The Constant Gardener

"Any reason given at all?" Still Rob, throwing his questions like punches.

"The so-called evidence offered in the document was tendentious. Any inquiries on the strength of it would achieve nothing and prejudice our relations with the host nation."

"Did you tell Tessa that was the answer — no action?"

"Not in as many words."

"What did you tell her?" Lesley asked.

Was it Woodrow's new policy of truth telling that made him reply as he did — or some weaker instinct to confess? "I told her what I felt would be acceptable to her, given her condition-given the loss she had suffered, and the importance she attached to the documents."

Lesley had switched off the tape recorder and was packing away her notebooks. "So what lie was acceptable to her, sir? In your judgment?" she asked.

"That London was on the case. Steps were being taken."

For a blessed moment Woodrow believed the meeting was over. But Rob was still in there, slugging away.

"One more thing, if you don't mind, Mr. Woodrow. Bell, Barker and Benjamin. Known otherwise as ThreeBees."

Woodrow's posture did not alter by a fraction.

"Ads all over town. "ThreeBees, Busy for Africa." "Buzzing for You, Honey! I Love ThreeBees." Headquarters up the road. Big new glass building, looks like a Dalek."

"What of them?"

"Only we pulled out their company profile last night, didn't we, Les? Quite an amazing outfit, you don't realize. Finger in every African pie but British to the core. Hotels, travel agencies, newspapers, security companies, banks, extractors of gold, coal and copper, importers of cars, boats and trucks — I could go on forever. Plus a fine range of drugs. "ThreeBees Buzzing for Your Health." We spotted that one as we drove here this morning, didn't we, Les?"

"Just back down the road," Lesley agreed.

"And they're hugger-mugger with Moi's Boys too, from all we hear. Private jets, all the girls you can eat."

"I assume this is getting us somewhere."

"Not really. I just wanted to watch your face while I talked about them. I've done it now. Thank you for your patience."

Lesley was still busy with her bag. For all the interest she had shown in this exchange, she might not have heard it at all.

"People like you should be stopped, Mr. Woodrow," she mused aloud, with a puzzled shake of her wise head. "You think you're solving the world's problems but actually you're the problem."

"She means you're a fucking liar," Rob explained.

This time, Woodrow did not escort them to the door. He remained at his post behind the desk, listening to the fading footsteps of his departing guests, then he called the front desk and asked, in the most casual tone, to be advised when they had cleared the building. On learning they had, he made his way swiftly to Coleridge's private office. Coleridge, he well knew, was away from his desk, conferring with the Kenyan Ministry of External Affairs. Mildren was speaking on the internal telephone, looking unpleasantly relaxed.

"This is urgent," Woodrow said, in contrast to whatever Mildren thought he was doing.

Seated at Coleridge's empty desk, Woodrow watched Mildren extract a white lozenge from the High Commissioner's personal safe and insert it officiously in the digital phone.

"Who do you want, anyway?" Mildren asked, with the insolence peculiar to lower-class private secretaries to the great.

"Get out," Woodrow said.

And as soon as he was alone, dialed the direct number of Sir Bernard Pellegrin.

* * *

They sat on the veranda, two Service colleagues enjoying an after-dinner nightcap under the relentless glare of intruder lights. Gloria had taken herself to the drawing room.

"There's no good way of saying this, Justin," Woodrow began. "So I'll say it anyway. The very strong probability is, she was raped. I'm terribly, terribly sorry. For her and for you."

And Woodrow was sorry, he must be. Sometimes you don't have to feel something to know you feel it. Sometimes your senses are so trampled that another appalling piece of news is just one more tiresome detail to administer.

"This is ahead of the postmortem of course, so it's premature and off the record," he went on, avoiding Justin's eye. "But they seem to have no doubt." He felt a need to offer practical consolation. "The police feel it's actually quite thought-clearing — to have a motive at least. It helps them with the broad thrust of the case, even if they can't point a finger yet."

Justin was sitting to attention, holding his brandy glass in front of him with both hands, as if someone had handed it to him as a prize.

"Only a probability?" he objected at last. "How very strange. How can that be?"

Woodrow had not imagined that, once again, he would be subjected to questioning but in some ghastly way he welcomed it. A devil was driving him.

"Well, obviously they do have to ask themselves whether it could have been consensual. That's routine."

"Consensual with whom?" Justin inquired, puzzled.

"Well, whoever — whoever they have in mind. We can't do their job for them, can we?"