Diamond Solitaire pd-2

by Peter Lovesey

  Then came the signal.

  Smoothly, Curtis talked to the camera. Kids everywhere, he said, fancied themselves as detectives, and now they were getting the chance to solve a real-life mystery. In a few graphic sentences he gave the background, the terrorist alert in Harrods and the discovery of the small girl, his cue to introduce Diamond.

  The interview went precisely as planned, with no trick questions and no stumbling answers. Afterwards, there was a chance to watch a recording, and Diamond was pleased to see how strongly the appeal to the viewers came over. Cedric Athelhampton emerged at last from the control room, a pencil-thin man dressed entirely in white, and shook Diamond’s hand. “Stunning, my love, simply stunning. You must have been handcrafted for television, every chunky pound of you, did you know that? Such a substantial presence, a marvelous contrast with the little girl. My only problem now is that I didn’t warn the BBC about the calls. I’m perfectly certain me switchboard’s jammed already. I’m going to get it in the neck, but it was bloody good television, and I’ll say so in my defense.”

  “What about these calls?” Diamond asked, suddenly perturbed.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Who’s taking mem?”

  “They’re being put through to my office, to my assistant, Justine, at present. Between you, me and the BBC, ninety-nine percent will be duff. The proverbial pisspot full of crabapples. Kids get carried away when someone with Curtis’ charm and flair makes an appeal for information. Isn’t he irresistible?”

  Diamond was in no frame of mind for discussing anyone’s charm and flair. He was furious with himself for failing to think ahead. He’d been far too preoccupied with the program. “Right now I’m interested in the calls, the one percent. Is Justine capable of recognizing the real thing?”

  Cedric smiled roguishly. “The real thing? How would I know?” Reacting fast to Diamond’s glare, he added, “She’s bright, as bright as a guardsman’s buttons. Don’t fret” He squeezed Diamond’s arm. “We’ll let you know if we strike lucky.”

  But Diamond wasn’t satisfied. He insisted on being taken to the office where Justine was answering the phone.

  She had a notepad open and a pencil in her hand, and was talking into a headset. “Thank you, dear. Now give the phone to Mummy.” She glanced up at Diamond. “Sodding little brats.” She pressed another switch and said wearily,” ‘What About the Kids’��� Where exactly did you see her?���The King and I? Do you mean the film with Yul Brynner?��� Thank you, I’ve made a note of it���”

  Maybe it wasn’t opportune to ask if any of the calls seemed promising.

  Justine said, “The parents give mem these ideas. They must do. They’re dafter than the kids.” She told Diamond, “I know why you’re here. I’ve been doing this for over an hour and they’re still coming in nonstop. Do me a favor and get me a sarnie and an orange juice from the canteen, would you? By then I might have got myself sorted.”

  He didn’t argue; he was going to have to rely on Justine.

  She’d removed the headset when he returned. She bit hungrily into the sandwich. “Thanks. What do I owe you?”

  “Just a summing-up,” he told her. “Have we struck gold, or not?”

  “You’re the judge of that. What it boils down to is at least twelve callers who swear they know her, at school, or in a dancing class, or something. I’ve got their numbers so you can call them back. And there was one spooky call.”

  “What do you mean-spooky?”

  “I didn’t like the sound of it one bit. A Japanese woman. Well, I think she was Japanese. She sounded Japanese to me.

  “Did she give her name?”

  “No. That’s the point. She refused. And she didn’t say anything about knowing who Naomi is, like all the other callers did. All she would say was that she was under instructions to send you a message. A taxi would be sent for you at seven.”

  “Sent here?”

  “Yes. If you really want to help Naomi, you’re to get into the taxi, both of you.”

  “Naomi as well?”

  “Yes.”

  “That was all? She didn’t say where the taxi would take us?”

  Justine shook her head. “Will you do it?”

  “Did you get the impression she was serious?”

  “Mr. Diamond, she was so serious that if I were you I’d think twice about going.”

  “I’m not looking for a bunch of laughs,” said Diamond. “What time is it now?”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Quick reactions can be vital to success; they can also get you into trouble. In the taxi, Diamond remembered he was no longer a senior policeman. He was doing the professional thing, following the only real lead to come out of the television program. But as a detective acting on a tipoff he would have routinely radioed his movements to headquarters.

  He asked the driver where they were going.

  “My lips are sealed, mate.”

  “Oh, come on!”

  “The Albert Hall!”

  “Get stuffed.”

  He should have phoned the school, or at least got someone to pass a message to Julia Musgrave. For a middle-aged man to transport a small girl around London without informing her guardians wasn’t just misguided, it deserved all the outrage it would trigger. The point wasn’t that Julia would suspect him of abducting the child-she’d credited him with some responsibility up to now-but others would. Sexual abuse-of children, an evil he was incapable of understanding, had come under the media spotlight in recent months and it wouldn’t require much for a woman like Mrs. Straw to brand him as a pervert. To be fair to Mrs. Straw, any policeman would be duty bound to treat such an allegation seriously. He resolved to get to a phone as soon as possible after they reached their destination.

  And it was the Albert Hall.

  The moment he and Naomi stepped out in Kensington Gore, opposite the north door, they were approached by a Japanese woman. Diamond cupped a hand around Naomi’s head and steered her protectively towards him. He was taking no chances.

  The woman gave a deep, ceremonious bow. She looked about sixty, far too old to be Naomi’s mother. There was a wart at the left edge of her upper lip. “Mr. Diamond?”

  “Yes.”

  “Please come with me.”

  “In a moment, madam.” He settled the fare. As his right hand returned to his side he felt Naomi clutch the ends of his fingers tightly. Clearly she didn’t regard the woman as family. They followed her towards the building and he noticed Naomi’s head go back, to take in the scale of the building’s red-brick exterior. A casserole dish for the gods, he always thought when he saw the Albert Hall. You could imagine a divine hand lifting the roof, inserting an enormous ladle and giving the contents a stir during the singing of “Land of Hope and Glory” on the last night of the Proms.

  The woman moved briskly up a short flight of steps and through the arched entrance as if the Albert Hall were her home. She was dressed in expensive Western clothes, a fawn silk jacket and finely tailored dark brown trousers. Her gold-framed glasses had a long retaining chain that danced on her shoulders.

  By the time they entered the building, Naomi’s grip was threatening to stop the circulation in Diamond’s hand. The woman turned right, leading them along the main passage that surrounds the auditorium. Others were moving about in there, young people for the most part, with the age and appearance of students. Yet Diamond didn’t have the impression that the Hall was being used for a concert, whether pop or classical. Precisely what was being staged down here this week he didn’t know. Slack thinking, he chided himself. He ought to have asked someone at the Television Center.

  Their guide stopped by a door marked private and tapped with her knuckles.

  Diamond was uneasy about taking Naomi into an enclosed area. “Do you mind telling me what this is about?” he asked.

  The woman turned to face him. “I am sorry. It is not for me to say.”

  “Who are you? I don’t even know your n
ame.”

  “I am nothing. Disregard me.”

  “You speak good English.”

  “That is the only reason I am here.”

  The door was opened by a burly young Japanese in a black tracksuit. The woman bowed. The young man dipped his head in a formal greeting directed more to Diamond than their guide and revealed that his hair was bunched and fastened in a topknot. Something was said in Japanese.

  “Please enter,” the woman told them, standing aside to gesture them forward.

  The sickly-sweet fumes of a floral perfume wafted over them. It was coming from the young man’s hair, and the scent was camellia, Diamond registered, recalling a more subtle variety sometimes used by Steph. This was looking less and less like a homecoming for a lost child, but there didn’t appear to be anything threatening about the invitation. He led Naomi through the door.

  They were greeted by a spectacle that nothing had prepared them for: an enormous pair of buttocks, naked except for a strip of black silk squeezed into the cleft.

  For reasons too complex to explore, the over-fleshed male bottom is not a feature much revered in modern Western society. It can be the object of mockery-literally, a butt-or, more positively, a source of extra poundage in the rugby scrum, or the tug-of-war team. This bottom manifestly aspired to higher planes of experience. It was monumental; as awesome in its way as the Albert Memorial across the road.

  Motionless, pale gold in hue, smooth as traffic beacons, sturdy as two barrels stored side by side, it dominated the center of the room and much of the sides as well. The rest of the owner’s body was for the moment hidden, except for a partial view of stocky legs and bare feet. He was bending forward in a position that must have been painful to hold.

  From Naomi’s eye level, the spectacle would have rivaled Mount Fuji.

  Belatedly, Diamond recalled an item he had seen a couple of days before on a television newscast. A Japanese festival had opened and one of the main attractions was a tournament for Japanese wrestlers. The sport had a devoted following here. He mouthed the word “Sumo?”

  The man who had just admitted them nodded.

  Although Diamond hadn’t watched much sumo wrestling on television, he felt some sympathy with a sport for which the training amounted to gorging oneself with food and the action rarely lasted longer than fifteen seconds.

  The buttocks flexed, shuddered and shifted position with astonishing rapidity as their owner, regardless of his guests, went through a physical routine, raising his body level with his hips and lifting his right foot to shoulder height and then slapping it down heavily.

  “The shiko,” murmured the woman from the doorway. “To frighten evil spirits and the opponent.”

  “Tell him the opponent isn’t here,” Diamond muttered.

  The shiko was repeated with the left leg. The great domes of flesh completed their movement, quivered, and were still. If anything, the reek of camellias had intensified. The wrestler, as well as his Jeeves, must have been pomaded with the stuff.

  “I rather think someone has made a mistake inviting us here,” Diamond insisted.

  Shocked that anyone should speak while the workout was in progress, the man in the tracksuit held up a restraining hand.

  The wrestler treated them to the panorama of his backside again, bending so low that his head must have been between his knees. He was wearing the silk loincloth used in combat by the highest-ranking sumotori. The enforced intimacy with this mountainous rump was unsettling Diamond, and he didn’t care to think what effect it could be having on the child. Actually, the room wasn’t small. Indeed it must have been the star dressing room. But when shared with a sumo wrestler and two heads coated in essence of camellia, it seemed minute. He turned to see if the woman was still present. She was standing just inside the door trying to be unobtrusive.

  Diamond asked her, “Are you sure this is right?”

  She nodded and signaled to him to be silent by pressing her fingers against her lips.

  The wrestler grunted, raised himself from the jackknife position and suddenly turned about to face them. He was vast all over. His thighs looked as if they could have supported an overpass and in a sense they did, because his huge belly jutted so far over the belt of his loincloth that he appeared naked. A thick band of pectoral muscles lay over his torso, forming a deep, undulating crease. Above all that, almost extrinsic to the show, was his small, moon-shaped head. Its only real distinction was the hair tied at the back and folded forward in the traditional fan shape worn by the highest ranked sumotori. He exchanged the briefest of glances with the man in the tracksuit, who picked up a black jacket not unlike an undergraduate gown and wrapped it around the colossal shoulders.

  Then the great man bowed in greeting and Diamond did the same. For once in his life, he was feeling physically diminished, skimpy, if not slender. A hand was extended for him to shake. Having seen the agility of Japanese wrestiers, he wouldn’t have been surprised to have found himself on his back in the far corner. Instead he received nothing worse than a firm handshake. Something was said in Japanese, the voice high-pitched and husky.

  The woman spoke up from behind Diamond. “The Ozeki Yamagata wishes to introduce himself and welcome you to the Albert Hall, his temporary quarters.”

  Diamond identified himself and Naomi. Chairs were produced for them. Yamagata squatted on a wooden bench and said something to his dresser, who spoke in turn to the woman interpreter.

  She told Diamond, “I have the honor to translate for Mr. Yamagata. He instructs me to explain that Ozeki is the second highest rank in sumo. Mr. Yamagata is a very important wrestler in Japan, and the most senior in this tournament. You are welcome to be his honored guests in the arena tonight if you wish.”

  “We are honored indeed,” said Diamond, fitting smoothly into the formal style of address, “but I think the child is too young.”

  When this was translated for Mr. Yamagata he appeared to take it well, nodding sagely.

  Naomi still had a tight grip on Diamond’s fingertips. With some justification, she regarded these proceedings with the deepest suspicion.

  Yamagata spoke again and the interpreter explained that by chance the Very Important Wrestler had watched the transmission of “What About the Kids?” A portable set had been brought in for him to see a Channel 4 program about sumo, but it had concentrated too much on a rival sumo stable and he had switched channels. “Mr. Yamagata was deeply moved by the unhappy situation of this Japanese child who appears on British television and says nothing. He asked me to make inquiries, so I phoned the BBC,” she explained.

  Diamond’s hopes of a breakthrough were dashed. “You mean he didn’t recognize Naomi?”

  She shook her head.

  “He doesn’t know who she is?”

  “It was only a TV show.”

  “For crying out loud!” Diamond jerked up from the chair, accidentally hoisting Naomi to her feet as well, because she still had hold of his fingertips. “You brought us here for nothing, because this

  ��� this lump of lard happened to see the kid on the box? That’s ludicrous. Who else have you dragged in-Arthur Daley?”

  “Please! I cannot possibly say these things to Mr. Yamagata.”

  “Don’t trouble. We’re off. We’ve been conned by this heap of flab.” He turned to leave and found the way barred by the henchman in the tracksuit, hunched forward combatively, looking as if he wasn’t messing. Naomi gave a whimper, dropped her precious drawing pad, and flung both arms around Diamond’s waist, or as far around as she was able.

  Not the ideal conditions for a first encounter with a sumo wrestler.

  “Do you mind?” Diamond articulated in a straining-to-be-civil, British fashion. “We would like to leave now.”

  A volley of Japanese came from Yamagata, and the interpreter pushed herself between Diamond and the henchman. “Mr. Diamond, I implore you! Mr. Yamagata has not finished speaking. You cannot leave yet.”

  “There’s noth
ing else to say,” Diamond told her. “The only reason we came was to find out who Naomi is. He doesn’t know. He hasn’t the faintest idea.”

  “He wishes to help.”

  “By questioning her in Japanese? The Embassy people tried. She doesn’t respond. Now will you do me a favor and ask this buffoon to let us pass?”

  “You should not turn your back on Mr. Yamagata.”

  She spoke this dictum like a universal truth. Probably it was well known and wisely heeded among the wrestling fraternity. Diamond heeded it and looked over his shoulder.

  Thankfully, Yamagata hadn’t moved from the bench. He was beckoning to Diamond to return to the chair.

  Maybe, after all, Diamond rationalized, the guy has something constructive to suggest. I won’t gain anything from an angry exit. I shouldn’t let the frustration get to me. If I’d been questioning a witness in the nick, any old witness, I’d have heard him out in hope of eliciting something useful, wouldn’t I?

  “Okay,” he said, resting his hand on Naomi’s shoulder. “Two minutes.”

  They sat down again.

  “Mr. Yamagata would like to hear from your own lips the story of this little girl.”

  “I thought he had something to tell me.”

  “Please, Mr. Diamond.”

  “As you wish.” Striving to be tolerant, he picked his way through the few known facts, starting with the bomb scare in Harrods and ending with Naomi’s drawings, which she was willing to hand over for Yamagata’s inspection.

  The wrestler methodically turned the pages of the drawing pad, studying the diamond shapes and coming finally to the lattice window.

  “That’s my own work,” Diamond said, thinking how ridiculous he sounded, like some amateur artist looking for compliments. “This drawing above is Naomi’s. I wondered at one stage if she was writing in Japanese characters, but I was told not.”

  When this was explained to Yamagata, he shook his head. He seemed as mystified about the significance of the drawings as everyone else. He closed the pad and handed it back to Naomi, graciously, with both hands, as if it were some precious item in the sumo ritual. He said something in Japanese to her, but she made no response. He then turned to Diamond and actually managed some halting words of English.