The Constant Gardener

Mustafa had stopped at Ghita's car. Woodrow knew it well. Had watched it often from the safety of his office window, usually with a glass in his hand. It was a tiny Japanese thing, so small and low that when she wriggled into it, he could imagine her putting on her swimsuit. But why are we stopping here? his gaze was demanding of Mustafa. What's Ghita's car got to do with me being blackmailed? He began to work out what he was worth in terms of ready cash. Would they want hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands? He'd have to borrow from Gloria, but what could he dream up for an excuse? Well, it was only money. Ghita's car was parked as far from a streetlamp as possible. The lamps were out with the power cut, but you never knew when they might come on. He worked out that he had around eighty pounds in Kenyan shillings on him. How much silence would that buy? He began thinking in terms of negotiation. What sanctions did he have as the purchaser? What guarantee would there be that the fellow didn't come back in six months or six years? Get on to Pellegrin, he thought, in a burst of gallows humor: ask old Bernard to get the toothpaste back in the tube.

Unless.

Drowning, Woodrow reached for the craziest straw of them all.

Ghita!

Ghita stole the letter! Or, more likely, Tessa gave it to her for safekeeping! Ghita sent Mustafa to haul me out of the party, and she's about to punish me for what happened at Elena's. And look, there she is! In the driver's seat, waiting for me! She slipped round the back of the house and she's sitting in the car, my subordinate, waiting to blackmail me!

His spirits soared, if only for a second. If it's Ghita, we can do business. I can outgun her anytime. Maybe more than business. Her desire to hurt me is only the reverse side of different, more constructive desires.

But it wasn't Ghita. Whoever the figure was or wasn't, it was unmistakably male. Ghita's driver, then? Her regular boyfriend, come to take her home after the dance so that nobody else gets her? The passenger door stood open. Under Mustafa's impassive gaze, Woodrow lowered himself into the car. Not like wriggling into his swimsuit, not for Woodrow. More like getting into a bumper car with Philip at the fair. Mustafa closed the door after him. The car rocked, the man in the driver's seat made no movement. He was dressed the way some urban Africans dress, Saint Moritz-style in defiance of the heat, in a dark quilted anorak and woolen skullcap low over the brow. Was the fellow black or white? Woodrow breathed in, but caught no sweet scent of Africa.

"Nice music, Sandy," Justin said quietly, reaching out an arm to start the engine.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Woodrow sat at a carved desk of rainforest teak priced at five thousand U.S. dollars. He was hunched sideways, one elbow on a silver-framed blotter, which cost less. The glow of a single candle glistened on his sweated, sullen face. From the ceiling above him mirrored stalactites reflected the same candle flame to infinity. Justin stood across the room from him in the darkness, leaning against the door, much as Woodrow had leaned against Justin's door on the day he brought him the news of Tessa's death. His hands were squeezed behind his back. Presumably he wanted no trouble from them. Woodrow was studying the shadows thrown onto the walls by the candlelight. He could make out elephants, giraffes, gazelles, rhinos rampant and rhinos couchant. The shadows on the wall opposite were all birds. Roosting birds, waterbirds with long necks, birds of prey with smaller birds in their talons, giant singing birds perched on tree trunks with musical boxes inside them, price on application. The house was in a wooded side street. Nobody drove past it. Nobody tapped on the window to find out why a half-drunk white man in a dinner jacket with his tie untied was talking to a candle in Mr. Ahmad Khan's African and Oriental Art Emporium, on a leafy hillside five minutes' drive from Muthaiga at half past midnight.

"Khan a friend of yours?" Woodrow asked.

No answer.

"Where did you get the key from then? Friend of Ghita's, is he?"

No answer.

"Friend of the family, probably. Ghita's, I mean." He took a silk handkerchief from the top pocket of his dinner jacket and surreptitiously wiped a couple of tears from his cheeks. He had no sooner done so than a fresh crop appeared, so he had to wipe them away too. "What do I tell them when I get back? If I ever do?"

"You'll think of something."

"I usually do," Woodrow admitted, into his handkerchief.

"I'm sure you do," said Justin.

Frightened, Woodrow swung his head round to look at him, but Justin was still standing against the door, his hands safely wedged behind his back.

"Who told you to suppress it, Sandy?" Justin asked.