Diamond Solitaire

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The two patrolmen first up the stairs had one thing, and one only, lodged in their brains: if this was murder, the scene had to be sealed until the Crime Scene Unit arrived. Having viewed the body, they didn't go so far as to take off their shoes and tiptoe from the room, but they were pretty fastidious about avoiding contact with anything except the carpet. Such discipline ought to have sounded a warning bell for Diamond, but his mind was on other things. He followed them out and told them that something else had to be done, and urgently. He gave them descriptions of Naomi and the man in the leather jacket, and the white Buick, including its license number. The patrolmen seemed to take umbrage at this big, bluff Englishman issuing orders, so he changed to a more respectful approach. Patiently, more patiently than anyone who knew him would have credited, he repeated everything until one of them took the decision to transmit the message to Central that a murder suspect was at large with a seven-year-old Japanese girl believed to be mentally handicapped. He could do no more. The machine took over.

The scene of the killing became a honeypot for homicide detectives, the forensic team in white overalls, police photographers, the coroner's assistant and the medical examiner. Procedural activity compartmentalized the horror of violent death and made it manageable.

For the next three hours Peter Diamond was put through the grinder by detectives.

Violent deaths were commonplace in New York, but the case of Minori Tanaka had unusual features. More than one of the interrogators commented that it was a cruel killing. Even murders have their scale of acceptability and a bullet through the head rates several points above a drowning. The tying of the victim's hands was picked out as a particularly nasty feature. One officer commented that drowning may have been used because it was a relatively silent way to kill. It was true that the manager, De Wint, hadn't heard anything to alert him. If Diamond hadn't arrived and demanded to be let into the room, the body would have remained undiscovered until the next day.

The workover he was given was outrageous, in his opinion, considering who he was, and he told them so. Homicide were unrepentant. As an ex-detective he'd conducted himself, in the words of one lieutenant, like Winnie the Pooh in a James Bond movie. While he didn't accept the comparison, he pretended to see it their way after a couple of hours of being shouted at.

He was driven to the 26th Precinct station house to assemble a photofit of Leather-jacket; a task he'd often demanded of witnesses himself, without appreciating how difficult it was to arrive at a likeness. Afterwards, they got him to look through photos of known criminals. A fruitless exercise that had to be gone through.

By eleven that evening there was still no news of the Buick except that it was identified as a stolen car, taken from a street in Queens early that morning. If a car isn't stopped within the first two hours of a call going out, he was told, the chances of arresting anyone are slim. They abandon the car and take another if they're professional crooks, and who in New York would admit to being an amateur? He asked if the patrols were being reminded of the details. The transmitter was red-hot, he was told. When a kid is at risk, really at risk like this Japanese girl, the alert has top priority.

"So is there anything else I can do?"

He got the answer he expected.

"You're asking me to leave, then?"

"You got it. What's your address?"

"What?"

"Where are you staying, man?"

He hadn't even considered until this moment. "I, em, haven't checked in yet."

"Mister, it's a little late in the day."

He settled for a room in the Firbank. Downstairs, without bath, at sixty dollars. Probably a sensible choice. While his sumo sponsor might conceivably have stumped up for a five-star hotel downtown, this was where the action was. And a five-star hotel downtown might have looked askance at a guest without any baggage at all.

The action! Why do I kid myself, he thought. I'm sidelined here. A killer is holding a handicapped child somewhere in this city. Even the police are getting no information.

Patience, self-discipline, confidence that something will turn up-these are the props a senior detective learns to support himself with when everything has been done and nothing seems to be happening. He'd been through it many times. The pressure was extreme, but you had to be strong.

In the privacy of the first-floor bathroom, he took from his pocket the photograph he'd found in Minori Tanaka's wallet, having suppressed his curiosity for hours. A curious picture to carry in a wallet. Not the kind of snap people hand out to friends when families are mentioned. It was a shot of a gravestone.

Most of the inscription was in Japanese, with the exception of some numerals showing the dates of birth and death of the deceased. He had to squint to read them: 2.2.1984-12.12.1988

He dipped into his pocket for the notes he'd made of the passport details and found that his memory wasn't at fault. The child named in the passport, Emi Tanaka, had been born on February 2, 1984, which was identical to the date of birth on the gravestone.

A coincidence?

No.

A twin?

Unlikely.

Most probably Emi Tanaka was dead.

If so, she had been dead four years. Yet Mrs. Tanaka had brought Naomi through immigration at Heathrow and JFK by using this passport, suggesting that she was the child born on February 2, 1984. The age was about right. No other identification is required when children travel on their parents' passports. No photo. No birth certificate. Not even descriptive details.

He returned to his room and lay on the bed pondering the reason why a woman should take a child-an autistic child- all the way from Japan to England, pretending it was hers. The obvious assumption was that she had kidnapped Naomi. Maybe she was one of those unfortunate mothers who snatch somebody else's child because their own has died. He'd investigated a similar case in England, although both children had been much younger, just a few months old in fact. The distress had affected everyone, not least himself. He'd been relieved that the woman was treated with leniency by the court. Anyone who has suffered the loss of a young child, or the grief of a miscarriage, can understand the motive for such actions, criminal as they may be.

With the facts so far, he started putting together a scenario. Somewhere in Japan in 1988, Mrs. Tanaka's child Emi had died, aged four years and ten months. The grief-stricken mother had been unable to come to terms with her loss. She had to endure the sight of her dead child's friends growing up and enjoying the world, as Emi should have done. Either by chance or intention she observed the children in a school for the handicapped. Naomi was one of them, and Mrs. Tanaka noticed her particularly because she was about the age Emi would have been. She coveted her. Not understanding Naomi's autism, she persuaded herself that this beautiful and apparently normal child was merely unwanted and unhappy, and that she could be a good mother to her and give her the love she craved.

So she contrived some way of snatching her from the school.

Then she'd flown to England, using her own dead child's entry on the passport to get Naomi past the immigration checks.

In London (the scenario went on), in fact, on a shopping trip to Harrods, Naomi had succeeded in escaping from this woman who had kidnapped her. She had hidden in the furniture department, and there she had been found after the store closed.

Distraught, Mrs. Tanaka had not known how to get the child back. Afraid of contacting the police or the Japanese Embassy, she had waited for news of where Naomi was being looked after. Eventually, perhaps by recognizing her on television, she had tracked her to the school. By calling there early in the morning, she had avoided meeting the teaching staff. Her strength of will had outmatched Mrs. Straw's. Reunited with Naomi, she had made her escape to New York.

There the theory foundered. The events in America were inexplicable. Leather-jacket's involvement didn't fit any facts at all. Apparently he'd been waiting to meet Mrs. Tanaka and the child-with murder in mind. If not, then he was a killer who picked up women randomly at airports and murdered them-but would a random killer approach a woman with a young child? Surely he'd have the sense to foresee the problems that would bring. Anyway, the nature of the killing didn't square with a casual pickup. The usual motives of sex and theft just didn't apply.

Well into the night Diamond grappled with the inconsistencies, trying to develop the scenario and finding it impossible. Somewhere earlier in the chain of events there must have been an American connection he'd missed, he decided, but that was the limit of his speculation. At some stage he left the room and went upstairs to check whether anything new had emerged. He found a solitary cop slumped in a chair outside the murder room. No one was inside. Homicide had left, and the inquiry was now being conducted from Headquarters, wherever that was.

He returned to his room, stripped and got into bed. Back in England, it would be morning already. He didn't feel like sleep, but he was dog-tired.