The Constant Gardener

"I've been sitting in the communications room all day, putting the calls through to him. The London banks, Basel, then it's the banks again, then it's finance companies he's never heard of, offering him monthly credit at forty percent compound, then it's what he calls his rat pack, the political ones. You can't help listening, can you?"

A mother with a child on her arm was scraping timidly on the windscreen with her emaciated hand. Donohue lowered his window and handed her a twenty-shilling note.

"He's mortgaged his houses in Paris, Rome and London, and there's to be a charge on his house in Sutton Place, New York. He's trying to find a buyer for his stupid football team, though you'd have to be deaf and dumb to want them. He's asked his special friend in Credit Suisse for twenty-five million U.S. today, pay you back thirty million Monday. Plus KVH are after him for payment on his marketing deals. And if he hasn't got cash they'll stretch a point and take over his company."

A dazed family trio was gathering at the window, refugees from somewhere, going nowhere.

"Want me to sort them out, sir?" Crick asked, reaching for the door handle.

"You'll do no such thing," Donohue ordered sharply. He started the engine and edged slowly along the road while Crick kept talking.

"He screams at them is all he does. It's pathetic, frankly. KVH don't want his money. They want his business, which is what we all knew, but he didn't. I don't know where the shock waves will end, do I?"

"I'm sorry to hear that, Doug. I'd always thought of you and Kenny as hand in glove."

"Me too, sir. It's taken a lot to bring me to this point, I'll confess. It's not like me to be two-faced, is it?"

A bunch of ostracized male gazelles had come to the roadside to watch them pass.

"What do you want, Doug?" Donohue asked.

"I was wondering whether there was informal work available, sir. Anyone you'd like visited or kept an eye on. Any special documents you needed." Donohue waited, unimpressed. "Plus I've got this friend. From the Ireland days. Lives in Harare, which wouldn't be my cup of tea."

"What about him?"

"He was approached, wasn't he? He's a freelance."

"Approached to do what?"

"Certain European people who were friends of friends of his approached him. Offering him megabucks to pacify a white woman and her black boyfriend up Turkana way. Like by yesterday. Leave tonight, we've got a car waiting."

Donohue pulled onto the verge and again stopped the car. "Date?" he asked.

"Two days before Tessa Quayle was killed."

"Did he take the contract?"

"Of course not, sir."

"Why not?"

"He's not the sort. He won't touch women, for one thing. He's done Rwanda, he's done Congo. He'll never touch another woman."

"So what did he do?"

"He advised them to speak to certain people he knew who weren't so particular."

"Such as who?"

"He's not saying, Mr. Donohue. And if he was, I wouldn't let him tell me. There are some things that are too dangerous to know."

"Not a lot on offer then, is there?"

"Well, he is prepared to talk the wider parameters, if you know what I mean."

"I don't. I buy names, dates and places. Retail. Cash in a bag. No parameters."

"I think what he's really talking about, sir, if you cut away the fancy language is: would you like to buy what happened to Dr. Bluhm, including map references? Only being by way of a writer, he's written an account of the events in Turkana as they affected the doctor, based on what his friends told him. For your eyes only, assuming the price is right."

Another group of night migrants had assembled round the car, led by an old man in a lady's broad-brimmed hat with a bow on it.

"Sounds crap to me," said Donohue.

"I don't think it's crap, sir. I think it's the real McCoy. I know it is."

A chill passed over Donohue. Know? he wondered. Know how? Or is your friend from Ireland days a cipher for Doug Crick?

"Where is it? This account he's written."

"It's to hand, sir. I'll put it that way."

"I'll be at the pool bar of the Serena Hotel tomorrow at midday for twenty minutes."

"He's looking at fifty K's, Mr. Donohue."

"I'll tell you what he's looking at when I've seen it."

Donohue drove for an hour, swerving between craters, slowing down for very little. A jackal scurried through his headlights, bound for the game park. A group of women from a local flower farm hailed a lift from him, but for once he didn't stop. Even passing his own house he refused to slow down, but headed directly for the High Commission. The lake salmon would have to keep until tomorrow.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

"Sandy Woodrow," Gloria announced with playful severity, standing arms akimbo before him in her new fluffy dressing gown, "it's jolly well time you showed the flag."