The Constant Gardener

"Oh, our police are most industrious. If we have lost a computer, tell the insurance company and buy a new one, don't come bothering the police. Did you meet Wanza?"

"Only in hospital. She was already very ill. Did Tessa write to you about Wanza?"

"That she was poisoned. That Lorbeer and Kovacs had come to visit her in the hospital and that Wanza's baby survived, but Wanza did not. That the drug killed her. Maybe a combination killed her. Maybe she was too thin, not enough body fat to handle the drug. Maybe if they had given her less, she would have lived. Maybe KVH will fix the pharmacokinetics before they sell it in America."

"She said that? Tessa did?"

"Sure. "Wanza was just another guinea pig. I loved her, they killed her. Tessa.""

Justin was already protesting. For heaven's sake, Birgit, what about Emrich? If Emrich, as one of the discoverers of the drug, has declared it unsafe, then surely- Birgit cut him short. "Emrich exaggerates. Ask Kovacs. Ask KVH. The contribution of Lara Emrich to the discovery of the Dypraxa molecule was completely minimal. Kovacs was the genius, Emrich was her laboratory assistant, Lorbeer was their Svengali. Naturally because Emrich was also the lover of Lorbeer, her importance has been made bigger than the reality."

"Where's Lorbeer now?"

"It is not known. Emrich doesn't know, KVH doesn't know — says it doesn't — for the last five months he has been completely invisible. Maybe they killed him also."

"Where's Kovacs?"

"She is traveling. She is traveling so much that KVH can never tell us where she is or where she will be. Last week she was in Haiti, maybe, three weeks ago she was in Buenos Aires or Timbuktu. But where she will be tomorrow or next week is a mystery. Her home address is naturally confidential, her telephone also."

Carl was hungry. One minute he was placidly trailing a piece of twig through a puddle, the next he was yelling blue murder for food. They sat on a bench while Birgit fed him from the bottle.

"If you were not here he would feed himself," she said proudly. "He would walk along like a little drunkard with the bottle in his mouth. But now he has an uncle to watch him, so he requires your attention." Something in what she said reminded her of Justin's grief. "I am so sorry, Justin," she murmured. "How can I say it?" But so swiftly and softly that for once it was not necessary for him to say "thank you" or "yes, it's terrible" or "you're very kind" or any other of the meaningless phrases he had learned to mouth when people felt obliged to say the unsayable.

* * *

They were walking again and Birgit was reliving the burglary.

"I arrived at the office in the morning — my colleague Roland is at a conference in Rio — it is otherwise a normal day. The doors are locked, I must unlock them as usual. At first I notice nothing. That is the point. What burglar locks doors behind him when he leaves? The police asked us this question also. But our doors were locked without question. The place is not tidy, but that is normal. In Hippo we clean our own rooms. We cannot afford to pay a cleaner and sometimes we are too busy or too lazy to clean for ourselves."

Three women on push-bikes rode solemnly by, circled the car park and returned, passing them on their way down the hill. Justin remembered the three women cyclists of this morning.

"I go to check the telephone. We have an answering machine at Hippo. A normal hundred-mark affair, but a hundred marks nevertheless, and nobody has taken it. We have correspondents all over the world, so we must have an answering machine. The tape is missing. Oh shit, I think, who took the stupid tape? I go to the other office to look for a new tape. The computer is missing. Oh shit, I think, who is the idiot who has moved the computer and where did they put it? It's a big computer on two stories but to move it is not impossible, it has wheels. We have a new girl, a trainee lawyer, a great girl actually but new. "Beate, darling," I say, "where the hell is our computer?"' Then we start to look. Computer. Tapes. Disks. Papers. Files. Missing and the doors locked. They take nothing else of value. Not the money in the money box, not the coffee machine or the radio or the television or the empty tape recorder. They are not drug addicts. They are not professional thieves. And to the police they are not criminals. Why should criminals lock doors? Maybe you know why."

"To tell us," Justin replied after a long pause.

"Please? To tell us what? I don't understand."

"They locked the doors on Tessa too."

"Explain, please. What doors?"

"Of the jeep. When they killed her. They locked the jeep doors so that the hyenas wouldn't take away the bodies."

"Why?"

"They were telling us to be afraid. That's the message they put on Tessa's laptop. To her or to me. "Be warned. Don't go on with what you're doing." They sent her a death threat too. I only found out about it a few days ago. She never told me."

"Then she was brave," said Birgit.