Philip Kerr - Gridiron

Between the pounding blows on the other side he could just hear Frank Curtis shouting. Once again Coleman pulled at the handle, but the door was still locked.

'Frank?' he shouted.

'Nat? Is that you?'

'I'm OK, Frank. But Levine is dead. It looks like he got hit by a fuckin'

Patriot missile. There's blood and pieces of this guy all over the washroom. It's like Sam Peckinpah's dinner in here, man.'

'What happened?'

'Hey, you tell me,' Coleman shouted. 'I just opened the door and it was like the guy blew apart in front of me.' He shook his head. 'I'm kind of deaf, too. My ears are ringing. Like I've been in a plane or something. Frank? Are you still there?'

'OK, Nat, we're going to get you out of there.'

But inside the washroom, a loud buzzer sounded.

'Wait a minute, Frank. Something's happening. Can you hear it?'

The voice came from somewhere up above Nathan Coleman's head, an Englishman's voice, and for a millisecond he thought it was God. Then he remembered Abraham.

'Please vacate the washroom,' said the voice. 'Please vacate the washroom. Automatic cleansing of this facility will commence in five minutes. Repeat. Please vacate this washroom. You have five minutes.'

'Frank? The man wants to clean up the mess in here. What do I do now?'

'Stand clear of the door, Nat. We're going to break it in.'

Coleman retreated into the only cubicle that remained clear of Levine's anatomical diaspora, tipped the seat on the toilet bowl and sat down. There followed a short silence and then, on the other side of the door, the dull, unmistakable impact of a man's shoulder. To Nathaniel Coleman, it was an informative sort of sound. Before being transferred to the Homicide Bureau he had been a patrolman. After three years cruising LA in a black-and-white you got to know the kind of doors you could break down and those you could not. Curtis went at it like some comic-book hero, but Coleman could tell that his effort was wasted and that the door would stand fast.

The buzzer sounded again.

'Please vacate the washroom. Please vacate the washroom. Automatic cleansing of this facility will commence in four minutes. Repeat. Please vacate this washroom. You now have four minutes.'

Coleman dropped his head back on to his shoulders and stared up at the blood-spattered ceiling and the small loudspeaker that was installed there.

'Well, if you could just open this fucking door I'd be glad to get out of your way.'

Then he stood up and returned to the door. 'Frank?'

'Sorry, Nat. Damn thing doesn't budge. We're going to have to try something else. Sit tight.'

Coleman glanced uncomfortably at Levine's head lying on the floor and hammered on the door.

'Frank? I don't want to end up like Levine here, so you'd better think of something quick. I just got the four-minute warning.'

A minute passed and the buzzer sounded a third time. 'Please vacate the washroom…'

Coleman lifted his eyes towards the ceiling and grimaced. He drew the Glock 9 millimetre from the clip holster he wore inside the waist of his pants and with a finger in one ear silenced the loudspeaker with a couple of shots.

'Nat? Nat, what the hell's going on in there?'

'It's OK, Frank, I just got tired listening to the fuckin' computer telling me to get my ass out of the can, that's all. So I bust some shots off.'

'Nice work, Nat. For a moment there I thought you had a 211 in progress.'

'No. Just the 207, same as before. Only I don't think old Abraham wants any ransom money. I think he wants my butt.'

Frank Curtis slapped the washroom door hard with frustration.

'What happens during automatic cleansing?' he asked Mitch, who shrugged and with a look turned the question towards Willis Ellery.

'The washroom is sprayed with a hot ammonia solution,' said Ellery.

'How hot?'

'Not boiling, but still pretty hot. After that it's dried with hot air before the air itself is changed under pressure and aromatized.'

'Is the cleansing program what killed Levine?'

Ellery shook his head. 'I doubt it. Being trapped in a washroom during a cleansing program wouldn't be a pleasant experience, but it's not necessarily a fatal one. The thing is — well, I should have thought of it before. You see, I was in there immediately before Tony and I nearly mentioned it to him. Only he said something to me that put it right out of my head.'

'Mentioned what?' Curtis asked impatiently. 'Come on, we haven't got much time here.'

'If Abraham is using the HVAC to make things uncomfortable for us, it stands to reason it might use the washroom for a hostile purpose. From what Coleman has said it sounds to me as if Abraham killed Tony using air pressure. It must have increased the psi in there to way above normal, like on an aircraft. But possibly that wasn't fatal until Coleman opened the door. Then there would have been a sudden and immediate depressurization. Enough to blow Levine apart.'

'Is there any way of stopping the cleansing program?'

'You mean that doesn't include Abraham?" Ellery laid his hand on a panel on the corridor wall beside the door.

'I've got a feeling that there's something behind here that might do the job,' he said, 'but I need to check it out on the laptop first.'

'Do it,' Curtis said urgently.

Ellery ran back towards the boardroom. Halfway there he stopped, turned on his heel and called back, 'If the program starts, tell Coleman to make sure he covers his eyes.'

'OK.'

Mitch was inspecting the way the panel cover was attached to the wall.

'Self-tapping screws. I'll speak to Helen and see if she found a screwdriver.'

Curtis hammered on the washroom door.

'Nat? We're working on an idea to get you out of there, but it's going to take a couple of minutes. If the program starts make sure you cover your eyes. The liquid contains ammonia. And it might be hot.'

'Fucking great, Frank,' said the voice behind the door. 'I'll look for a brush and see if I can't get some of this dirt out from under my fingernails, shall I?'

Curtis sprinted back to the boardroom, where he found Willis Ellery and Mitch studying a 3-D drawing.

'What have you got?' he said urgently, trying to make sense of the luminescent green drawing.

Not to be hurried, Mitch moved the trackball to turn the Intergraph drawing first one way and then the other.

'Each washroom is self-contained,' explained Ellery. 'Behind that panel are pipe, duct and cable tails, connected to building services. Water enters the washroom via the wet riser and the computer takes over, heating it, mixing it with ammonia for cleaning, whatever. If we can cut off the mains water supply we can effectively stop the whole cleansing program.'

'Right. How do we do that?'

'Just a minute,' said Ellery. 'Let me see.'

Curtis glanced about. Bob Beech was hunched over the computer terminal. Arnon and Birnbaum had one of the building plans spread on the table in front of them and were discussing something with one ear on the latest crisis. Jenny was sitting at Mitch's shoulder watching the laptop screen. At the far end of the table Helen Hussey had laid out a selection of tools and other useful objects as if preparing for surgery. There was a first-aid kit, a carpet knife, a small handsaw, a bevel, a jointer, a rasp, some tin snips, a plasterer's float, a pair of pliers, a shave hook, the scissors, some knives and forks, an assortment of coach-bolts, a couple of screwdrivers, a bottle opener and a large wrench.

Curtis selected one of the screwdrivers.

'Where in hell did you find that lot?' Curtis asked, impressed with her resourcefulness.

'You'd be surprised what builders leave lying around a new building,' she said. 'There was a whole bag of tools in the ladies' washroom, of all places.'

'Yeah, well, you'd better keep out of the washrooms from now on," said Curtis, raising his voice. 'All of you. Abraham just killed Levine in the men's room. And now Nat's stuck in there.'

'My God.'

'Do you have a monkey wrench there, Helen?' asked Ellery.

She had never liked Tony Levine. Always trying to come on to her. He was worse than Warren Aikman. But she was sorry he was dead. With a shock she realized she had already lost count of the number of people who had died in the Gridiron since the late afternoon.

'I don't know,' she said vaguely, and held up something she thought might fit the description.

'Even better,' said Ellery excitedly. That's a Stillson.'

When the water started to pour into the washroom Coleman was almost relieved, for it was neither hot nor did it seem to contain ammonia. But with each minute that passed the level began to increase. By the time Curtis was back on the other side of the door, it was several inches deep. Coleman might have tried to stop the flow except that the water was pouring into the washroom from every conceivable entry point: from high-pressure sprinklers on the ceiling, from the faucets on the sink, even from the cisterns behind the toilets. The idea that Abraham intended that he should drown was beginning to seep slowly through the policeman's imagination.

'Got a fuckin' leak in here, Frank,' he yelled. 'Place is filling up with water. No ammonia. Maybe Abraham changed his mind about the cleansing program after I hit his voice box.'

This gave Coleman an idea. Once again he drew his gun.

'Hey, Frank,' he yelled. 'Stand away from the door. I'm going to try and blast a few holes in the door. I reckon I'm going to need some help with the drainage in here before very long. Frank?'

'Ah, that's a negative, Nat,' shouted Curtis. 'I've just been told that the door's made of steel. You'd need a fifty calibre BMG to get through this. Just try and take it easy. We've got something going here. A way of disconnecting the whole bathroom module from the mains supply of water.'

'OK, Frank, Whatever you say. But don't leave it too long. I never did like any of those submarine pictures.'

Coleman holstered his gun and, with the water nearly up to his knees, sat down on the toilet again.

Bending forwards he scooped some of the water into his hands and drank it.

'I guess I won't die of thirst anyway.'

Curtis released the last of the self-tapping screws and let the panel fall off the wall and on to the floor. In the recessed space were a large red elbow-shaped pipe, a smaller branch pipe connecting the washroom, a couple of ceramic disc valves and, inside a mineral insulated square box, the electrical trunking that controlled the operation of the washroom. Willis Ellery pointed to a joint on the branch pipe and said, 'I think all we have to do to turn off the mains water is tighten this.'

'Hold on a second,' said Curtis. 'Is this pipe going to be safe to touch?

What about all that electrical stuff in there? Suppose Abraham's got the pipe wired to the fucking mains electricity?'

'He's got a point, Will,' said Mitch, already keying the code number that was printed on the box cover on to his laptop. 'WSPC 21 . The wiring diagram might even show us how to open the door.'

The pull-down menu on the screen asked which version of the wiring instructions he required, Quick or Technical. Mitch chose Quick and watched as the Intergraph programme sketched out a line for each cable instead of a line for every wire.

Willis Ellery leaned across his shoulder and studied the diagram for a minute or two.

'None of the pipes is connected to the electricity supply,' he said at last. Then, beating the palm of his hand with the Stillson pipe wrench, he added, 'Well, here goes,' and prepared to try and close off the water. Adjusting the serrated jaws of the Stillson to fit the joint around the branch pipe, he began to tighten the screw.