The Constant Gardener (52 page)

“No, indeed,” Justin agrees.

“Couple of hours, we could be in Nairobi.”

Justin shakes his head.

“Want me to stretch a point and take you over the border to Kampala? We've got fuel.”

“You're very kind.”

The road reappears, sandy and deserted. The plane reacts violently, nosing left and right like a plunging horse, as if nature is telling it to go back.

“Worst winds for miles around,” McKenzie says. “Region's famous for 'em.”

The town of Lodwar lies below them, set small among cone-shaped black hills, none more than a couple of hundred feet high. It looks neat and purposeful, with tin roofs, a tarmac airstrip and a school.

“No industry,” McKenzie says. “Great market for cows, donkeys and camels if you're interested in buying.”

“I'm not,” says Justin with a smile.

“One hospital, one school, lot of army. Lodwar's the security center for the whole area. Soldiers spend most of their time in the Apoi hills, chasing bandits to no effect. Bandits from Sudan, bandits from Uganda, bandits from Somalia. A real nice catchment area for bandits. Cattle thieving is the local sport,” McKenzie recites, back in his role of tour guide. “The Mandango steal cattle, dance for two weeks till another tribe steals them back.”

“How far from Lodwar to the lake?” asks Justin.

“Give or take, fifty kilometers. Go to Kalokol. There's a fishing lodge there. Ask for a boatman called Mickie. His boy's Abraham. Abraham's all right as long as he's with Mickie, poison on his own.”

“Thanks.”

Conversation ends. McKenzie overflies the airstrip, waving his wingtips to signal his intent to land. He climbs again and returns. Suddenly they are on the ground. There is nothing more to say except, once more, thanks.

“If you need me, find someone who can call me on the radio,” McKenzie says as they stand sweltering on the airstrip. “If I can't help you, there's a guy called Martin, runs the Nairobi School of Flying. Flying for thirty years. Trained in Perth and Oxford. Mention my name.”

Thanks, says Justin again and, in his anxiety to be courteous, writes it down.

“Want to borrow my flight bag?” McKenzie asks, making a gesture with the black briefcase in his right hand. “Long-barreled target pistol, if you're interested. Gives you a chance at forty yards.”

“Oh, I'd be no good at ten,” Justin exclaims, with the kind of self-effacing laugh that dates from his days before Tessa.

“And this is Justice,” McKenzie says, introducing a grizzled philosopher in a tattered T-shirt and green sandals who has appeared from nowhere. “Justice is your driver. Justin, meet Justice. Justice, meet Justin. Justice has a gentleman called Ezra who will be riding point with him. Anything more I can do for you?”

Justin draws a thick envelope from the pocket of his bush jacket. “I'd like you please to post this for me when you're next in Nairobi. Just the ordinary mail will do fine. She's not a girlfriend. She's my lawyer's aunt.”

“Tonight soon enough?”

“Tonight would be splendid.”

“Take care then,” says McKenzie, slipping the envelope into his flight bag.

“Indeed I will,” says Justin, and this time manages not to tell McKenzie he's been very kind.

•      •      •

The lake was white and gray and silver and the overhead sun made black and white stripes of Mickie's fishing boat, black in the shadow of the canopy, white and pitiless where the sun shone freely on the woodwork, white on the skin of the freshwater that popped and bubbled with the rising fish, white on the misted gray mountains that arched their backs under the sun's heat, white where it struck the black faces of old Mickie and his young companion the poisonous Abraham—a sneering, secretly angry child; McKenzie was quite right—who for some unfathomable reason spoke German and not English, so that the conversation, what there was of it, was three-cornered: German to Abraham, English to old Mickie and their own version of kiSwahili when they spoke between themselves. White also whenever Justin looked at Tessa, which was often, perched tomboy-style on the ship's prow where she was determined to sit despite the crocodiles, with one hand for the boat the way her father had taught her and Arnold never far away in case she slipped. On the boat's radio an English-language cookery program was extolling the virtues of sun-dried tomatoes.

At first it had been difficult for Justin to explain his destination in any language. They might never have heard of Allia Bay. Allia Bay didn't interest them in the least. Old Mickie wanted to take him due southeast to Wolfgang's Oasis where he belonged, and the poisonous Abraham had hotly seconded the motion: the Oasis was where Wazungu stayed, it was the first hotel in the region, famous for its film stars and rock stars and millionaires, the Oasis without a doubt was where Justin was heading, whether he knew it or not. It was only when Justin drew a small photograph of Tessa from his wallet—a passport photograph, nothing that had been defiled by the newspapers—that the purpose of his mission became clear to them, and they became quiet and uneasy. So Justin wished to visit the place where Noah and the Mzungu woman were murdered? Abraham demanded.

Yes, please.

Was Justin then aware that many police and journalists had visited this place, that everything that could be found there had been found, also that Lodwar police and the Nairobi flying squad had separately and together decreed the place to be a forbidden area to tourists, sightseers, trophy-hunters and anybody else who had no business there? Abraham persisted.

Justin was not, but his intention remained the same, and he was prepared to pay generously to see it fulfilled.

Or that the place was well known to be haunted, and had been even before Noah and the Mzungu were murdered?—but with much less conviction, now that the financial side was settled.

Justin vowed he had no fear of ghosts.

At first in deference to the gloomy nature of their errand, the old man and his helper had adopted a melancholy pose, and it took all Tessa's determined good spirits to bounce them out of it. But as usual, with the help of a string of witty comments from the prow, she succeeded. The presence of other fishing boats farther up the sky was also a help. She called out to them—what have you caught? —and they called back to her—this many red fish, this many blue, this many rainbow. And so infectious was her enthusiasm that Justin soon persuaded Mickie and Abraham to put a line out themselves, which also had the effect of diverting their curiosity into more productive paths.

“You are all right, sir?” Mickie asked him, from quite close, peering like an old doctor into his eyes.

“I'm fine. Fine. Just fine.”

“I think you have a fever, sir. Why don't you relax under the canopy and let me bring you some cold drink.”

“Fine. We both will.”

“Thank you, sir. I have to attend to the boat.”

Justin sits under the canopy, using the ice from his glass to cool his neck and forehead while he rides with the motion of the boat. It is an odd company they have brought with them, he has to admit, but then Tessa is absolutely wanton when it comes to extending invitations, and really one just has to bite one's lip and double the number one first thought of. Good to see Porter here, and you too, Veronica, and your baby Rosie always a pleasure, no—no objections there. And Tessa always seems to get that bit more out of Rosie than anybody else can. But Bernard and Celly Pellegrin a total mistake, darling, and how absolutely typical of Bernard to include three rackets, not just one, in his beastly tennis kit. As for the Woodrows-honestly, it's time you overcame your laudable but misplaced conviction that even the most unpromising among us have hearts of gold, and you're the one to prove it to them. And for God's sake stop peeking at me as if you're about to make love to me at any moment. Sandy's going half crazy from looking down your shirtfront as it is.

“What is it?” Justin asked sharply.

At first he thought it was Mustafa. Gradually he realized that Mickie had taken a fistful of his shirt above his right shoulder blade and was shaking it to wake him.

“We've arrived, sir, on the eastern shore. We are close to the place where the tragedy happened.”

“How far?”

“To walk, ten minutes, sir. We will accompany you.”

“That's not necessary.”

“It is most necessary, sir.”

“Was fehlt dir?” Abraham asked, over Mickie's shoulder.

“Nichts. Nothing. I'm fine. You've both been very kind.”

“Drink some more water, sir,” Mickie said, holding a fresh glass to him.

They make quite a column, clambering over the slabs of lava rock here at the cradle of civilization, Justin has to admit. “Never realized there were so many civilized chaps around,” he tells Tessa, doing his English bloody fool act, and Tessa laughs for him, that silent laugh she does when she smiles delightedly and shakes and generally does all the right things but no sound issues. Gloria leads the way, well, she would. With that royal British stride of hers and those elbows she can outmarch the lot of us. Pellegrin bitching, which is also normal. His wife Celly saying she can't take the heat, what's new? Rosie Coleridge on her dad's back, having a good sing in Tessa's honor—how on earth did we all fit into the boat?

Mickie had stopped, one hand held lightly on Justin's arm. Abraham was standing close behind him.

“This is the place where your wife passed away, sir,” said Mickie softly.

But he need not have bothered because Justin knew exactly—even if he didn't know how Mickie had deduced that he was Tessa's husband, but perhaps Justin had informed him of this fact in his sleep. He had seen the place in photographs, in the gloom of the lower ground and in his dreams. Here ran what looked like a dried riverbed. Over there stood the sad little heap of stones erected by Ghita and her friends. Around it—but spreading in all directions, alas—lay the junk that was these days inseparable from any well-publicized event: discarded film cassettes and boxes, cigarette packets, plastic bottles and paper plates. Higher up —maybe thirty or so yards up the white rock slope—ran the dust road where the long-wheelbase safari truck had pulled alongside Tessa's jeep and shot its wheel off, sending the jeep careering down this same slope with Tessa's murderers in hot pursuit with their pangas and guns and whatever else they were carrying. And over there—Mickie was silently pointing them out with his gnarled old finger—were the blue smears of the Oasis four-track's paintwork left on the rock face as it slid into the gully. And the rock face, unlike the black volcanic rock surrounding it, was white as a gravestone. And perhaps the brown stains on it were indeed blood, as Mickie was suggesting. But when Justin examined them, he concluded they might as well be lichen. Otherwise he observed little of interest to the observant gardener, beyond yellow spear grass and a row of doum palms that as usual looked as though they had been planted by the municipality. A few euphorbia shrubs—well, naturally-making themselves a precarious living among chunks of black basalt. And a spectral white commiphora tree—when were they ever in leaf?—its spindly branches stretched to either side of it like the wings of a moth. He selected a basalt boulder and sat on it. He felt light-headed, but lucid. Mickie handed him a water bottle and Justin took a pull from it, screwed the top back on and set it at his feet.

“I'd like to be alone for a little while, Mickie,” he said. “Why don't you and Abraham go and catch a fish and I'll call to you from the shore when I'm done?”

“We would prefer to wait for you with the boat, sir.”

“Why not fish?”

“We would prefer to remain here with you. You have a fever.”

“It's going now. Just a couple of hours.” He looked at his watch. It was four in the afternoon. “When's dusk?”

“At seven o'clock, sir.”

“Fine. Well, you can have me at dusk. If I need anything I'll call.” And more firmly, “I want to be alone, Mickie. That's what I came here for.”

“Yes sir.”

He didn't hear them leave. For a while he heard no sounds at all, except for the odd popping of the lake, and the putter of an occasional fishing boat. He heard a jackal howl, and a lot of backchat from a family of vultures that had commandeered a doum palm down on the lakeside. And he heard Tessa telling him that if she had it all to do again, this was still where she would want to do her dying, in Africa, on her way to heading off a great injustice. He drank some water, stood up, stretched and wandered over to the paint marks because that was where he knew for a surety that he was close to her. It didn't take much working out. If he put his hands on the marks he was about eighteen inches from her, if you discounted the width of the car door. Or maybe twice that much if you imagined Arnold in between. He even managed to have a bit of a laugh with her because he'd always had the devil's own job persuading her to wear her seat belt. On potholed African roads, she had argued, with her usual stubbornness, you were better off hanging loose: at least you could weave and dodge around inside the car instead of being plonked like a sack of potatoes into every bloody crater. And from the paint marks he made his way to the bottom of the gully and, hands in pockets, stood beside the dried-up riverbed, staring back at the spot where the jeep had come to rest and imagining poor Arnold being hauled senseless from it, to be taken to his place of prolonged and terrible execution.

Then, as a methodical man, he returned to the boulder he had chosen as his sitting place when he first came here, and sat down on it again, and devoted himself to the study of a small blue flower not unlike the phlox that he had planted in the front garden of their house in Nairobi. But the problem was, he was not absolutely sure the flower belonged to the place where he was seeing it, or whether in his mind he had transplanted it from Nairobi or, come to think of it, from the meadows surrounding his hotel in the Engadine. Also his interest in flora generally was at a low ebb. He no longer wished to cultivate the image of a sweet chap passionately interested in nothing except phlox, asters, freesias and gardenias. And he was still reflecting on this transition in his nature when he heard the sound of an engine from the direction of the shore, first the little explosion of it as it sprang to life, then its steady chugging as it faded into the distance. Mickie's decided to have a go after all, he thought; for your true fisherman, rising fish at dusk are an irresistible temptation. And after that, he remembered his attempts to persuade Tessa to go fishing with him, which invariably ended with no fish but a lot of undisciplined lovemaking, which was perhaps why he was so keen on persuading her. And he was still humorously contemplating the logistics of making love in the bottom of a small boat when he had a different idea about Mickie's fishing expedition, namely that it wasn't happening.

Mickie didn't mess about, change his mind, give in to whims.

That wasn't Mickie at all.

The thing about Mickie that you knew the moment you set eyes on him, and Tessa had said the same, was that this fellow was your born family retainer, which was why, to be honest, it was easy to confuse him with Mustafa.

So Mickie hadn't gone fishing.

But he'd gone. Whether he'd taken the poisonous Abraham with him was a moot point. But Mickie had gone, and the boat had gone. Back across the lake—that boat's engine had faded and faded.

So why had he gone? Who had told him to go? Paid him to go? Ordered him to go? Threatened him if he didn't go? What message had Mickie received, over his boat's radio, or man to man from another boat or somebody on the shore, that had persuaded him, against all the natural lines of his good face, to walk out on a job when he hadn't been paid for it? Or had Markus Lorbeer the compulsive Judas taken out some more insurance with his friends in the industry? He was still mulling over this possibility when he heard another engine, this time from the direction of the road. The dusk was falling quickly by now, and the light already fickle, so he might have expected a passing car at this hour to put on its sidelights at the very least, but this one—car or whatever—hadn't done so, which was a puzzle to him.

One thought he had—probably because the car was moving at a snail's pace—was that it was Ham, driving at his habitual five miles an hour below the speed limit, come to announce that Justin's letters to the ferocious aunt in Milan had been safely received, and that Tessa's great injustice would shortly be righted on the lines of her oft-stated conviction that the system must be forced to mend its own ways from within. Then he thought: It's not a car at all, I've got it wrong. It's a small plane. Then the sound stopped altogether, which almost succeeded in convincing him it had been an illusion in the first place—that he was hearing Tessa's jeep, for instance, and any second it was going to pull up just above him on the road there and she was going to hop out wearing both Mephisto boots, and come skipping down the slope to congratulate him on taking over where she'd left off. But it wasn't Tessa's jeep, it didn't belong to anyone he knew. What he was looking at was the elusive shape of a long-wheelbase jeep or four-track—no, safari truck—either dark blue or dark green, in the fast-vanishing light it was hard to tell, and it had stopped in exactly the spot where he had just been watching Tessa. And although he had been expecting something of the kind ever since he had returned to Nairobi—even in a remote way wishing for it, and had therefore regarded Donohue's warning to him as superfluous—he greeted the sight with an extraordinary sense of exultation, not to say completion. He had met her betrayers, of course—Pellegrin, Woodrow, Lorbeer. He had rewritten her scandalously discarded memorandum for her—if in a piecemeal form, but that couldn't be avoided. And now, it seemed, he was about to share with her the last of all her secrets.

A second truck had pulled up behind the first. He heard light footsteps and made out the fast-moving shapes of fit men in bulky clothes crouching at the run. He heard a man or woman whistle and an answering whistle from behind him. He imagined, and perhaps it was true, that he caught a whiff of Sportsman cigarette smoke. The darkness grew suddenly deeper as lights came on around him and the brightest of them picked him out, and held him in its beam.

He heard a sound of feet sliding down white rock.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Let me rush to the protection of the British High Commission in Nairobi. It is not the place I described, for I have never been inside it. It is not staffed by the people I have described, for I have never met nor spoken to them. I met the High Commissioner a couple of years back, and we had a ginger beer together on the veranda of the Norfolk Hotel and that was all. He bears not the least resemblance, externally or otherwise, to my Porter Coleridge. As to poor Sandy Woodrow—well, if there were a Head of Chancery at all in the British High Commission in Nairobi as I write, you may be sure he would be a diligent and upstanding man or woman who never covets a colleague's spouse or destroys inconvenient documents. But there isn't. Heads of Chancery in Nairobi, as in many other British missions, have fallen to the axe of time.

In these dog days when lawyers rule the universe, I have to persist with these disclaimers, which happen to be perfectly true. With one exception nobody in this story, and no outfit or corporation, thank God, is based upon an actual person or outfit in the real world, whether we are thinking of Woodrow, Pellegrin, Landsbury, Crick, Curtiss and his dreaded House of ThreeBees, or Messrs. Karel Vita Hudson, also known as KVH. The exception is the great and good Wolfgang of the Oasis Lodge, a character so imprinted upon the memory of all who visit him that it would be ridiculous to attempt to create a fictional equivalent. In his sovereignty, Wolfgang raised no objection to my traducing his name and voice.

There is no Dypraxa, never was, never will be. I know of no wonder cure for TB that has recently been launched on the African market or any other—or is about to be—so with luck I shall not be spending the rest of my life in the law courts or worse, though nowadays you can never be sure. But I can tell you this. As my journey through the pharmaceutical jungle progressed, I came to realize that, by comparison with the reality, my story was as tame as a holiday postcard.

On a happier note, let me warmly thank those who helped me and are willing to have their names mentioned, as well as others who helped me and for good reasons are not.

Ted Younie, a longtime and compassionate observer of the African scene, first whispered pharmaceuticals in my ear and later purged my text of several solecisms.

Dr. David Miller, a physician with experience of Africa and the Third World, first suggested tuberculosis as the way, and opened my eyes to the costly and sophisticated campaign of seduction waged by pharmaceutical companies against the medical profession.

Dr. Peter Godfrey-Faussett, a senior lecturer at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, gave me precious expert advice, both at the outset and again at the manuscript stage.

Arthur, a man of many trades and son of my late American publisher Jack Geoghegan, told me horrendous tales of his time as a pharma man in Moscow and Eastern Europe. Jack's benign spirit presided over us.

Daniel Berman of Medecins Sans Frontieres in Geneva provided me with a briefing that was three-star Michelin: worth the whole journey.

BUKO Pharma-Kampagne of Bielefeld in Germany—not to be confused with Hippo in my novel—is an independently financed, undermanned body of sane, well-qualified people who struggle to expose the misdeeds of the pharmaceutical industry, particularly in its dealings with the Third World. If you are feeling generous, please send them some money to help them continue their work. As medical opinion continues to be insidiously and methodically corrupted by the pharmagiants, BUKO'S survival assumes ever greater importance. And BUKO not only helped me greatly. They actually urged me to extol the virtues of responsible pharmaceutical companies. For love of them, I tried here and there to do as they asked, but it wasn't what the story was about.