He sat in front of it, and his latest helpmate pressed a switch. While the machine was booting up, she had a spasm of uncertainty. "Are you quite sure Michael said you could inspect the personnel files? Only a few of us have the password to get into them."
"That's all right," he assured her. "I'm not out to discover how much you people earn or what age you are. I just want to look up a research scientist, someone who is sponsored by Manflex."
"That's no problem," she said, with obvious relief. "It's much easier to access researchers man permanent staff. What name are you hoping to find?"
"Masuda. Dr. Yuko Masuda."
"That doesn't sound English."
"It isn't I have a cousin who went to Japan."
"Let's try, then. Masuda. Would you spell mat?"
When the name appeared on the screen, Diamond's hopes of new information were dashed. It was a thin account of twelve years of research.
Name: MASUDA, Dr. Yuko (female). Date of Birth:-
Address: Care of Dept. of Biochemistry, Univ. of Yokohama, Japan.
Qualifications: M.Sc, Ph.D.
Dates of Sponsorship: From: September 1979.
To: Continues.
Subject of Research: Drug- and alcohol-induced comas.
Drugs Under Research: Sympathomimetic.
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.
"It isn't much," he complained. "Hasn't she published anything since 1983? I thought research scientists were constantly publishing."
The woman gave a shrug. "Maybe the file hasn't been updated."
At least the file confirmed that David Hexner had been entirely frank about Yuko Masuda. This was all familiar stuff from the interview at the station house.
"Is there any way of telling when this file was put together?"
"Oh, sure. There's a checklist of all the dates when entries or deletions were made." She pressed two keys and a window was displayed on the right of the screen. "Just two entries. As you see, the file was created on September 10, 1987, and the latest entry was only three months back."
He hesitated. Something was wrong. "But the last entry on file refers to a conference in 1983. Which piece of this data is new? What did anyone find to enter three months ago when all I can see here relates to work published up to 1983?"
"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.