The Constant Gardener (47 page)

He was driving slowly, peering into parked cars, glancing repeatedly at his wing mirrors. He passed his own house but gave it hardly a look. A yellow dog rushed at the car, snapping at its wheels. He swerved, keeping his eyes on the mirrors while he softly rebuked it. Craters came at them like black lakes in the headlights. Ghita peered out of the rear window. The road was pitch dark.

“Keep your eyes front,” he commanded her. “I'm in danger of losing the way. Give me some lefts and rights.”

He was driving faster now, swinging between craters, bouncing over tar bumps, veering to the center of the road whenever he distrusted the sides. Ghita was murmuring: left here, left again, big pothole coming up. Abruptly he slowed down and a car overtook them, followed by a second.

“See anyone you recognize?” he asked.

“No.”

They entered a tree-lined avenue. A battered sign reading HELP VOLUNTEER barred their way. A line of emaciated boys with poles and a wheelbarrow with no wheel were gathered behind it.

“Are they always here?”

“Day and night,” said Ghita. “They take the stones from one hole and put them in another. In this way their job is never done.”

He pumped the foot brake. The car rolled to a halt just before the sign. The boys clustered round the car, slapping their palms on the roof. Justin lowered his window as a flashlight lit up the inside of the car, followed by the quick-eyed, smiling head of their spokesman. He was sixteen at most.

“Good evening, Bwana,” he cried in a tone of high ceremony. “I am Mr. Simba.”

“Good evening, Mr. Simba,” said Justin.

“You wish to contribute to this fine road we're making, man?”

Justin passed a hundred-shilling note through the window. The boy danced triumphantly away, waving it above his head while the others clapped.

“What's the usual tariff?” Justin asked Ghita as he drove on.

“About a tenth of that.”

Another car overtook them and Justin again peered intently at its occupants, but seemed not to see whatever he was looking for. They entered the town center. Shop lights, cafes, teeming pavements. Matutu buses racing by with music blasting. Out to their left, a smash of metal was followed by the blaring of horns and screams. Ghita was directing him again: right here, through these gates now. Justin drove up a ramp and into the crumbling forecourt of a square three-story building. By the perimeter lights he read the words COME UNTO JESUS NOW! daubed on the slab wall.

“Is this a church?”

“It was a Seventh Day Adventist dental clinic,” Ghita replied. “Now it is converted into flats.”

The car park was a piece of low ground surrounded by razor wire and if she had been alone she would never have driven into it, but he was already heading down the slipway with his hand out for the key. He parked and she watched him while he stared back up the slipway, listening.

“Who are you expecting?” she whispered.

He led her past grinning groups of kids to the entrance and up the steps to the lobby. A handwritten notice said LIFT SERVICE SUSPENDED. They crossed to a gray staircase lit by low-watt bulbs. Justin climbed beside her until they arrived at the top floor, which was in darkness. Producing his own pocket torch, Justin lit the way. Asian music and smells of Oriental food issued from closed doors. Handing her his torch, Justin returned to the stairwell while she unchained her iron grille and turned the three locks. As she stepped into the flat, she heard her phone ringing. She looked round for Justin, to find him standing beside her.

“Ghita, my dear, hullo,” cried a charming male voice she couldn't immediately place. “How radiant you looked tonight. Tim Donohue here. Wondered whether I might pop up a minute, have a cup of coffee with the two of you underneath the stars.”

•      •      •

Ghita's flat was small, three rooms only, and all looking at the same run-down warehouse and the same bustling street with broken neon signs and honking cars and intrepid beggars who stood in their path until the last moment. A barred window gave onto an outside iron staircase that was supposed to be a fire escape, though for reasons of self-preservation the tenants had sawn off the bottom flight. But the upper flights were still intact, and on warm evenings Ghita could climb up to the roof and settle herself against the wooden cladding of the water tank, and study for the Foreign Service examination that she was determined to sit next year, and listen to the clatter of her fellow Asians up and down the building, and share their music and their arguments and their children, and almost convince herself she was among her own people.

And if this illusion vanished as soon as she drove through the gates of the High Commission and put on her other skin, the rooftop with its cats and chicken coops and washing and aerials remained one of the few places where she felt at ease—which was why perhaps she was not unduly surprised when Donohue proposed that they enjoy their coffee underneath the stars. How he knew she had a rooftop was a mystery to her, since he had never, so far as she knew, set foot in her apartment. But he knew. With Justin warily looking on, Donohue stepped over the threshold and, holding a finger to his lips, threaded his angular body through the window and onto the platform of the iron staircase, then beckoned them to follow him. Justin went next and by the time Ghita joined them with the coffee tray, Donohue was perched on a packing case, knees level with his ears. But Justin could settle nowhere. One minute he was posed like an embattled sentinel against the neon strips across the street, the next squatting at her side, head bowed, like a man drawing with his finger in the sand.

“How'd you make it through the lines, old boy?” Donohue inquired above the rumble of traffic, while he sipped his coffee. “Little bird told me you were in Saskatchewan couple of days ago.”

“Safari package,” said Justin.

“Via London?”

“Amsterdam.”

“Big group?”

“Big as I could find.”

“As Quayle?”

“More or less.”

“When did you jump ship?”

“In Nairobi. Soon as we'd cleared Customs and Immigration.”

“Smart lad. I misjudged you. Thought you'd use one of the land routes. Slip up from Tanzania or whatever.”

“He wouldn't let me fetch him from the airport,” Ghita put in protectively. “He came here by cab in the dark.”

“What do you want?” Justin asked from another part of the darkness.

“A quiet life, if you don't mind, old boy. I've reached an age. No more scandal. No more lifting of stones. No more chaps sticking their necks out, looking for what isn't there anymore.” His craggy silhouette turned to Ghita. “What did you go up to Loki for, dear?”

“She went for my sake,” Justin's voice cut in, before she had thought of a reply.

“And so she should,” Donohue said approvingly. “And for Tessa's sake too, I'm sure. Ghita's an admirable girl.” And to Ghita again, more forcibly, “And you found what you were looking for, did you, dear? Mission accomplished? I'm sure it was.”

Justin again, faster than before. “I asked her to check on Tessa's last days up there. To make sure they were doing what they said they were doing: attending the gender seminar. They were.”

“And you agree with that version of events, do you, my dear?” Donohue inquired, back to Ghita.

“Yes.”

“Well, good on you,” Donohue remarked and took another sip of his coffee. “Shall we talk turkey?” he suggested to Justin.

“I thought we were doing that.”

“About your plans.”

“What plans?”

“Precisely. For example, if it were ever in your mind to have a quiet word with Kenny K. Curtiss, you'll be wasting your breath. I can tell you that for no fee.”

“Why?”

“His bully boys are waiting for you, that's one reason. For another, he's out of the race, if he was ever completely in it. The banks have taken his toys away. ThreeBees' pharmaceutical interests will go back to where they came from: KVH.”

No reaction.

“My point being, Justin, that there's not a lot of satisfaction to be had from firing bullets into somebody who's already dead. If it's satisfaction you're looking for. Is it?”

No answer.

“As to the murder of your wife, much as it pains me to have to tell you this, Kenny K was not, repeat not complicit, as we say in court. Neither was his sidekick Mr. Crick, though I've no doubt he'd have leaped at the opportunity if it had been offered to him. Crick was under standing instructions to report Arnold's and Tessa's movements to KVH, naturally. He made ample use of Kenny Knowledge's local assets, notably the Kenyan police, to keep an ear and an eye out for them. But Crick was no more complicit than Kenny K. A watching brief doesn't make him a murderer.”

“Who did Crick report to?” Justin's voice asked.

“Crick reported to an answering machine in Luxembourg that has since been disconnected. From there, the fatal message was passed down the line by means that you and I are never likely to establish. Until it reached the ears of the sensitive gentlemen who killed your wife.”

“Marsabit,” Justin said, from nearby.

“Indeed. The celebrated Marsabit Two, in their green safari truck. They were joined en route by four Africans, bounty hunters like themselves. The purse for the job was a million dollars to be divided at the discretion of their leader, known as Colonel Elvis. All we can be sure of is that his name is not Elvis and he never rose to the dizzy rank of colonel.”

“Did Crick report to Luxembourg that Tessa and Arnold were heading for Turkana?”

“That, dear boy, is a question too far.”

“Why?”

“Because Crick won't answer it. He's afraid. As I could wish you were. He's afraid that if he is too liberal with his information, andwiththe information of certain friends of his, he'll get his tongue chopped out to make room for his testicles. He may be right.”

“What do you want?” Justin repeated. He was crouched at Donohue's side, staring into his blackened eyes.

“To dissuade you from doing whatever you intend to do, dear boy. To tell you that whatever it is you're looking for, you won't find it, but that won't prevent you from getting killed. There's a contract out on you as soon as you set foot in Africa and here you are in Africa with both feet. Every renegade mercenary and gang boss in the business dreams of getting you in his sights. Half a million to make you dead, a million to make it look like suicide, the preferred way. You can hire yourself all the protection you want, it won't do you a blind bit of good. You'll probably be hiring the very people who are hoping to kill you.”

“Why does your Service care whether I live or die?”

“At the business level, it doesn't. At the personal level, I'd prefer not to see the wrong side win.” He took a breath. “In which context, I'm sorry to tell you that Arnold Bluhm is as dead as a dodo and has been for weeks. So if you're here to save Arnold, I'm afraid that, once again, there's nothing to save.”

“Prove it,” Justin demanded roughly, while Ghita swung silently away from them and buried her face in her forearm.

“I'm old and dying and disenchanted and I'm telling you tales out of school that would get me shot at dawn by my employers. That's all the proof you can have. Bluhm was knocked senseless, shoved in the safari truck, driven into the empty desert. No water, no shade, no food. They tortured him for a couple of days in the hope of finding out whether he or Tessa had thought to make a second set of the disks they'd found in the four-track. I'm sorry, Ghita. Bluhm said no, they hadn't made a second set, but why should anybody take no for an answer? So they tortured him to death to be on the safe side and because they enjoyed it. Then they left him to the hyenas. And that, I am afraid, is the truth.”

“Oh my dear God.”

It was Ghita, whispering into her hands.

“So you can cross Bluhm off your list, Justin, together with Kenny K. Curtiss. Neither of them is worth the journey anymore.” He rode on remorselessly. “Meanwhile, hear this. Porter Coleridge is fighting your corner in London for you. And that's not just top secret. That's eat before reading.”

Justin had disappeared from Ghita's vision. She searched the darkness and discovered him close behind her.

“Porter is calling for Tessa's case to be reassigned to the original police officers, and for Gridley's head to be placed on a charger next to Pellegrin's. He wants the relationship between Curtiss, KVH and the British government to be the subject of a cross-party inquiry and he's chipping away at Sandy Woodrow's feet of clay while he's about it. He wants the drug to be assessed by a team of independent scientists, if there are any left in the world. He's discovered there's something called the Ethical Trials Committee of the World Health Organization that might serve. If you go home now, you might just be able to tip the balance. So that's why I came,” he ended happily and, having drained the last of his coffee, stood up. “Getting people out of countries is one of the few things we still do well, Justin. So if you'd rather be smuggled out of Kenya in a warming pan than brave the hells of Kenyatta airport a second time, not to mention Moi's watchers and everybody else's, have Ghita give us the wink.”

“You've been very kind,” said Justin.

“That was what I was afraid you'd say. Good night.”

•      •      •

Ghita lay on her bed with the door open. She was staring at the ceiling, not knowing whether to weep or pray. She had always assumed that Bluhm was dead, but the vileness of his death was worse than anything she had feared. She wished she could return to the simplicities of her convent school, and recover her belief that it was God's will that man should rise so high and stoop so low. On the other side of the wall, Justin was back at her desk, writing by pen because pen was what he liked although she had offered him her laptop. The plane to Loki was due to leave Wilson at seven, which meant he would be gone in an hour. She wished she could share the rest of his journey, but knew that no one could. She had offered to drive him to the airport but he preferred to take a taxi from the Serena Hotel.

“Ghita?”

He was knocking on her door. She called, “It's all right,” and rose to her feet.