Maybe it wasn't opportune to ask if any of the calls seemed promising.
Justine said, "The parents give mem these ideas. They must do. They're dafter than the kids." She told Diamond, "I know why you're here. I've been doing this for over an hour and they're still coming in nonstop. Do me a favor and get me a sarnie and an orange juice from the canteen, would you? By then I might have got myself sorted."
He didn't argue; he was going to have to rely on Justine.
She'd removed the headset when he returned. She bit hungrily into the sandwich. "Thanks. What do I owe you?"
"Just a summing-up," he told her. "Have we struck gold, or not?"
"You're the judge of that. What it boils down to is at least twelve callers who swear they know her, at school, or in a dancing class, or something. I've got their numbers so you can call them back. And there was one spooky call."
"What do you mean-spooky?"
"I didn't like the sound of it one bit. A Japanese woman. Well, I think she was Japanese. She sounded Japanese to me.
"Did she give her name?"
"No. That's the point. She refused. And she didn't say anything about knowing who Naomi is, like all the other callers did. All she would say was that she was under instructions to send you a message. A taxi would be sent for you at seven."
"Sent here?"
"Yes. If you really want to help Naomi, you're to get into the taxi, both of you."
"Naomi as well?"
"Yes."
"That was all? She didn't say where the taxi would take us?"
Justine shook her head. "Will you do it?"
"Did you get the impression she was serious?"
"Mr. Diamond, she was so serious that if I were you I'd think twice about going."
"I'm not looking for a bunch of laughs," said Diamond. "What time is it now?"
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Quick reactions can be vital to success; they can also get you into trouble. In the taxi, Diamond remembered he was no longer a senior policeman. He was doing the professional thing, following the only real lead to come out of the television program. But as a detective acting on a tipoff he would have routinely radioed his movements to headquarters.
He asked the driver where they were going.
"My lips are sealed, mate."
"Oh, come on!"
"The Albert Hall!"
"Get stuffed."
He should have phoned the school, or at least got someone to pass a message to Julia Musgrave. For a middle-aged man to transport a small girl around London without informing her guardians wasn't just misguided, it deserved all the outrage it would trigger. The point wasn't that Julia would suspect him of abducting the child-she'd credited him with some responsibility up to now-but others would. Sexual abuse-of children, an evil he was incapable of understanding, had come under the media spotlight in recent months and it wouldn't require much for a woman like Mrs. Straw to brand him as a pervert. To be fair to Mrs. Straw, any policeman would be duty bound to treat such an allegation seriously. He resolved to get to a phone as soon as possible after they reached their destination.
And it was the Albert Hall.
The moment he and Naomi stepped out in Kensington Gore, opposite the north door, they were approached by a Japanese woman. Diamond cupped a hand around Naomi's head and steered her protectively towards him. He was taking no chances.
The woman gave a deep, ceremonious bow. She looked about sixty, far too old to be Naomi's mother. There was a wart at the left edge of her upper lip. "Mr. Diamond?"
"Yes."
"Please come with me."
"In a moment, madam." He settled the fare. As his right hand returned to his side he felt Naomi clutch the ends of his fingers tightly. Clearly she didn't regard the woman as family. They followed her towards the building and he noticed Naomi's head go back, to take in the scale of the building's red-brick exterior. A casserole dish for the gods, he always thought when he saw the Albert Hall. You could imagine a divine hand lifting the roof, inserting an enormous ladle and giving the contents a stir during the singing of "Land of Hope and Glory" on the last night of the Proms.
The woman moved briskly up a short flight of steps and through the arched entrance as if the Albert Hall were her home. She was dressed in expensive Western clothes, a fawn silk jacket and finely tailored dark brown trousers. Her gold-framed glasses had a long retaining chain that danced on her shoulders.
By the time they entered the building, Naomi's grip was threatening to stop the circulation in Diamond's hand. The woman turned right, leading them along the main passage that surrounds the auditorium. Others were moving about in there, young people for the most part, with the age and appearance of students. Yet Diamond didn't have the impression that the Hall was being used for a concert, whether pop or classical. Precisely what was being staged down here this week he didn't know. Slack thinking, he chided himself. He ought to have asked someone at the Television Center.
Their guide stopped by a door marked private and tapped with her knuckles.
Diamond was uneasy about taking Naomi into an enclosed area. "Do you mind telling me what this is about?" he asked.
The woman turned to face him. "I am sorry. It is not for me to say."
"Who are you? I don't even know your name."
"I am nothing. Disregard me."
"You speak good English."
"That is the only reason I am here."
The door was opened by a burly young Japanese in a black tracksuit. The woman bowed. The young man dipped his head in a formal greeting directed more to Diamond than their guide and revealed that his hair was bunched and fastened in a topknot. Something was said in Japanese.
"Please enter," the woman told them, standing aside to gesture them forward.
The sickly-sweet fumes of a floral perfume wafted over them. It was coming from the young man's hair, and the scent was camellia, Diamond registered, recalling a more subtle variety sometimes used by Steph. This was looking less and less like a homecoming for a lost child, but there didn't appear to be anything threatening about the invitation. He led Naomi through the door.
They were greeted by a spectacle that nothing had prepared them for: an enormous pair of buttocks, naked except for a strip of black silk squeezed into the cleft.
For reasons too complex to explore, the over-fleshed male bottom is not a feature much revered in modern Western society. It can be the object of mockery-literally, a butt-or, more positively, a source of extra poundage in the rugby scrum, or the tug-of-war team. This bottom manifestly aspired to higher planes of experience. It was monumental; as awesome in its way as the Albert Memorial across the road.
Motionless, pale gold in hue, smooth as traffic beacons, sturdy as two barrels stored side by side, it dominated the center of the room and much of the sides as well. The rest of the owner's body was for the moment hidden, except for a partial view of stocky legs and bare feet. He was bending forward in a position that must have been painful to hold.
From Naomi's eye level, the spectacle would have rivaled Mount Fuji.
Belatedly, Diamond recalled an item he had seen a couple of days before on a television newscast. A Japanese festival had opened and one of the main attractions was a tournament for Japanese wrestlers. The sport had a devoted following here. He mouthed the word "Sumo?"
The man who had just admitted them nodded.
Although Diamond hadn't watched much sumo wrestling on television, he felt some sympathy with a sport for which the training amounted to gorging oneself with food and the action rarely lasted longer than fifteen seconds.
The buttocks flexed, shuddered and shifted position with astonishing rapidity as their owner, regardless of his guests, went through a physical routine, raising his body level with his hips and lifting his right foot to shoulder height and then slapping it down heavily.