The Constant Gardener

The house was one of a terrace of new white town houses built in a Victorian street. Each house was set at an angle, like a line of ships' prows nosing their way into an old harbor. Each had a basement with its own stairway, and a front door set above street level, and stone steps leading up to it, and iron railings, and brass horseshoes for door knockers that didn't knock. Watched by a fat gray cat that had made itself at home between the curtains and the window of number seven, Justin climbed the steps of number six and pressed the bell. He was carrying everything he possessed: one travel bag, money and, despite Lesley's injunction not to do so, both his passports. He had paid the motel in advance. If he returned to it, he would do so of his own free will and not because he needed to. It was ten o'clock of a frosted, freezing, ice-clear night. Cars were parked nose to tail along the curb, pavements empty. The door was opened by a tall woman in silhouette.

"You are Peter," she told him accusingly.

"Are you Lara?"

"Naturally."

She closed the door after him.

"Were you followed here?" he asked her.

"It is possible. Were you?"

They faced each other under the light. Birgit was right: Lara Emrich was beautiful. Beautiful in the haughty intelligence of her stare. In its chill, scientific detachment that, already at first scenting, caused him inwardly to recoil. In the way she shoved her graying hair aside with the back of her wrist; then, with her elbow still raised and her wrist at her brow, continued critically to survey him with an arrogant yet inconsolable stare. She wore black. Black slacks, a long black smock, no makeup. The voice, heard close, even gloomier than on the telephone.

"I am very sorry for you," she said. "It is terrible. You are sad."

"Thank you."

"She was murdered by Dypraxa."

"So I believe. Indirectly, but yes."

"Many people have been murdered by Dypraxa."

"But not all of them were betrayed by Markus Lorbeer."

From upstairs came a roar of televised applause.

"Amy is my friend," she said, as if friendship were an affliction. "Today she is a registrar at Dawes Hospital. But unfortunately she signed a petition favoring my reinstatement and is a founding member of Saskatchewan Doctors for Integrity. Therefore they will be looking for an excuse to fire her."

He was going to ask her whether Amy knew him as Quayle or Atkinson when a strong-voiced woman bawled down at them and a pair of furry slippers appeared on the top stair.

"Bring him on up here, Lara. Man needs a drink."

Amy was middle-aged and fat, one of those serious women who have decided to play themselves as comedy. She wore a crimson silk kimono and pirate's earrings. Her slippers had glass eyes. But her own eyes were ringed with shadow, and there were pain lines at the corners of her mouth.

"Men who killed your wife should be hanged," she said. "Scotch, bourbon or wine? This is Ralph."

It was a large attic room, lined in pine and roof high. At the far end stood a bar. A huge television set was playing ice hockey. Ralph was a wispy-haired old man in a dressing gown. He sat in an imitation leather armchair with a matching stool to put his slippered feet on. Hearing his name, he flapped a liver-spotted hand in the air but kept his eyes on the game.

"Welcome to Saskatchewan. Grab yourself a drink," he called, in a mid-European accent.

"Who's winning?" Justin asked, to be friendly.

"Canucks."

"Ralph's a lawyer," Amy said. "Aren't you, honey?"

"Not much of anything now. Damned Parkinson's dragging me into the grave. That academic body behaved like a bunch of horses' arses. That what you came about?"

"Pretty much."

"Stifle free speech, interpose yourself between doctor and patient, it's time educated men and women had some balls to speak out for truth instead of cringing in the shithouse like a bunch of craven cowards."

"It is indeed," said Justin politely, accepting a glass of white wine from Amy.

"Karel Vita's the piper, Dawes dances to their tune. Twenty-five million dollars start-up money they give for a new biotech building, fifty more promised. That's not peanuts, even for a shower of rich no-brains like Karel Vita. And if everybody keeps their nose clean, plenty more to come. How the hell d'you resist pressure like that?"

"You try," Amy said. "If you don't try, you're fucked."

"Fucked if you try, fucked if you don't. Speak out, they take away your salary, fire you and run you out of town. Free speech comes mighty costly in this town, Mr. Quayle — more than most of us can afford. What's your other name?"

"Justin."

"This is a one-crop city, Justin, when it comes to free speech. Everything's fine and dandy, long as some crazy Russian bitch doesn't take it into her head to publish harebrained articles in the medical press badmouthing a clever little pill she's invented that happens to be worth a couple of billion a year to the House of Karel Vita, whom Allah preserve. Where you planning to put them, Amy?"

"In the den."