Diamond Solitaire (8 page)

"Naomi isn't mine."

She gave him a long look, not without sympathy, but accompanied by the slight smile that hadn't left her lips since she'd seen the injury. "Let's say that you're taking a special interest. That's the agony with these children. They look bright They can show glimmers of intelligence, even of brilliance in some cases. The textbooks call such children idiot savants."

"Cruel," Diamond commented.

"It's a cruel condition."

"For the parents, I mean."

"Oh, yes. It's harder to accept than having a child who is retarded. Some autistic children can sing quite intricate tunes before they're a year old. I've known a four-year-old who remembers every bar of a Beethoven symphony. They can do incredible things with numbers. They can hide some favorite toy and then weeks, months later, go straight to it People marvel at such things and persuade themselves that there's a genius trying to get free, that it's simply a matter .of finding the miracle cure. It isn't so, Peter. These kids are impaired for life. The memory may be functioning with superefficiency, but the rest of the brain isn't. They can't reason as you or I can. They can't interpret the facts they know to any purpose. It's incredibly frustrating, but you have to accept it if you work with them."

"Of course."

"You're not discouraged?"

"I'm not a quitter, Julia. I'm ready for the next round."

She regarded him with a kind of pity. "It isn't a boxing match, in spite of the evidence to the contrary."

He peeled off the Elastoplast on the way home in the tube, not wishing Stephanie to see it. The small cut had dried, but the area still felt sore. It was too much to hope that Steph wouldn't notice the minute he stepped through the door.

She said, "Lunchtime drinks today?"

"Naomi."

"I thought you told me she was only this high."

"Yes, but I was sitting in an armchair."

"With the child on your lap?" She paused. "Have you
got
a lap these days, my love?"

"Not on my lap, for God's sake. I don't want child molesting added to my record. No, I was leaning forward in the chair, trying to get her to touch me."

"Pete, that sounds even more deplorable."

'To identify me. To show that she understood my name."

"She's Japanese, my love."

He switched on the TV.

Later she said, "Maybe you ought to try a different approach."

"Such as?" He spoke sharply. He was still feeling frayed.

"You seem to be trying to get through to her on the basis that she isn't autistic. Have you thought of doing the other thing? In other words, testing whether she is?"

"How do I do that?"

"Better ask."

After two more arid sessions in the staffroom with Naomi (keeping his distance) he was close to being persuaded that no progress was possible, and he admitted as much to Julia Musgrave. They were in the school garden during what was wishfully described in the timetable as playtime. Rajinder and Naomi were seated on swings of the kind that had side supports and safety bars, being kept in motion by Mrs. Straw. Not one of the trio seemed to be taking any pleasure in the exercise. Tabitha, sucking her thumb, was watching dolefully and Clive was hiding behind a sack of grass seed in the gardener's shed.

"I've got to admire your persistence, Peter," Julia Musgrave told him, "but I have to say that I think you're right You're up against a brick wall. Have you talked to the police? They took away the clothes Naomi was found in. I wonder if they found any clues."

"You can stop wondering," he told her. "I know one of the inspectors there. The kid's things were sent off to the lab, and after a couple of weeks a five-page report came back, saying—in a nutshell—that they appeared to have been worn by a dark-haired female child. Oh, and they had the Marks and Spencer label. That cuts it down to five million, I should guess." He picked a sprig of lavender and rolled it between his finger and thumb, watching the bits drop on the path. The scent was a favorite of Steph's. "My wife thinks I'm going at this the wrong way round."

"How do you mean?"

"She says instead of looking for signs that Naomi isn't autistic, I ought to be examining all the evidence that she
is.
Normality is impossible to prove."

"It's a questionable concept anyway. She sounds like a bright lady, your wife."

"Brighter than me, for sure."

"Why don't you talk to Dr. Ettlinger? He's coining in to look at Naomi this afternoon."

Ettlinger was a child psychiatrist attached in some unspecified way to the school, a short, troll-like man with a prodigious crop of wiry black hair. It wasn't clear whether he'd been appointed by the local health authority or was a freelancer who had persuaded Julia Musgrave that there might be something in it for the children. As Peter Diamond was only mere himself by courtesy of Julia, he was in no position to object, but his private assessment was that Ettlinger ought not to have been let within a mile of young kids. The man was abrasive, opinionated and humorless. In spite of that, he seemed to have convinced everyone at the school that he was an international authority on autism, and presumably it was true.

"You'd better not waste my time," he told Diamond waspishly when approached in the staffroom. "I'm Teutonic. I have no interest whatsoever in the weather, or cricket, or cars." From anyone else, the remark might have been meant to amuse. Not from Ettlinger.

"It's a professional matter, Doctor," Diamond assured him, uncomfortably kowtowing. The days when he could pull rank on smart-mouthed forensic experts were just a memory now. "I'm interested in Naomi, the Japanese girl. She's here because they believe she's autistic."

"Correct."

"So you agree that she is?"

"I didn't say that. I was merely confirming your statement" "But have you formed an opinion yet?"

"No."

"Is that because you have doubts?"

"Certainly not," Ettlinger snapped. "Dubiety is unscientific. I am open-minded. Do you understand the difference?
You
may harbor doubts. I am open-minded."

Diamond was tempted to remark that the state of Ettlinger's mind interested him less than Naomi's, but he checked himself.

Ettlinger added, "I would need to study the child in a more systematic way than I can on occasional visits. She is not my patient"

"I understand she shows some of the classical symptoms of autism."

"Classical?"
Ettlinger almost choked on the word, he was so indignant.
"Classical?
The condition wasn't given a name until 1943, and it wasn't studied in a serious way until the 1960s. How can you speak of symptoms as classical?"

"Typical, then."

"I could object to that as well."

Diamond didn't give him the opportunity. "She doesn't speak. She avoids eye contact. Is that the profile of an autistic child? Because if it is, Naomi fits it perfectly."

"What you have just described, Mr. Diamond, may be indicative of autism; it is also the appropriate behavior of well-brought-up young women throughout much of Asia. Have you thought of that? One cannot discount the possibility that her behavior is governed, to some degree at least, by her culture."

A persuasive point that Diamond accepted. He supposed he had borne it in mind up to now without articulating it. "But not to speak at all, not even to the woman from the Japanese Embassy?"

"That, I grant you, is exceptional."

"How do you recognize autism, then?"

Ettlinger sighed and glanced up at the staffroom clock.

"All right, how does anyone recognize it? Are there tests?"

"What do you mean?"

"X rays, blood tests, scans. I'm no expert."

"There are no objective tests of that kind," said Ettlinger with disdain. "One looks at the behavior. What I will say is that every child who fits this syndrome suffers from some degree of speech impairment, ranging from mutism to aphasia—which is confusion over the proper sequence of letters and words. Every child, Mr. Diamond."

Diamond placed a mental tick against Naomi's mutism.

"It is also true by definition that the autistic child is manifestly indifferent to other people, especially other children. Autism comes from the Greek, as you probably know.
Autos.
Self. Right?"

Another tick.

"However, one would expect to observe other impairments, such as problems of motor control."

"Odd ways of walking, you mean, like Rajinder?"

"Yes."

"Naomi isn't like that She seems well coordinated."

Ettlinger nodded. "Some of them are. Curiously, they sometimes have the ability to keep their balance better than other children. They climb on furniture and leap around in a surefooted manner. They could probably perform prodigious feats on a tightrope."

Which wouldn't be easy to test, Diamond thought.

"And they won't get dizzy if they spin around."

"That's something I didn't know."

"It's commonly observed."

"Anything else?"

Ettlinger spread his hands. "Much else, Mr. Diamond. Repetitive behavior, such as head banging, or rocking, or staring into a mirror, or spinning things. The wheels of a toy, for instance. You must have watched Clive do that."

"Of course. I don't think Naomi does it."

Ettlinger was already onto other symptoms of autism. "Abnormal reactions to sensory experiences, such as pain, or cold or heat. Hostility to being touched lightly." There was the hint of a smile.

"You heard what happened to me?"

"I can see."

"Was that to be expected of an autistic child?"

"They bite, yes."

"I mean does it make the diagnosis more likely?"

"It's a small indication. Next time you should try being more boisterous, and see if she responds to it They often enjoy a good romp." The moral objection to a strange man "romping" with a small girl seemed not to have occurred to Dr. Ettlinger.

"Is anything known about the cause of the condition?"

A laugh came from deep in Ettlinger's throat "The cause, 70 you say? Nobody knows. No known cause and no cure. There are theories. More theories than I have time to list, my friend. Personally, I am inclined to believe that the problem is organic, rather than emotional. It has nothing to do with the way the children are reared, as was once suspected. It goes back, in my opinion, to pre-, peri- or postnatal injury or illness affecting the brain. And don't ask me what can be done. Every week, practically, I read of some Svengali claiming spectacular success. Cures, even. You can hug these children, reward them, punish them, isolate them, put them on diets. They can be trained to some extent. I don't deny it. But so can chimpanzees. Personally I would rather train a chimpanzee. They're capable of affection, you know. Autistic children give none. They are tyrants."

Diamond had heard all this with mounting distaste. "That's hardly a scientific word, is it? Tyrants?"

The little doctor glared. "Think of a better one. Spend as long as you like observing Naomi and think of a better one—if you can." He turned his back on Diamond and went over to talk to someone else.

CHAPTER TEN

This morning Diamond was equipped with a pad of drawing paper and a marker. If this intractable little girl wouldn't respond to sounds, he'd decided, maybe it
was
a problem of language. He was going to see whether symbols would do the trick. He moved his chair next to hers and placed the pad on a low table in front of them. Then he drew a large circle and added a smaller one on top. A body and a head, evoking childish memories of beetle drives on wet afternoons in English holiday camps. Except mat this was meant to represent his body and his head. He added stick legs and arms, followed by the facial features, with a scribble of hair above each ear to establish the margins of his bald dome. He held it up for Naomi, beamed encouragingly and said, "Diamond." He pointed to his chest

Possibly, he persuaded himself, her eyes gave his artwork the credit of a glance. They certainly didn't linger on it. And she remained silent.

He touched the drawing and then tapped himself on the head.

"See? Diamond."

Not a muscle twitched.

Refusing to be discouraged, he folded the picture over and drew a smaller figure on the next sheet, with the suggestion of a skirt and a passable attempt at fringed hair.

"Naomi."

He pointed to her. Indicated her hair. Then added a flourish to the drawing, a small bow poised on top of the head. "Like it?~ He chuckled a little, and was conscious how forced it sounded. "It's you."

Not only was she unamused, she hadn't even looked.

Determined not to be thwarted, he turned back to the first drawing, tore it from the pad and set it on the table beside the second one, to make clear the contrast in size. "Big Diamond. And little Naomi. Diamond. Naomi. Me and you."

She seemed frozen.

Several more attempts to establish the significance of the drawings came to nothing.

"Would
you
like to draw?" He slid the pad across the table in front of her. Once on television he'd seen a boy suffering from autism who could do remarkable drawings of buildings from memory, precise in detail and perfect in perspective. After a visit to London the boy had made sketches of St. Paul's and other buildings equally ornate. Two books of his drawings had been published.

Diamond wasn't expecting fine art from Naomi. He was willing to settle for a mark on the paper, of any sort. He took hold of her left hand and carefully inserted the marker between her fingers. He'd noticed that she used the left when she held a paper cup. Plenty of thought was going into this.

Naomi declined to grip the marker and let it flop out of her hand.

"I think you could do this," he said, more for his own morale than the child's. "I really think you could." He replaced her fingers around the marker and guided her hand to produce a shaky circle on the drawing pad. "There!"

The accomplishment was lost on Naomi.

"Suit yourself, miss." More disappointed than he cared to show, he turned his back on the child and stepped over to the table where the coffee things were. He might as well switch the kettle on now so that the teachers didn't have to wait when they came in at lunchtime. That would be the sum of his achievements for this lesson. He checked the water level, pressed the switch and stared out of the window, listening to the kettle begin the moaning note that was sometimes mistaken for a child crying.

Then he was conscious of a light touch on his right hand. Unbidden, Naomi had got up from her chair and reached up to place her palm against his.

He stared down, amazed. Elated. Did he dare feel elated? She didn't return his glance, but what she had done was enough. It was the first positive gesture she had made towards him, or towards anyone in the school, so far as he knew. He let his fingers gently enclose the small hand. He and Naomi stood together in front of the window in silence, in some sort of harmony, the irresistible force and the immovable object.

The kettle was coming to the boil and it had some fault in the mechanism that stopped it from switching off. He let it steam for a time and then leaned forward and with his left hand switched off the wall socket Naomi took it as the signal to remove her hand from his and go back to her chair. He turned, smiling to let her see that it wasn't meant as a rejection. She didn't respond.

His eyes were misting. For pity's sake, he thought, I'm not going soft, am I? Peter Diamond, ex-CID?

At lunchtime, he told Julia Musgrave about the drawing session. They sat together on a bench under a sycamore tree in the school garden eating sandwiches. By then he was able to be more objective, admitting that it might be a mistake to place too much significance on the incident.

"No, we need all the encouragement that's going in this work," she said. "Some kids never make a spontaneous gesture of friendship like that to another person. Never. It's terrific news, Peter. Let's face it, no one else has made any progress with her. I think the woman from the embassy has despaired of ever getting through. She didn't come at all this week. She phoned instead. They're talking about sending Naomi to a school in Boston that specializes in autism. It's run by Japanese teachers."

"Boston?" Diamond said, aghast "Send her to America? That's going to confuse the kid even more."

"They're getting remarkable results. Several children from mis country have been taken there. It may be the best solution for her. We're making no progress here—well, not until mis morning." She paused, looking at him earnestly. "They call it the Boston Hagashi School. Apparently
hagashi
means 'hope' in Japanese. Don't you think that's a beautiful idea?"

If it was, he wasn't receptive to it "Look, I know you mean to do right by Naomi, but suppose she isn't autistic?"

"It's not really my decision, Peter. She's in the care of the local authority."

"Who'd be very relieved to have her taken off their hands, no doubt."

"Now you're being cynical."

'Tell me something, then. What precisely is being done to find her parents?"

She sighed. "The police are making inquiries. No one has given any worthwhile information, so far as I can gather. No one has reported her missing. Where are the parents? Somebody definitely looked after her up to the time she was found. She was clean and decently dressed. She's been abandoned, Peter, and I don't think the parents are going to change their minds. Young mothers sometimes come forward to reclaim newborn babies left on doorsteps, but this is something else."

"Agreed."

"I often meet parents who feel they can't cope any longer with disturbed children—only they don't just leave them in Harrods and walk away."

"What is it, six weeks now?" Diamond asked, making a point rather than seeking the answer, which he knew.

"Almost."

"In the first week, her picture was in the papers."

"And on television. Nothing came of it."

He said thoughtfully, "The picture was only a still, and it was only on the regional news. I'd like to get her onto a national TV program, like 'Crimewatch.'"

Julia Musgrave frowned. "We don't know that a crime is involved."

"Abandoning a child her age?"

She shook her head. "It's not the best way to reach her parents. Somewhere out there is a very distressed mother."

"All right, let's see if we can get Naomi on a chat show."

"A
chat
show?"

"You'd do the chatting, but she'd be seen by millions."

"Peter, I'm not sure that it's right to put a disturbed little girl in front of television cameras."

He understood her reluctance without supporting it. "I'd agree with you if she was a gibbering idiot, or scared of people, like Clive. But you and I know how she'll conduct herself on television. She'll stay as calm as ever. Self-possessed. She's in control. You can't deny that. And if she appears live, it's going to make a far bigger impact than a still picture. There's a very good chance that someone will recognize her."

"I'm not at all happy about this."

"And I'm far from happy about the kid being whisked off to America when her parents may still be here in England. Let me make some inquiries. This is just the kind of story they like to take up on TV. She's a very appealing child."

"Exactly," she said with passion. "I don't want her used. We don't have the moral right to turn her into an object for people to goggle at If she's on television, you can bet the papers will take it up. We'll have all sorts of well-meaning folk offering to adopt her, sending her toys—"

"Does she have any toys?"

"She isn't interested, Peter. We have a whole menagerie of stuffed animals."

"How about toys with wheels?" he asked suddenly, recalling Dr. Ettlinger's observation.

"She isn't a spinner, rest assured. Look, television is an entertainment medium. Naomi isn't entertainment, she's a vulnerable child with a serious impairment."

"Julia, people aren't going to laugh at her, for God's sake."

She regarded him steadily. "If this had been Clive or Rajinder whose people we couldn't find, would you take them on television?"

"Probably not on a talk show," he conceded.

"And why not?"

"Their behavior wouldn't do them credit—but they're different. You and I know that Naomi would acquit herself impeccably." "Oh, yes?" A glint came to her eye. "How do you know she wouldn't bite the cameraman?"

He had to smile at the prospect.

Julia's attention switched abruptly to Mrs. Straw, who was bearing down on them from the direction of the house. From the manner of her approach, the carriage of her shoulders and the swing of her thighs, she had something awesome to announce, and she was going to make sure that it received its proper attention.

"What is it, Mrs. Straw?" Julia asked.

"I think you should look in the staffroom, Miss Musgrave. Somebody stupidly left a marker pen lying about. The Japanese girl found it, and she's scribbled all over the walls, and they were only papered three months ago. You never saw anything like it!"

The vandalism in the staffroom provided Diamond with his first opportunity of detective work since leaving Bath. The perpetrator of the graffiti had done an effective job, for the walls were copiously covered in aimless scribble. Nor had the furniture escaped. The thick, black lines had turned the lower half of the room into what one of the teachers described as a Jackson Pollock. The reference went over Diamond's head, although it sounded apt.

Nobody, he learned by questioning Mrs. Straw, had actually seen Naomi at work with the marker. The child had been found with it later in the dining room. She had refused to give it up. "I had to pry her fingers off one by one," Mrs. Straw asserted. "She was all set to do it all over the school."

This, it turned out, was a false accusation. Doubtful that Naomi was the culprit, Diamond was able to demonstrate her innocence. When he examined the staffroom walls, he found that the scribbles ran higher man she was capable of reaching. Thus it was that the real culprit was apprehended in his usual hiding place behind the grass seed in the garden shed. Not only was Clive's reach four inches higher than that of any other child in the school, his hands and clothes were stained with black marks. It transpired that he'd wandered into the staffroom at a time when nobody was about and had done the deed, afterwards throwing the marker away in the garden. Later, Naomi had picked it up.

"I'm afraid Mrs. Straw is a vengeful woman," Julia Musgrave confided to Diamond. "She does work hard for the school, though. I don't think we'd manage without her."

"She was right about one thing," he admitted. "I was daft to leave the marker out." In this confessional vein, he went on rashly to promise to redecorate the staffroom—a severe penance indeed. This little crisis had sidetracked them from the more vital issue of whether it was right to put Naomi on television; not for long, he was resolved.

As he was leaving, calculating how many cans of emulsion he'd need, Julia called his name and came after him into the corridor.

He stopped, uncertain what to expect.

"You can have your marker back," she told him. "Believe it or not, the ink isn't all used up yet."

He pocketed it, slightly puzzled. The marker belonged to the school anyway. She must have known.

She said,"You don't really have to go to all that trouble— over the staffroom, I mean."

"It's no sweat for me," he lied.

"I appreciate the offer, only I wouldn't want you to think it will change anything."

"Except the color of the staffroom," he said, grinning.

When he turned, he almost fell over Naomi. She must have been standing extremely close behind him, apparently waiting, because she stretched up her hand towards him. Twice in a day, he thought. This is too amazing to be true.

He extended his hand towards hers, but immediately she pulled it away. She didn't, after all, wish to renew the contact.

"Have it your way," he said, wryly reflecting that even at that tender age, women played fast and loose with decent men's affections.

Sure enough, she proffered me hand a second time, only now her palm was outstretched as if she were asking for money.

"What is it, Naomi?" he asked, bending lower. "What are you trying to say?"

Her eyes had lost that habitual glazed look. She was focusing on him intently, her forehead creased in concern. She began jabbing her hand at him repeatedly like a beggar in a Cairo bazaar.

He asked, "Are you hungry?"

Whatever the problem was, she was really trying to communicate— a huge advance after six passive weeks—and the least he could do in return was discover what she wanted.

"It can't be money."

As he bent even closer to her upturned face, she reached for his jacket, pulled it open and dipped her free hand into the inner pocket

"Young lady," he said, "you're sharper than anyone suspected."

Only it wasn't his wallet she was after. It was the marker that he'd stowed away in there after seeing Julia. Naomi whipped it out and clutched it to her chest with both hands, as if she wanted nothing so much in the world.

"God help us!" he said to her. "What do I do now?"