Peter Lovesey: Diamond Solitaire

"I shouldn't say this, Peter," the security director told him, "but you're blood unlucky. Your record here has been exemplary apart from this. You could have looked forward to a more senior post"

"Rules are rules."

"Unfortunately, yes. We'll do the best we can in the way of a reference, but, er…"

"… security jobs are out, right?" said Diamond. He was inscrutable. Fat men-and he was fat-often have faces that seem on the point of turning angry or amused. The trick is to guess which.

The director didn't mind exhibiting his own unease. He shook his head and spread his hands in an attitude of helplessness. "Believe me, Peter, I feel sick to the stomach about this."

"Spare me that"

"I mean it I'm not confident I would have spotted the kid myself. She was practically invisible under the cushions."

"I lifted the cushions," Diamond admitted.

"Oh?"

"She wasn't on that sofa when I did my round. I definitely checked. I always do. It's an obvious place to plant a device. The kid must have been somewhere else and got under them later."

"How could you have missed her?"

"I reckon I took her for one of the cleaners' kids. They bring them in sometimes. Some of them are Vietnamese."

"She's Japanese, I think."

Diamond snapped out of his defeated mood. "You think? Hasn't she been claimed?"

"Not yet."

"Doesn't she know her name?"

"Hasn't spoken a word since she was found. Over at the nick, they spent the whole of today with a string of interpreters trying to coax her to say something. Not a syllable."

"She isn't dumb, is she?"

"Apparently not, but she says nothing intelligible. There's almost no reaction from the child."

"Deaf?"

"No. She reacts to sound. It's a mystery."

"They'll have to go on TV with her. Someone will know her. A kid found in Harrods at night-it's just the sort of story the media pick up on."

"No doubt."

"You don't sound convinced."

"I'm convinced, Peter, all too easily convinced. But there are other considerations, not least our reputation. I don't particularly want it broadcast that a little girl penetrated our security. If the press get on to you, I'd appreciate your not making any statements."

"About security? I wouldn't."

"Thank you."

"But you can't muzzle the police. They have no interest in keeping the story confidential. It's going to break somewhere, and soon."

A sigh from the director, followed by an uncomfortable silence.

"So when do I clear my locker?" Diamond asked. "Right away?"

The priest looked into the widow's trusting eyes and rashly told her, "It's not as if it's the end of the world."

The words of comfort were spoken on a fine summer evening in the sitting room of a country villa in Lombardy, between Milan and Cremona. Pastoral care, Father Faustini termed it Ministering to the bereaved, the sacred obligation of a priest. True, the ministering in mis instance had continued longer than was customary, actually into a second year. But Claudia Coppi, cruelly widowed at twenty-eight, was an exceptional case.

Giovanni, the husband, had been killed freakishly, struck by lightning on a football field. "Why did it have to be my husband when twenty-one other players, the referee and two linesmen were out there?" Claudia demanded of the priest each time he came on a visit. "Is that the Lord's will? My Giovanni, of all those men?"

Father Faustini always reminded Claudia that the Lord works in mysterious ways. She always gazed at him trustingly with her large, dark, expressive eyes (she had worked as a fashion model) and he always told her that it was a mistake to dwell on the past.

The priest and the young widow were seated on a padded cushion that extended around the perimeter of the sunken floor. As usual, Claudia had hospitably uncorked a Barolo, a plummy vintage from Mascarello, and there were cheese biscuits to nibble. The sun had just about sunk out of sight, but to have switched on electric lights on such an evening would have been churlish. The scent of stocks, heavy on the cooler air, reached them through the open patio doors. The villa had a fine garden, watered by a sprinkler system. Giovanni, not short of money-he'd made it to the top as a fashion photographer-had called in a landscape architect when the place was built. For Father Faustini, the remote location of the villa meant a three-mile trip on his moped, but he never complained. He was forty and in good health. A rugged man with tight, black curls and a thick moustache.

"You're doing so much better, now," he remarked to the widow Coppi.

"It's window dressing, Father. Inside, I'm still very tense."

"Really?" He frowned, and only partly out of concern for the tension she was under. It was a good thing the room had become so shadowy that his disquietude wouldn't be obvious to her.

"My usual problem," she explained. "Stress. It shows up in the muscles. I feel it in my shoulders, right across the top."

"As before?"

There was a silence. Father Faustini was experiencing some tension, also.

Claudia said, "Last week you really succeeded in loosening the muscles."

"Really?" he said abstractedly.

"It was miraculous."

He cleared his throat, unhappy with the choice of word.

She amended it to, "Marvelous, then. Oh, the relief! I can't tell you how much better I felt."

"Did it last?"

"For days, Father." While he was absorbing that, she added plaintively, "There's no one else I can ask."

She made it sound like a plea for charity. Father Faustini sometimes fetched shopping for elderly members of his flock. He often collected medicine for their ailments. He'd been known to chop wood and cook soup for poor souls in trouble, so what was the difference in massaging Claudia Coppi's aching shoulders? Only that it set up conflicts within himself. Was it right 10 deny her Christian help because of his moral and spiritual frailty?

On the last two Friday evenings he had performed this service for her. Willingly he would have chopped wood instead, but the villa's central heating was oil-fired. He would have fetched shopping with alacrity, but she had a twice-weekly delivery from the best supermarket in Cremona. She had a gardener, a cook and a cleaner. What it came down to in practice was that the only assistance Father Faustini could render to Claudia Coppi was what she was suggesting. The poor young woman couldn't massage her own shoulders. Not well enough to remove muscular tension.

There was another factor that made him hesitate. Once a week in church he heard Claudia Coppi's confession, and lately-he wasn't certain how many times this had occurred, and didn't intend to make a calculation-she had admitted to impure thoughts, or carnal desires, or some such form of words. It wasn't his custom to ask for more details in the confessional once the commission of a sin was established, so he couldn't know for sure that there was a connection with his visits to the villa.

"I found something you could rub in, if you would," she said.

He coughed nervously and crossed his legs. This was new in the routine. "Embrocation?" he queried, striving to limit his thoughts to muscular treatment, remembering the overpowering reek of a certain brand favored by footballers. The stuff brought tears to the eyes.

"More of a moisturizer really. It's better for my skin. Really smooth. Try." She reached out and smeared some on the back of his hand.

He wiped it off immediately. "It's scented."

"There's a hint of musk," she admitted. "If you'd like to hold the pot, I'll just slip my blouse off."

"That won't be necessary," he quickly said.

"Father, it's silk. I don't want it marked."

"No, no, signora, cover yourself up."

"But I haven't unbuttoned yet" She laughed and added, "Is it as dark as all that?"