He enters a crowded concourse and sees Bluhm engaged in a heated conversation with another man. First he hears Bluhm's voice — though not the words — strident and accusing, echoing in the steel girders. Then the other man speaks back. Some people, once seen, live forever in our memories. For Woodrow this is one of them. The other man is thickly built and paunchy, with a glistening, meaty face that is cast in an expression of abject despair. His hair, blond to ginger, is spread sparsely over his scalded pate. He has a pinched, rosebud mouth that pleads and denies. His eyes, round with hurt, are haunted by a horror that both men seem to share. His hands are mottled and very strong, his khaki shirt stained with tramlines of sweat around the collar. The rest of him is concealed under a white medical coat.
And then we can tell you about the greedy coincidences in white coats.
Woodrow moves stealthily forward. He is almost upon them, but neither head turns. They are too intent on arguing. He strides past them unnoticed, their raised voices lost in the din.
* * *
Donohue's car was back in the drive. The sight of it moved Woodrow to sick fury. He stormed upstairs, showered, put on a fresh shirt and felt no less furious. The house was unusually silent for a Saturday and when he glanced out of his bathroom window he saw why. Donohue, Justin, Gloria and the boys were seated at the table in the garden playing Monopoly. Woodrow loathed all board games, but for Monopoly he had an unreasoning hatred not unlike his hatred of the Friends and all the other members of Britain's overblown Intelligence community. What the devil does he mean by coming back here minutes after I told him to keep his bloody distance? And what kind of weird husband is it who sits down to a jolly game of Monopoly just days after his wife is hacked to death? House guests, Woodrow and Gloria used to tell each other, quoting the Chinese proverb, were like fish and stank on the third day. But Justin was becoming more fragrant to Gloria with each day that passed.
Woodrow went downstairs and stood in the kitchen, looking out of the window. No staff on Saturday afternoons, of course. So much nicer to be just ourselves, darling. Except that it's not ourselves, it's your-selves. And you look a bloody sight happier with two middle-aged men fawning on you than you ever look with me.
At the table, Justin had landed on somebody's street and was paying out a stack of money in rent while Gloria and the boys hooted with delight and Donohue protested that it was about time too. Justin was wearing his stupid straw hat, and as with everything else he wore, it became him perfectly. Woodrow filled a kettle and set it on the gas. I'll take out tea to them, let them know I'm back — assuming they aren't too tied up with one another to notice. Changing his mind, he stepped smartly into the garden and marched up to the table.
"Justin. Sorry to butt in. Wondered if we could have a quick word." And to the others — my own family, staring at me as if I've raped the housemaid — "Didn't mean to break this up, gang. Only be a few minutes. Who's winning?"
"Nobody," said Gloria with edge, while Donohue from the wings grinned his shaggy grin.
The two men stood in Justin's cell. If the garden hadn't been occupied, Woodrow would have preferred the garden. As it was, they stood facing each other across the drab bedroom, with Tessa's Gladstone bag — Tessa's father's Gladstone bag — reclining behind the grille. My wine store. His bloody key. Her illustrious father's bag. But as he started to speak, he was alarmed to see his surroundings change. Instead of the iron bedstead, he saw the inlaid desk her mother had loved. And behind it, the brick fireplace with invitations on it. And across the room where the bogus beams appeared to converge, Tessa's naked silhouette in front of the French window. He willed himself back to time present and the illusion passed.
"Justin."
"Yes, Sandy."
But for the second time in as many minutes he veered away from the confrontation he had planned. "One of the local broadsheets is running a sort of liber amicorum about Tessa."
"How nice of them."
"There's a lot of rather unambiguous stuff about Bluhm in it. A suggestion that he personally delivered her child. Sort of not very hidden inference that the baby might be his as well. Sorry."
"You mean Garth."
"Yes."
Justin's voice was taut and, to Woodrow's ear, as dangerously pitched as his own. "Yes, well, that is an inference that people have drawn from time to time in recent months, Sandy, and no doubt in the present climate there will be more of it."
Though Woodrow allowed space for him to do so, Justin did not suggest that the inference was wrong. And this impelled Woodrow to press harder. Some guilty inner force was driving him.
"They also suggest that Bluhm went so far as to take a camp bed to the ward so that he could sleep close to her."
"We shared it."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Sometimes Arnold slept on it, sometimes I did. We took turns, depending on our respective workloads."
"So you don't mind?"
"Mind what?"
"That this should be said of them — that he was devoting this amount of attention to her — with your consent, apparently — while she was acting as your wife here in Nairobi."
"Acting? She was my wife, damn you!"
Woodrow hadn't reckoned with Justin's anger any more than he'd reckoned with Coleridge's. He'd been too busy quelling his own. He'd got his voice down, and in the kitchen he'd managed to shrug some of the tension out of his shoulders. But Justin's outburst came at him out of a clear sky, and startled him. He had expected contrition and, if he was honest, humiliation, but not armed resistance.
"What are you asking me precisely?" Justin inquired. "I don't think I understand."
"I need to know, Justin. That's all."
"Know what? Whether I controlled my wife?"
Woodrow was pleading and backing away at the same time. "Look, Justin — I mean, see it my way — just for a moment, OK? The whole world's press is going to pick this up. I have a right to know."
"Know what?"
"What else Tessa and Bluhm got up to that's going to be headlines — tomorrow and for the next six weeks," he ended, on a note of self-pity.
"Such as what?"
"Bluhm was her guru. Well, wasn't he? Whatever else he was."
"So?"
"So they shared causes together. They sniffed out abuses. Human rights stuff. Bluhm has some kind of watchdog role — right? Or his employers have. So Tessa — " he was losing his way and Justin was watching him do it — "she helped him. Perfectly natural. In the circumstances. Used her lawyer's head."
"D'you mind telling me where this is leading?"
"Her papers. That's all. Her possessions. Those you collected. We did. Together."
"What of them?"
Woodrow pulled himself together: I'm your superior, for God's sake, not some bloody petitioner. Let's get our roles straight, shall we?
"I need your assurance, therefore — that any papers she assembled for her causes — in her capacity as your wife herewith diplomatic status — here on HMG'S ticket — will be handed to the Office. It was on that understanding that I took you to your house last Tuesday. We would not have gone there otherwise."
Justin had not moved. Not a finger, not an eyelid flickered while Woodrow delivered himself of this untruthful afterthought. Backlit, he remained as still as Tessa's naked silhouette.