The Constant Gardener

CHAPTER NINE

"It's just bloody horrible!" cried a balding figure in a voluminous brown overcoat, prizing Justin free of his luggage trolley and blinding him with a bear hug. "It's absolutely foul and fucking unfair and bloody horrible. First Garth, now Tess."

"Thank you, Ham," said Justin, returning the embrace as best he could, given that his arms were pinned to his sides. "And thank you for turning out at this ungodly hour. No, I'll take that, thank you. You carry the suitcase."

"I'd have come to the funeral if you'd let me! Christ, Justin!"

"It was better to have you holding the fort," said Justin kindly.

"That suit warm enough? Bit brass monkeys, isn't it, after sunny Africa?"

Arthur Luigi Hammond was sole partner of the law firm of Hammond Manzini of London and Turin. Ham's father had deviled with Tessa's father at law school at Oxford, and afterward at law school in Milan. At a single ceremony in a tall church in Turin they had married two aristocratic Italian sisters, both fabled beauties. When Tessa was born to the one, Ham was born to the other. As the children grew they spent holidays together on Elba, skied together in Cortina and, as de facto brother and sister, graduated together at university, Ham with a rugger Blue and a hard-won third, Tessa with a first. Since the death of Tessa's parents Ham had played the part of Tessa's wise uncle, zealously administering her family trust, making ruinously prudent investments for her and, with all the authority of his prematurely bald head, curbing his cousin's generous instincts while forgetting to render his own fees. He was big and pink and shiny, with twinkly eyes and liquid cheeks that frowned or smiled with every inner breeze. When Ham plays gin rummy, Tessa used to say, you know his hand before he does, just by the width of his grin when he picks up each card.

"Why not shove that thing in the back?" Ham roared as they clambered into his tiny car. "All right, on the floor then. What's it got in it? Heroin?"

"Cocaine," said Justin as he discreetly scanned the ranks of frosted cars. At Immigration, two woman officers had nodded him through with conspicuous indifference. In the luggage hall, two dull-faced men in suits and identification tags had looked at everyone but Justin. Three cars down from Ham's, a man and woman sat head to head in the front of a beige Ford saloon studying a map. In a civilized country, you can never tell, gentlemen, the jaded instructor on the security course liked to say. The most comfortable thing you can do is assume they're with you all the time.

"All set?" Ham asked shyly, buckling his seat belt.

England was beautiful. Low rays of morning sun gilded the frozen Sussex plow. Ham drove as he always drove, at sixty-five miles an hour in a seventy speed limit, ten yards behind the belching exhaust pipe of the nearest convenient lorry.

"Meg sends love," he announced gruffly, in a reference to his very pregnant wife. "Blubbed for a week. So did I. Blub now if I'm not bloody careful."

"I'm sorry, Ham," said Justin simply, accepting without bitterness that Ham was one of those mourners who look to the bereaved for consolation.

"I just wish they'd find the bugger, that's all," Ham burst out some minutes later. "And when they've strung him up, they can toss those Fleet Street bastards into the Thames for good measure. She's doing time with her bloody mother," he added. "That should bring it on."

They drove once more in silence, Ham glowering at the belching lorry in front of him, Justin staring in perplexity at the foreign country he had represented half his life. The beige Ford had overtaken them, to be replaced by a tubby motorcyclist in black leather. In a civilized country, you can never tell.

"You're rich, by the by," Ham blurted, as open fields gave way to suburbia. "Not that you were exactly a pauper before, but now you're stinking. Her father's, mother's, the trust, whole shooting match. Plus you're sole trustee of her charity. She said you'd know what to do with it."

"When did she say that?"

"Month before she lost the baby. Wanted to make sure everything was kosher in case she snuffed it. Well, what the hell was I supposed to do, for Christ's sake?" he demanded, mistaking Justin's silence for reproach. "She was my client, Justin. I was her solicitor. Talk her out of it? Ring you up?"

His eye on the wing mirror, Justin made appropriate soothing noises.

"And Bluhm's the other bloody Executor," Ham added in furious parenthesis.

"Executioner more like."

The hallowed premises of Messrs. Hammond Manzini were situated in a gated cul-de-sac called Ely Place on two wormy upper floors with paneled walls hung with disintegrating images of the illustrious dead. In two hours' time, bilingual clerks would be murmuring into grimy telephones while Ham's ladies in twinsets grappled with the modern technology. But at seven in the morning, Ely Place was deserted except for a dozen cars parked along the curbside and a yellow light burning in the crypt of St. Etheldreda's Chapel. Laboring under the weight of Justin's luggage, the two men clambered up four rickety flights to Ham's office, then up a fifth to his monkish attic flat. In the tiny living-dining-kitchen hung a photograph of a slimmer Ham kicking a goal to the jubilation of an undergraduate crowd. In Ham's tiny bedroom where Justin was supposed to change, Ham and his bride Meg were cutting a three-tier wedding cake to the fanfares of Italian trumpeters in tights. And in the tiny bathroom where he took a shower hung a primitive oil painting of Ham's ancestral home in coldest Northumbria, which accounted for Ham's penury.

"Bloody roof blew clean off the north wing," he was yelling proudly through the kitchen wall while he smashed eggs and clattered pans. "Chimney stacks, tiles, weather vane, clock, buggered to a man. Meg was out on Rosanne, thank God. If she'd been in the vegetable garden, she'd have caught the bell tower slap in the withers, whatever they are."

Justin turned the hot tap and at once scalded his hand. "How very alarming for her," he commiserated, adding cold.

"Sent me this extraordinary little book for Christmas," Ham boomed, to the sizzle of bacon. "Not Meg. Tess. Happen to show it to you at all? Little book she sent me? For Christmas?"

"No, Ham, I don't think she did — " rubbing soap into his hair in the absence of shampoo.

"Some Indian mystic chap. Rahmi Whoosit. Ring any bells? I'll get the rest of him in a minute."

"Afraid not."

"All about how we should love each other without attachment. Struck me as a pretty tall order."

Blinded with soap, Justin emitted a sympathetic growl.

"Freedom, Love and Action — that's the title. Hell she expect me to do with freedom, love and action? I'm married, for fuck's sake. Got a baby in the pipeline. Plus I'm a bloody Roman. Tess was a Roman herself before she jacked it in. Hussy."

"I expect she wanted to thank you for all that running around you did for her," Justin suggested, picking his moment, yet careful to preserve the casual note of their exchange.

Temporary disconnection from other side of wall. More sizzling, followed by heretical expletives and smells of burning.

"What running around was that then?" Ham bawled suspiciously. "Thought you weren't supposed to know about any running around. Deadly secret, according to Tess, the running around was. "To be kept strictly out of reach of all Justins." Health warning. Put it as the subject in every e-mail."

Justin had found a towel, but rubbing his eyes made the smarting worse. "I didn't know about it exactly, Ham. I sort of divined it," he explained through the wall with the same casualness. "What did she want you to do? Blow up Parliament? Poison the reservoirs?" No answer. Ham was engrossed in his cooking. Justin groped for a clean shirt. "Well, don't tell me she had you handing out subversive leaflets about Third World debt," he said.

"Bloody company records," he heard back, over more clashing of saucepans. "Two eggs right for you or one? They're our hens."

"One will be fine, thanks. Whatever records were they?"

"All she cared about. Anytime she thought I was getting fat and comfortable: pow, in there with another e-mail about company records." More crashing of pans deflected Ham to other paths. "Cheated at tennis, know that? In Turin. Oh yes. Little minx and self were partnered in a kiddywink knockout competition. Lied like a trooper all through the match. Every line call: out. Could be a yard in, didn't make a blind bit of difference. Out. "I'm Italian," she said, "I'm allowed to." "Like hell you're Italian," I said. "You're English to your boots, same as me." God alone knows what I'd have done if we'd won. Given the cup back, I suppose. No, I wouldn't. She'd have killed me. Oh Christ. Sorry."

Justin stepped into the drawing room to take his place before a greasy slag heap of bacon, egg, sausages, fried bread and tomatoes. Ham was standing with one hand crammed to his mouth, dazed by his unhappy choice of metaphor.

"What sort of companies exactly, Ham? Don't look like that. You'll put me off my breakfast."

"Ownership," said Ham through his knuckles, as he sat down opposite Justin at the tiny table. "Whole thing was about ownership. Who owned two pissy little companies in the Isle of Man. Anyone else call her Tess, d'you know?" he asked, still chastened. "Apart from me?"

"Not in my hearing. And certainly not in hers. "Tess" was your sole copyright."

"Loved her rotten, you see."

"And she loved you. What sort of companies?"

"Intellectual property. Never had it off with her, mind. Too close."

"And in case you were wondering, it was the same with Bluhm."

"Is that official?"

"He didn't kill her, either. Any more than you or I did."

"Sure?"

"Sure."

Ham brightened. "Old Meg wasn't convinced. Didn't know Tess the way I did, you see. Special thing. Can't be replicated. "Tess has chums," I told her. "Buddies. The demon sex doesn't come into it." I'll tell her what you said, if you don't mind. Cheer her up. All that shit in the press. Sort of rebounded on me."

"So where were these companies registered? What were their names? Do you remember?"

"'Course I remember. Couldn't help bloody remembering, with old Tess hammering away at me every other day."

Ham was pouring tea, clutching the teapot in both hands, one for the pot, one to keep the lid from falling off while he grumbled. The operation completed, he sat back, still nursing the teapot, then lowered his head as if he were about to charge.

"All right," he demanded aggressively. "Name me the most secretive, duplicitous, mendacious, hypocritical bunch of corporate wide boys it's been my dubious pleasure to encounter."

"Defense," Justin suggested disingenuously.

"Wrong. Pharmaceutical. Beats Defense into a cocked hat. I've got it now. Knew I would. Lorpharma and Pharmabeer."

"Who?"

"It was in some medical rag. Lorpharma discovered the molecule and Pharmabeer owned the process. Knew I would. How those chaps come up with names like that, God knows."

"Process to do what?"

"Produce the molecule, arsehole, what do you think?"

"What molecule?"

"God knows. Same as the law but worse. Words I've never seen before, hope never to see 'em again. Blind the punters with science. Keep 'em in their place."

After breakfast they went downstairs together and put the Gladstone in Ham's strongroom next door to his office. Lips pursed for discretion, eyes lifted to the heavens, Ham spun the combination and hauled back the steel door for Justin to go in alone. Then watched from the doorway while Justin laid the bag on the floor close to a pile of age-honored leather boxes with the firm's Turin address embossed on the lid.

"That was only the beginning, mark you," Ham warned darkly, affecting indignation. "A canter round the course before the real thing. After that it was names of directors of all companies owned by Messrs. Karel Vita Hudson of Vancouver, Seattle, Basel plus every city you've heard of from Oshkosh to East Pinner. And "What's the state of play regarding the much-publicized rumors of an imminent collapse of the noble and ancient house of Balls, Birmingham and Bumfluff Limited or whatever they're called, known otherwise as ThreeBees, president for life and master of the universe one Kenneth K. Curtiss, knight?"' Did she have any more questions? you wonder. Yes, she bloody did. I told her to get it off the Internet but she said half the stuff she wanted was X-rated or whatever they do if they don't want Joe Public looking over their shoulders. I said to her — "Tess, old thing, Christ's sake, this is going to take me weeks. Months, old girl." Did she give a tinker's? Did she hell. It was Tess, for Christ's sake. I'd have jumped out of a balloon without the parachute if she'd told me to."

"And the sum of it was?"

Ham was already beaming with innocent pride. "KVH Vancouver and Basel own fifty-one percent of the pissy Isle of Man biotech companies, Lor-hoojamy and Pharmawhatnot. ThreeBees Nairobi have sole import and distribution rights of said molecule plus all derivatives for the whole of the African continent."

"Ham, you're incredible!"

"Lorpharma and Pharmabeer are both owned by the same gang of three. Or were till they sold their fifty-one percent. One chap, two hags. The chap is called Lorbeer. "Lor" plus "beer" plus "pharma" gives you Lorpharma and Pharmabeer. The hags are both doctors. Address care of a Swiss gnome who lives in a letter box in Liechtenstein."

"Names?"

"Lara Somebody. She's in my notes. Lara Emrich. Got it."

"And the other one?"

"Forget. No, I don't. Kovacs. No first name given. It was Lara I fell in love with. My favorite song. Used to be. From Zhivago. Old Tess's too in those days. Fuck." A natural break while Ham blew his nose and Justin waited.

"So what did you do with these nuggets of intelligence when you'd landed them, Ham?" Justin inquired tenderly.

"Read the whole lot to her over the telephone to Nairobi. Chuffed to bits, she was. Called me her hero — " he broke off, alarmed by Justin's expression — "not your telephone, idiot. Some mate of hers up-country. "You're to go to a phone box, Ham, and you're to call me straight back on the following number. Got a pen?"' Bossy little cow, always was. Bloody cagey about telephones, though. Bit paranoid in my view. Still, some paranoids have real enemies, don't they?"

"Tessa did," Justin agreed, and Ham gave him a queer look, which got queerer the longer it lasted.

"You don't think that's what happened, do you?" Ham asked, in a subdued voice.

"In what way?"

"Old Tess fell foul of the pharmaceutical chaps?"

"It's conceivable."

"But I mean, Christ — old sport — you don't think they shut her mouth for her, do you? I mean, I know they're not Boy Scouts."

"I'm sure they're all dedicated philanthropists, Ham. Right down to their last millionaire."

A very long silence followed, broken by Ham.

"Mother. Oh Christ. Well. Tread gently, what?"

"Exactly."

"I dropped her in the shit by making that phone call."

"No, Ham. You broke an arm and a leg for her and she loved you."

"Well. Christ. Anything I can do?"

"Yes. Find me a box. A stout brown cardboard box would do. Got such a thing?"

Glad of an errand Ham charged off and, after much cursing, returned with a plastic draining tray. Crouching to the Gladstone, Justin opened the padlocks, released the leather straps and, masking Ham's view with his back, transferred the contents to the tray.

"And now, if you would, a wad of your dullest files on the Manzini estate. Back numbers. Stuff you keep but never look at. Enough to fill up this bag."

So Ham found him files too: as old and dog-eared as Justin seemed to want. And helped him load them into the empty bag. And watched him buckle the bag up and lock it. Then from his window watched him again, as he strode down the cul-desac, bag in hand, to hail a cab. And as Justin disappeared from view, Ham breathed "Holy Mother!" in an honest invocation to the Virgin.

* * *

"Good morning, Mr. Quayle, sir. Take your bag, sir? I'll have to run it under the X ray, if you don't mind. It's the new regulations. Wasn't like that in our day, was it? Or your father's. Thank you, sir. And here's your ticket, all shipshape and aboveboard as they say." A dropping of the voice. "Very sorry, sir. We're all greatly affected."

"Good morning, sir! Nice to have you back with us." Another dropped voice. "Deepest condolences, sir. From the wife also."

"Our very deepest commiserations, Mr. Quayle" — another voice, breathing beer fumes in his ear — "Miss Landsbury says please to go straight on up, sir. Welcome home."

But the Foreign Office was no longer home. Its preposterous hall, built to strike terror into the hearts of Indian princes, imparted only strutting impotence. The portraits of disdainful buccaneers in periwigs no longer tipped him their familial smile.

"Justin. I'm Alison. We haven't met. What a terrible, terrible way to get to know each other. How are you?" said Alison Landsbury, appearing with posed restraint in the twelve-foot-tall doorway of her office, and pressing his right hand in both of hers before leaving it to swing. "We're all so, so sad, Justin. So utterly horrified. And you're so brave. Coming here so soon. Are you really able to talk sensibly? I don't see how you could."

"I was wondering whether you had any news of Arnold."

"Arnold? — ah, the mysterious Dr. Bluhm. Not a murmur, I'm afraid. We must fear the worst," she said, without revealing what the worst might be. "Still, he's not a British subject, is he?" — cheering up — "we must let the good Belgians look after their own."

Her room was two floors high, with gilded friezes and black wartime radiators and a balcony overlooking very private gardens. There were two armchairs and Alison Landsbury kept a cardigan over the back of hers so that you didn't sit in it by mistake. There was coffee in a thermos so that their tryst need not be interrupted. There was the mysteriously thick atmosphere of other bodies just departed. Four years Minister in Brussels, three years Defense Counselor in Washington, Justin rehearsed, quoting from the form book. Three more back in London on attachment to the Joint Intelligence Committee. Appointed Head of Personnel six months ago. Our only recorded communications: One letter suggesting I trim my wife's wings-ignored. One fax ordering me not to visit my own house — too late. He wondered what Alison's house was like, and awarded her a redbrick mansion flat behind Harrods, handy for her bridge club at weekends. She was wiry and fifty-six and dressed in black for Tessa. She wore a man's signet ring on the middle finger of her left hand. Justin assumed it was her father's. A photograph on the wall showed her driving off at Moor Park. Another — somewhat ill-advisedly, in Justin's view — had her shaking hands with Helmut Kohl. Soon you'll get your women's college and be Dame Alison, he thought.

"I've spent the whole morning thinking of all the things I won't say to you," she began, projecting her voice to the back of the hall for the benefit of latecomers. "And all the things we simply mustn't agree on yet. I'm not going to ask you how you see your future. Or tell you how we see it. We're all far too upset," she ended, with didactic satisfaction. "By the way, I'm a Madeira cake. Don't expect me to be multilayered. I'm the same wherever you slice me."

She had set a laptop on the table in front of her, and it could have been Tessa's. As she spoke she prodded at the screen with a gray baton hooked at the end like a crochet needle. "There are some things I must tell you, and I'll do that straightaway." Prod. "Ah. Indefinite sick leave is the first thing. Indefinite because obviously it's subject to medical reports. Sick because you're in trauma, whether you know it or not." So there. Prod. "And we do counseling, and I'm afraid that with experience we're getting rather good at it." Sad smile and another prod. "Dr. Shand. Emily outside will give you Dr. Shand's coordonnees. You've got a provisional appointment tomorrow at eleven, but change it if you need to. Harley Street, where else? Do you mind a woman?"

"Not at all," Justin replied hospitably.

"Where are you staying?"

"At our house. My house. In Chelsea. Will be."

She frowned. "But that isn't the family house?"

"Tessa's family."

"Ah. But your father has a house in Lord North Street. Rather a beautiful one, I remember."

"He sold it before he died."

"Do you intend remaining in Chelsea?"

"At present."

"Then Emily outside should have the coordonnees of that house as well, please."

Back to the screen. Was she reading from it or hiding in it?

"Dr. Shand isn't a one-night stand, she's a course. She counsels individuals, she counsels groups. And she encourages interaction between patients with similar problems. Where security permits, obviously." Prod. "And if it's a priest you'd like, instead of or as well, we have representatives of every denomination who've been cleared for most things so just ask. Our view here is, give anything a chance, provided it's secure. If Dr. Shand doesn't fit, come back and we'll look for someone who does."

Perhaps you also do acupuncture, thought Justin. But elsewhere in his head he was wondering why she was offering him security-cleared confessors when he had no secrets to confess.

"Ah. Now would you like a haven, Justin?" Prod.

"I'm sorry?"

"A quiet house." The emphasis on "quiet," like "green-house." "An away-from-it-all until the hue and cry dies down. Where you can be totally anonymous, recover your balance, take long country walks, pop up to London to see us when we need you or vice versa, pop back again. Because it's on offer. Not wholly free of charge in your case, but heavily subsidized by HMG. Discuss with Dr. Shand before deciding?"

"If you say so."

"I do." Prod. "You've suffered an awful amount of humiliation in public. How has this affected you, to your knowledge?"

"I'm afraid I haven't been in public very much. You had me hidden away, if you remember."

"All the same you suffered it. Nobody likes to be portrayed as a deceived husband, nobody likes to have their sexuality raked over in the press. Anyway, you don't hate us. You don't feel angry or resentful or demeaned. You're not about to take revenge. You're surviving. Of course you are. You're old Office."

Uncertain whether this was a question, a complaint or merely a definition of durability, Justin let it alone, fixing his attention instead on a doomed peach-colored begonia in a pot too close to the wartime radiator.

"I seem to have a memo here from the pay people. Do you want all this now or is it too much?" She gave it to him anyway. "We're keeping you on full pay of course. Married allowances, I'm afraid, discontinued, effective from the day you became single. These are nettles one has to grasp, Justin, and in my experience they're best grasped now and accepted. And the usual return-to-U.k. cushioning allowances pending a decision about your eventual destination, but again obviously at single rates. Now Justin, is that enough?"

"Enough money?"

"Enough information for you to function for the time being."

"Why? Is there more?"

She put down her baton and turned her gaze full on him. Years ago, Justin had had the temerity to complain at a grand store in Piccadilly, and had faced the same frigid managerial stare.

"Not as yet, Justin. Not that we're aware of. We live on tenterhooks. Bluhm's not accounted for, and the whole grisly press story will run and run until the case is cleared up one way or the other. And you're having lunch with the Pellegrin."

"Yes."

"Well, he's awfully good. You've been steadfast, Justin, you've shown grace under pressure and it's been noted. You've suffered appalling strain, I'm sure. Not only after Tessa's death but before it. We should have been firmer and brought you both home while there was time. Erring on the side of tolerance looks in retrospect very like the easy way out, I'm afraid." Prod, and scrutinize screen with growing disapproval. "And you've given no press interviews, have you? Not talked at all, on or off the record?"

"Only to the police."

She let this go. "And you won't. Obviously. Don't even say "no comment." In your state, you're perfectly entitled to put the phone down on them."

"I'm sure that won't be hard."

Prod. Pause. Study screen again. Study Justin. Return eyes to screen. "And you've no papers or materials that belong to us? That are — how shall I say it? — our intellectual property? You've been asked, but I'm to ask you again in case something has come up, or comes up in the future. Has anything come up?"

"Of Tessa's?"

"I'm referring to her extramarital activities." She took her time before defining what these might be. And while she did so, it dawned on Justin, a little late perhaps, that Tessa was some kind of monstrous insult to her, a disgrace to their schools and class and sex and country and the Service she had defiled; and that by extension Justin was the Trojan horse who had smuggled her into the citadel. "I'm thinking of any research papers she may have acquired, legitimately or otherwise, in the course of her investigations or whatever she called them," she added with frank distaste.

"I don't even know what I'm supposed to be looking for," Justin complained.

"Neither do we. And really it's very hard for us here to understand how she ever got into this position in the first place." Suddenly the anger that had been simmering was forcing its way out of her. She hadn't meant it to, he was sure; she had gone to great lengths to contain it. But it had evidently slipped from her control. "It's really quite extraordinary, looking at what's since come to light, that Tessa was ever allowed to become that person. Porter has been an excellent Head of Mission in his way but I can't help feeling he must share a good deal of the blame for this."

"For what exactly?"

Her dead stop took him by surprise. It was as if she had hit the buffers. She came to a halt, her eyes firmly on her screen. She held the crochet needle at the ready, but made no move with it. She laid it softly on the table as if grounding her rifle at a military funeral.

"Yes, well, Porter," she conceded. But he had made no point for her to concede.

"What's happened to him?" Justin asked.

"I think it's absolutely marvelous the way the two of them sacrificed everything for that poor child."

"I do too. But what have they sacrificed now?"

She seemed to share his bewilderment. To need him as an ally, if only while she was denigrating Porter Coleridge. "Terribly, terribly hard, in this job, Justin, to know where to put one's foot down. One wants to treat people as individuals, one longs to be able to fit each person's circumstances into the general picture." But if Justin thought she was tempering her assault on Porter, he was dead wrong. She was simply reloading. "But Porter — we have to face it — was on the spot and we weren't. We can't act if we're kept in the dark. It's no good asking us to pick up the pieces ex post facto if we haven't been informed a priori. Is it?"

"I suppose not."

"And if Porter was too starry-eyed, too tied up with his awful family problems — nobody disputes that — to see what was developing under his nose — the Bluhm thing and so on, I'm sorry-he had an absolutely first-class lieutenant in Sandy, with a very safe pair of hands, at his elbow, any-time, to spell it out for him in words a foot high. Which Sandy did. Ad nauseam, one gathers. But to no effect. So I mean it's perfectly clear that the child — obviously-the poor girl — Rosie or whatever its name is — claims all their out-of-hours attention. Which isn't necessarily what one appoints a High Commissioner for. Is it?"

Justin made a meek face, indicating his sympathy with her dilemma.

"I'm not prying, Justin. I'm asking you. How is it possible — how was it possible — forget Porter for a moment — for your wife to engage in a range of activities of which, by your account, you knew nothing? All right. She was a modern woman. Jolly good luck to her. She led her life, she had her relationships." Pointed silence. "I'm not suggesting you should have restrained her, that would be sexist. I'm asking you how, in reality, you remained totally ignorant of her activities — her inquiries — her — how shall I put it? I'd like to say meddling, actually."

"We had an arrangement," Justin said.

"Of course you did. Equal and parallel lives. But in the same house, Justin! Are you really saying she told you nothing, showed you nothing, shared nothing? I find that awfully hard to believe."

"I do too," Justin agreed. "But I'm afraid it's what happens when you put your head in the sand."

Prod. "So now did you share her computer?"

"Did I what?"

"The question is perfectly clear. Did you share, or otherwise have access to, Tessa's laptop computer? You may not know it, but she addressed some very strong documents to the Office, among others. Raising grave allegations about certain people. Accusing them of awful things. Making trouble of a potentially very damaging kind."

"Potentially damaging to whom, actually, Alison?" Justin asked, delicately fishing for any free gifts of information she might care to bestow.

"It's not a matter of whom, Justin," she replied severely. "It's whether you have Tessa's laptop computer in your possession and, if not, where is it, physically at this moment in time and what does it contain?"

"We never shared it, is the answer to your first question. It was hers and hers alone. I wouldn't even know how to get into it."

"Never mind getting into it. You have it in your possession, that's the main thing. Scotland Yard asked you for it, but you, very wisely and loyally, concluded that it was better in the Office's hands than theirs. We're grateful for that. It's been noted."

It was a statement, it was a binary question. Tick box A for yes I have it, box B for no I haven't. It was an order and a challenge. And judging by her crystal stare, it was a threat.

"And disks, obviously," she added while she waited. "She was an efficient woman, which makes it all so odd, a lawyer. She's sure to have made copies of whatever was important to her. In the circumstances these disks also constitute a breach of security and we'd like them as well, please."

"There aren't any disks. Weren't."

"Of course there were. How can she have run a computer without keeping disks?"

"I looked high and low. There weren't any."

"How very bizarre."

"Yes, isn't it?"

"So I think the best thing you can do, Justin, on reflection, is bring everything you've got into the Office as soon as you've unpacked it, and let us handle it from then on. To spare you the pain and the responsibility. Yes? We can do a deal. Anything that isn't relevant to our concerns belongs to you exclusively. We'll print it out, and give it to you, and nobody here will read it or evaluate it or commit it to memory in any way. Shall we send somebody with you now? Would that help? Yes?"

"I'm not sure."

"Not sure you want a second person? You should be. A sympathetic colleague of your own grade? Someone you can trust entirely? Now are you sure?"

"It was Tessa's, you see. She bought it, she used it."

"So?"

"So I'm not sure you should be asking me to do that. Give you her property to be plundered just because she's dead." Feeling sleepy, he closed his eyes a moment, then shook his head to wake himself. "Anyway, it's not an issue, is it?"

"Why not, pray?"

"Because I haven't got it." He stood up, taking himself by surprise, but he needed a stretch and some fresh air. "The Kenyan police probably stole it. They steal most things. Thank you, Alison. You've been very kind."

Recovering the Gladstone from the head janitor took a little longer than was natural.

"Sorry to be premature," Justin said while he waited.

"You're not premature at all, sir," the head janitor retorted, and flushed.

* * *

"Justin, my dear fellow!"

Justin had started to give his name to the club porter at the door, but Pellegrin was ahead of him, pounding down the steps to claim him, smiling his decent chap's smile and calling out, "He's mine, Jimmy, shove his bag in your glory hole and put him down to me," before grasping Justin's hand and flinging his other arm round Justin's shoulders in a powerful un-English gesture of friendship and commiseration.

"You're up to this, are you?" he asked confidingly, first making sure no one was within earshot. "We can take a walk in the park if you'd rather. Or do it another time. Just say."

"I'm fine, Bernard. Really."

"The Beast of Landsbury didn't wear you out?"

"Not a bit."

"I've booked us in the dining room. There's a bar lunch, but it's eat off your crotch and a lot of ex-Office wrinklies moaning about Suez. Need a pee?"

The dining room was a risen catafalque with painted cherubs posturing in a ceiling of blue sky. Pellegrin's chosen place of worship was a corner sheltered by a polished granite pillar and a sad dracaena palm. Round them sat the timeless Whitehall brethren in chemical gray suits and school haircuts. This was my world, Justin explained to her. When I married you, I was still one of them.

"Let's get rid of the hard work first," Pellegrin proposed masterfully, when a West Indian waiter in a mauve dinner jacket had handed them menus shaped like Ping-Pong bats. And that was tactful of Pellegrin and typical of his decent chap's image, because by studying menus they were able to settle to each other and avoid eye contact. "Flight bearable?"

"Very, thank you. They upgraded me."

"Marvelous, marvelous, marvelous girl, Justin," Pellegrin murmured, over the parapet of his Ping-Pong bat. "Enough said."

"Thank you, Bernard."

"Great spirit, great guts. Bugger the rest. Meat or fish? — not a Monday — what have you been eating out there?"

Justin had known Bernard Pellegrin in snatches for most of his career. He had followed Bernard in Ottawa and they had briefly coincided in Beirut. In London they had attended a hostage survival course together and shared such gems as how to establish that you are being pursued by a group of armed thugs not afraid to die; how to preserve your dignity when they blindfold you and bind you hand and foot with sticky plaster and sling you into the boot of their Mercedes; and the best way to jump out of an upper-story window if you can't use the stairs but presumably have your feet free.

"All journalists are shits," Pellegrin declared confidently, still from inside his menu. "Know what I'm going to do one day? Doorstep the buggers. Do what they did to you, but do it back to 'em. Rent a mob, picket the editor of the Grauniad and the Screws of the World while they're having it away with their floozies. Photograph their kids going to school. Ask their wives what their old men are like in bed. Show the shits what it feels like to be at the receiving end. Did you want to take a machine gun to the lot of 'em?"

"Not really."

"Me too. Illiterate bunch of hypocrites. Herring fillet's all right. Smoked eel makes me fart. Sole meuniere's good if you like sole. If you don't, have it grilled." He was writing on a printed pad. It had SIR BERNARD P printed in electronic capitals at the top, and the food options listed on the left side, and boxes to tick on the right, and space for the member's signature at the bottom.

"A sole would be fine."

Pellegrin doesn't listen, Justin remembered. It's what got him his reputation as a negotiator.

"Grilled?"

"Meuniere."

"Landsbury in form?"

"Fighting fit."

"She tell you she was a Madeira cake?"

"I'm afraid she did."

"She wants to watch that one. She talk to you about your future?"

"I'm in trauma and on indefinite sick leave."

"Shrimps do you?"

"I think I'd prefer the avocado, thank you," Justin said, and watched Pellegrin tick shrimp cocktail twice.

"The Foreign Office formally disapproves of drinking at lunchtime these days, you'll be relieved to hear," Pellegrin said, surprising Justin with a full-beam smile. Then, in case the first application hadn't taken, a second one. And Justin remembered that the smiles were always the same: the same length, the same duration, the same degree of spontaneous warmth. "However, you're a compassionate case and it's my painful duty to keep you company. They do a passable sub-Meursault. You good for your half?" His silver propelling pencil ticked the appropriate box. "You're cleared, by the by. Off the hook. Sprung. Congratulations." He tore off the chit and weighed it down with the saltcellar to prevent it from blowing away.

"Cleared of what?"

"Murder, what else? You didn't kill Tessa or her driver, you didn't hire contract killers in a den of vice, and you haven't got Bluhm swinging by his balls in your attic. You can leave the courtroom without a stain on your escutcheon. Courtesy of the coppers." The order form had disappeared from underneath the saltcellar. The waiter must have taken it, but Justin in his out-of-body state had failed to spot the maneuver. "What sort of gardening you get up to out there by the by? Promised Celly I'd ask you." Celly short for Celine, Pellegrin's terrifying wife. "Exotics? Succulents? Not my scene, I'm afraid."

"Pretty well everything really," Justin heard himself say. "The Kenyan climate is extremely benign. I didn't know there was a stain on my escutcheon, Bernard. There was a theory, I suppose. But it was only a remote hypothesis."

"Had all sorts of theories, poor darlings. Theories far above their station, frankly. You must come down to Dorchester sometime. Talk to Celly about it. Do a weekend. Play tennis?"

"I'm afraid I don't."

They had all sorts of theories, he was surreptitiously repeating to himself. Poor darlings. Pellegrin speaks about Rob and Lesley the way Landsbury spoke about Porter Coleridge. That turd Tom Somebody was about to get Belgrade, Pellegrin was saying, largely because the Secretary of State couldn't stand the sight of his beastly face in London, and who could? Dick Somebody Else was getting his K in the next Honors, then with any luck he'd be kicked upstairs to Treasury — God help the national economy, joke — but of course old Dick's been kissing New Labor arse for the last five years. Otherwise, it was business as usual. The Office continued to fill up with the same redbrick achievers from Croydon with offcolor accents and Fair Isle pullovers that Justin would remember from his pre-Africa days; in ten years' time there wouldn't be One of Us left. The waiter brought two shrimp cocktails. Justin watched their arrival in slow motion.

"But then they were young, weren't they?" Pellegrin said indulgently, resuming his requiem mode.

"The new entrants? Of course they were."

"Your little policemen people in Nairobi. Young and hungry, bless 'em. As we all were once."

"I thought they were rather clever."

Pellegrin frowned and chewed. "David Quayle any relation of yours?"

"My nephew."

"We signed him up last week. Only twenty-one, but how else d'you beat the City to the draw these days? Godchild o' mine started up at Barclays last week on forty-five grand a year plus treats. Thick as two planks and still wet behind the ears."

"Good for David. I didn't know."

"Extraordinary choice for Gridley to have made, be honest, sending out a woman like that to Africa. Frank's worked diplomats. Knows the scene. Who's going to take a female copper seriously over there? Not Moi's Boys, that's for sure."

"Gridley?" Justin repeated, as the mists in his head cleared. "That's not Frank Arthur Gridley? The fellow who was in charge of diplomatic security?"

"The same, God help us."

"But he's an absolute ninny. We dealt with him when I was in Protocol Department." Justin heard his voice rising above the club's approved decibel level, and hastened to bring it down.

"Wood from the neck," Pellegrin agreed cheerfully.

"So what on earth's he doing investigating Tessa's murder?"

"Limoge to Serious Crime. Specialist in overseas cases. You know what coppers are like," said Pellegrin, stacking his mouth with shrimps and bread and butter.

"I know what Gridley's like."

Masticating shrimp, Pellegrin lapsed into High Tory telegramese. "Two young police officers, one of 'em a woman. T'other thinks he's Robin Hood. High-profile case, eyes of the world on 'em. Start to see their names going up in lights." He adjusted the napkin at his throat. "So they cook up theories. Nothing like a good theory to impress a half-educated superior." He drank, then hammered his mouth with a corner of his napkin. "Contract killers — bent African governments — multinational conglomerates — fabulous stuff! May even get a part in the movie, if they're lucky."

"What multinational did they have in mind?" Justin asked, contriving to ignore the disgusting notion of a film about Tessa's death.

Pellegrin caught his eye, measured it a moment, smiled, then smiled again. "Turn of phrase," he explained dismissively. "Not to be taken literally. Those young coppers were looking the wrong way from day one," he resumed, diverting himself while the waiter refilled their glasses. "Deplorable, actually. De-fucking-plorable. Not you, Matthew, old chap — " this to the waiter, in a spirit of good fellowship toward ethnic minorities — "and not a member of this club either, I'm pleased to say." The waiter fled. "Tried to pin it on Sandy for five minutes, if you can believe it. Some fatuous theory that he was in love with her, and had 'em both killed out of jealousy. When they couldn't get anywhere with that one, they hit the conspiracy button. Easiest thing in the world. Cherry-pick a few facts, cobble 'em together, listen to a couple of disgruntled alarmists with an axe to grind, throw in a household name or two, you can put together any bloody story you want. What Tessa did, if you don't mind my saying so. Well, you know all about that."

Justin blindly shook his head. I'm not hearing this. I'm back on the plane and it's a dream. "I'm afraid I don't," he said.

Pellegrin had very small eyes. Justin hadn't noticed this before. Or perhaps they were a standard size, but had developed the art of dwindling under enemy fire — the enemy, so far as Justin could determine, being anyone who held Pellegrin to what he had just said, or took the conversation into territory not previously charted by him.

"Sole all right? You should have had the meuniere. Not so dry."

His sole was marvelous, Justin said, forbearing to add that meuniere was what he had asked for. And the sub-Meursault also marvelous. Marvelous, like marvelous girl.

"She didn't show it to you. Her great thesis. Their great thesis, if you'll forgive me. That's your story and you're sticking to it. Right?"

"Thesis about what? The police asked me the same question. So did Alison Landsbury in a roundabout way. What thesis?" He was acting simple and beginning to believe himself. He was fishing again, but in disguise.

"She didn't show it to you but she showed it to Sandy," said Pellegrin, washing the information down with a pull of wine. "Is that what you want me to believe?"

Justin sat bolt upright. "She what?"

"Absolutely. Secret rendezvous, whole works. Sorry about that. Thought you knew."

But you're relieved I don't, thought Justin, still staring at Pellegrin in mystification. "So what did Sandy do with it?" he asked.

"Showed it to Porter. Porter dithered. Porter takes decisions once a year with lots of water. Sandy sent it to me. Coauthored and marked confidential. Not by Sandy. By Tessa and Bluhm. Those aid heroes make me sick, by the way, if you feel like letting off steam. Teddy bears' picnic for international bureaucrats. Diversion. Sorry."

"So what did you do with it? For God's sake, Bernard!"

I'm the deluded widower at the end of my tether. I'm the injured innocent, not quite as innocent as I'm sounding. I'm the indignant husband, cut out of the loop by my wandering wife and her lover. "Will somebody please finally tell me what this is about?" he went on, in the same querulous voice. "I've been Sandy's reluctant houseguest for the better part of an eternity. He never breathed a word to me about a secret rendezvous with Tessa or Arnold or anybody else. What thesis? Thesis about what?" Still prodding.

Pellegrin was smiling again. Once. Twice. "So it's all news to you. Jolly good."

"Yes. It is. I'm completely fogged."

"Girl like that, half your age, stepping high, wide and loose, never crossed your mind to ask her what the fuck she's up to."

The Pellegrin is angry, Justin noted. As Landsbury was. As I am. We're all angry and we're all concealing it.

"No, it didn't. And she wasn't half my age."

"Never looked in her diary, picked up the telephone extension by-mistake-on-purpose. Never read her mail or peeked in her computer. Zero."

"Zero to all of it."

Pellegrin was musing aloud, eyes on Justin. "So nothing got through to you. Hear no evil, see no evil. Amazing," he said, barely managing to keep his sarcasm within bounds.

"She was a lawyer, Bernard. She wasn't a child. She was a fully qualified, very smart lawyer. You forget."

"Do I? Not sure I do." He put on his reading spectacles in order to work his way to the lower half of his sole. When he had done so, he held up its spine with his knife and fork while he peered round like a helpless invalid for a waiter who could bring him a debris plate. "Just hope she confined her representations to Sandy Woodrow, that's all. Pestered the main player, we know that."

"What main player? You mean you?"

"Curtiss. Kenny K himself. The man." A plate appeared and Pellegrin laid the spine on it. "Surprised she didn't throw herself in front of his bloody racehorses while she was about it. Go sing it to Brussels. Go sing it to the United Nations. Go sing it on TV. Girl like that, mission to save the globe, goes wherever her fancy takes her and to hell with the consequences."

"That's not true at all," said Justin, wrestling with astonishment and serious rage.

"Say again?"

"Tessa went to great pains to protect me. And her country."

"By raking up muck? Blowing it out of all proportion? Importuning hubby's boss? Barging in on overworked company executives with Bluhm on her arm — not my idea of protecting her chap. More like the fast lane to wrecking the poor sod's chances if you ask me. Not that your chances were all that bright by then, if we're honest." A pull of fizzy water. "Ah. Got it now. I see what happened." A double smile. "You really don't know the back story. You're sticking to that."

"Yes. I am. I'm utterly bewildered. The police ask me, Alison asks me, you ask me — was I really in the dark? Answer, yes I was, and yes I still am."

Pellegrin was already shaking his head in amused disbelief. "Old boy. How's this? Listen a mo. I could live with this. So could Alison. They came to you. The two of 'em. Tessa and Arnold. Hand in hand. "Help us, Justin. We've found the smoking gun. Old, established, British-based company is poisoning innocent Kenyans, using 'em as guinea pigs, Christ knows what. Whole villages of corpses out there and here's the proof. Read it." Right?"

"They did nothing of the kind."

"Not done yet. Nobody's trying to pin anything on you, right? It's open doors round here. Everyone's your chum."

"So I've noticed."

"You hear 'em out. Decent chap that you are. You read their eighteen-page Armageddon scenario and you tell 'em they're out of their tiny minds. If they want to foul up Anglo-Kenyan relations for the next twenty years, they've found the ideal formula. Wise chap. If Celly had tried that one with me, I'd have given her a bloody good kick in the arse. And like you, I'd pretend the meeting never happened, which it didn't. Right? We'll forget it as fast as you did. Nothing on your file, nothing in Alison's little black book. Deal?"

"They didn't come to me, Bernard. Nobody pitched me a story, nobody showed me an Armageddon scenario, as you call it. Not Tessa, not Bluhm, not anyone. It's all a total mystery to me."

"Girl called Ghita Pearson, who the hell's she?"

"A junior member of Chancery. Anglo-Indian. Very bright and locally employed. Mother's a doctor. Why?"

"Apart from that."

"A friend of Tessa's. And mine."

"Could she have seen it?"

"The document? I'm sure not."

"Why?"

"Tessa would have kept it from her."

"She didn't keep it from Sandy Woodrow."

"Ghita's too fragile. She's trying to make herself a career with us. Tessa wouldn't have wanted to put her in an untenable position."

Pellegrin needed more salt, which he distributed by putting a small pile of it in his left palm, taking pinches with his right forefinger and thumb, then brushing his two hands together.

"Anyway. You're off the hook," he reminded Justin as if this were a consolation prize. "We won't be standing at the prison gates, shoving baguettes au fromage at you through the bars."

"So you said. I'm glad to hear it."

"That's the good news. Bad news is — your chum Arnold. Yours and Tessa's."

"Have they found him?"

Pellegrin shook his head grimly. "They've rumbled him, but they haven't found him. But they're hoping."

"Rumbled him for what? What are you talking about?"

"Deep waters, old boy. Very hard to navigate in your state of health. Wish we could be having this conversation in a few weeks' time when you've got your bearings, but we can't. Murder investigations are no respecters of persons unfortunately. They go at their own speed in their own way. Bluhm was your chum, Tessa was your wife. Not much fun for any of us to have to tell you chum killed wife."

Justin stared at Pellegrin in unfeigned astonishment, but Pellegrin was too busy with his fish to notice. "But what about the forensic evidence?" he heard himself ask, from some frozen planet. "The green safari truck? The beer bottles and cigarette ends? The two men who were spotted in Marsabit? What about — I don't know — ThreeBees, all the things the British police were asking me about?"

Pellegrin was smiling the first of his two smiles before Justin had finished speaking. "Fresh evidence, old boy. Conclusive, I'm afraid." He popped another piece of roll. "Coppers have found his clothes. Bluhm's. Buried at the lakeside. Not his safari jacket. He left that in the jeep as a blind. Shirt, trousers, underpants, socks, sneakers. Know what they found in the pocket of the trousers? Car keys. From the jeep. The ones he'd locked the jeep door with. Gives a new meaning to what the Yanks call closure these days. Very common thing with your crime of passion, I'm told. You kill somebody, lock the door behind you, lock up your mind. Thing never happened. Memory erased. Classic."

Distracted by Justin's incredulous expression, Pellegrin paused, then spoke in a voice of conclusion.

"I'm an Oswald man, Justin. Lee Harvey Oswald shot John F. Kennedy. Nobody helped him do it. Arnold Bluhm lost his rag and killed Tessa. The driver objected so Bluhm took a swing at him too. Then he chucked his head into the bushes for the jackals. Basta. There comes a moment, after all the wanking and fantasizing, when we're reduced to accepting the obvious. Sticky toffee pudding? Apple crumble?" He signaled to the waiter for coffee. "Mind if I give you one quiet word of warning between old friends?"

"Please do."

"You're on sick leave. You're in hell. But you're old Office, you know the rules and you're still an Africa man. And you're on my watch." And lest Justin might think this was some kind of romantic definition of his status: "Plenty of plums out there for a chap who's got himself sorted. Plenty of places I wouldn't be seen dead in. And if you're harboring so-called confidential information that you shouldn't have — in your head or anywhere else — it belongs to us, not you. Rougher world these days than the one we grew up in. Lot of mean chaps around with everything to go for and a lot to lose. Makes for bad manners."

As we have learned to our cost, thought Justin from far inside his glass capsule. He rose weightlessly from the table and was surprised to see his own image in a great number of mirrors at the same time. He saw himself from all angles, at all ages of his life. Justin the lost child in big houses, friend of cooks and gardeners. Justin the schoolboy rugby star, Justin the professional bachelor, burying his loneliness in numbers. Justin the Foreign Office white hope and nohoper, photographed with his friend the dracaena palm. Justin the newly widowed father of his dead and only son.

"You've been very kind, Bernard. Thank you."

Thank you for the master class in sophistry, he meant, if he meant anything. Thank you for proposing a film of my wife's murder and riding roughshod over every last sensitivity I had left. Thank you for her eighteen-page Armageddon scenario and her secret rendezvous with Woodrow, and other tantalizing additions to my awakening recollection. And thank you for the quiet word of warning, delivered with the glint of steel in your eye. Because when I look closely, I see the same glint in mine.

"You've gone pale," Pellegrin said accusingly. "Something wrong, old boy?"

"I'm fine. All the better for seeing you, Bernard."

"Get some sleep. You're running on empty. And we must do that weekend. Bring a chum. Someone who can play a bit."

"Arnold Bluhm never hurt a living soul," Justin said, carefully and clearly, as Pellegrin helped him into his raincoat and gave him back his bag. But whether he said this aloud, or to the thousand voices screaming in his head, he could not be absolutely sure.