The Constant Gardener

So if you knew all this, what in God's name did you do to bring this down on yourself? he demanded, of the sea, the sky, the snapping night wind.

Nothing whatever, she replied serenely. Sandy mistook my flirtations for a promise, exactly as he mistook your good manners for weakness.

For a moment nonetheless, almost as a luxury, Justin lets his courage fail him, as in his inmost heart he has sometimes let it fail him over Arnold. But his memory is stirring. Something he has read yesterday, last night, the night before. But what? A printout, Tessa to Ham. A long e-mail, a little too intimate for Justin's blood at first reading, so he put it aside in a folder dedicated to enigmas to be resolved when I am strong enough to face them. Returning to the oil room, he exhumes the printout and examines the date.

E-mail printout Tessa to Ham, dated exactly eleven hours after Woodrow, contrary to Service rules regarding the use of official writing paper, declared his passion for a colleague's wife on Her Majesty's Stationery Office blue:

I'm not a girl anymore, Ham, and it's time I put away girlish things, but what girl does, even when she's in pig? And now I've landed myself with a five-star megacreep with the hots for me. Problem is, Arnold and I have struck gold at last, more accurately true excrement of the foulest sort, and we desperately need said creep to speak for us in the corridors of power, which is the only way I can bear to go if I'm Justin's wife and the loyal Brit I aspire to be despite all. Do I hear you say I'm still the same ruthless bitch who likes leading men around on a string even when they're super-creeps? Well, don't say it, Ham. Don't say it even if it's true. Shut up about it. Because I have promises to keep, and so have you, sweetheart. And I need you to stick by me like the dear, sweet pal you are, and tell me I'm a good girl really, because I am. And if you don't, I'll give you the wettest kiss since the day I pushed you into the Rubicon in your sailor suit. Love you, darling. Ciao. Tess.

P.S. Ghita says I'm a complete whore but she can't pronounce it properly so it comes out hooer, like a hoover that's lost its V. Love Tess (hooer).

Defendant innocent as charged, he told her. And I as usual can be duly ashamed of myself.

* * *

Mystically calmed, Justin resumed his puzzled journey.

Extract from Rob and Lesley's joint report to Superintendent Frank Gridley, Overseas Crime Division, Scotland Yard, on their third interview with Woodrow, Alexander Henry, Head of Chancery, British High Commission, Nairobi:

Subject forcefully echoes what he claims to be the opinion of Sir Bernard Pellegrin, FO Director of Affairs for Africa, that further inquiry along the lines urged by Tessa Quayle's memorandum would needlessly jeopardize HMG'S relations with the Kenyan Republic and harm U.k. trade interests… Subject refuses on security grounds to divulge the contents of the said memorandum… Subject disclaims all knowledge of an innovative drug being presently marketed by House of ThreeBees… Subject advises us that any request for a sight of Tessa Quayle's memorandum should be addressed directly to Sir Bernard, assuming that it still exists, which Subject is prepared to doubt. Subject portrays Tessa Quayle as a tiresome and hysterical woman who was mentally unstable in respect of matters related to her aid work. We interpret this as a convenient method of discounting the significance of her memorandum. A request is hereby made that a formal application be sent as soon as practical to the Foreign Office for copies of all papers submitted to Subject by the deceased Tessa Quayle.

Marginal note in red, signed by F. Gridley, Deputy Commissioner: SPOKE SIR B. PELLEGRIN. APPLICATION REFUSED ON GROUNDS OF NATIONAL SECURITY.

Extracts from learned medical journals of varying obscurity extolling, in appropriately oblique terms, the sensational benefits of the innovative drug Dypraxa, its "absence of mutagenicity" and its "long half-life in rats."

Extract from the Haiti Journal of Health Sciences, meekly expressing reservations about Dypraxa, signed by a Pakistani doctor who has conducted clinical trials of the drug at a Haitian research hospital. The words "potential for toxicity" underlined in red by Tessa, specters of liver failure, internal bleeding, dizziness, damage to the optic nerves.

Extract from the next issue of the same rag in which a string of medical eminences with impressive professorships and initials deliver a withering counterblast, citing three hundred test cases. The same article accuses the poor Pakistani of "bias" and "irresponsibility toward his patients" and calls down curses on his head.