Philip Kerr - Gridiron

'Kind of surreal looking, don't you think? Like a Salvador Dali.'

Beech sat down heavily in his own chair, placed his elbows on the desk and sighed.

'I knew Hideki for almost ten years. There wasn't anything he didn't know about computers. The little Japanese bastard. Jesus, he was only thirty-seven. I can't believe he's dead. I mean, he seemed perfectly normal when I left last night. And, you know, since he started going to that chiropractor of your's, Aid, he'd stopped having his headaches.'

Beech shook his head. 'This is really going to hurt the Corp in America. Jardine Yu isn't going to believe it. Hideki was key to all our plans for the next five years.'

'We'll all miss him,' insisted Kenny.

Mitch waited for a moment and then said, 'That glitch on the real-time images program. D'you think he fixed it?'

Bob Beech pressed his palm on to the desk screen in front of him.

'We'll soon find out,' he said.

'What exactly was the problem?' said Mitch.

'Believe it or not,' Beech said, 'Abraham was just too fast for the RTI software. To trick the eye into believing that a holographic image is actually moving you need a minimum of sixty updates a second. That requires a data rate of around 12 trillion bits per second. Previous RTIs didn't give much more than a second or two's worth of interactive moving image, and even then it was kind of jerky looking. But by using LEMON, Yu Corp's new data compression program, and parallel processing, we worked out how to simulate terahertz-chip performance and make the RTI look lifelike. Our only problem was that the custommade software couldn't keep up. Hideki was trying to find some sort of equilibrium to achieve a smoother image.'

'You're going to run the program now, Bob?' said Kenny. He sounded surprised. 'Do you think that's a good idea?'

'Best way I know of checking it through.'

'I guess you're right. But I'd better check the atrium in case anyone's hanging around there.'

'Hey, you're right,' laughed Beech. 'RTI's liable to give someone the fright of their life when it comes on line. We've had enough shocks for one day.'

The Queen of Angels Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center on

North Vermont Avenue was just north of the Hollywood Freeway. Only a short ride west from New Parker Center it was where the downtown Homicide Bureau's autopsies were carried out when the city's murder rate was even higher than usual and there was no more room for bodies at the County General Hospital.

Curtis and Coleman had already made the trip on four occasions that week and to save time they were attending two autopsies: one the shooting of a young black gangster and the other the death of Hideki Yojo.

The shooting was straightforward enough. Roo Evans, twenty years old and tattooed with a Playboy bunny that identified the gang which he belonged to, had been involved in a car chase with a rival gang up the Harbor Freeway. When they finally caught up with him, close to the LA Convention Center, they fired eleven rounds of 9 millimetre into his chest.

After the first autopsy Curtis and Coleman sat drinking coffee in the Detectives' Room, waiting for the doctor to come and tell them when she was ready to section Hideki Yojo. It was another hot day and the smell was starting to turn Coleman's stomach.

'How does she do it?'

'Who?'

'Janet. Dr Bragg. Two in a row. I mean, Christ. She opened that kid's belly up like he was a goddamn trout.'

'It didn't need much help from her,' observed Curtis. 'Eleven rounds of 9 M. Those guys really made sure of it. A Glock. Just like you, Nat.'

'What am I, a suspect?'

'You always had a double-stack nine?'

'My momma done told me. I never was much of a shot, so I thought it was best I should have something to lay down lots of lead.'

The door opened and an attractive middle-aged black woman pushed her head into the room. 'We're about to start, gentlemen,' said Janet Bragg. She handed Curtis a small bottle of eucalyptus oil.

Curtis unscrewed the top and then dabbed some under each nostril. Nathan Coleman did the same and lit a defensive cigarette for good measure.

'Tell him what a smoker's lung looks like when it's on the slab, Janet,' said Curtis as they stepped into the corridor.

'It's a sight,' she admitted with considerable understatement. 'Odour's worse, though. Like concentrated ashtrays.'

Bragg was dressed for a shift in a hamburger factory: white overalls, gumboots, a plastic hair covering, goggles, an apron, heavy duty rubber gloves.

'You're looking good today, Janet,' said Coleman. 'Mmm. I like a woman who knows how to excite a man by the way she dresses.'

'Since you mention it,' said Bragg, 'there was semen on the inside of the cadaver's underpants.'

'Before he died, he came in his pants?' Nathan Coleman's surprise was mixed with revulsion.

'Well he didn't do it afterwards,' observed Curtis. 'That's for sure.'

'It's not uncommon in cases involving strangulation.'

'Is that what this is?' said Curtis. 'A strangulation?'

Bragg pushed open two flexible membrane doors that led into a large cold room.

'We'll soon see.'

Yojo's naked body lay on his refrigeration tray next to a stainless-steel autopsy table. Curtis had seen Bragg work often enough to know that she would require no assistance in shifting the body on to the table. Rollers beneath the perforated grid of the table allowed her to launch Yojo directly onto the table with one hand; and she performed this manoeuvre with the practised air of a stage magician removing a tablecloth from underneath a dinner service. Next she adjusted the height of the table and switched on an air-extraction facility that led into a below-slab ducting system. A biopsy sink was fitted at one end, with two lever-action mixer taps. She turned the taps on and also a spray washing handset with a flexible hose.

When she was ready Curtis turned on the Super-8 video camera that would record the whole autopsy. He checked the focus and then stood back to watch her work.

'Usual autopsy signs of asphyxia,' remarked Bragg, 'but there are no marks of any kind on the neck,' she observed, turning Yojo's head one way and then the other. 'Hard to see how he was strangled.'

'What about a plastic bag over the head?' suggested Curtis.

'Don't rush me, Frank,' she scolded and picked up her scalpel. Autopsy procedure had changed very little in the twenty years Frank Curtis had worked in homicide. Having examined the exterior of the body for any abnormality or trauma the main incisions remained the same. A Y-shaped incision, with each arm of the Y extending from the armpit beneath the breast to the botton of the sternum in the midline; and from this point of juncture to the lower abdomen and the genital area. Janet Bragg worked quickly, ligating the great vessels to the head, neck and arms and humming a little tune to herself as she prepared to remove the organs for later dissection.

The hum became the words of a song by Madonna.

'Holida-ay! It would be all right! Holida-ay!'

'I like a woman who's happy in her work,' said Curtis.

'You get used to anything.'

She collected the chest organs, placed them in a plastic bucket and repeated the procedure with the abdominal organs, for which there was a separate bucket. Groups of organs were always removed together so that any disturbances in their functional relationships might be determined. Then she picked up her electric saw and began to remove the vault of Hideki Yojo's skull.

Curtis looked around for Nathan Coleman and found him seated at a bench and looking through a microscope at a length of his own hair.

'Look, Nat, it's just like eating a boiled egg,' he remarked cruelly. 'Or are you one of these weirdos who insists on bashing the top in and peeling off the pieces of shell?'