Gridiron - Philip Kerr

Kenny dropped into his Lamm Nero leather armchair and laying the flat of his right hand on to the screen accessed the work-station. The computer gave him the date and the time while admitting him to the system: it was past six o'clock.

'Hey, don't remind me. I knew this was going to be a long day,' he muttered. 'Anything that involves Ray Richardson. And now this. You can sure pick your moments to fuck up, Abraham, I'll say that for you.'

-###-

Jenny and Mitch went into the kitchen where Curtis and Coleman had just concluded their interviews.

'What happened to you?' Curtis asked.

Jenny sat Mitch down at a long wooden table in the centre of the room, between a big stove with a ceramic hob and a seat of fitted drawers and cupboards. Jenny tugged open one of the drawers and took out a first-aid box.

'I just caught up with a former colleague.'

'I never knew architecture had such lively personalities in it,' said Curtis.

Mitch told him about Grabel while Jenny dabbed at his lip with an antiseptic swab.

'If anyone can shed some light on the death of Sam Gleig it's him,' he explained. 'Only he didn't see it that way. When I tried to persuade him to come up here and talk to you guys he punched me out. He's in a bit of state. Looks like he's hit the bottle pretty hard since leaving the firm.'

'You really need a stitch in that,' observed Jenny. 'Try not to smile.'

Mitch shrugged. 'That's easy.' He frowned. 'Look can we get out of here? This light is giving me a headache.'

Above their heads a fluorescent light burned to assist the antibacterial effect of the wall tiles: these had a photocatalytic coating of enamelled titanium dioxide, topped with a layer of copper and silver compounds: when the photocatalyst absorbed light, it activated the metal ions that killed any bacteria coming into contact with the tile's ceramic surface.

'More likely the effect of being knocked out,' said Jenny. 'You may have a concussion. Maybe you should have an X-ray.'

Mitch stood up. 'I'll be all right,' he said.

'Do you know where Mr Grabel went?'

Mitch shrugged. 'No idea. But I can tell you if he's still in the building.'

They went into the boardroom.

'Hey champ,' said Beech. 'Nice lip. What happened?'

'It's a long story.'

Mitch sat down in front of the desktop computer and asked Abraham for a list of everyone still in the building.

ATRIUM FLOOR:

RAY RICHARDSON, RICHARDSON ASSOC.

JOAN RICHARDSON, RICHARDSON ASSOC.

DECLAN BENNETT, RICHARDSON ASSOC.

IRVING DUKES, YU CORP.

PETER DOBBS, COOPER CONSTRUCTION

JOSE MARTINEZ, COOPER CONSTRUCTION

SWIMMING POOL AND FITNESS AREA: KAY KILLEN, RICHARDSON ASSOC.

COMPUTER ROOM:

AIDAN KENNY, RICHARDSON ASSOC.

21ST LEVEL BOARDROOM:

DAVID ARNON, ELMO SERGO ENGINEERING LTD

WILLIS ELLERY, RICHARDSON ASSOC.

MARTY BIRNBAUM, RICHARDSON ASSOC.

TONY LEVINE, RICHARDSON ASSOC.

HELEN HUSSEY, COOPER CONSTRUCTION

BOB BEECH, YU CORP.

FRANK CURTIS, LAPD

NATHAN COLEMAN, LAPD

MITCHELL BRYAN, RICHARDSON ASSOC.

JENNY BAO, JENNY BAO FENG SHUI CONSULTANT

'What the hell is everyone doing down in the atrium?' said Mitch. Beech shrugged apologetically. 'The front doors aren't working. We're locked in. At least we are until Aidan finds out what's wrong with it.'

'What about the garage?'

'Not working either.'

'Nothing like being locked in a place to make you feel secure,' said Curtis.

'Well,' sighed Mitch, 'Grabel got out, anyway. He's not listed by Abraham.'

'It's probably something quite simple,' said Beech. 'It usually is. A systems configuration or command-lines problem. Aid thinks it might just be a third-party driver for the whole security system that's incompatible with the smart drive.'

'I'd had the same thought myself,' joked Curtis. Mitch moved the mouse and called up a CCTV picture of the swimming pool.

'That's strange.' Mitch picked up the telephone and keyed out a number.

'Something the matter?' said Curtis.

Mitch let it ring for a minute and then replaced the receiver.

'I don't know,' said Mitch. 'I just asked Abraham to tell me where Kay was and it told me that she was in the pool. But I've got the pool on CCTV and I can't see her.'

Curtis leaned towards the monitor. 'Well, maybe she's in the changing rooms,' he offered.

Mitch shook his head. 'No, Abraham's always very precise. If she'd been in the changing rooms then it would have said.'

'Maybe she's out of reach of your camera or something.' Curtis placed a thick forefinger at the bottom of the screen. 'Is that something? There?

In the water? Right at the edge of the pool?'

Mitch placed his forefinger alongside that of Curtis.

'Abraham,' he said. 'Please close in on the area indicated by my finger.'

The picture grew closer.

'Do you see?' said Curtis. 'There's something in the water, isn't there?'

'What we really need,' said Mitch, 'is a camera on the ceiling.'

'Want us to go and take a look?'

'It's OK, I'll get Dukes to do it.'

Mitch picked up the telephone. Curtis grinned at Beech. 'So we're stuck, right?'

'I'm afraid so.'

'I guess that's what they mean when they say that computers are labour saving.'

'How's that?'

'Well, if it wasn't for your fucking computer I would be on my way back to the office to do some work.'

-###-

Down in the atrium the phone rang on the hologram desk. Richardson leaped up from the black leather sofa and skipped across the floor to snatch it up.

'Ray, it's Mitch.'

'What the hell's happening? Has Kenny fixed that computer yet?'

'He's still working on it.'

'Shit. I suppose we'd better come back upstairs. Just keep that stupid cop out of my way.'

'Before you do I want Dukes to go and check the pool area. Abraham insists that Kay is there but we can't see her on the closed-circuit TV. I've tried to call but she just doesn't answer. I'm worried she might have had an accident.'

Thinking that if he was going to be stuck for a while it might be pleasant to have a half-naked Kay to himself, Richardson said, 'Hey, I can do that. You don't need a security guard to tell you if someone is in the pool or not. She's probably frigging herself in one of those flotation tanks. Don't worry. Leave it to me.'

Richardson replaced the telephone and stared malevolently at Kelly Pendry's real-time image.

'Do something about that bloody piano music,' he snapped. 'Mozart. Schubert. Bach. Even Elton fucking John, but not that crap you're playing now. Something that's not going to make us all feel depressed about being stuck here. Understand, airhead?'

Kelly smiled relentlessly back at him.

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

'And it's not an inquiry. It's an order.'

He marched back to the sofas where Joan was waiting with Declan, Dukes and the two painters. He spoke to Joan as if only she existed.

'You may as well go back up,' he said. 'This might take a while. There's coffee upstairs. And cold beer.'

He sniffed the air suspiciously. No doubt about it. The air smelt of fish. So much for sea breeze.

'And maybe it doesn't smell quite as bad there.'

'Where are you going?' asked Joan.

'Mitch wants me to check something on the pool deck. I won't be long.'

'Then I'll wait here for you.'

'There's no need. You'd be more comfortable upstairs, and you wouldn't have to listen to this awful — '

As he spoke the piece by Glass ended and the piano started on Bach's Goldberg Variations. Joan shrugged as if to say that the issue was no longer a pressing one.

'OK,' he said. 'It's up to you. But I could be a while.'

Declan stood up. 'Well I could use a glass of water,' he said. He would have said beer but for the fact that he was driving them to LAX. 'Maybe it's just me, but it seems to be getting hot in here.'

'A beer would sure be nice,' said one of the two painters. The three of them started towards the elevator. 'Reckon I'll wait in my office,' said Dukes. 'Never did much like the piano anyway.'

Richardson smiled uncomfortably at his wife and walked in the direction of the Fitness Area. Did she suspect that there could be something going on between him and Kay? There had only been that one time, last Christmas, after the office party. And it had just been a quick feel. But seeing Kay in her underwear had reminded him of how much he had enjoyed making a pass at her. Of course that had been Kay's intention. And maybe Joan had spotted that. Perhaps she had seen something in his eyes. After all, she knew him so much better than anyone else.

He loosened his tie and unbuttoned his collar as he walked along the curving, velodrome-like corridor. Declan was right, it was getting hot. The most sophisticated HVAC system in existence, and still the place felt like an oven. He presumed that Aidan Kenny was somehow responsible and thought it was just as well that all these problems had arisen at the rehearsal for the inspection instead of the real thing.

Entering the poolside refreshment area he caught sight of Kay's lacy purple underwear lying close to the doorway where she had thrown it and felt a surge of excitement. He picked up her panties and placed them in his pocket, uncertain whether he would keep them or hand them back. Maybe he would tease her a little with them. He knew she was the kind of girl who could take a little teasing: who could hand out a bit of teasing herself. Fast, too. The tattoo made her seem like some gorgeous criminal. Perhaps, he thought, it was the idea of her submitting her own skin to pain that made the tattoo seem exciting.

'Kay,' he called. 'Babe, it's me, Ray.'

Then he saw her, naked, on her back under the lip of the pool deck, just below the angle of the wall-mounted camera, her pubic hair floating above her body like a small clump of seaweed, and the large breasts with rosebud nipples that he had kissed in the kitchen. Just about the last thing Richardson looked at was Kay Killen's face. His exclamation of desire changed to one of horror and disgust.

For a moment he stood as still as his heart, staring down at her. Then he jumped feet first into the water, although he already knew it was too late. Kay Killen was quite dead. He thought: a swimming-pool accident. Just like Le Corbusier. And yet how was it possible that such a good swimmer could have drowned? He lifted her out of the water and on to the pool deck. What a waste of a beautiful girl, he reflected. And what was that nuisance cop going to say now?

The thought made him jump out of the water and start a futile attempt at mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Dead she may have been, but he did not want Curtis accusing him of negligence. But as soon as his mouth fastened on hers he recoiled, gagging on the overpowering chemical taste on her blue lips, unable to continue. Seconds later he was retching into the swimming pool.

-###-

Aidan Kenny worked on a keyboard, preferring to type his transactions through the various sub-systems he had created on the BMS root directory instead of having to translate his thoughts into spoken words. His fat fingers moved quickly and expertly across the keys.

'Goddamn it, where are you?' he grumbled, scanning the hundreds of transactions that covered his screen. He sighed and cleaned his glasses on his tie. Then he flexed his neck against the clasp of his hands and typed some more, fingers moving furiously now, like an expert stenographer in an attorney's office.

Kenny winced as he hit the wrong key. The thought of Ray Richardson waiting for him to sort this problem out was making him feel nervous. Sweat started to pour from his heavily furrowed brow. With all his money and success, why did the man have to be so bad-tempered? There was no call for him to have spoken to the cop like that. Any minute now he felt sure he was going to have Richardson on the phone cursing him for a sonofabitch and blaming him for the fuck-up. He started to prepare his answer out loud.

'Well, Jesus, it's a large system. There are bound to be a few glitches in it. Since I've been working here we've identified over a hundred of them. It's inevitable when you get something as complicated as this building management system. If it worked perfectly first time, every time, then you wouldn't need to employ me.'

But even as he said it Aidan Kenny knew that there were still some of these glitches that neither he nor Bob Beech had been able to understand.

Like Allen Grabel's TESPAR code.

Or the umbrella icon: when it was raining on the roof of the Gridiron, Abraham was supposed to let everyone know by putting the icon in the corner of their work-station screens. The only trouble was that whenever this umbrella had appeared and Aidan Kenny had gone outside expecting rain, he had found the city dry, as always. After several fruitless attempts to rectify the problem Kenny had finally arrived at the quiet conclusion — shared only with Bob Beech — that this was

Abraham's idea of a joke.

'Ouch,' he exclaimed as another group of keystrokes took him down a cul-de-sac in the security system. If only he could have smoked he might have been able to concentrate more easily. As it was he felt as tense as if Ray Richardson had been standing right behind him, watching every transaction he made.

Kenny took off his glasses, polished the lenses on his tie again and replaced them, almost as if he didn't believe his own eyes.

'Now if that isn't the damnedest thing.'

Aidan Kenny's palm print had allowed him to step outside the ordinary user interface and access all the building management system codes. Short of amputating his own pudgy hand there was no other way into the command level. But even then the architecture of the system Kenny had created required a password — a precaution against the time when Richardson might try to fire him. When the Gridiron was ready to be handed over he would transfer the BMS access procedure to Bob Beech, but until then this was Kenny's own insurance policy. He had done the same with every smart building he had worked on. Where Ray Richardson was concerned you couldn't afford to take any chances. As usual he typed HOT.WIRE so that he could go where he wanted within the BMS architecture. Then he entered the security system where he knew the door-locking program was located. He would deal with the glitch with the building's HVAC after he had got Richardson out. Kenny knew the system codes like the computer knew the palm of his hand. So he was surprised to encounter some difficulty in reaching his transacted destination. But now that he had at last found the codes that controlled the front door he was even more surprised to discover several extra blocks of code: CITAD.CMD,' about which he knew absolutely nothing. CMD was supposed to indicate an indirect command file, edited and created by Kenny himself.

'Someone's been messing around in here,' he said. But then, as the impossibility of such a thing began to make itself plain, he found himself shaking his head.