Diamond Solitaire

by Peter Lovesey

  Churchward was careful to switch off the mike before conferring with Flexner, who had a glass of water to his lips.

  Diamond remained standing.

  Without getting up, Lieutenant Eastland muttered reproachfully, "You could have told me first."

  "There wasn't time."

  "Was this what you were setting up this morning when I came in?"

  "With the lab, yes. I called them back just now. The beef test was the first they tried."

  "I thought you were ordering a sandwich."

  David Flexner switched on again and did his best to sound composed: "We are not aware of any reason for the incident that has just been described. Michael Leapman has served as our Vice Chairman with honor and distinction for many years. We regret what has just been reported, but we can't see that it has any connection with our business here today. The program will resume after lunch. That is all I have to say at this time."

  The press closed in on Diamond.

  * * *

  "Satisfied?" Eastland asked, when Diamond had finally shaken off the last of them.

  "I'm not here for satisfaction. I'm here to find out how much Flexner and the professor know about Leapman's activities."

  "So what did you learn?"

  "Flexner, at least, was genuinely fazed. I'm less certain about the professor."

  Eastland appeared to concur. "He's a different type. More mature as a personality. His mind was on damage limitation."

  "That was my impression, too. A cool customer. I suspend judgment on Professor Churchward."

  "His sort wouldn't be fazed if King Kong stepped into the conference."

  "But that doesn't make him a guilty man."

  "Want another look at him? He's taking the afternoon session."

  Diamond said he had other plans. While the big shots were away, he was going to visit the Manflex Building. He meant to find out for himself whether Flexner had concealed anything of importance the evening before when he was being questioned about Yuko Masuda's file entry.

  "You won't get in there without a warrant," Eastland told him. "They have security like a state pen."

  "Want a bet?"

  "Sure."

  "I bet you the price of a meal, then," Diamond suggested.

  "One of your meals? Get away."

  Both men grinned. They worked better now they had the measure of each other.

  Later, fortified by a sandwich (or two) he bought himself, Diamond stepped from a limousine and strutted confidently towards the front entrance of the Manflex Corporation. The security guard'—happily one he hadn't met on the previous visit—asked for his pass. Diamond admitted that he didn't possess a pass. He had something better.

  "What's that?"

  "A British passport"

  "Mister, are you trying to be funny?"

  "No, I'm giving you the chance to verify my name. I'm Peter Diamond."

  "Am I supposed to have heard of you?" said the guard, a mite more cautiously.

  "I'm glad you asked the question. You'd better give some thought to the answer." Diamond peered at the man's identity disc. "Officer William Pinkowitz."

  Anyone who has played the power game knows that you put a man on the defensive by using his name. "Are you something in Safe Haven Security?"

  Diamond repeated in a scandalized tone, "Something in it?"

  "Do you work for us?"

  "I wouldn't put it that way, but you're getting there." All this was an exercise in psyching out that he had used in various guises many times before.

  "But you're not American."

  "Didn't I just make that clear?" He left the wretched man dangling a moment longer before saying, "Safe Haven is just a subsidiary of Diamond Sharp International."

  "Diamond Sharp..."

  "International. Do you want to check with your superior?"

  There was a certain amount of hesitation before Officer William Pinkowitz apparently decided that to cast any more doubt on the word of Peter Diamond was a risk he'd rather not take. "I'll just take a look at that passport, sir."

  "Certainly."

  After an interval came the inevitable, awed, "You're a Detective Superintendent?”

  "You're doing a good job, Pinkowitz. Keep it up." He walked into the building. Behind him, he heard Pinkowitz's heels click in salute.

  He got out of the elevator at the twenty-first floor, from which, he'd been told, Manny Flexner had jumped to his death. A woman was coming along the corridor and wasn't the sort to walk shyly past Thirtyish, with dark hair, brilliant makeup and, of all things, a kiss-curl in the center of her forehead, she couldn't wait to find out what he was doing there with his black eye and battered face. She called out when she was still fully fifteen yards away, "Can I help you?"

  "Personnel records?" he said.

  "They're all on computer now."

  "Where could I, em...?"

  "Are you Australian?"

  "English."

  "Oh, you can't be!" She checked the position of her curl. "I have some very dear friends in England. Which part of England?"

  "London."

  "Really? My friends are in Welwyn Garden City. Is that near London?"

  "Tolerably near."

  "Tolerably near—I love it! But what's happened to you? I hope you haven't had a bad experience in our country."

  "No, just a fall. I'm fine."

  "I wouldn't have said so! Are you here on vacation?"

  "Research," he said, divining a way to get back on course. He wasn't sure how long he could rely on Officer Pinkowitz to keep his privileged knowledge to himself. "Family history. Mr., er, Leapman suggested I consult the records for information about a distant member of the family."

  "Michael Leapman? He isn't here today. Isn't that just too bad?"

  "It doesn't trouble me in the least But if I could be shown how to use a computer..."

  "I don't know if there's a spare desk. Hold on—I'll think of something."

  "Mr. Leapman's desk?"

  "Why, yes—of course!"

  Neat and simple, satisfyingly simple. At least, he told himself, I'm functioning again.

  She showed him into Leapman's office, a place with signs of long occupation. A comfortable reclining chair, worn at the arms. A desk with cup stains apparently impervious to cleaning. Some far-from-new executive toys, including a Newton's cradle that Diamond couldn't resist disturbing. A poster of Stockholm, curling at the corners. Even the computer keyboard at a separate desk had the glaze chipped off some of the main keys.

  He sat in front of it, and his latest helpmate pressed a switch. While the machine was booting up, she had a spasm of uncertainty. "Are you quite sure Michael said you could inspect the personnel files? Only a few of us have the password to get into them."

  "That's all right," he assured her. "I'm not out to discover how much you people earn or what age you are. I just want to look up a research scientist, someone who is sponsored by Manflex."

  "That's no problem," she said, with obvious relief. "It's much easier to access researchers man permanent staff. What name are you hoping to find?"

  "Masuda. Dr. Yuko Masuda."

  "That doesn't sound English."

  "It isn't I have a cousin who went to Japan."

  "Let's try, then. Masuda. Would you spell mat?"

  When the name appeared on the screen, Diamond's hopes of new information were dashed. It was a thin account of twelve years of research.

  Name: MASUDA, Dr. Yuko (female). Date of Birth:—

  Address: Care of Dept. of Biochemistry, Univ. of Yokohama, Japan.

  Qualifications: M.Sc, Ph.D.

  Dates of Sponsorship: From: September 1979.

  To: Continues.

  Subject of Research: Drug- and alcohol-induced comas.

  Drugs Under Research: Sympathomimetic.

  Publications: "An insult to the brain: coma and its characteristics." Postgraduate thesis, 1981. "Narcosis and coma states." American Journal of Biochemistry, May 1981. "The tr
eatment of alcoholic coma." Paper presented to Japanese Pharmacological Conference, Tokyo, 1983.

  "It isn't much," he complained. "Hasn't she published anything since 1983? I thought research scientists were constantly publishing."

  The woman gave a shrug. "Maybe the file hasn't been updated."

  At least the file confirmed that David Hexner had been entirely frank about Yuko Masuda. This was all familiar stuff from the interview at the station house.

  "Is there any way of telling when this file was put together?"

  "Oh, sure. There's a checklist of all the dates when entries or deletions were made." She pressed two keys and a window was displayed on the right of the screen. "Just two entries. As you see, the file was created on September 10, 1987, and the latest entry was only three months back."

  He hesitated. Something was wrong. "But the last entry on file refers to a conference in 1983. Which piece of this data is new? What did anyone find to enter three months ago when all I can see here relates to work published up to 1983?"

  "I'm sorry, I can't answer that. I have no idea."

  "The computer can't tell us?"

  "No."

  He sighed. Three months ago would have been shortly before Naomi was brought to London. Possibly there was a connection. Apparently there was no way of finding out.

  He had another thought "Can anyone make additions to these files?"

  "If they can get into them, sure, but only a few of us have the password."

  "That would include the Chairman... ?"

  "The Vice Chairman, Personnel Director, Research Director, Senior Systems Analyst and some secretaries, including me.

  "Whose secretary are you?"

  "Mr. Hart's. He's Personnel."

  "And you are...?"

  "Molly Docherty. I thought you were never going to ask."

  "I'm Peter Diamond. And who is the Research Director?"

  "Mr. Greenberg. Would you like to meet him?"

  "How long has he been in the job?"

  "About two years."

  "Then I don't think I want to meet him." Diamond tapped the screen with his finger. "Tell me, Molly, where was this information stored prior to September 1987?"

  "It was all on a card index. Mr. Flexner—Mr. Manny Flexner, I mean—was a sweet man, but he was a little slow in catching up with the computer age. He didn't trust modem technology."

  Nor I, thought Diamond. "And all the information on the card index was transferred to the computer?"

  "Oh, yes. Everything. And triple-checked. I was one of the operators."

  Before asking the next question, he sent up a silent prayer. He was agnostic in his thinking, but if help was to be had from any source he needed it now. "Do those filing cards still exist?"

  There was an agonizing pause for thought before Molly Docherty said, "I believe they were put into storage somewhere." "Where?"

  "Now you're really asking. The basement, I guess."

  "Would you mind escorting me?"

  She laughed, he supposed at the way he'd expressed himself. "I'll have to clear it with my boss."

  "You don't have to mention me."

  On the way down in the elevator, she said, "You must be very devoted to your family."

  "Why?" He was thrown briefly, and then remembered his trumped-up reason for inspecting the files. "It isn't just a matter of making a family tree. I want to get the background on these people." Even to himself, he sounded pretty unconvincing.

  The basement was a cold, echoing place stacked with outmoded office furniture: wooden desks with the veneers exposed, gray metal cupboards of the kind so popular in the sixties and a great variety of chairs with their covers ripped and frayed. The discarded personnel files were easy to locate, stored in five metal boxes—locked, but Molly had thoughtfully collected a set of keys from upstairs.

  "These go back thirty years at least," she told him. "There must be a thousand in each box."

  "Let's open one."

  She stooped and found the appropriate box. As she tried the keys, she remarked, "This is like treasure hunting. I do hope it's worth your trouble."

  She flicked through the cards rapidly with a long, lacquered fingernail, picked one out and handed it to Diamond. "Voila!"

  He didn't need long. "This doesn't match the computer entry."

  "It wouldn't," she said. "We're constantly updating,"

  "Deleting information?"

  "No, adding it."

  "What do you make of this, then?" He handed back the card.

  Name: MASUDA, Dr. Yuko

  Address: c/o Dept. of Biochemistry, Yokohama University

  Qualifications: M.Sc, Ph.D.

  Dates of Sponsorship: From: September 1979.

  To: July 1985.

  Subject of Research: Comas, drug-induced and alcoholic

  Drugs Under Research: Jantac

  Publications: "An insult to the brain: coma and its characteristics." Postgraduate thesis, 1981.

  "Narcosis and coma states." American Journal of Biochemistry, May 1981.

  "The treatment of alcoholic coma." Paper presented to Japanese Pharmacological Conference, Tokyo, 1983.

  "What's the problem?"

  Clearly the details weren't written so indelibly in Molly Docherty's memory. Diamond explained. "It says here that the sponsorship terminated in July 1985. On your computer, that isn't mentioned. It states that the sponsorship continues. That's a big difference, surely?"

  "I guess she resumed the research at a later date."

  "Wouldn't that be recorded upstairs?"

  "The point is that she's back with us now. I guess whoever updated the entry did the simple thing, deleted the date she stopped and substituted 'continues.' "

  He wasn't satisfied with that. "It gives the impression she was continuously doing research. There must have been a gap"

  "For a short period."

  "Of about two years? The computer was installed in 1987, you said. And everything was triple-checked from these cards?"

  As if resenting the implication that someone had erred, she said, "I'll just see if there's an entry on another card. Maybe the data from two cards was collated."

  But there was no second card for Yuko Masuda.

  "This drug—Jantac—isn't listed on the computer, either," Diamond pointed out. "There's something quite different and unpronounceable. Sympatho—something or other. What exactly is Jantac?"

  "Sorry," she said, "but there are thousands of drugs. I can't tell you."

  "Is it a Manflex product?"

  "It isn't familiar to me, but we can check the list upstairs."

  "And could we also make a photocopy of this card?"

  She looked doubtful. "Is this really for family history?"

  "Only remotely, I'm afraid. I'm a policeman on the trail of a little girl who is missing from home. Dr. Masuda is her mother."

  "And what did you find out about this drug?"

  Eastland looked more at ease sitting at his own desk in the station house.

  "Jantac? Not much," Diamond admitted. "It was on the Manflex list of experimental drugs."

  "Was?"

  "It isn't any longer. They pulled it in 1985."

  "The year your Japanese lady's research stopped."

  "Exactly."

  "Do we know why it was withdrawn?"

  "No, but I intend to find out."

  "You think it could be important?"

  "Someone wiped it from the computer record. I'm satisfied that it must have been transferred accurately from the cards. Molly—the woman who helped me—insisted that everything on those cards went on to the computer and was triple-checked. But listen to this—the computer entry was altered for the first and only time three months ago."

  "About the time you found Naomi in London?"

  "Yes."

  Eastland leaned back in his chair. "Where will you get this information—about Jantac?"

  "Yokohama University, I reckon. That's where the work was done. I'll fax them
."

  "Before you do that, there's something I should tell you.

  We found Leapman's car."

  "Where?"

  "JFK."

  "The airport."

  "It was in the parking lot. Been there some time."

  "How do you know?"

  "He flew out last night. Japan Airlines, direct to Tokyo. I've spent the afternoon checking passenger lists."

  "Tokyo. Have you told them?"

  "Too late. He's already landed and cleared. With Naomi."

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  A Japan Airlines Boeing 747 taxied down the runway at the International Airport at Narita, thirty-five miles east of Tokyo. From his window over the wing Peter Diamond could see watchtowers, water cannon and riot policemen in full battledress. He'd read somewhere about the mass riots here in the mid-eighties and the long-running dispute with the local farmers over landing rights. Even so, this degree of security was daunting. It led him to wonder how stringent the immigration arrangements would be. Narita was not the most auspicious airport at which to arrive if your luggage consisted of a carrier bag containing only a pink sweater, cotton trousers, disposable razor, face cloth, toothpaste and toothbrush. His apprehension was borne out when he produced his passport and it was taken away. He was asked to step into an interview room, where he waited under video surveillance for twenty minutes while, presumably, they checked their list of undesirable aliens.

  Finally he had an opportunity to tell an immigration officer (who spoke faultless English) that he was a detective engaged in an investigation.

  The young man eyed him dubiously. "Scotland Yard Special Branch?"

  "No." He had the strong impression that anything he said was liable to be checked, so he kept to the truth. "I've been working with the New York Police. Twenty-sixth Precinct."

  "You are with the NYPD?"

  "In cooperation with them. I am a senior officer. My passport, if you examine it—"

  "I already have. Is Detective Superintendent your present rank, Mr. Diamond?"

  He noted a distinct emphasis on the "Mr." "Former, actually. I have retired from the regular police."

  "Retired? So you are a private agent?"