The Constant Gardener

But tomorrow never comes. Not for all her fiery words. Throughout the night and late into the morning Justin sits on the edge of his bed, waiting for Rob and Lesley to return as they have threatened, armed with their warrants, their subpoenas and their writs, and a posse of Kenyan Blue Boys to do their dirty work for them. He fruitlessly debates options and hiding places as he has done for days. Thinks like a prisoner of war, contemplating floors and walls and ceilings: where? Makes plans to recruit Gloria, drops them. Makes others involving Mustafa and Gloria's houseboy. Others again involving Ghita. But the only word of his inquisitors is a phone call from Mildren saying the police officers are required elsewhere, and no, there is no news of Arnold. And when the funeral comes, the police officers are still required elsewhere — or so it appears to Justin, when now and then he scans the mourners, counting absent friends.

* * *

The plane had entered a land of eternal predawn. Outside his cabin window, wave after wave of frozen sea rolled toward a colorless infinity. All round him, white-shrouded passengers slept in the unearthly postures of the dead. One had her arm thrown upward as if she had been shot while waving to someone. Another had his mouth open in a silent scream, and his dead man's hand across his heart. Upright and alone, Justin returned his gaze to the window. His face floated in it beside Tessa's, like the masks of people he once knew.

CHAPTER NINE

"It's just bloody horrible!" cried a balding figure in a voluminous brown overcoat, prizing Justin free of his luggage trolley and blinding him with a bear hug. "It's absolutely foul and fucking unfair and bloody horrible. First Garth, now Tess."

"Thank you, Ham," said Justin, returning the embrace as best he could, given that his arms were pinned to his sides. "And thank you for turning out at this ungodly hour. No, I'll take that, thank you. You carry the suitcase."

"I'd have come to the funeral if you'd let me! Christ, Justin!"

"It was better to have you holding the fort," said Justin kindly.

"That suit warm enough? Bit brass monkeys, isn't it, after sunny Africa?"

Arthur Luigi Hammond was sole partner of the law firm of Hammond Manzini of London and Turin. Ham's father had deviled with Tessa's father at law school at Oxford, and afterward at law school in Milan. At a single ceremony in a tall church in Turin they had married two aristocratic Italian sisters, both fabled beauties. When Tessa was born to the one, Ham was born to the other. As the children grew they spent holidays together on Elba, skied together in Cortina and, as de facto brother and sister, graduated together at university, Ham with a rugger Blue and a hard-won third, Tessa with a first. Since the death of Tessa's parents Ham had played the part of Tessa's wise uncle, zealously administering her family trust, making ruinously prudent investments for her and, with all the authority of his prematurely bald head, curbing his cousin's generous instincts while forgetting to render his own fees. He was big and pink and shiny, with twinkly eyes and liquid cheeks that frowned or smiled with every inner breeze. When Ham plays gin rummy, Tessa used to say, you know his hand before he does, just by the width of his grin when he picks up each card.

"Why not shove that thing in the back?" Ham roared as they clambered into his tiny car. "All right, on the floor then. What's it got in it? Heroin?"

"Cocaine," said Justin as he discreetly scanned the ranks of frosted cars. At Immigration, two woman officers had nodded him through with conspicuous indifference. In the luggage hall, two dull-faced men in suits and identification tags had looked at everyone but Justin. Three cars down from Ham's, a man and woman sat head to head in the front of a beige Ford saloon studying a map. In a civilized country, you can never tell, gentlemen, the jaded instructor on the security course liked to say. The most comfortable thing you can do is assume they're with you all the time.

"All set?" Ham asked shyly, buckling his seat belt.

England was beautiful. Low rays of morning sun gilded the frozen Sussex plow. Ham drove as he always drove, at sixty-five miles an hour in a seventy speed limit, ten yards behind the belching exhaust pipe of the nearest convenient lorry.

"Meg sends love," he announced gruffly, in a reference to his very pregnant wife. "Blubbed for a week. So did I. Blub now if I'm not bloody careful."

"I'm sorry, Ham," said Justin simply, accepting without bitterness that Ham was one of those mourners who look to the bereaved for consolation.

"I just wish they'd find the bugger, that's all," Ham burst out some minutes later. "And when they've strung him up, they can toss those Fleet Street bastards into the Thames for good measure. She's doing time with her bloody mother," he added. "That should bring it on."