The Constant Gardener

"The name escapes me. Small, gray and Japanese is about all I can tell you." He is lying. Glibly. He knows it, they know it. To judge by their faces, an air of loss has entered the relationship, of friendship disappointed. But not on Justin's side. Justin knows only stubborn refusal, concealed within diplomatic grace. This is the battle he has steeled himself for over days and nights, while praying it may never be joined.

"She kept it in her workroom, right? Where she kept her notice board and her papers and research material."

"When she was not taking it with her, yes."

"Did she use it for her letters — documents?"

"I believe so."

"And e-mails?"

"Frequently."

"And she'd print out from it, right?"

"Sometimes."

"She wrote a long document about five or six months ago — around eighteen pages of letter and annex. It was some kind of protest about malpractice, we think medical or pharmaceutical or both. A case history, describing something very serious that was going on here in Kenya. Did she show it to you?"

"No."

"And you didn't read it — for yourself, without her knowledge?"

"No."

"You know nothing about it then. Is that what you're saying?"

"I'm afraid it is." Washed down with a regretful smile.

"Only we were wondering whether this was to do with the great crime she thought she'd got onto."

"I see."

"And whether ThreeBees might have something to do with that great crime."

"It's always possible."

"But she didn't show it to you?" Lesley insists.

"As I have told you several times, Lesley: no." He almost adds, "dear lady."

"Do you think it might have involved ThreeBees in any way?"

"Alas, I have absolutely no idea."

But he has every idea. It is the terrible time. It is the time when he feared he might have lost her; when her young face grew harder by the day and her young eyes acquired a zealot's light; when she crouched, night after night, at her laptop in her little office, surrounded by heaps of papers flagged and cross-referred like a lawyer's brief; the time when she ate her food without noticing what she was eating, then hurried back to her labors without even a good-bye; the time when shy villagers from the countryside came soundlessly to the side door of the house to visit her, and sat with her on the veranda, eating the food that Mustafa brought to them.

"So she never even discussed the document with you?" Lesley, acting incredulous.

"Never, I'm afraid."

"Or in front of you — with Arnold or Ghita, say?"

"In the last months, Tessa and Arnold kept Ghita at arm's length, I assume for her own good. As for myself, it was my perception that they actually mistrusted me. They believed that if I was caught in a conflict of interest, I would owe my first allegiance to the Crown."

"And would you?"

Never in a thousand years, he is thinking. But his answer reflects the ambivalence they expect of him. "Since I am not familiar with the document you refer to, I fear that is not a question I can answer."

"But the document would have been printed from her laptop, right? This eighteen-page job — even if she didn't show it to you."

"Possibly. Or Bluhm's. Or a friend's."

"So where is it now — the laptop? This minute?"

Seamless.

Woodrow could have learned from him.

No body language, no tremor in the voice or exaggerated pause for breath.

"I looked in vain for her laptop in the inventory of her possessions presented to me by the Kenyan police and, like a number of other things, regrettably it does not feature."

"Nobody at Loki saw her with a laptop," Lesley says.

"But then I don't suppose they inspected her personal luggage."

"Nobody at the Oasis saw her with one. Did she have it with her when you drove her to the airport?"

"She had the rucksack that she always carried on her field trips. That too has disappeared. She had an overnight bag which may also have contained her laptop. Sometimes it did. Kenya does not encourage lone women to display expensive electronic equipment in public places."

"But then she wasn't alone, was she?" Rob reminds him, after which a long silence intervenes — so long that it becomes a matter of suspense to see who breaks it first.

"Justin," says Lesley finally. "When you visited your house with Woodrow last Tuesday morning, what did you take away with you?"

Justin affects to assemble a mental list. "Oh… family papers… private correspondence relating to Tessa's family trust… some shirts, socks… a dark suit for the funeral… a few trinkets of sentimental value… a couple of ties."

"Nothing else?"

"Nothing that immediately springs to mind. No."

"Anything that doesn't?" asks Rob.

Justin smiles wearily but says nothing.

"We talked to Mustafa," says Lesley. "We asked him: "Mustafa, where's Miss Tessa's laptop?"' He gave out conflicting signals. One minute she'd taken it away with her. The next she hadn't. After that, the journalists had stolen it. The one person who hadn't taken it was you. We thought he might be trying to front for you and not succeeding very well."

"I'm afraid that's rather what you get when you bully domestic staff."