workroom, right? Where she kept her notice board and her papers and research material.”

“When she was not taking it with her, yes.”

“Did she use it for her letters—documents?”

“I believe so.”

“And e-mails?”

“Frequently.”

“And she'd print out from it, right?”

“Sometimes.”

“She wrote a long document about five or six months ago—around eighteen pages of letter and annex. It was some kind of protest about malpractice, we think medical or pharmaceutical or both. A case history, describing something very serious that was going on here in Kenya. Did she show it to you?”

“No.”

“And you didn't read it—for yourself, without her knowledge?”

“No.”

“You know nothing about it then. Is that what you're saying?”

“I'm afraid it is.” Washed down with a regretful smile.

“Only we were wondering whether this was to do with the great crime she thought she'd got onto.”

“I see.”

“And whether ThreeBees might have something to do with that great crime.”

“It's always possible.”

“But she didn't show it to you?” Lesley insists.

“As I have told you several times, Lesley: no.” He almost adds, “dear lady.”

“Do you think it might have involved ThreeBees in any way?”

“Alas, I have absolutely no idea.”

But he has every idea. It is the terrible time. It is the time when he feared he might have lost her; when her young face grew harder by the day and her young eyes acquired a zealot's light; when she crouched, night after night, at her laptop in her little office, surrounded by heaps of papers flagged and cross-referred like a lawyer's brief; the time when she ate her food without noticing what she was eating, then hurried back to her labors without even a good-bye; the time when shy villagers from the countryside came soundlessly to the side door of the house to visit her, and sat with her on the veranda, eating the food that Mustafa brought to them.

“So she never even discussed the document with you?” Lesley, acting incredulous.

“Never, I'm afraid.”

“Or in front of you—with Arnold or Ghita, say?”

“In the last months, Tessa and Arnold kept Ghita at arm's length, I assume for her own good. As for myself, it was my perception that they actually mistrusted me. They believed that if I was caught in a conflict of interest, I would owe my first allegiance to the Crown.”

“And would you?”

Never in a thousand years, he is thinking. But his answer reflects the ambivalence they expect of him. “Since I am not familiar with the document you refer to, I fear that is not a question I can answer.”

“But the document would have been printed from her laptop, right? This eighteen-page job—even if she didn't show it to you.”

“Possibly. Or Bluhm's. Or a friend's.”

“So where is it now—the laptop? This minute?”

Seamless.

Woodrow could have learned from him.

No body language, no tremor in the voice or exaggerated pause for breath.

“I looked in vain for her laptop in the inventory of her possessions presented to me by the Kenyan police and, like a number of other things, regrettably it does not feature.”

“Nobody at Loki saw her with a laptop,” Lesley says.

“But then I don't suppose they inspected her personal luggage.”

“Nobody at the Oasis saw her with one. Did she have it with her when you drove her to the airport?”

“She had the rucksack that she always carried on her field trips. That too has disappeared. She had an overnight bag which may also have contained her laptop. Sometimes it did. Kenya does not encourage lone women to display expensive electronic equipment in public places.”

“But then she wasn't alone, was she?” Rob reminds him, after which a long silence intervenes—so long that it becomes a matter of suspense to see who breaks it first.

“Justin,” says Lesley finally. “When you visited your house with Woodrow last Tuesday morning, what did you take away with you?”

Justin affects to assemble a mental list. “Oh … family papers … private correspondence relating to Tessa's family trust … some shirts, socks … a dark suit for the funeral … a few trinkets of sentimental value … a couple of ties.”

“Nothing else?”

“Nothing that immediately springs to mind. No.”

“Anything that doesn't?” asks Rob.

Justin smiles wearily but says nothing.

“We talked to Mustafa,” says Lesley. “We asked him: ”Mustafa, where's Miss Tessa's laptop?“' He gave out conflicting signals. One minute she'd taken it away with her. The next she hadn't. After that, the journalists had stolen it. The one person who hadn't taken it was you. We thought he might be trying to front for you and not succeeding very well.”

“I'm afraid that's rather what you get when you bully domestic staff.”

“We didn't bully him,” Lesley comes back, angry at last. “We were extremely gentle. We asked him about her notice board. Why was it full of pins and pinholes but didn't have any notices on it? He'd tidied it, he said. Tidied it all by himself with no help from anyone. He can't read English, he's not allowed to touch her possessions or anything in the room, but he'd tidied the notice board. What had he done with the notices? we asked him. Burned them, he said. Who told him to burn them? Nobody. Who told him to tidy the notice board? Nobody. Least of all Mr. Justin. We think he was covering for you, not very well. We think you took the notices, not Mustafa. We think he's covering for you on the laptop too.”

Justin has lapsed once more into that state of artificial ease that is the curse and virtue of his profession. “I fear you do not take into account our cultural differences here, Lesley. A more likely explanation is that the laptop went with her to Turkana.”

“Plus the notices off her notice board? I don't think so, Justin. Did you help yourself to any disks during your visit?”

And here for a moment—but only here—Justin drops his guard. For while one side of him is engaged in bland denial, another is as anxious as his interrogators to obtain answers.

“No, but I confess I searched for them. Much of her legal correspondence was contained in them. She was in the habit of e-mailing her solicitor on a range of matters.”

“And you didn't find them.”

“They were always on her desk,” Justin protests, now lavish in his desire to share the problem. “In a pretty lacquer box given her by the very same solicitor last Christmas-they're not just cousins but old friends. The box has Chinese lettering on it. Tessa had a Chinese aid worker translate it. To her delight, it turned out to be a tirade against loathsome Westerners. I can only suppose that it went the same way as the laptop. Perhaps she took the disks to Loki too.”

“Why should she do that?” asks Lesley skeptically.

“I'm not literate in information technology. I should be, but I'm not. The police inventory said nothing of disks either,” he adds, waiting for their help.

Rob reflects on this. “Whatever was on the disks, chances are it's on the laptop too,” he pronounces. “Unless she downloaded onto a disk, then wiped the hard disk clean. But why would anyone do that?”

“Tessa had a highly developed sense of security, as I told you.”

Another ruminative silence, shared by Justin.

“So where are her papers now?” asks Rob roughly.

“On their way to London.”

“By diplomatic bag?”

“By whatever route I choose. The Foreign Office is being most supportive.”

Perhaps it is the echo of Woodrow's evasions that brings Lesley to the edge of her chair in an outburst of unfeigned exasperation.

“Justin.”

“Yes, Lesley.”

“Tessa researched. Right? Forget the disks. Forget the laptop. Where are her papers —all her papers—physically and at this moment?” she demands. “And where are the notices off that board?”

Playing his artificial self again, Justin vouchsafes her a tolerant frown, implying that although she is being unreasonable, he will do his best to humor her. “Among my effects, no doubt. If you ask me which particular suitcase, I might be a little stumped.”

Lesley waits, letting her breathing settle. “We'd like you to open all your luggage for us, please. We'd like you to take us downstairs now, and show us everything you took from your house on Tuesday morning.”

She stands up. Rob does the same, and stations himself beside the door in readiness. Only Justin remains seated. “I'm afraid that is not possible,” he says.

“Why not?” Lesley snaps.

“For the reason that I took the papers in the first place. They are personal and private. I do not propose to submit them to your scrutiny, or anybody else's, until I have had a chance to read them myself.”

Lesley flushes. “If this was England, Justin, I'd slap a subpoena on you so fast you wouldn't even feel it.”

“But this is not England, alas. You have no warrant and no local powers that I'm aware of.”

Lesley ignores him. “If this was England, I'd get a warrant to search this house from top to bottom. And I'd take every trinket, piece of paper and disk that you lifted from Tessa's workroom. And the laptop. I'd go through them with a tooth comb.”

“But you've already searched my house, Lesley,” Justin protests calmly from his chair. “I don't think Woodrow would take kindly to your searching his as well, would he? And I certainly cannot give you permission to do to me what you have done to Arnold without his consent.”

Lesley is scowling and pink like a woman wronged. Rob, very pale, stares longingly at his clenched fists.

“We'll see about that tomorrow then,” Lesley says ominously as they leave.

But tomorrow never comes. Not for all her fiery words. Throughout the night and late into the morning Justin sits on the edge of his bed, waiting for Rob and Lesley to return as they have threatened, armed with their warrants, their subpoenas and their writs, and a posse of Kenyan Blue Boys to do their dirty work for them. He fruitlessly debates options and hiding places as he has done for days. Thinks like a prisoner of war, contemplating floors and walls and ceilings: Where? Makes plans to recruit Gloria, drops them. Makes others involving Mustafa and Gloria's houseboy. Others again involving Ghita. But the only word of his inquisitors is a phone call from Mildren saying the police officers are required elsewhere, and no, there is no news of Arnold. And when the funeral comes, the police officers are still required elsewhere—or so it appears to Justin, when now and then he scans the mourners, counting absent friends.

•      •      •

The plane had entered a land of eternal predawn. Outside his cabin window, wave after wave of frozen sea rolled toward a colorless infinity. All round him, white-shrouded passengers slept in the unearthly postures of the dead. One had her arm thrown upward as if she had been shot while waving to someone. Another had his mouth open in a silent scream, and his dead man's hand across his heart. Upright and alone, Justin returned his gaze to the window. His face floated in it beside Tessa's, like the masks of people he once knew.

“It's just bloody horrible!” cried a balding figure in a voluminous brown overcoat, prizing Justin free of his luggage trolley and blinding him with a bear hug. “It's absolutely foul and fucking unfair and bloody horrible. First Garth, now Tess.”

“Thank you, Ham,” said Justin, returning the embrace as best he could, given that his arms were pinned to his sides. “And thank you for turning out at this ungodly hour. No, I'll take that, thank you. You carry the suitcase.”

“I'd have come to the funeral if you'd let me! Christ, Justin!”

“It was better to have you holding the fort,” said Justin kindly.

“That suit warm enough? Bit brass monkeys, isn't it, after sunny Africa?”