The Constant Gardener

Justin walked to the rear of the bus and saw the door already open, and Lesley's arm outstretched to receive the music case. Landing on a wooden seat in pitch blackness, he was in Muthaiga again, on the slatted bench of the Volkswagen van, with Livingstone at the wheel and Woodrow sitting opposite him giving orders.

"We're following you, Justin," Lesley explained. Her voice in the darkness was urgent, yet mysteriously despondent. It was as if she too had suffered a great loss. "The surveillance team followed you to the cinema and we're part of it. Now we're covering the side exit in case you come out that way. There's always a possibility that the quarry gets bored and leaves early. You just did. In five minutes, that's what we'll report to mission control. Which way are you heading?"

"East."

"So you'll hail a cab and go east. We'll report the number of your cab. We won't follow you because you'd recognize us. There's a second surveillance car waiting for you at the front of the cinema and a spare lying up in the King's Road for contingencies. If you decide to walk or take a tube, they'll drop a couple of pedestrians behind you. If you catch a bus, they'll be grateful because there's nothing easier than getting stuck behind a London bus. If you go into a phone box and make a call, they'll listen to it. They have a Home Office warrant and it works wherever you happen to phone from."

"Why?" Justin asked.

His eyes were growing accustomed to the light. Rob had draped his long body over the back of the driver's seat, making himself part of the conversation. His manner was as abject as Lesley's but more hostile.

"Because you crapped on us," he said.

Lesley was dragging newspaper out of Tessa's music case and stuffing it into a plastic carrier bag. A wad of large envelopes lay at her feet, perhaps a dozen. She began loading them into the music case.

"I don't understand," Justin said.

"Well, try," Rob advised. "We're under sealed orders, right? We tell Mr. Gridley what you do. Someone up there says why you do it, but not to us. We're the help."

"Who searched my house?"

"In Nairobi or Chelsea?" Rob countered sardonically.

"Chelsea."

"Not ours to inquire. The team was stood down for four hours while whoever did it did it. That's all we know. Gridley put one uniformed copper on the doorstep in case anyone tried to wander in off the street. If they did, his job was to tell them that our officers were investigating a burglary of the premises, so bugger off. If he was a copper at all, which I doubt," Rob added, snapping his mouth shut.

"Rob and me are off the case," Lesley said. "Gridley would assign us to traffic duties in the Orkney Islands if he could, except he daren't."

"We're off everything," Rob put in. "We're unpersons. Thanks to you."

"He wants us where he can see us," Lesley said.

"Inside the tent, pissing out," said Rob.

"He's sent two new officers to Nairobi to help and advise the local police in the search for Bluhm and that's all," said Lesley. "No looking under stones, no deviations. Period."

"No Marsabit Two, no more grief about dying nigger women and phantom doctors," Rob said. "Gridley's own lovely words. And our replacements aren't allowed to talk to us in case they catch our disease. They're a couple of nobrains with a year to go, same as Gridley."

"It's a top security situation and you're part of it," Lesley said, closing the clasp on the music case but hugging it to her lap. "What part is anybody's guess. Gridley wants your life story. Who you meet, where, who comes to your house, who you phone, what you eat, who with. Every day. You're a material player in a top secret operation is all we're allowed to know. We're to do what we're told and mind our own business."

"We'd not been back in the Yard ten minutes before he was yelling for all notebooks, tapes and exhibits on his desk now," said Rob. "So we gave them to him. The original set, complete and uncut. After we'd made copies, naturally."

"The glorious House of ThreeBees is never to be mentioned again and that's an order," Lesley said. "Not their products, their operations or their staff. Nothing's allowed to rock the boat. Amen."

"What boat?"

"Lots of boats," Rob cut in. "Take your pick. Curtiss is untouchable. He's halfway to brokering a bumper British arms deal with the Somalis. The embargo's a nuisance but he's found ways of getting round it. He's front-runner in the race to provide a stateof-the-art East African telecom system using British high tech."

"And I'm standing in the way of all that?"

"You're in the way, period," Rob replied venomously. "If we'd been able to get past you, we'd have had them cold. Now we're on the pavement, back at day one of our careers."

"They think you know whatever Tessa knew," Lesley explained. "It could be bad for your health."

"They?"