Diamond Solitaire

by Peter Lovesey

  "It's conceivable."

  "Conceivable? I was dumped in the river. You won't question that?"

  "No, I don't question that."

  "Leapman must have believed I was dead, but he still had a problem, because you—the cops—brought David Flexner in for questioning the same night. He couldn't understand how you made the connection, but he knew how dangerous it was. It was getting too close to home. And home was where he was holding Naomi."

  Eastland was waking up. "He didn't want the cops calling. This is not a good time in his life to get arrested."

  "Right. If he's going to cash in on PDM3, it's essential that the conference goes ahead. Are you with me so far?"

  Eastland only gave a shrug and said, "Let's say I've been listening."

  "Now, Leapman isn't the spokesman for PDM3. He's just the Vice Chairman. It isn't absolutely necessary that he puts in an appearance at the conference. David Flexner and the professor can handle it. The only thing liable to ruin the day—and the big hike in his shares—is if he—Leapman—has a visit from the cops and is found to have the child in his possession. That would be a disaster."

  "So?"

  "So he arranges to disappear. He will take the child with him, leaving no evidence that she was ever in the house. First he dresses the child and puts her in the car. Then he tidies her room so well that you wouldn't know she was ever there."

  "Unless you were smart enough to look under the mattress," said Eastland in a bland tone that didn't amount to mockery, but wasn't respectful either.

  Diamond's eyes narrowed, and one of them hurt. The black eye was still swollen. He sensed that he was being sent up, but he refused to be deflected. "Then he fakes the attack. Tips over several items of furniture and smashes the TV screen."

  "How about the blood? You telling me it was ketchup?"

  "No."

  "Self-inflicted?"

  "I don't know."

  "That's a switch."

  There followed an interval when neither man spoke. Diamond needed to draw breath and Eastland was gathering himself to demolish the theory. "It's one hell of a scenario to build on one ballpoint," he said finally. "In a nutshell, you believe Leapman arranged the scene himself, leaving us to deduce that he was beaten up and probably murdered?"

  "Yes. I think you'll find that the only prints are his own. Probably he wore gloves to handle the baseball bat and the phone."

  Eastland supplied unexpected support here. "It's true that whoever handled those objects wore gloves. That much we have established. And you think Leapman is alive and well? He drove off with the kid sometime before we arrived?"

  "That's it"

  "Where to?"

  "I've no idea, but at least we know who to look for. We can put out a description."

  "We circulated details last night," Eastland said with a yawn.

  "No response?"

  "None."

  Diamond didn't have to be told about the problems tracing cars in New York.

  "What's your reaction, then?"

  "To what?" said Eastland.

  'To what I've just been telling you."

  "I don't buy it."

  And that was that

  They arrived at the Sheraton Center and shared an elevator to the third floor with a throng of people wearing name tags marked with the Manflex logo. The conference was to be in the Georgian suite. Young women in red blazers and white skirts were handing out information packs. Diamond took one and saw with grim satisfaction that an amendment sheet was included: Mr. Michael Leapman, Vice Chairman, will not, after all, be chairing the session with Professor Churchward. His place will be taken by the Chairman, Mr. David Flexner.

  Seated inconspicuously towards the back, Diamond and Eastland watched David Flexner enter, accompanied by the professor, a slim, brown-suited man with cropped hair who took a chair beside the podium. Flexner was the first to speak. He addressed his large audience confidently, unaffected, it seemed, by the alarms of the previous twenty-four hours. After welcoming everyone, he briefly outlined the history of Manflex under his father's management, listing the principal drugs for which the firm was known. This was a stage of the proceedings when a few latecomers were still finding seats and many of the audience were looking around them to see which faces they recognized.

  To a scattering of polite applause, the man in the brown suit was introduced as Professor Alaric Churchward. Gaunt and pale, but well in control, Churchward surveyed the audience with pinpoint blue eyes for a few seconds before opening with an attention-grabbing statement. Some four million Americans, he said, could no longer remember the names of their friends and families. They couldn't put names to everyday objects, such as chairs and tables. They were sufferers from Alzheimer's disease and they included people who had held highly responsible and demanding jobs. The roll of victims of Alzheimer's was as impressive as it was distressing, including the actress Rita Hayworth, film director Otto Preminger, mystery writer Ross Macdonald and artist Norman Rockwell. The cause was unknown; it was likely that a number of different areas of the brain contributed to the symptoms. Research scientists the world over had been working intensively for the last fifteen years to find a successful treatment.

  He summarized the main targets of the research in a way that signaled something new and revolutionary, describing how the bulk of the work had concentrated on finding ways of increasing supplies of the brain chemical acetylcholine, which has a vital and mysterious process in the functioning of the memory. The brain's supply of this chemical was known to diminish rapidly with the onset of Alzheimer's.

  Churchward went on to say that his own approach (and now more pens came out in the audience and tape recorders were switched on) was different because it was directed toward the nerve cells themselves. For twelve years, teams of scientists under his direction based in America, Europe and Asia had made animal studies to test the effectiveness of certain compounds as protective agents that could delay, or even prevent, nerve cell death. In the last eight years their work had been concentrated on a compound known as Prodermolate, or PDM3, that had proved to be something more than a protective agent

  Alaric Churchward was quite a showman. Having got to his product, he kept everyone in suspense by introducing film footage of some Alzheimer's patients he had tested five years previously, prior to the administration of PDM3.

  The bemused people who were shown on the screen being asked which month it was and when they were born and who was the current president of the United States were not exclusively the elderly that Peter Diamond associated with the illness. There was a woman of forty-seven and a man of fifty-two, although the others were over sixty-five. The spectacle of people of intelligent appearance puzzling over quite basic facts was profoundly disturbing, particularly a couple of men who demanded angrily to be told who they were and where they came from.

  "I guess this is the 'before,' " Eastland commented to Diamond.

  "Is it? I don't mink I... Oh—I see what you mean." In his concentration on the film, he must himself have sounded mentally lacking. These pathetic people moved him more than he had expected. Progressive loss of memory was a deep-seated fear of his own, and he had no difficulty in identifying with their distress.

  After the lights were turned up, the professor talked at length about PDM3, a technical briefing couched in scientific terminology that Diamond found increasingly difficult to follow. His attention drifted back to the poignant images of the Alzheimer's patients.

  Then the room was darkened for another sequence of film, the "after" interviews. Introducing them, Churchward explained that some of the volunteers (as he insisted on calling them, rather than patients, or subjects) had been administered with PDM3, and some, as a control, with a placebo.

  The film was eloquent. The effects on those who had been given the drug were striking. Not only did they answer the questions they had found so baffling before, but they went on to give unsolicited accounts of the improvements in their lives. They could dress
themselves, go for walks, use shops, write letters. In the standard word test, they had averaged a seven-point improvement. The results contrasted cruelly with the steady deterioration of the group who had taken the placebo. For Diamond, cynical as he felt about the sales pitch, it was difficult to remain detached, difficult not to wish that every one of those sad, benighted people had been given the drug.

  In a neat coup de thedtre when the lights went on, Churchward was seen to have been joined by a man and a woman, whom he introduced as people just seen in the film, volunteers whose lives had been transformed by PDM3. Each answered two or three questions lucidly and testified to the improvement in their memory and concentration. They left the platform to spontaneous applause.

  David Flexner stepped up to play his part as Chairman. He invited questions.

  A bearded man near the front made the point that certain drugs patented by other pharmaceutical companies had appeared to produce remarkable improvements in Alzheimer's patients, but the effects had proved only temporary. In two years, the deterioration had set in again. Was there any real possibility, he asked, that PDM3 could sustain the improvement?

  Churchward answered the question so smoothly that it might have been seeded before the conference, and perhaps it had been. "Of course I'm aware of the products you're referring to, sir, and I agree that they have disappointed as long-term remedies. There are six drugs to my knowledge that have been undergoing tests intended to give a boost to the cholenergic system that produces acetylcholine. It is beyond dispute that a certain amount of success has been achieved. Unfortunately, as you just implied, the duration is severely limited. The reason—and this is a personal opinion—would appear to be that the nerve cells that produce the acetylcholine continue to die. Our own approach, with PDM3, is quite different, for we are actually regenerating those cells. Our experiments in Indiana and at our other centers in Tokyo and London have been running for seven years, and no significant deterioration has been observed. Clearly the patients get older—let's not forget that we are dealing mainly with geriatrics—but our tests and interviews are consistently encouraging. There is, of course, documentary backup that some of my colleagues will present this afternoon. Next question."

  A woman to the right of Diamond asked if any adverse drug reactions to PDM3 had been reported.

  "Remarkably few," Churchward told her. "Every drug produces some unwanted reactions, but in this case they are negligible. The majority of volunteers reported no untoward effects."

  "Maybe they forgot," Diamond muttered to Eastland in a facetious aside. He was becoming irritated by the smoothness of Churchward's presentation.

  "Fewer than twenty percent of our volunteers reported mild dizziness, but this is notoriously difficult to assess, and was of short duration," Churchward added. "Five percent of those taking the placebo also reported dizziness. It isn't perceived as a serious problem."

  Diamond leaned closer to Eastland and told him in a low voice that he was going out to make a phone call. It may have sounded remarkably like a smoker's excuse for a quick drag outside the room, but it was genuine. He was in the seat closest to the aisle, so he was able to move out without disturbing anyone.

  When he returned ten minutes later, the question and answer session was still in progress. Someone asked if PDM3 could be described as a "smart drug."

  "That's not a term a serious biochemist would use, madam," Churchward answered, "but I know what you're referring to, and you have touched on a matter of real significance. It's estimated that up to 100,000 healthy Americans take drugs daily in the expectation of increasing their mental capacity. Call them cognitive enhancers or smart drugs, the point is that their effects are as yet unproven. I read somewhere that as many as 160 cognitive enhancers are under development, many of them being vasodilators. Do you know what I mean by that? A vasodilator has the effect of widening the blood vessels, thus increasing the supply of blood to the brain. However, if your blood supply is normal, there's no evidence that vasodilators will make you any smarter. I have yet to be convinced that any of the so-called smart drugs are effective. And yet..."

  The professor paused, smiled slightly, and then leaned forward like a preacher, with one finger raised to focus the attention of his listeners. He need not have troubled, for they were totally attentive. "... PDM3 raises exciting possibilities. This afternoon, I shall give you details of a limited experiment that we undertook with a group of student volunteers. It's well known that certain highly intelligent people have poor memories. We administered PDM3 to twenty undergraduates from the University of Corydon in Indianapolis. Three of them were consistently below average scorers on memory tests and there is no question that the drug produced a marked improvement in their mental performance. We're not talking about forgetful elderly people here. This is something else. And now ..." Churchward folded his arms and kept everyone in suspense for a moment. "... I want to take it a stage further. In Phase Three of our tests, I propose to examine in a wide-scale test the ability of this remarkable drug to regenerate and prolong the mental capacities of normal people. If our prehminary findings are right, the implications;—for individuals, for society, as a whole, for the economy, for the welfare of our nation, the progress of mankind, are truly—"

  "Mind blowing?" the questioner suggested.

  Churchward smiled. "I'm tempted to say that anyone taking PDM3 runs no risk of having his mind blown. But, yes, we can scarcely imagine the potential of such a discovery."

  It seemed a good note on which to end, or so David Flexner thought, because he reached for the microphone. "Unless there are any other questions, ladies and gentle-men—"

  "Yes, I have one more, if you don't mind." Suddenly Peter Diamond was on his feet. He hadn't planned to intervene so publicly as this and he hadn't discussed it with Lieutenant Eastland (who muttered, "Jesus!"). Only in the last few minutes had he come to a decision to fire a broadside across the bows of the two well-defended men at the front. A scare at this stage, when they thought they were fully in control, might panic them into revealing something really culpable— if they were implicated. "This session was to have been chaired by Mr. Michael Leapman. What is the significance of his absence?"

  Flexner's right hand went straight to his long hair and raked through it. "Mr. Leapman is, um ... Excuse me, sir, this is an organizational matter. I don't see that it has any relevance to what we have heard."

  "Ah, but it has," Diamond insisted. "It's well known that Mr. Leapman is strongly identified with this drug. He promoted it actively within your company. He, more than any other individual, is responsible for this conference, for the decision to go into Phase Three of the testing. Yet he isn't here this morning. What are we to make of this, Mr. Flexner? Does it mean that Michael Leapman has gone cold on the project?"

  Flexner was staring. "Sir, would you mind telling me who you represent?"

  "My name is Diamond."

  This simple statement made a satisfying impact. Men don't return from the dead all that often, and David Flexner had not been informed that Diamond had survived his dip in the Hudson River. His hair didn't stand on end, but in every other respect he gave a fair impression of a man seeinga ghost.

  To give him time to find his voice again, Diamond went on to say, "I'd better identify myself properly. I'm a detective working with Lieutenant Eastland of the New York Police Department, with whom you are acquainted. He's sitting beside me, in case you can't see from there. But my question was about Mr. Leapman. As you no doubt know, he has gone missing. I think your audience is entitled to know the circumstances."

  Flexner looked more bloodless than the specter in front of him. "It has no relevance," he managed to say.

  Churchward got up and spoke to Flexner and his remark was close enough to the mike to be heard all over the room.

  "Let's wrap this up fast."

  No one else had any desire to leave. Diamond said, "You may prefer to wrap it up fast, gentlemen, but the rest of us won't be impressed if y
ou do. Mr. Michael Leapman has disappeared from his house in suspicious circumstances. A certain amount of damage has been done inside his house in New Jersey. There are signs of a scuffle. Overturned furniture. Bloodstains. His car is missing. I believe you were informed of this when you tried to call him this morning."

  Flexner appeared to give a nod.

  Seeing that his Chairman was bereft of words, Professor Churchward reached for the microphone and said, "This is a scientific conference, not a police investigation. We're sorry to hear about the attack on Michael, but with all due respect it has no bearing on what we are discussing today."

  Diamond said at once, "I believe you're mistaken there. You've assumed that Mr. Leapman was the victim of an attack."

  "But you just described it," said Churchward.

  "No, Professor, I described the scene at the house. The evidence is that the attack was faked."

  There were gasps. Everyone had turned to hear what Diamond was saying.

  "I was doubtful of the setup anyway, so I asked the forensic lab to check the blood spots found at the scene. I phoned to get the results a few minutes ago." Savoring the moment, he found a wicked way of prolonging it. "As mere are so many scientists present, you may care to know that they test whether it's human by diluting it and bringing it into contact with animal serum. There should be a precipitin reaction between the human protein and the animal serum. A white line forms. No white line was found in this case. The forensic people have a good stock of antisera from a variety of animals." He paused. He was as capable as Churchward of working an audience. "The blood spots in Michael Leapman's living room were bovine in origin, probably from calf liver, which is as bloody as most things one keeps in a freezer." Again he waited, allowing the facts to sink in. "So I'm bound to ask whether either of you gentlemen has any idea why Mr. Leapman should have gone missing in these suspicious circumstances at this crucial time."