The Constant Gardener

"We've arrived, sir, on the eastern shore. We are close to the place where the tragedy happened."

"How far?"

"To walk, ten minutes, sir. We will accompany you."

"That's not necessary."

"It is most necessary, sir."

"Was fehlt dir?" Abraham asked, over Mickie's shoulder.

"Nichts. Nothing. I'm fine. You've both been very kind."

"Drink some more water, sir," Mickie said, holding a fresh glass to him.

They make quite a column, clambering over the slabs of lava rock here at the cradle of civilization, Justin has to admit. "Never realized there were so many civilized chaps around," he tells Tessa, doing his English bloody fool act, and Tessa laughs for him, that silent laugh she does when she smiles delightedly and shakes and generally does all the right things but no sound issues. Gloria leads the way, well, she would. With that royal British stride of hers and those elbows she can outmarch the lot of us. Pellegrin bitching, which is also normal. His wife Celly saying she can't take the heat, what's new? Rosie Coleridge on her dad's back, having a good sing in Tessa's honor — how on earth did we all fit into the boat?

Mickie had stopped, one hand held lightly on Justin's arm. Abraham was standing close behind him.

"This is the place where your wife passed away, sir," said Mickie softly.

But he need not have bothered because Justin knew exactly — even if he didn't know how Mickie had deduced that he was Tessa's husband, but perhaps Justin had informed him of this fact in his sleep. He had seen the place in photographs, in the gloom of the lower ground and in his dreams. Here ran what looked like a dried riverbed. Over there stood the sad little heap of stones erected by Ghita and her friends. Around it — but spreading in all directions, alas — lay the junk that was these days inseparable from any well-publicized event: discarded film cassettes and boxes, cigarette packets, plastic bottles and paper plates. Higher up — maybe thirty or so yards up the white rock slope — ran the dust road where the long-wheelbase safari truck had pulled alongside Tessa's jeep and shot its wheel off, sending the jeep careering down this same slope with Tessa's murderers in hot pursuit with their pangas and guns and whatever else they were carrying. And over there — Mickie was silently pointing them out with his gnarled old finger — were the blue smears of the Oasis four-track's paintwork left on the rock face as it slid into the gully. And the rock face, unlike the black volcanic rock surrounding it, was white as a gravestone. And perhaps the brown stains on it were indeed blood, as Mickie was suggesting. But when Justin examined them, he concluded they might as well be lichen. Otherwise he observed little of interest to the observant gardener, beyond yellow spear grass and a row of doum palms that as usual looked as though they had been planted by the municipality. A few euphorbia shrubs — well, naturally-making themselves a precarious living among chunks of black basalt. And a spectral white commiphora tree — when were they ever in leaf? — its spindly branches stretched to either side of it like the wings of a moth. He selected a basalt boulder and sat on it. He felt light-headed, but lucid. Mickie handed him a water bottle and Justin took a pull from it, screwed the top back on and set it at his feet.

"I'd like to be alone for a little while, Mickie," he said. "Why don't you and Abraham go and catch a fish and I'll call to you from the shore when I'm done?"

"We would prefer to wait for you with the boat, sir."

"Why not fish?"

"We would prefer to remain here with you. You have a fever."

"It's going now. Just a couple of hours." He looked at his watch. It was four in the afternoon. "When's dusk?"

"At seven o'clock, sir."

"Fine. Well, you can have me at dusk. If I need anything I'll call." And more firmly, "I want to be alone, Mickie. That's what I came here for."

"Yes sir."