The Constant Gardener

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

"Sandy Woodrow," Gloria announced with playful severity, standing arms akimbo before him in her new fluffy dressing gown, "it's jolly well time you showed the flag."

She had risen early and brushed out her hair by the time he had shaved. She had packed the boys off to school with the driver, then cooked him bacon and eggs, which he wasn't allowed, but once in a while a girl's allowed to spoil her man. She was mimicking the school prefect in herself, using her head girl voice, though none of this was yet apparent to her husband, who was plowing his way as usual through a heap of Nairobi newspapers.

"Flag goes back up on Monday, dear," Woodrow replied distractedly, masticating bacon. "Mildred's been on to Protocol Department. Tessa's been half-masted longer than a prince of the blood."

"I'm not talking about that flag, silly," said Gloria, removing the newspapers from his reach and setting them prettily on a side table beneath her watercolors. "Are you sitting comfortably? So listen. I'm talking about throwing an absolutely bumper party to cheer us all up, you included. It's time, Sandy. It really is. It's time we all said to each other, "Right. Been there. Done that. Dreadfully sorry. But life has to go on." Tessa would feel exactly the same. Vital question, darling. What's the inside story? When are the Porters coming back?" The Porters like the Sandys and the Elenas, which is how we talk about people when we're being cozy.

Woodrow transferred a square of egg to his fried bread. "Mr. and Mrs. Porter Coleridge are taking an extended period of home leave while they settle their daughter Rosie into school," he intoned, quoting an imaginary spokesman. "Inside story, outside story, only story there is."

But a story that, despite his seeming ease, exercised Woodrow considerably. What the hell was Coleridge up to? Why this radio silence? All right, he was on home leave. Good luck to him. But Heads of Mission on home leave have telephones and e-mails and addresses. They get withdrawal symptoms, phone their number twos and private secretaries on the flimsiest excuse, wanting to know about their servants, gardens, dogs and how's the old place ticking over without me? And they get huffy when it's suggested to them that the old place ticks over rather better when they're not in it. But from Coleridge, ever since his abrupt departure, not a dicky bird. And if Woodrow called London with the professed aim of bouncing a few innocent questions off him — and quite incidentally to pump him about his aims and dreams — he was met by one blank wall after another. Coleridge was "doing a stint at Cabinet Office," said a neophyte in Africa Department. He was "attending a ministerial working party," said a satrap in the permanent undersecretary's department.

And Bernard Pellegrin, when Woodrow finally reached him from the digital phone on Coleridge's desk, was as airy as the rest of them. "One of those Personnel cock-ups," he explained vaguely. "PM wants a briefing so the Secretary of State has to have one, so they all want one. Everyone wants a bit of Africa. What's new?"

"But is Porter coming back here or not, Bernard? I mean this is very unsettling. For all of us."

"I'd be the last to know, old boy." Slight pause. "You alone?"

"Yes."

"That little shit Mildred hasn't got her ear to the keyhole?"

Woodrow glanced at the closed door to the anteroom and lowered his voice. "No."

"Remember that thick bit o' paper you sent me not so long ago? Twenty-odd pages — woman author?"

Woodrow's stomach lurched. Anti-listening devices might be safe against outsiders, but are they safe against us?

"What about it?"

"My view is — best scenario would be-solve everything — it never arrived. Lost in the mails. That play?"

"You're talking about your end, Bernard. I can't speak for your end. If you didn't receive it, that's your business. But I sent it to you. That's all I know."

"Suppose you didn't send it, old boy. Suppose none of it happened. Never written, never sent? Would that be viable your end?" The voice absolutely at ease with itself.

"No. It's impossible. Not at all viable, Bernard."

"Why not?" Interested, but not the smallest degree perturbed.

"I sent it to you by bag. It was listed. Personal for you. Inventoried. The Queen's Messengers signed for it. I told — " he was going to say "Scotland Yard" but changed his mind in time — "I told the people who came out here about it. I had to. They'd already got the background by the time they spoke to me." His fear made him angry. "I told you I'd told them! I warned you, actually! Bernard, is something unraveling? You're making me a bit jumpy, actually. I'd rather understood from you that the whole thing had been laid peacefully to rest."

"Nothing to it, old boy. Calm down. These things pop up now and then. Bit of toothpaste slips out of the tube, you put it back. People say it can't be done. Happens every day. Wife well?"

"Gloria's fine."

"Kiddywinks?"

"Fine."

"Give our love."

"So I've decided it's to be a really super dance," Gloria was saying enthusiastically.

"Oh, right, splendid," said Woodrow and, giving himself time to recover the thread of their conversation, helped himself to the pills she made him swallow every morning: three oat bran tablets, one cod liver oil and half an aspirin.

"I know you hate dancing but that's not your fault, it's your mother's," Gloria went on sweetly. "I shan't be letting Elena interfere, not after the rather tacky little do she gave recently. I shall just keep her informed."

"Oh. Right. You two have kissed and made up, have you? Don't think I knew that. Congratulations."

Gloria bit her lip. Memories of Elena's dance had momentarily cast her down. "I do have friends, Sandy, you know," she said, a little pitifully. "I rather need them, to be frank. It gets quite lonely waiting all day for you to come back. Friends laugh, they chat, they do each other favors. And sometimes they fall out. But then they get together again. That's what friends do. I just wish you had someone like that. Well, don't I?"

"But I've got you, darling," Woodrow said gallantly as he embraced her good-bye.

* * *

Gloria went to work with all the drive and efficiency she had put into Tessa's funeral. She formed a working committee of fellow wives and members of the staff too junior to refuse her. First among them was Ghita, a choice that mattered greatly to her since Ghita had been the unwitting cause of the rift between Elena and herself and the ghastly scene that had followed it. The memory would haunt her all her days.

Elena had given her dance, and it had been, to a point, one had to say, well, a success. And Sandy, it was well known, was a great believer in couples splitting up at parties and working the room, as he called it. Parties, he liked to say, were where he did his best diplomacy. And so they should be. He was charming. So for most of the evening Gloria and Sandy hadn't seen much of one another, except for the odd woo-hoo across the room and the odd wave on the dance floor. Which was perfectly normal, though Gloria could have wished for just one dance, even if it had to be a foxtrot so that Sandy could get the rhythm. And beyond that Gloria had had very little to say about the evening, except that she really thought Elena could cover up a bit more at her age, instead of having her bust springing out all over, as we used to say, and she wished the Brazilian Ambassador had not insisted on putting his hand on her bottom for the samba, but Sandy says that's what Latins do.

So it came as a total bolt from the blue when, on the morning after the dance — at which Gloria had noticed nothing untoward, be it repeated, and she did consider herself rather observant — over a post-mortem coffee at the Muthaiga, Elena had let slip — completely casually, as if it were just another bit of perfectly ordinary gossip rather than a total bombshell, wrecking her complete life — that Sandy had come on so heavily with Ghita Pearson — Elena's very words — that Ghita had pleaded a headache and gone home early, which Elena considered tedious of her, because if everyone did that, one might just as well not bother to give a party at all.

Gloria was at first speechless. Then she refused point-blank to believe a word of it. What did Elena mean, come on, exactly? Come on how, El? Be specific, please. I think I'm rather upset. No, it's perfectly all right, just go on, please. Now you've said it, let's have it all.

Feeling her up, for openers, Elena retorted with deliberate coarseness, incensed by what she perceived as Gloria's prudishness. Groping her tits. Pressing his nasty up against her crotch. What do you expect a man to do when he's got the hots for somebody, woman? You must be the only girl in town not to know that Sandy is the biggest pussy hound in the business. Look at the way he padded round Tessa all those months with his tongue hanging out, even when she was eight months pregnant!

The mention of Tessa did it. Gloria had long accepted that Sandy had had a harmless thing about Tessa, though of course he was far too upright to let his feelings get out of hand. Rather to her shame, she had quizzed Ghita on the subject and drawn a satisfying blank. Now Elena had not only reopened the wound: she had poured vinegar into it. Incredulous, mystified, humiliated and plain bloody angry, Gloria stormed home, dismissed the staff, settled the boys at their homework, locked the drinks cupboard and waited darkly for Sandy to return. Which he finally did around eight o'clock, pleading pressure of work as usual but, so far as she could tell in her fraught state, sober. Not wishing to be earwigged by the boys, she grabbed him by the arm and frog-marched him down the servants' staircase to the lower ground.

"What the hell's the matter with you?" he complained. "I need a Scotch."

"You are the matter, Sandy," Gloria retorted fearsomely. "I want no circumlocutions, please. No diplomatic sweet-talk, thank you. No courtesies of any kind. We're both grownups. Did you, or did you not, have an affair with Tessa Quayle? I warn you, Sandy. I know you very well. I shall know immediately if you're lying."

"No," said Woodrow simply. "I didn't. Any more questions?"

"Were you in love with her?"

"No."

Stoical under fire like his father. Not budging an eyebrow. The Sandy she loved best, if she was honest. The kind of man you know where you are with. I'll never talk to Elena again.

"Did you make up to Ghita Pearson while you were dancing with her at Elena's party, or not?"

"No."

"Elena says you did."

"Then Elena's talking bilge. What's new?"

"She says Ghita left early in tears because you pawed her."

"Then I assume Elena is pissed off because I didn't paw Elena."

Gloria had not expected such straight, unequivocal, almost reckless denials. She could have done without "pissed off," and she'd just stopped Philip's pocket money for saying it, but Sandy might be right all the same. "Did you stroke Ghita — feel her up — did you press yourself against her — tell me!" she shouted, and gave way to a burst of tears.

"No," Woodrow replied again, and made a step toward her, but she brushed him aside.

"Don't touch me! Leave me alone! Did you want to have an affair with her?"

"With Ghita or Tessa?"

"Either of them! Both of them! What does it matter?"

"Shall we take Tessa first?"

"Do what you want!"

"If you mean by "affair" go to bed with her, I'm sure the idea occurred to me, as it would to most men of heterosexual appetite. Ghita I find less appealing, but youth has its attractions, so let's throw her in too. How about the Jimmy Carter formula? "I committed adultery in my heart." There. I've confessed. Want a divorce or can I have my Scotch?"

By which time she was doubled up, weeping helplessly with shame and self-loathing, and begging Sandy to forgive her because it had become horribly obvious to her what she had been doing. She had been accusing him of all the things she had been accusing herself of ever since Justin slipped into the night with his suitcases. She had been working out her guilt on him. Mortified, she hugged herself and blurted, "I'm so sorry, Sandy," and "Oh Sandy, please," and "Sandy, forgive me, I'm so awful," as she struggled to release herself from his grasp. But Sandy by now had an arm round her shoulders and was helping her up the stairs like the good doctor he should have been. And when they reached the drawing room she gave him the key to the drinks cupboard and he poured a stiff one for both of them.

Nonetheless the healing process took its time. Suspicions so monstrous are not laid to rest in a day, particularly when they echo other suspicions that have been laid to rest in the past. Gloria thought back a distance, then another distance. Her memory, which had a way of going off on its own, insisted on retrieving incidents that at the time she had dismissed. After all, Sandy was an attractive man. Of course women would make up to him. He was the most distinguished-looking person in the room. And a little innocent flirtation never did anyone any harm. But then memory kicked in again, and she wondered. Women from previous postings came to mind — tennis partners, baby-sitters, young wives with promotable husbands. She found herself reliving picnic parties, swimming parties, even — an involuntary shudder — a rather drunken nude swimming party in the French Ambassador's pool in Amman, when nobody really looked, and we all ran shrieking for our towels, but all the same…

It took Gloria several days to forgive Elena, and in a way, of course, she never would. But then Elena was so unhappy, she reflected, with her generous side. How could she not be, married to that dreadful little Greek and trying to make up for him with one seedy affair after another?

* * *

Otherwise, the only thing that slightly bothered Gloria was what precisely they ought to be celebrating. Obviously it had to be a Day — like Independence Day or May Day. Obviously it had to be soon, or the Porters would come back, which was not what Gloria wanted at all. She wanted Sandy in the limelight. Commonwealth Day was looming but it was too far away. With a little doctoring, they could have an early Commonwealth Day that got in ahead of everybody else's. That would show initiative. She would have preferred British Commonwealth Day, but everything has to be cut down to size these days, it's the age we live in. She would have preferred St. George's Day, and let's slay the bloody dragon for good! Or Dunkirk Day and let's fight them on the beaches! Or Waterloo Day or Trafalgar Day or Agincourt Day, all resounding British victories — but unfortunately they were victories over the French who, as Elena acidly pointed out, had the best cooks in town. But since none of these days fitted, Commonwealth Day it had to be.

Gloria decided it was now time to embark on her master plan, for which she needed the blessing of the Private Office. Mike Mildren was a man in flux. Having had a rather unwholesome New Zealand girl sharing his flat for the last six months, he had overnight exchanged her for a good-looking Italian boy who reputedly spent his day lounging by the pool at the Norfolk Hotel. Choosing just after lunch when Mildren was said to be at his most receptive, she telephoned him from the Muthaiga Club, using all her wiles and promising herself not to call him Mildred by mistake.

"Mike, it's Gloria here. How are you? Have you got a minute? Two even?"

Which was nice and modest of her because after all she was the acting High Commissioner's wife, even if she wasn't Veronica Coleridge. Yes, Mildred had a minute.

"Well, Mike, as you may have heard, I and a bunch of stalwarts are planning a rather large pre-Commonwealth Day knees-up. A sort of curtain-raiser for everybody else's do. Sandy's spoken to you about it, obviously. Hasn't he?"

"Not yet, Gloria, but no doubt he will."

Sandy being useless as usual. Forgetting everything about her as soon as he walks out of the front door. And when he comes home, drinking himself to sleep.

"Well, anyway, what we're looking at, Mike," she bowled on, "is a big marquee. As big as we can find, frankly, with a kitchen at the side. We're going to have a slap-up hot buffet and a live, really good local band. Not a disco like Elena's, and not cold salmon either. Sandy's offering up a hefty chunk of his precious allowances, and the Service attaches are digging into their piggy banks, which is a start, shall we say. Still with me?"

"Indeed I am, Gloria."

Pompous little boy. Too many of his master's airs and graces. Sandy will knock him into shape, once he gets the chance.

"So two questions, really, Mike. Both a bit delicate, but never mind, I'll plunge in. One. With Porter AWOL, if I dare say it, and no financial input from H.E.'s frais, as it were, is there, well, a slush fund available, or might Porter be persuaded to chip in from afar, as it were?"

"Two?"

He really is insufferable.

"Two, Mike, is where? Given the size of the event — and the vast marquee — and its importance to the British community at this rather difficult time, and the cachet we want to attach to it, if that's what you do with a cachet — well, we were thinking — I was — not Sandy, he's too busy, obviously — that the best place to have a five-star knees-up for Commonwealth Day just might be-provided everybody agreed, of course — the High Commissioner's lawn. Mike?" She had the eerie feeling that he had dived underwater and swum away.

"Still listening, Gloria."

"Well, wouldn't it? For parking and everything. I mean nobody need go inside the house, obviously. It's Porter's. Well, except for pit stops, obviously. We can't put Portaloos in H.E.'s garden, can we?" She was getting hung up over Porter and Portaloos, but forged on. "I mean everything's there waiting, isn't it? Servants, cars, security, and so on?" She hastily corrected herself. "I mean waiting for Porter and Veronica, obviously. Not waiting for us. Sandy and I are just holding the fort till they come back. It's not a takeover or anything. Mike, are you still there? I feel I'm talking to myself."

She was. The rebuff came the same evening in the form of a typed, hand-delivered note of which Mildred must have kept a copy. She didn't see him deliver it. All she saw was an open car driving away with Mildred in the passenger seat and his pool boy at the wheel. Department was emphatic, he wrote pompously. The High Commissioner's residence and its lawns were a no-go area for functions of all kinds. There was to be no "de facto annexation of High Commissioner status," he ended cruelly. A formal Foreign Office letter to this effect was on its way.

Woodrow was furious. He had never let fly at her like this before. "Serves you bloody well right for asking," he raged, stomping up and down the drawing room. "Do you really suppose I'll land Porter's job by going and camping on his bloody lawn?"

"I was only prodding them a bit," she protested pathetically, as he ranted on. "It's perfectly natural to want you to be Sir Sandy one day. It isn't the borrowed glory I'm after. I just want you to be happy."

But her afterthought was typically resilient. "Then we'll jolly well have to do it better here," she vowed, staring mistily into the garden.

* * *

The great Commonwealth Day bash had begun.

All the frantic preparations had paid off, the guests had arrived, music was playing, drink flowing, couples were chatting, the jacarandas in the front garden were in bloom, life was really rather super at last. The wrong marquee had been replaced with the right one, paper napkins with linen, plastic knives and forks with plate, vile puce bunting with royal blue and gold. A generator that brayed like a sick mule had been replaced with one that bubbled like a hot saucepan. The sweep in front of the house no longer looked like a building site and some brilliant last-minute whipping in by Sandy on the telephone had procured some jolly good Africans, including two or three from Moi's retinue. Sooner than rely on untried waiters — just look at what had happened at Elena's! — or rather hadn't happened! — Gloria had mustered staff from other diplomatic households. One such recruit was Mustafa, Tessa's spearman, as she used to call him, who had been too grief-stricken, by all accounts, to find another job. But Gloria had sent Juma off in pursuit of him, and here he finally was, flitting among the tables on the other side of the dance floor, a bit down in the mouth, bless him, but obviously pleased to have been thought of, which was the important thing. The Blue Boys miraculously had arrived on time to direct parking, and the problem as usual would be to keep them away from the drink, but Gloria had read them the riot act and all one could do was hope. And the band was marvelous, really jungle, and a good strong beat for Sandy to dance to if he had to. And didn't he look simply splendid in the new dinner jacket Gloria had bought him as a "sorry" present? What a parade horse he was going to make one day! And the hot buffet, what she had tasted of it — well, good enough. Not sensational, you didn't expect that in Nairobi, there was a limit to what you could buy even if you could afford it. But streets better than Elena's, not that Gloria felt in the least competitive. And darling Ghita in her gold sari, divine.

* * *

Woodrow too has every reason to congratulate himself. Watching the couples gyrate to music he detests, sipping methodically at his fourth whisky, he is the storm-tossed mariner who has made it back to harbor against all odds. No, Gloria, I never made a pass at her — or at any other her. No to all of it. No, I will not provide you with the means to destroy me. Not you, not the Archbitch Elena, and not Ghita, the scheming little puritan. I'm a status quo man, as Tessa rightly observed.

Out of the corner of his eye Woodrow spots Ghita, matching bodies with some gorgeous African she has probably never seen in her life until tonight. Beauty like yours is a sin, he tells her in his mind. It was a sin with Tessa, it is with you. How can any woman inhabit a body like yours and not share the desires of the man she inflames? Yet when I point this out to you — just the odd confiding touch, nothing gross — your eyes blaze and you hiss at me in a stage whisper to get my hands off you. Then you flounce home in a huff, closely observed by the Archbitch Elena… His reverie was disturbed by a pallid, balding man, who looked as though he'd lost his way, accompanied by a six-foot Amazon in bangs.

"Why, Ambassador, how awfully good of you to come!" Name forgotten but with this bloody music going no one's counting. He bawled at Gloria to join him — "Darling, meet the new Swiss Ambassador who arrived a week ago. Very sweetly called to pay his compliments to Porter! Poor chap got me instead! Wife will be joining you in a couple of weeks' time, isn't that right, Ambassador? So he's on the loose tonight, ha ha! Lovely to see you here! Forgive me if I do the rounds! Ciao!"

The bandleader was singing, if that was how you described his caterwaul. Clutching his microphone in one fist and fondling its tip with the other. Rotating his hips in copulative ecstasy.

"Darling, aren't you the teeniest bit turned on?" Gloria whispered as she whirled past him in the arms of the Indian Ambassador. "I am!"

A tray of drinks went by. Woodrow deftly put his empty glass on it and helped himself to a full one. Gloria was being led back to the dance floor by the jovial, shamelessly corrupt Morrison M'Gumbo, known also as Minister for Lunch. Woodrow cast round gloomily for somebody with a decent enough body to dance with. It was this non-dancing that got his goat. This mincing about, parading your parts. It made him feel like the clumsiest, most useless lover a woman ever had to put up with. It evoked all the do-this-don't-do-thats and the for-God's-sake-Woodrows that had rung in his ears since the age of five.

"I said, I've been running away from myself all my life!" he was bellowing into the puzzled face of his dancing partner, a busty Danish aid worker called Fitt or Flitt. "Always known what I was running away from, but never had the least idea where I was heading. How about you? I said, how about you?" She laughed and shook her head. "You think I'm mad or drunk, don't you?" he shouted. She nodded. "Well, you're wrong. I'm both!" Chum of Arnold Bluhm's, he remembered. Jesus, what a saga. When on earth will that show end? But he must have pondered this loud enough for her to hear him above the awful din because he saw her eyes go down and heard her say, "Maybe never," with the kind of piety good Catholics reserve for the Pope. Alone again, Woodrow headed upstream toward tables of deafened refugees, huddled together in shell-shocked groups. Time I ate something. He untied his bow tie and let it hang loose.

"Definition of a gentleman, my daddy used to say," he explained to an uncomprehending black Venus. "Chap who ties his own bow tie!"

Ghita had staked a territorial claim at one corner of the dance floor and was twisting pelvises with two jolly African girls from the British Council. Other girls were joining them in a witches' circle and the entire band was standing at the edge of the rostrum, singing yeh, yeh, yeh at them. The girls were slapping each other's palms, then turning round and tipping their bottoms at each other and Christ alone knew what the neighbors were saying up and down the road because Gloria hadn't invited all of them, or the tent would have been knee-deep in gunrunners and dope dealers — a joke Woodrow must have shared with a brace of very big chaps in native rig because they dissolved into hoots of laughter and retold the whole thing to their womenfolk who cracked up too.

Ghita. What the hell's she up to now? It's the Chancery meeting all over again. Every time I look at her she looks away. Every time I look away, she looks at me. It's the damnedest thing I ever saw. And once again Woodrow must have externalized his thoughts because a bore called Meadower from the Muthaiga Club immediately agreed with him, saying that if young people were determined to dance like that, why didn't they just fuck on the dance floor and be done with it? Which as it happened accorded perfectly with Woodrow's opinion, a point he was bellowing into Meadower's ear as he came face to face with Mustafa the black angel, standing square in front of him as if he were trying to stop him passing, except that Woodrow wasn't proposing to go anywhere. Woodrow noticed that Mustafa wasn't carrying anything, which struck him as impertinent. If Gloria out of the goodness of her heart has hired the poor dear man to fetch and carry, why the hell isn't he fetching and carrying? Why's he standing here like my bad conscience, empty-handed except for a folded bit of paper in one hand, mouthing unintelligible words at me like a goldfish?

"Chap says he's got a message for you," Meadower was shouting.

"What?"

"Very personal, very urgent message. Some beautiful girl fallen base-over-bum in love with you."

"Mustafa said that?"

"What?"

"I said, did Mustafa say that?"

"Aren't you going to find out who she is? Probably your wife!" roared Meadower, dissolving in hysterics.

Or Ghita, thought Woodrow, with an absurd leap of hope.

He took half a step away and Mustafa kept alongside him, turning his shoulder into him so that from Meadower's eye line they resembled two men hunched together lighting their cigarettes in the wind. Woodrow held out his hand and Mustafa reverently laid the note onto his palm. Plain A4 paper, folded small.

"Thank you, Mustafa," Woodrow yelled, meaning bugger off.

But Mustafa stood firm, commanding Woodrow with his eyes to read it. All right, damn you, stay where you are. You can't read English anyway. Can't speak it either. He unfolded the paper. Electronic type. No signature.

Dear Sir,

I have in my possession a copy of the letter that you wrote to Mrs. Tessa Quayle inviting her to elope with you. Mustafa will bring you to me. Please tell nobody and come at once, or I shall be forced to dispose of it elsewhere.

No signature.

* * *

With one burst of the riot police's water cannon, it seemed to Woodrow, he had been drenched cold sober. A man on his way to the scaffold thinks of a multitude of things at once and Woodrow, for all that he had a skinful of his own tax-free whisky inside him, was no exception. He suspected that the transaction between Mustafa and himself had not escaped Gloria's attention and he was right: she would never again take her eyes off him at a party. So he threw her a reassuring wave across the room, mouthed something to suggest "no problem" and set himself submissively in Mustafa's wake. As he did so, he caught Ghita's gaze full beam for the first time this evening and found it calculating.

Meanwhile, he was speculating hard about the identity of his blackmailer and associating him with the presence of the Blue Boys. His argument went as follows. The Blue Boys had at some point searched the Quayles' house and discovered what Woodrow himself had failed to find. One of their number had kept the letter in his pocket until he saw an opportunity to exploit it. That opportunity had now arisen.

A second possibility occurred to him pretty well simultaneously, which was that Rob or Lesley or both, having been removed from a high-profile murder case against their will, had decided to cash in. But why here and now, for Christ's sake? Somewhere in this mix he also included Tim Donohue, but that was because Woodrow regarded him as an active if senile nonbeliever. Only this evening, seated with his beady wife Maud in the darkest corner of the tent, Donohue had, in Woodrow's opinion, maintained a malign and untrusting presence.

Meanwhile Woodrow was taking intimate note of the physical things around him, rather in the way he might look for emergency doors when an aeroplane hits turbulence: the inadequately driven tent pegs and slack guy ropes — my God, the smallest breeze could blow the whole thing over! — the mud-caked coconut matting along the tented corridor — somebody could slip on that and sue me! — the unguarded open doorway to the lower ground — bloody burglars could have emptied the whole house and we'd never have been the wiser.

Skirting the edges of the kitchen, he was disconcerted by the number of unauthorized camp followers who had converged on his house in the hope of a few leftovers from the buffet, and were sitting around like Rembrandt groups in the glow of a hurricane lamp. Must be a dozen of them, more, he reckoned indignantly. Plus about twenty children camping on the floor. Well, six, anyway. He was equally incensed by the sight of the Blue Boys themselves, sodden with sleep and drink at the kitchen table, their jackets and pistols draped over the backs of their chairs. Their condition, however, persuaded him that they were unlikely to be the authors of the letter that he was still clutching, folded, in his hand.

Leaving the kitchen by the back stairs, Mustafa led the way by hand torch up to the hall, and so to the front door. Philip and Harry! Woodrow remembered in sudden terror. God in heaven, if they should see me now. But what would they see? Their father in a dinner jacket with his black tie loose around his neck. Why should they suppose it was loosened for the hangman? Besides — he remembered now — Gloria had farmed the boys out to friends for the night. She had seen enough diplomatic children at dances and couldn't be doing with any of it for Philip and Harry.

Mustafa was holding the front door open, waving his torch at the drive. Woodrow stepped outside. It was pitch dark. For romantic effect, Gloria had had the outside lights switched off, relying on rows of candles in sandbags, which had for the most part mysteriously gone out. Talk to Philip, who had recently taken up domestic sabotage as a pastime. It was a fine night but Woodrow wasn't in a mood to study stars. Mustafa was skimming toward the gate like a will-o'-the-wisp, beckoning him forward with his torch. The Baluhya gateman opened the gates while his extended family observed Woodrow with their usual intense interest. Cars were parked on both sides of the road, their minders dozing on the verge or murmuring to each other over little flames. Mercedes with drivers, Mercedes with minders, Mercedes with Alsatian dogs in them, and the usual crowd of tribespeople with nothing to do but watch life pass them by. The din from the band was as bloody awful out here as it was in the marquee. Woodrow wouldn't be surprised if he got a couple of formal complaints tomorrow. Those Belgian shippers in number 12 will slap a writ on you the moment your dog farts in their airspace.

Mustafa had stopped at Ghita's car. Woodrow knew it well. Had watched it often from the safety of his office window, usually with a glass in his hand. It was a tiny Japanese thing, so small and low that when she wriggled into it, he could imagine her putting on her swimsuit. But why are we stopping here? his gaze was demanding of Mustafa. What's Ghita's car got to do with me being blackmailed? He began to work out what he was worth in terms of ready cash. Would they want hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands? He'd have to borrow from Gloria, but what could he dream up for an excuse? Well, it was only money. Ghita's car was parked as far from a streetlamp as possible. The lamps were out with the power cut, but you never knew when they might come on. He worked out that he had around eighty pounds in Kenyan shillings on him. How much silence would that buy? He began thinking in terms of negotiation. What sanctions did he have as the purchaser? What guarantee would there be that the fellow didn't come back in six months or six years? Get on to Pellegrin, he thought, in a burst of gallows humor: ask old Bernard to get the toothpaste back in the tube.

Unless.

Drowning, Woodrow reached for the craziest straw of them all.

Ghita!

Ghita stole the letter! Or, more likely, Tessa gave it to her for safekeeping! Ghita sent Mustafa to haul me out of the party, and she's about to punish me for what happened at Elena's. And look, there she is! In the driver's seat, waiting for me! She slipped round the back of the house and she's sitting in the car, my subordinate, waiting to blackmail me!

His spirits soared, if only for a second. If it's Ghita, we can do business. I can outgun her anytime. Maybe more than business. Her desire to hurt me is only the reverse side of different, more constructive desires.

But it wasn't Ghita. Whoever the figure was or wasn't, it was unmistakably male. Ghita's driver, then? Her regular boyfriend, come to take her home after the dance so that nobody else gets her? The passenger door stood open. Under Mustafa's impassive gaze, Woodrow lowered himself into the car. Not like wriggling into his swimsuit, not for Woodrow. More like getting into a bumper car with Philip at the fair. Mustafa closed the door after him. The car rocked, the man in the driver's seat made no movement. He was dressed the way some urban Africans dress, Saint Moritz-style in defiance of the heat, in a dark quilted anorak and woolen skullcap low over the brow. Was the fellow black or white? Woodrow breathed in, but caught no sweet scent of Africa.

"Nice music, Sandy," Justin said quietly, reaching out an arm to start the engine.