The Constant Gardener

"The address was typed, the waybill was written by hand, the package was dispatched from the Norfolk Hotel, Nairobi. The sender's name was difficult to read but I think it was McKenzie. Is that Scottish? If the package could not be delivered it should not be returned to Kenya. It should be destroyed."

"The waybill had a number, presumably."

"The waybill was attached to the envelope. When I put the document in the safe for the night I first put it back in the envelope. Naturally the envelope has also disappeared."

"Get back to the courier service. They'll have a copy."

"The courier service has no record of the package. Not in Nairobi, not in Hanover."

"How do I find her?"

"Lara?"

The rain clattered on the tin roof and the orange lights of the city swelled and dwindled in the mist while Birgit tore a sheet of paper from her diary and wrote out a long telephone number.

"She has a house but not for much longer. Otherwise you must inquire at the university, but you must take care because they hate her."

"Was Lorbeer sleeping with Kovacs as well as Emrich?"

"For Lorbeer it would not be unusual. But I believe the quarrel between the women was not about sex but about the molecule." She paused, following his gaze. He was staring into the distance, but there was nothing to see but the far hilltops poking through the mist. "Tessa wrote often that she loved you," she said quietly to his averted face. "Not directly, that was not necessary. She said you were a man of honor and when it was necessary you would be honorable."

She was preparing to leave. He passed her the backpack and between them they strapped Carl into his baby pillion and fixed the plastic cape so that his sleepy head popped through the hole. She stood squat before him.

"So then," she said. "You walk?"

"I walk."

She pulled an envelope from inside her jacket.

"This is all I remember of Lorbeer's novel. I wrote it down for you. My handwriting is very bad but you will decipher it."

"You're very kind." He stuffed the envelope inside his raincoat.

"So have good walking then," she said.

She was going to shake his hand but changed her mind and kissed him on the mouth: one stern, deliberate, necessarily clumsy kiss of affection and farewell while she held the bicycle steady. Then Justin held the bicycle while she buckled her shell helmet under her chin before swinging into the saddle and pedaling away down the hill.

* * *

I walk.

He walked, keeping to the center of the road, one eye for the darkening rhododendron bushes either side of him. Sodium lights burned every fifty meters. He scanned the lack patches between. The night air smelled of apples. He reached the bottom of the hill and approached the parked Mercedes, passing ten yards from its bonnet. No light inside the car. Two men were sitting in the front, but to judge by their motionless silhouettes they were not the same two who had driven up the hill and down again. He kept walking and the car overtook him. He ignored it, but in his imagination the men were not ignoring him. The Mercedes reached a crossroads and turned left. Justin turned right, heading for the glow of the town. A taxi passed and the driver called out to him.

"Thank you, thank you," he called back expansively, "but I prefer to walk."

There was no answering call. He was on a pavement now, keeping to the outer edge.

He made another crossing and entered a brightly lit side street. Dead-eyed young men and women crouched in doorways. Men in leather jackets stood on corners, elbows lifted, talking into cell phones. He made two more crossings and saw his hotel ahead of him.

The lobby was in the usual inescapable evening turmoil. A Japanese delegation was checking in, cameras were flashing, porters piling costly luggage into the only lift. Taking his place in the queue he pulled off his raincoat and slung it over his arm, favoring Birgit's envelope in the inside pocket. The lift descended, he stood back to let the women get in first. He rode to the third floor and was the only one to get out. The vile corridor with its sallow strip-lighting reminded him of the Uhuru Hospital. Television sets blared from every room. His own room was 311 and the door key was a piece of flat plastic with a black arrow printed on it. The din of competing television sets was infuriating him and he had a good mind to complain to somebody. How can I write to Ham with this din going on? He stepped into his room, laid his raincoat over a chair and saw that his own television set was the culprit. The chambermaids must have turned it on while they made up the room, and not bothered to turn it off when they left. He advanced on the set. It was showing the kind of program he particularly detested. A half-dressed singer was howling at full volume into a microphone to the delight of an ecstatic juvenile audience while illuminated snow wandered down the screen.