The Constant Gardener

Descending Amy's staircase to the front door, Lara goes ahead of Justin, carrying her Russian bag in one hand and holding the banister with the other while she watches him over her shoulder. In the hall she unhooks his coat for him and helps him into it. She puts on her own coat and an Anna Karenina fur hat and makes to shoulder his travel bag, but Etonian chivalry forbids this, so she watches him with her brown, unblinking gaze, Tessa's gaze without the scamp in it, while he adjusts the strap over his own shoulder and, as a tight-lipped Englishman, suppresses any sign of pain. Sir Justin holds open the door for her and whispers his surprise as the ice-cold air slices viciously into him, ignoring his quilted coat and fur boots. On the pavement Dr. Lara takes his left forearm in her left hand and reaches her right arm across his back to steady him but this time not even the case-hardened Etonian can suppress an exclamation of pain as the chorus of nerves in his back bursts into song. She says nothing, but their eyes meet naturally as he swings his head defensively away from the direction of the pain. Her gaze under the Anna Karenina fur hat is alarmingly reminiscent of other eyes. The hand that is no longer across his back has joined the hand that enfolds his left forearm. She has slowed her pace to match his. Hip to hip, they are performing a stately march along the icy pavement when she stops dead and, still clutching his arm, stares across the road.

"What is it?"

"It is nothing. It is predictable."

They are in the town square. A small gray car of indeterminate make stands alone beneath an orange lamp. It is very dirty despite the frost. It has a wire coat-hanger for a radio aerial. Stared at this way, it has something ominous and unprotected about it. It is a car waiting to explode.

"Is it yours?" Justin asks.

"Yes. But it is no good."

The great spy belatedly observes what Lara has already spotted. The front offside tire is flat.

"Don't worry. We'll change the wheel," Justin says boldly, forgetting for a ludicrous moment the ferocious cold, his bruised body, the late hour and any last considerations of operational security.

"It will not be sufficient," she replies with appropriate gloom.

"Of course it will. We'll turn the engine on. You can sit in the car and keep warm. You've got a spare wheel and a jack, haven't you?"

But by now they have reached the far pavement and he has seen what she has anticipated: the nearside tire is also flat. Seized by a need for action, he attempts to break free of her but she clings onto him and he understands that it is not the cold that is causing her to shiver.

"Does this happen a lot?" he asks.

"Frequently."

"Do you call a garage?"

"At night they will not come. I find a taxi home. In the morning when I return, I have a parking ticket. Maybe also a ticket regarding the unsafe condition of the car. Sometimes they are towing it away and I must collect it from an inconvenient location. Sometimes there is no taxi but tonight we are fortunate."

He follows her gaze and sees to his surprise a taxi parked in a far corner of the square with its interior lights burning and its engine running and one figure huddled at the wheel. Still holding his arm, she urges him forward. He goes along with her for a few yards, then stops, his internal alarm bells sounding.

"Do cabs normally sit around town as late as this?"

"It is not important."

"Yes, it is, actually. Very."

Releasing himself from her gaze he becomes aware of a second cab pulling up behind the first. Lara sees it too.

"You are being ridiculous. Look. Now we have two cabs. We can take one each. Maybe we take only one. Then I shall first accompany you to your hotel. We shall see. It is unimportant." And forgetting his condition, or simply losing patience with him, she tugs again at his arm, with the result that he stumbles and breaks free of her and stands in front of her, blocking her way.

"No," he says.

No meaning, I refuse. Meaning, I have seen the unlogic of this situation. If I was rash before, I shall not be rash now, and nor will you. The coincidences are too many. We are in the empty square of a godforsaken town in the middle of the tundra on a freezing March night when even the town's one horse is asleep. Your car has been deliberately disabled. One taxi stands conveniently available, a second has now joined it. Who else are the taxis waiting for but us? Is it not reasonable to assume that the people who disabled your car are the same people who would like us to ride in theirs?

But Lara is not accessible to this scientific argument. Waving her arm at the nearer driver, she is striding forward to claim him. Justin grabs her by the other arm, stops her in midstride and hauls her back. The action infuriates her as much as it hurts him. She has had enough of being pushed around.

"Leave me alone. Get away from me! Give that back!"