Diamond Solitaire Page 6

  Gatti may have nodded in response to the greeting, or the dip of the head may have been part of his running action. It wasn't in his nature to greet people, even in less demanding circumstances. After just a few minutes of slow jogging, he was moving with a spastic jerkiness and taking noisy gulps of air.

  A long exchange was clearly out of the question, so Leapman drew alongside and came quickly to the point "There's a hitch in our arrangement, I'm sorry to say."

  Gatti stopped jogging and turned away from Leapman, flapping his hands at his entourage to step back and give him some privacy. They reversed several paces. The procession set off again with a decent gap in the ranks.

  "What are you trying to tell me?"

  Leapman resumed, "Manny Flexner saw his doctor for a checkup and found that he has only a few months to live."

  "So?"

  "So that's the problem."

  "His problem, not mine," Gatti wheezed.

  "With respect, it isn't so simple as mat He says he's going to step down."

  "Resign?"

  "Yes."

  "What's wrong with that?"

  "He wants to nominate his son to replace him."

  "He has a son?"

  "Yes."

  "You didn't tell me."

  "I'm sorry, Mr. Gatti. I know I should have mentioned k before now. I didn't rate David Flexner at all. He takes no interest in the business."

  "Is he on the Board?"

  "Yes, but—"

  "You didn't rate him, huh?"

  "Well, no."

  "Flexner's own son? You didn't rate him?"

  The questions appeared to indict Leapman and he was becoming alarmed. "He sits through the Board meetings and says nothing," he said in his own defense.

  Massimo Gatti stopped running again. The pursuers stopped, too far off to overhear anything. Leapman stood tamely, waiting for Gatti to recover his bream. "We made an agreement, Mr. Leapman," the little man eventually succeeded in saying. "You needed funds. You came to me with a proposition. Fine. My people were impressed with your scheme. So we backed you. We did as you suggested. We took out the factory in Milano. And two good men were killed."

  Horrified, Leapman was quick to say, "That wasn't my suggestion, Mr. Gatti. You wanted to buy in at the lowest price. I wouldn't have recommended arson."

  "Good men killed," Gatti reiterated. "For nothing."

  "Not for nothing. Let's be frank—the fire achieved what you wanted. Manflex shares plunged on the news. The price recovered a little after you started buying. It was you, wasn't it? You and your associates, buying at rock-bottom prices?"

  There was no response.

  "The shareholders are losing confidence," Leapman insisted. "Manny Flexner's position as Chairman is untenable. I'm certain I could have achieved a boardroom coup. Manny has no rescue plan. The cupboard is bare."

  "So what's different?"

  "He's dying, and it's altered the equation. People who would have supported me are going to back his son out of sympathy or loyalty. Manny's dying wish and all that crap. There's no way I can pull this off right now."

  Gatti stared at him. "Mr. Leapman, I don't give a shit who is Chairman. You enter a billion-dollar agreement with me, you deliver. You know what happens when an agreement breaks down."

  Just three days after his arrival in Italy, David Flexner was installed in a temporary office suite in Milan with telephone system, fax machine, photocopier, word processor, computer and PA—whose name, fittingly, was Pia. She had short, Titian-red hair and garnet-colored eyes. Pia was so watchable that David had instantly decided she would get the female lead if he ever actually got to make a film in Italy, never mind whether she could act. The fact that she also spoke English like a BBC newscaster and could use all the hardware seemed of trifling importance when she first walked in. She was not, he hazarded from the swing of her hips, a diehard feminist Nor, for that matter, was he.

  Diverting as the gorgeous Pia was, in the crisis resulting from the fire there wasn't time to observe her. Rico Villa had set up appointments with the insurers, the union representatives, the employment office and the main city newspapers, who would be the chief means of getting information to the staff. A meeting of all the Manflex Italia employees had been set for the following Saturday morning. They were to gather in a cinema southwest of the city. By then David would have something positive to offer in the way of redundancy terms. He'd spent yesterday with the accountants. Reluctant as he was to devote his life to the pharmaceuticals industry, what had happened in Italy was a problem he could handle with energy and sensitivity. Hundreds of people had lost their livelihood, and he would do his damnedest to treat them decently and fairly.

  Towards the end of Thursday afternoon, Pia swanned in with two men who were definitely not on the roll. They were far too brash to be employees. They studied David with long, level looks as if mentally measuring him for his coffin. Unwilling to be intimidated, he made it obvious that he was assessing them, their off-the-rack suits and their uninteresting striped ties. One, in his forties, had his hair trimmed to about half an inch. "These gentlemen are from the police," Pia said superfluously. She turned to check on their names. They spoke no English, apparently. The short-haired one was a Commissioner, which sounded pretty senior. His name was Dordoni. The other must have been too low in rank to merit an introduction.

  "Do you have any information about the fire yet?" David asked, getting in first.

  Pia translated, listened and then gave the response, which was not an answer. "The Commissioner is asking for a list of all the staff employed at the plant"

  "No problem. We can provide that."

  "He wants a check on everybody."

  "A check?"

  "To know if they are still alive."

  "That isn't so simple. Would you explain to him that we're not in contact with everyone. We're having this meeting Saturday and we'll take names there. What is this about? My understanding is that no one was killed in the fire."

  The translation process began again. Commissioner Dor-doni spoke rapidly, as if irritated by the delays, looking directly at David with moist, black eyes that reminded him of fresh sheep droppings.

  "He says a car ..." Pia stopped and checked something with Dordoni. "... an Alfa Romeo Veloce saloon, crashed on a country road three thousand meters—that's about two miles—from Manflex Italia on the evening of the fire; The petrol tank ruptured and the wreck was badly burned." She turned back to Dordoni for more of the story in Italian, and presently added, "The remains of two men were found. Badly burned. Very badly. They have not been identified."

  "And he's trying to connect this with the fire at the plant?"

  "He says the Alfa Romeo was coming from the direction of the Manflex plant. They can tell by the skid marks that the car was traveling at high speed when it left the road. Apparently it turned over a couple of times. Inside the trunk they found five empty gasoline containers."

  David hesitated, frowning.

  Pia said helpfully, "I think he's implying that these men may have started the fire at the plant, but he hasn't exactly said so yet."

  "What does he want from me?"

  She had another brief exchange with Dordoni before turning back to David. "He says the fire service investigators haven't ruled out the possibility of arson. He's asking if you know of anyone who might have wished to destroy the plant."

  "The answer is no."

  Commissioner Dordoni didn't require a translation. He countered with a frenetic outpouring of Italian.

  Pia, caught in the middle and handling her role with admirable cool, lifted her eyebrows a fraction and explained, "He wants me to tell you it's unwise to refuse to cooperate with the police."

  "If mat's a threat, Pia, you can tell this arrogant jerk that I resent it. I spoke the truth. I've no reason to suspect anyone we employ, or have employed." Having let rip, David had second thoughts. "No. Hold it. Tell him this. The possibility is very disturbing indeed, and he'll have our
full cooperation."

  This Undertaking lowered the temperature a little. Dordoni and his assistant got down to facts—the names of the two security men, the times of shifts, the number of employees and so on, all of which David supplied. They also demanded a list of the staff, with addresses, but he couldn't supply one, not before Saturday's meeting.

  "If he'd describe these two men, we can make some inquiries and find out if anyone recognizes them," he told Pia.

  Dordoni gave a sinister laugh when this was translated, and made a rubbing motion with his finger and thumb while speaking his reply.

  Pia impassively translated, "The men were incinerated beyond recognition. It's possible that the forensic pathologists will give some information, but that is likely to take weeks or months."

  "What about the car?"

  Dordoni revealed that the registration plates had been removed from the Alfa Romeo. Very little that would be useful was left.

  David turned to Pia. "Would you ask him a question from me? If these men haven't been identified, is there any evidence at all that connects them with our company?"

  She conferred with Dordoni. "He says no."

  "It's circumstantial, then."

  "Is that a question?"

  "Don't trouble," he told her. He wasn't scoring points. "Ask him how this crash happened."

  Pia sounded reluctant to put the question. "He already told us. The car was going too fast It turned over."

  "Yes, but why? Was it being chased?"

  She turned back to Dordoni and succeeded in getting the unhelpful answer, "Nobody knows."

  Dordoni nodded to his assistant, preparing to leave. He wasn't waiting for any more idiot questions.

  "Was another vehicle involved?" David pressed him.

  Pia translated quickly.

  Dordoni shrugged. At the door, he appeared to decide, after all, that he would volunteer something else. He turned and delivered a couple of sentences.

  Now Pia gave a shrug. "The car was traveling on a perfectly straight stretch of road. It went out of control, but they don't understand why. They can see from the tire marks that it didn't have a blowout It's an extraordinary thing to happen. They are calling it—I think you have the expression in English—an act of God."

  Later in the afternoon there was an opportunity to get Rico Villa's views on the mysterious car crash. He was dismissive, scornful of the suggestion that arsonists had started the fire. "Why won't they admit mat coincidences happen? Typical of the police, always looking for the first solution that suggests itself. Two serious incidents on one evening and they have to connect them."

  "Only a couple of miles from each other," commented David, slipping into Dordoni's role.

  "A couple of drunks turn their car over. What's so sinister about that?"

  "How do you know they were drunk?"

  "You're in Lombardy now, my friend. Have you tried the Oltrepo Pavese ?

  "They did have those empty petrol cans in their trunk."

  "They were probably farmers. If you have farm vehicles to keep on the move, you collect extra petrol to take back with you."

  "But he said the registration plates were missing."

  "Kids. Souvenir hunters. They'll help themselves to anything." David wasn't overly impressed, and said so.

  "Okay," Rico lobbed one back, "in a couple of days we can take a roll call. Then we'll know if anyone from Manflex Italia is missing. Want a bet?"

  "The guys in the car don't have to be Manflex employees," David said. "Like Dordoni said, they could have been sacked. Or they could simply be troublemakers from outside."

  "Let it go, Dave," Rico advised, putting a hand on his shoulder. "We have more important things to do right now. The police are going to take months over this. Years, probably. And then it's quite likely they'll file it as unsolved."

  For the first time in their friendship, David Flexner had a stirring of unease about Rico.

  CHAPTER NINE

  "What exactly do you do in that school?" Stephanie asked one evening as they waited to eat A chicken casserole in the oven was sending out a rich aroma, but the vegetables still required their seven minutes in the microwave.

  "A lot of sitting around."

  "Can't you make yourself useful in some way?"

  "Occasionally. Today I was doing the job I do best—putting a jigsaw together. An eight-piece jigsaw." Diamond offered the statement blandly, knowing Stephanie would pounce on it. Sometimes he took a wry pleasure in being the prey to his wife's sharp remarks.

  "How many pieces went missing?"

  "Unkind! Not a single one. They're the size of your hand."

  'This is for the children's benefit, I take it?"

  'Naturally."

  "So you work with them, fitting the pieces together?"

  He smiled. "Some hope! I fit them together and they pull them apart."

  "Does Naomi join in?"

  His voice altered, the byplay over. "Naomi? No."

  "Why not? Jigsaws are pretty basic, when all's said and done. Language isn't involved."

  "She doesn't join in anything. She's completely passive."

  "Maybe she's terrified of the others."

  "She was like this before she was brought to the school."

  'Terrified?"

  Diamond nodded. She was almost certainly right.

  "But they insist she's autistic?" Stephanie asked.

  "The diagnosis isn't carved in stone," he said. "Anyway, as far as I can tell it's a convenient label for a pretty broad spectrum of maladjusted kids. Give, for instance, has these tantrums and has to find some corner of the room he considers the safest from invasion. Naomi's not like that She'll sit where she's told. She's silent. Totally switched off. Her behavior is nothing like Clive's, but they're both thought to be autistic. Is that ready?"

  He'd been interrupted by five electronic bleeps. The microwave oven was a symbol of more affluent times. He'd bought it on the day he resigned from the police, but it looked older than that, copiously speckled during the redecoration of the kitchen. Some of the marks had been impossible to remove.

  "Standing time," Stephanie reminded him. "The veggies need their standing time. I don't know if you remember Maxine Beckington, one of the Brownies. She didn't last very long with us, but she was a bright little thing."

  "That was probably why," said Diamond.

  "Why what?"

  "Why she didn't last. If she was as bright as you say, she probably objected to dancing around the toadstool on the grounds that it was a phallic symbol."

  She gave him a glare. The Brownie movement wasn't a topic for levity. "I was about to tell you that Maxine's mother had another child, a boy, and he was the envy of all the other mothers because he was such a contented baby, willing to lie in his pram for as long as they left him. I saw him myself—a beautiful child with gorgeous big blue eyes. He never cried. They never missed a night's sleep. But after a time, this angelic baby started to make them uneasy. They realized he didn't cry even when he was hungry. If they hadn't fed him as a matter of routine, he would have starved, still without complaining. It was uncanny. What started out as a blessing turned out to be deeply worrying, and with good reason. He was eventually found to be autistic. Your Naomi sounds similar."

  Diamond pondered the suggestion. "Yes, I can imagine her as a baby acting like that, but we shouldn't make these comparisons."

  "Why not?"

  "It's unscientific, that's why. One thing I've learned from Julia Musgraye is that autism has to be diagnosed by an expert. You can't pick out a single symptom as typical. Any characteristic you name—the aloofness, the odd movements some of them make, the difficulties with speech—could be the result of some other condition. You recognize autism by a whole range of things. And they vary. Not all autistic babies behave like the kid you just described. Some of them fight and scream from day one and refuse to be comforted."

  "Dreadful for the mothers," Stephanie concurred. "And they look like normal childr
en."

  "Prettier, sometimes. You used a word to describe that baby: angelic. Autistic kids tend to have large eyes and remarkably symmetrical features. They really seem to be otherworldly."

  "Is Naomi like that?"

  "Well, yes."

  "Does she scream and fight?"

  "Never."

  "What if she's provoked?"

  Diamond frowned at the idea. "No one wants to give the kid a hard time. She's had enough shocks already."

  "Don't the other children sometimes bother her?"

  "They don't fight each other. They're too enclosed in their own worlds."

  Stephanie picked up the oven gloves and took out the casserole. Together they served up the meal. When they had savored a few mouthfuls, Diamond said, "I'd like to know how the geniuses at the Police Training College would cope with young Naomi. She'd test their information-gathering techniques all right."

  "It sounds to me as if you're warming to the challenge."

  "Me?" He raised his eyebrows in mock surprise.

  Stephanie said, "You and this kid remind me of something my science teacher told us at school, about when an irresistible force meets an immovable object. How do you resolve it, then?"

  Julia Musgrave was more amenable to his proposal than he felt entitled to expect. The ten days he'd spent observing the class and occasionally assisting had disposed of any fears she may have had that he was a potential nuisance. After classes and in the staffroom he'd shown by bis questions that he was quick to appreciate the difficulties of teaching handicapped children.

  The staff, as one would hope in a special school, were strongly committed. They amounted to four full-time and three part-time helpers, plus the redoubtable Mrs. Straw, who besides guarding the front door had a list of duties that included playtime supervision, first aid, general filing and heating up the lunches supplied by the meals-on-wheels service.

  Diamond had persuaded Julia Musgrave to release Naomi from class for the last hour of Friday afternoon. In a one-to-one situation, he would try patiently to dismantle the child's wall of indifference. They would have the staffroom to themselves. This small room at the back of the house doubled as a work and rest area. Desks were ranged along the walls and mere was a table with coffee-making facilities under the window at one end. Three armchairs were grouped around a low table on which were scattered magazines and newspapers. Diamond had brought in one of the small chairs and spent some time deciding where to place it Eventually he settled for a position facing one of the armchairs. He poured hot water onto instant coffee and sat in the armchair.