The Constant Gardener

"And our old friend Lorbeer," Lesley came in apologetically. "First name unknown, origins unknown, probably half Dutch or Boer, qualifications also a mystery. We're quoting from Bluhm's notes, that's the problem, so we're at his mercy, as you might say. He's got the three names ringed together like a flow chart, with itsy-bitsy descriptions inside each balloon. Lorbeer and the two women doctors. Lorbeer, Emrich, Kovacs. Quite a mouthful. We'd have brought you a copy but we're a bit queasy about using copiers at the moment. You know what the local police are like. And copy shops — well, we wouldn't trust them to copy the Lord's Prayer, frankly, would we, Rob?"

"Use ours," said Woodrow too quickly.

A ruminative silence followed, which to Woodrow was like a deafness where no cars went by, and no birds sang, and nobody walked down the corridor outside his door. It was broken by Lesley doggedly describing Lorbeer as the man they would most like to question.

"Lorbeer's a floater. He's believed to be in the pharmaceutical business. He's believed to have been in and out of Nairobi a few times in the last year but the Kenyans can't trace him, surprisingly. He's believed to have visited Tessa's ward in the Uhuru Hospital when she was confined there. Bullish, that's another description we've had. I thought that was the Stock Exchange. And you're sure you've never come across a reddish-haired medical Lorbeer of bullish appearance at all, may be a doctor? Anywhere in your travels?"

"Never heard of the man. Or anyone like him."

"We're getting that quite a lot, actually," Rob commented from the wings.

"Tessa knew him. So did Bluhm," said Lesley.

"That doesn't mean I knew him."

"So what's the white plague when it's at home?" Rob asked.

"I've absolutely no idea."

They left as they had left before: on an ever-growing question mark.

* * *

As soon as he was safely clear of them, Woodrow picked up the internal phone to Coleridge and, to his relief, heard his voice.

"Got a minute?"

"I suppose so."

He found him sitting at his desk, one splayed hand to his brow. He was wearing yellow braces with horses on them. His expression was wary and belligerent.

"I need to be assured that we have London's backing in this," Woodrow began, without sitting down.

"We being who exactly?"

"You and I."

"And by London, you mean Pellegrin, I take it."

"Why? Has anything changed?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"Is it going to?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"Well, does Pellegrin have backing? Put it that way."

"Oh, Bernard always has backing."

"So do we go on with this, or don't we?"

"Go on lying, you mean? Of course we do."

"Then why can't we agree on — on what we say?"

"Good point. I don't know. If I were a God man, I'd sneak off and pray. But it's not as fucking easy as that. The girl's dead. That's one part of it. And we're alive. That's another part."

"So have you told them the truth?"

"No, no, good Lord no. Memory like a sieve, me. Terribly sorry."

"Are you going to tell them the truth?"

"Them? No, no. Never. Shits."

"Then why can't we agree our stories?"

"That's it. Why not? Why not indeed. You've put your finger on it, Sandy. What's stopping us?"

* * *

"It's about your visit to the Uhuru Hospital, sir," Lesley began crisply.

"I thought we'd rather done that one in our last session."

"Your other visit. Your second one. A bit later. More a follow — up."

"Follow-up? Follow-up of what?"

"A promise you made to her, apparently."

"What are you talking about? I don't understand you."

But Rob understood her perfectly, and said so. "Sounded pretty good English to me, sir. Did you have a second meeting with Tessa at the hospital? Like four weeks after she'd been discharged, for instance? Like meet her in the anteroom to the postnatal clinic where she had an appointment? Because that's what it says you did in Arnold's notes, and he hasn't been wrong so far, not from what us ignorant folk can understand of them."

Arnold, Woodrow recorded. Not Bluhm anymore.