The Constant Gardener

I hope therefore that you will bear with me for a week or two before I respond to your proposals. As to sick leave, I do not feel I should trespass unnecessarily upon the Office's goodwill. I have taken no leave this year, and I believe I am owed five weeks' disembarkation leave in addition to my normal annual entitlement. I would prefer to claim what is due to me before asking your indulgence. My renewed thanks.

A hypocritical, dishonest placebo, he decided, with satisfaction. Justin the incurably civil servant fusses about whether it is proper for him to take sick leave while winding up his murdered wife's affairs. He went back to the hall and took another look at the Gladstone lying on the floor beneath the marble-topped side table. One padlock forced and no longer functional. The other padlock missing. The contents replaced at random. You're so bad, he thought in contempt. Then he thought: unless you're trying to scare me, in which case you're rather good. He checked his jacket pockets. My passport, genuine, to be used when leaving or entering Britain. Money. No credit cards. With an air of firm purpose, he set to work adjusting the house lights in the pattern that best suggested sleep.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The mountain stood black against the darkening sky, and the sky was a mess of racing cloud, perverse island winds and February rain. The snake road was strewn with pebbles and red mud from the sodden hillside. Sometimes it became a tunnel of overhanging pine branches and sometimes it was a precipice with a free fall to the steaming Mediterranean a thousand feet below. He would make a turn and for no reason the sea would rise in a wall in front of him, only to fall back into the abyss as he made another. But no matter how many times he turned, the rain came straight at him, and when it struck the windscreen he felt the jeep wince under him like an old horse no longer fit for heavy pulling. And all the time the ancient hill-fort of Monte Capanne watched him, now from high above, now squatting at his right shoulder on some unexpected ridge, drawing him forward, fooling him like a false light.

"Where the hell is it? Somewhere off to the left, I swear," he complained aloud, partly to himself and partly to Tessa. Reaching a crest, he pulled irritably into the side of the road and put his fingertips to his brow while he took a mental bearing. He was acquiring the exaggerated gestures of solitude. Below him lay the lights of Portoferraio. Ahead of him, across the sea, Piombino twinkled on the mainland. To left and right, a timber track cut a gully into the forest. This is where your murderers lay up in their green safari truck while they waited to kill you, he explained to her in his mind. This is where they smoked their beastly Sportsmans and drank their bottles of Whitecap and waited for you and Arnold to drive by. He had shaved and brushed his hair and put on a clean denim shirt. His face felt hot and there was a pulsing in his temples. He plumped for left. The jeep jogged over an unruly mat of twigs and pine needles. The trees parted, the sky lightened and it was nearly day again. Below him at the foot of a clearing lay a cluster of old farmhouses. I'll never sell them, I'll never rent them out, you told me, the first time you brought me here. I'll give them to people who matter, then later we'll come and die here.

Parking the jeep, Justin tramped through wet grass toward the nearest cottage. It was neat and low with freshly limed walls and old pink roof tiles. A light burned in the lower windows. He hammered on the door. A sedate plume of wood smoke, sheltered by the surrounding forest, rose vertically from the chimney into the evening light, only to be swept away as the wind seized it. Ragged blackbirds wheeled and argued. The door opened and a peasant woman in a garish head scarf let out a cry of pain, lowered her head and whispered something in a language he did not expect to understand. Her head still lowered, body sideways to him, she took his hand in both of hers and pressed it against each cheek in turn, before kissing it devoutly on the thumb.

"Where's Guido?" he asked in Italian as he followed her into the house.