Peter Lovesey - Diamond Solitaire

"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."

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.