Philip Kerr - Gridiron

'What are you talking about, Ray? Take it easy, dear, and tell me what's happened.'

Richardson paused as he tried to collect himself. He drew a big breath and then nodded.

'I'm OK,' he said. 'It's Kay. She's dead. I went into the pool and she was just floating there. I jumped in and pulled her out. Tried to revive her. But it was too late.' He shook his head. 'I don't understand what could have happened. How could she have drowned? You saw her yourself, Joan. She was a terrific swimmer.'

'Drowned?'

Richardson nodded nervously.

'You're sure she was dead?'

'Quite sure.'

Joan put a sympathetic hand on her husband's trembling back and shook her head. 'Well, I don't know. Maybe she dived in and hit her head on the bottom. It happens all the time. Even to the best of swimmers.'

'First Hideki Yojo. Then that security guy. Now Kay. Why does this have to happen to me?' He chuckled uncomfortably. 'Christ, what am I saying? I must be crazy. All I'm thinking about is the building. I was trying to pull the poor kid out of the water and you know what I kept thinking? I kept thinking, a swimming accident. Like Le Corbusier. Can you believe it? That's how obsessed I've become, Joan. That beautiful girl is dead and what's going through my fucking mind is that she went the same way as a famous architect. What's the matter with me?'

'You're upset, that's all.'

'And that's not the only thing. The phones aren't working. I just tried to call upstairs. To tell them that she's dead.' Richardson's jaw quivered a little. 'You should have seen her, Joan. It was terrible. A beautiful young woman like that, dead.'

As if on cue the piano stopped playing Bach's Goldberg Variations in the style of Glenn Gould and, in the style of Artur Rubinstein, began to play the insistent tolling bass of the funeral march from Chopin's Sonata in B-Flat Minor.

Even Ray Richardson recognized the unrelenting, sombre tones of the piece immediately. He stood up, fists clenched with outrage.

'What's the fucking idea?' he yelled. 'Is that someone's idea of a joke?

If so, then it isn't funny.'

He marched back to the hologram desk as indignantly as his wet shoes allowed.

'Hi!' said Kelly in her brightest-button-in-the-class voice. 'Can I help you, sir?'

'What's the idea with this music?' snapped Richardson.

'Well,' smiled Kelly, 'it's very much in the tradition of funeral marches born in the French Revolution. In the contrasting central episode, however, Chopin — '

'I didn't ask for the fucking programme notes. I meant that the music is in very bad taste. And why aren't the phones working? And why does the place smell like shit?'

'Please be patient. I'm trying to expedite your inquiry.'

'Cretin,' shouted Richardson.

'Have a nice day.'

Richardson stamped his way back to Joan.

'We'd better go back upstairs and tell everyone what's happened.' He shook his head. 'God knows what that fucking cop is going to say.' He turned on the heel of his squelching shoe and started towards the elevators.

Joan stood up and caught him by the sleeve of his wet shirt.

'If the phones aren't working,' she said, 'then probably the elevators aren't either.'

She pointed to the blank floor-indicator panel above the car that Declan and the two painters had taken a short while earlier.

'I noticed it went out when they passed the fifteenth floor.' She shrugged as Richardson frowned back at her with blank incomprehension. 'Well, they were going back up to twenty-one, weren't they? It never got there.'

A bell rang as the doors to one of the other five elevators, summoned automatically to the atrium floor by Abraham, opened in front of them. Richardson stared into the car suspiciously.

'It looks OK,' he said.

Joan shook her head. 'I don't like it,' she said.

Richardson stepped into the waiting car.

'Ray, please come out,' she pleaded. 'I've got a bad feeling about this.'

'Come on, Joan,' he urged. 'You're being irrational. Besides, I'm not climbing twenty-one flights in wet shoes.'

'Ray, think about it,' she insisted. 'The front door is locked. The HVAC has stopped working. The aromatizer has gone screwy. The phones are out. You want to be trapped inside an elevator on top of all that? If you do, go right ahead, but me, I'm taking the stairs. I don't care how many floors it is. I can't explain it, but no, I'm not going in there.'

'What is this, Navajo wisdom or something? Actually it's nice and cool in here.'

He put his hand against the wall of the elevator car, then snatched it away as if he had been burned.

'Jesus Christ,' he exclaimed and stepped smartly out of the car, rubbing his fingers against the palm of his other hand.

'What's the trouble now?' The voice belonged to Dukes, the security guard.

'Something is wrong with the elevator,' Richardson admitted, looking baffled. 'The wall of the car is freezing cold. Like the inside of an ice-box. My hand just stuck to it.'

Dukes stepped inside and touched the wall with his forefinger. 'Man, you're right,' he said. 'How is that possible?'

Richardson rubbed his chin and then pinched his lower lip thoughtfully. 'There's a high-velocity duct from the central plant on the roof,' he said after a moment or two. 'Air is passed over refrigerant in the direct expansion coil. That feeds cool air into a fan assisted terminal variable volume box that is supposed to feed into low-velocity duct work. I can only think that somehow the building's entire supply of cool air must have been re-routed down the elevator shafts. That must be why it's so hot out here.'

'Sure is cool standing in here. Man, look,' he observed. 'I can see my breath.'

'The freezer effect must be like wind chill or something. Like the Midwest in winter.'

Dukes shivered and stepped out of the car. 'I'd sure hate to be in there with the doors closed.'

'My wife thinks there may be three people stuck in one of the other cars,' said Richardson. 'Around the fifteenth level.'

'The three guys who were here earlier?'

Joan nodded.

'In this kind of cold storage they've got no more chance than a bag of T-bones.'

'Fuck,' said Richardson. 'What a fucking fuck-up.' He put his hands on top of his head and walked around in a small circle of frustration. 'Well, we've got to get them out of there. Good drivers aren't so easy to find these days. Declan's practically one of the family. Any thoughts?'

Dukes frowned. His first thought was to call Ray Richardson a selfish motherfucker and remind him that there were two other people trapped with his precious fucking driver. But the man was still the boss and Dukes didn't want to lose his job. So instead he pointed past the elevator doors.

'How about we hit the fire alarm? It's an automatic response from the fire department, isn't it?'

'Worth a try, I guess.'

They walked round the corner, behind the elevators to where a fire hose was located on a wall next to a fire-alarm box. Dukes drew his gun to smash the glass.

'No! Put that thing away!' yelled Richardson, too late.

It was not the fire alarm that was activated now but the security alarm. The sight on CCTV of a gun being waved around the atrium was sufficient for Abraham to initiate automatically the Gridiron's defensive systems. The doors to the emergency stairs locked on every level. A steel portcullis descended from the ceiling, closing off both stairs and elevators. Only when Abraham considered that the upper levels had been rendered impregnable to intruders did the deafening klaxon stop.

'Shit,' said Dukes. 'I clean forgot about that.'

'You fucking idiot,' snarled Richardson. 'Now we're really stuck down here.'

Dukes shrugged. 'So it's the cops who turn up instead of the fire department. I don't see that makes any difference.'

'It would have been nice to have waited for them in comfort,' said Richardson. 'I don't know about you, but I could have used a drink.' He shook his head angrily. 'You're fired. Do you know that? When we're out of this situation, you're history, pal.'

Dukes shrugged philosophically, glanced at the Sig automatic still in his hand and then replaced it in his holster.

'I'll say one thing for you, asshole,' he grinned. 'It takes guts for a man to fire someone with a gun in his hand. Or stupidity.'

The walkie-talkie on Dukes's belt buzzed. Dukes unclipped it and pressed the call-receive button.

'What the hell's happening down there?'

'Mitch?' Richardson snatched the handset away from Dukes. 'Mitch, it's Ray. We're boxed in down here like a Japanese dinner. Dukes drew his gun to break the glass on the fire alarm instead of using the little hammer on the chain. Thinks he's Clint fucking Eastwood or something. It set the defence systems off.'

'Are you all OK?'

'Yeah, we're all right. But listen, did Declan and those two painters make it up there.'

'No. We haven't seen them.'

'Then they must be stuck in the elevator. That wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that somehow the entire air-conditioning output for the building has been re-routed down the goddamn elevator shaft. The car they took must be an ice-box. That's why we were trying to call out the fire department.'

'You can forget that,' said Mitch. 'I think Abraham has been sabotaged.'

'By who, for chrissakes?'

Mitch told him about Allen Grabel.

'If I'm right and Abraham has lost his integrity, then he may have been given a new set of priorities. Somehow I don't think they include calling the public services on our account. We'll have to try and think of something from up here. What about Kay?'

Richardson sighed. 'She's dead.'

'Dead? Jesus, no. What happened?'

'Don't ask me. I found her floating in the pool. I tried to revive her but it was no good.' He paused for a moment and then added: 'Look, what do you mean Abraham's lost his integrity? What's Kenny doing to get the systems back on line?'

'We can't make contact,' said Mitch. 'I'd been hoping you could check out the computer room on your way up.' Mitch explained his theory about the looped video recording. 'Somehow we've got to get into that computer room and cancel all the BMS programs.'

'What about your work-station in the boardroom?' asked Richardson.

'Can't Beech do something from there?'

'Only if Abraham allows it.'

'Jesus, what a fuck-up. What are we going to do?'

'Look, stay cool. We'll try to think of something and then come back to you.'

'Yeah, well don't leave it too long. It's like an oven down here.'

In the brushed aluminium ceiling of each elevator car was a round hole of less than half an inch in diameter. Recessed behind the hole to a depth of several millimetres was the triangular-shaped nut that held the car's inspection hatch in place. To undo the nut and open the hatch required a special socket spanner held by Otis maintenance engineers. Despite the obvious futility of the attempt, Dobbs, the tallest of the three men trapped inside the car, was trying to shift the nut with a small screwdriver from his overalls pocket.

'Gotta be a way of turning this,' he said, through chattering teeth.

'You're wasting your time,' said Declan Bennett, already blue with cold.

'You got a better idea, friend?' said Martinez. 'Let's hear it, if you do,

'cause there ain't no other way out.'

'Damn thing,' said Dobbs. 'Won't budge.' He dropped his aching arms from the ceiling, stared disappointedly at his tool and, as if recognizing its inadequacy, threw it aside in disgust. 'You're right. I might as well stick my dick in there. Then at least I'd die happy.' He laughed bitterly. 'I can't figure this cold. I've heard of a climactic modifier bringing on a chill, but this is ridiculous. Never thought I'd get myself froze to death in LA.'