Diamond Solitaire

are passive.'

'You explained this to me the other day.'

'Well, then.'

'So why did she bite me? Hasn't anyone invaded her space before?'

Julia Musgrave nodded. 'I see what you mean. This is the first time she's bitten anyone, or shown any tendency to fight'

'Is it possible she learned it from Clive?'

'The biting? I suppose it is, but they don't imitate each other much. They're too independent'

'You keep saying 'they,'' Diamond objected testily. The bite, and the amusement it had created, had made him irritable. Some of his old colleagues in the police would have said his true character was beginning to emerge. 'Let's suppose Naomi isn't autistic. Suppose she has some other problem that stops her from speaking. Mightn't she be influenced by what the other kids do?'

Julia Musgrave sighed. 'I can't help thinking you're heading straight up a cul-de-sac. People find it so hard to accept that their kid is autistic.'

'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.