"It's all right," she said, launching into a translation directly, looking up earnestly at the wrestler.
"As you know," Diamond picked up his thread again, "in England we did all we could to publicize Naomi's plight. After I went on television, Mrs. Tanaka panicked and snatched Naomi back. She was in trouble now. She couldn't possibly stay in Britain, so she phoned her contact for orders. They told her to fly to New York, and she obeyed, a fatal move, if only she'd realized. Obviously the people behind this scam had decided Mrs. Tanaka was unreliable and dispensable, and they hired a man to meet her and murder her."
He stopped. He'd told most of it now. It all hung together so well. And yet…
Yamagata listened to the Japanese version and then spoke a few words that, translated into English, pinpointed the problem. "If Dr. Masuda is dead, why has Leapman come to Japan with Naomi and two American strongmen?"
Diamond was about to admit he was stumped for an explanation when someone interrupted in Japanese. It was Dr. Hitomi, speaking in the modulated tone he had used before.
Modulated it may have been, yet it brought a swift, excited response from Yamagata.
The translation followed for Diamond's benefit. "Dr. Hitomi says he thinks you are mistaken in saying Dr. Masuda is dead. He saw her here on the campus only last week."
He made an effort to stay calm. "Is he certain? When the police checked her last address, she was missing."
Now one of the librarians chimed in, using imperfect, but perfectly comprehensible English. "Is true. She alive. She sometimes use library. If you like I show you her name on computer."
"No need," said Diamond. "I believe you, both of you."
He loosened his lips and blew out, making them vibrate. It eased his tension, somehow. "And now we know the answer to Mr. Yamagata's question. Leapman and his friends are in Japan to do the job properly this time and silence Dr. Masuda for good."
"With the child?" Miss Yamamoto said spontaneously.
"They'll use the child as bait. The point is, have they found her mother already?"
When this had been turned into Japanese, Yamagata spoke.
"He says the real point is, where to look for Dr. Masuda."
He was right. They did the obvious thing first, and checked the library records for an address. It proved to be the same place that Diamond had been informed by the Yokohama police was now let to someone else. A phone called confirmed this.
"So where in the whole of Japan do we turn now?" he said aloud, but speaking more to himself than anyone present, so that he was caught by surprise when Miss Yamamoto translated.
This time, no one had an answer.
And this was the nadir, the most depressing moment of the entire quest. To have come this far and be thwarted was hard enough, but to know for sure that every minute of inaction made it more likely that Naomi and her mother would die- that was intolerable.
He asked them to call the police. He was told that they had been notified hours before, apparently by the zealous young man in Immigration.
"Then we'll call and ask if they have any information yet."
A call was made and the police had nothing to impart. Not even a sighting of the Americans.
Someone suggested coffee. Diamond wasn't interested.
"What else do they have on the library computer?" he asked Miss Yamamoto.
Only the titles of the books borrowed.
"What are they?" he asked, more to give an illusion of activity than anything else.
Yuko Masuda had one book out. On comas.
He wondered.
"Is there a hospital in this city, or in Tokyo, that specializes in treating alcoholics?"
Three.
"Would you phone each of them and ask whether Dr. Masuda carries out research there?"
The second hospital they called said Dr. Masuda was a regular visitor.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Diamond had been told that the hospital was south of the city, in the foreigners' quarter, Yamate-Machi, known as the Bluff. For about a mile the taxi driver took a route along the north bank of the Nakamura River. He drove fast, with the horn blaring most of the time, on orders from Yamagata, who kept urging him to overtake more vehicles; you didn't need Japanese to understand. And there was no complaining from the driver. He was obviously a sumo worshipper having the trip of a lifetime. If he lived to tell the tale, he'd be the envy of every taxi driver in Yokohama.
In the front passenger seat, Diamond ground his teeth and braced himself for a collision. This kind of traveling, he reflected grimly, shouldn't be inflicted on the middle-aged. It was a bit much when the quickest you normally experienced was a bus up Kensington High Street. But he still hoped to God that he would get to Yuko Masuda before Leapman and his two gorillas.
They screeched right, the mudflaps rasping on the road, forced lower by the weight on the rear seat. They crossed a bridge, zigzagged along a busy stretch beside Ishikawacho Railway Station, and then onto the access road for a stretch of expressway. God help us, Diamond said to himself, he can really put his foot down now. But the taxi was close to its optimum speed anyway. They fast-laned under a tunnel and all the way to the next exit which took them into the Yamate-Machi area. Not a moment too soon, the hospital came up on the left, dominated by four high-rise blocks, a huge, modern site with its own system of roadways.
Yamagata had his door open well before they braked outside the main reception hall. Gesturing to Diamond to remain in the cab, he moved inside at impressive speed for a big man. It would have been interesting to see the reactions inside. When aswnotori charged in and demanded to know the way to the coma unit, you'd assume that he'd been rough with someone.
Yamagata emerged, running, shouting directions, and clambered in, causing the whole vehicle to rock, and they powered off again. The speed was even more reckless in hospital grounds with limit signs at every turn, but the driver wasn't slowing for ambulances, food trolleys or zimmer-frames; he could steer, couldn't he?
They rounded the outpatient block, swerving to avoid an unconscious patient being wheeled between two buildings, and raced through a narrow space between parked cars. Ahead was the building they wanted, if Yamagata's frenetic instructions meant anything. It was a one-story, flat-roofed wooden structure that looked like an afterthought The taxi screeched to a halt and the passengers leapt out and shoved open the door.
They were in a short corridor with doors along one side. A woman was walking towards them.
At this critical stage of the operation, with timing that can only be described as inopportune, Diamond had a deeply disturbing thought. He hadn't the faintest idea what Yuko Masuda looked like. If this woman were she, he wouldn't know. Nor, come to that, had he ever laid eyes on Michael Leapman.
He was looking for total strangers.
He told Yamagata, "We need help," and the big man seemed to understand because he spoke to the woman. When the name Masuda was mentioned, she didn't react as if it were her own. She came back with a question of her own that Yamagata answered. Then she pointed to a door just behind them.
Diamond opened it and walked into a ward about forty meters long, with five bays separated by glass-walled partitions. In the nearest they could see a patient surrounded by the apparatus necessary to monitor and sustain life in the unconscious state. Most of one wall was covered with photos and cards and there was a mobile of cardboard goldfish suspended above the bed. A nurse wearing a face mask was attending to the drip-feed. She turned, her eyes widening in amazement