The Constant Gardener

But Rob's anger was not to be contained. "It was a setup from day one and you were part of it. The Blue Boys laughed at us, so did the bastards in ThreeBees. Your friend and colleague Mr. Woodrow lied to us all ways up. So did you. You were the only chance we had and you kicked us in the teeth."

"We've got one question for you, Justin," Lesley came in, scarcely less bitterly. "You owe us one straight answer. Have you got somewhere to go? A safe place you can sit and read? Abroad is best."

Justin prevaricated. "What happens when I go home to Chelsea and put out my bedroom light? Do you people stay outside my house?"

"The team sees you home, it sees you to bed. The watchers grab a few hours' sleep, the listeners stay tuned to your telephone. The watchers return bright and early next morning to get you up. Your best time is between one and four a.m."

"Then I have somewhere I can go," Justin said after a moment's thought.

"Fantastic," said Rob. "We haven't."

"If it's abroad, use land and sea," Lesley said. "Once you're there, break the chain. Take country buses, local trains. Dress plain, shave every day, don't look at people. Don't hire cars, don't fly anywhere from anywhere, even inland. People say you're rich."

"I am."

"Then get yourself a lot of cash. Don't use credit cards or traveler's checks, don't touch a cell phone. Don't make a collect call or speak your name on the open line or the computers will kick in. Rob here's made you up a passport and a U.K. press card from the Telegraph. He nearly couldn't get your photo till he rang the FO and said we needed one for records. Rob's got friends in places where we're not supposed to have places, right, Rob?" No answer. "They're not perfect because Rob's friends didn't have the time, did they, Rob? So don't use them coming in and out of England. Is that a deal?"

"Yes," said Justin.

"You're Peter Paul Atkinson, newspaper reporter. And never, whatever you do, carry two passports at the same time."

"Why are you doing this?" Justin asked.

"What's it to you?" Rob countered furiously from the darkness. "We had a job to do, that's all. We didn't like losing it. So we've given it to you to fuck up. When they throw us out, maybe you'll let us clean your Rolls-Royce now and then."

"Maybe we're doing it for Tessa," Lesley said, dumping the music case in his arms. "On your way, Justin. You didn't trust us. Maybe you were right. But if you had, we might have got there. Wherever there is." She reached for the door handle. "Look after yourself. They kill. But you've noticed that."

He started down the street and heard Rob speaking into his microphone. Candy is emerging from the cinema. Repeat, Candy is emerging with her handbag

. The minibus door slammed shut behind him. Closure, he thought. He walked a distance. Candy is hailing a cab, and she's a boy.

* * *

Justin stood at the long sash window of Ham's office, listening to the ten o'clock chimes above the night growl of the city. He was looking down into the street but standing back a little, at a point where it was easy enough to see, but less easy to be seen. A pallid reading light was burning on Ham's desk. Ham reclined in a corner, in a wing chair worn old by generations of unsatisfied clients. Outside, an icy mist had come up from the river, frosting the railings outside St. Etheldreda's tiny chapel, scene of Tessa's many unresolved arguments with her Maker. A lighted green notice board advised passersby that the chapel had been restored to the Ancient Faith by the Rosminian Fathers. Confessions, Benedictions and Weddings by Appointment. A trickle of late worshipers passed up and down the crypt steps. None was Tessa. On the floor of the office, heaped onto Ham's plastic tray, lay the former contents of the Gladstone. On the desk lay Tessa's music case and beside it, in files marked with his firm's name, Ham's diligent assembly of the printouts, faxes, photocopies, notes of phone conversations, postcards and letters that he had accumulated in the course of his correspondence with Tessa over the last year.

"Bit of a snafu, I'm afraid," he confessed awkwardly. "Can't find her last lot of e-mails."

"Can't find them?"

"Or anybody else's, for that matter. Computer's got a bug in the works. Bloody thing's gobbled up the mailbox and half the hard drive. Engineer's still working on it. When he gets it back, I'll let you have it."

They had talked Tessa, then Meg, then Cricket, where Ham's large heart was also invested. Justin was not a Cricket fan but he did his best to sound enthusiastic. A flyblown travel poster of Florence lurked in the twilight.

"Do you still have that tame courier service back and forth to Turin every week, Ham?" Justin asked.

"Absolutely, old boy. Been taken over, of course. Who hasn't? Same people, just a bigger cock-up."

"And you still use those nice leather hatboxes with the firm's name on them that I saw in your safe this morning?"