A rusting steel door stood closed against them and Banda hammered on it in a commanding manner, leaning back on his heels and rapping four or five times at calculated intervals as if a code were being transmitted. The door creaked open partway to reveal the haggard, apprehensive heads of three young men. But at the sight of the surgeon doctor they reeled back, enabling him to slither past them, with the result that Woodrow, left standing in the stinking hall, was treated to the hellish vision of his school dormitory given over to the AIDS'-DEAD of all ages. Emaciated corpses lay two a bed. More corpses lay on the floor between them, some dressed, some naked on their backs or sides. Others had their knees drawn up in futile self-protection and their chins flung back in protest. Over them, in a swaying, muddy mist, hung the flies, snoring on a single note.
And at the center of the dormitory, parked by itself in the passage between the beds, stood matron's ironing board, on wheels. And on the ironing board, an arctic mass of winding-sheet, and two monstrous semihuman feet protruding from it, reminding Woodrow of the duck-feet bedroom slippers he and Gloria had given to their son Harry last Christmas. One distended hand had somehow contrived to remain outside the sheet. Its fingers were coated in black blood and the blood was thickest at the joints. Its fingertips were aquamarine blue. Use your imagination, Mr. Chancery. You know what happens to corpses in this heat?
"Mr. Justin Quayle, please," Dr. Banda Singh called, with the portent of a barker at a royal reception.
"I'm coming with you," Woodrow muttered and, with Justin at his side, stepped bravely forward in time to see Dr. Banda roll back the sheet and reveal Tessa's head, grossly caricatured and bound chin-to-skull in a strip of grimy cloth which had been led round the throat where her necklace had once hung. A drowning man rising to the surface for the last time, Woodrow recklessly took in the rest: her black hair plastered to her skull by some undertaker's comb. Her cheeks puffed out like a cherub's blowing up a wind. Her eyes closed and eyebrows raised and mouth open in lolling disbelief, black blood caked inside as if she'd had all her teeth pulled at the same time. You? she is blowing stupidly as they kill her, her mouth formed into an oo. You? But who does she say it to? Who is she ogling through her stretched white eyelids?
"You know this lady, sir?" Inspector Muramba inquired delicately of Justin.
"Yes. Yes, I do, thank you," Justin replied, each word carefully weighed before it was delivered. "It's my wife Tessa. We must fix her funeral, Sandy. She'll want it to be here in Africa as soon as possible. She's an only child. She has no parents. There is no one apart from me who needs to be consulted. Better make it as soon as possible."
"Well, I suppose that will have to depend a bit on the police," said Woodrow gruffly and was barely in time to make it to a cracked hand basin, where he vomited his heart out while Justin the ever-courteous stood at his shoulder with his arm round him, murmuring condolences.
* * *
From the carpeted sanctuary of the Private Office, Mildren slowly read aloud to the blank-voiced young man on the other end of the line:
The High Commission is sad to announce the death by murder of Mrs. Tessa Quayle, the wife of Justin Quayle, First Secretary in Chancery. Mrs. Quayle died on the shores of Lake Turkana, close to Allia Bay. Her driver Mr. Noah Katanga was also killed. Mrs. Quayle will be remembered for her devotion to the cause of women's rights in Africa, as well as for her youth and beauty. We wish to express our deep sympathy to Mrs. Quayle's husband Justin and her many friends. The High Commission flag will be flown at half-mast until further notice. A book of condolence will be placed in the High Commission reception lobby.
"When will you be running that?"
"I just did," said the young man.
CHAPTER TWO
The Woodrows lived in a suburban house of quarried stone and leaded mock-Tudor windows, one of a colony set in large English gardens in the exclusive hilltop suburb of Muthaiga, a stone's throw from the Muthaiga Club and the British High Commissioner's residence and the ample residences of ambassadors from countries you may never have heard of till you ride the closely guarded avenues and spot their nameplates planted among warnings in kiSwahili of dangerous dogs. In the wake of the bomb attack on Nairobi's U.S. Embassy, the Foreign Office had supplied all staff of Woodrow's rank and upward with crash-proof iron front gates and these were conscientiously manned day and night by shifts of exuberant Baluhya and their many friends and relatives. Round the garden's perimeter, the same inspired minds had provided an electrified fence crowned with coils of razor wire and intruder lights that blazed all night. In Muthaiga there is a pecking order about protection, as there is about many other things. The humblest houses have broken bottles on stone walls, the middle-rankers razor wire. But for diplomatic gentry, nothing less than iron gates, electric fences, window sensors and intruder lights will secure their preservation.
The Woodrow house stood three floors high. The two upper floors comprised what the security companies called a safe haven protected by a folding steel screen on the first landing, to which the Woodrow parents alone had a key. And in the ground-floor guest suite, which the Woodrows called the lower ground because of the slope of the hillside, there was a screen on the garden side to protect the Woodrows from their servants. There were two rooms to the lower ground, both severe and white-painted and, with their barred windows and steel grilles, distinctly prisonlike. But Gloria in anticipation of her guest's arrival had decked them out with roses from the garden and a reading light from Sandy's dressing room, and the staff television set and radio because it would do them good to be without them for a change. It wasn't exactly five-star even then — she confided to her bosom friend Elena, English wife to a softpalmed Greek official at the United Nations — but at least the poor man would have his aloneness, which everybody absolutely had to have when they lost someone, El, and Gloria herself had been exactly the same when Mummy died, but then of course Tessa and Justin did have — well, they did have an unconventional marriage, if one could call it that — though speaking for herself Gloria had never doubted there was real fondness there, at least on Justin's side, though what there was on Tessa's side — frankly, El darling, God alone knows, because none of us ever will.
To which Elena, much divorced and worldly wise where Gloria was neither, remarked, "Well, you just watch your sweet arse, honey. Freshly widowed playboys can be very raunchy."
* * *
Gloria Woodrow was one of those exemplary Foreign Service wives who are determined to see the good side of everything. If there wasn't a good side in sight, she would let out a jolly good laugh and say, "Well, here we all are!" — which was a bugle call to all concerned to band together and shoulder life's discomforts without complaint. She was a loyal old girl of the private schools that had produced her and she sent them regular bulletins of her progress, avidly devouring news of her contemporaries. Each Founder's Feast she sent them a witty telegram of congratulation or, these days, a witty e-mail, usually in verse, because she never wanted them to forget that she had won the school poetry prize. She was attractive in a forthright way, and famously loquacious, especially when there wasn't much to say. And she had that tottery, extraordinarily ugly walk that is affected by Englishwomen of the royal class.