Philip Kerr - Gridiron

Hernandez grinned and shrugged. 'My wife prefers it to the smell of sweat, sir.'

Curtis opened his coat and sniffed under his arm.

'I didn't mean — '

'OK then, Calvin, what happened when you and your aftershave turned up here this morning?'

'Well, Sarge, Officer Cooney and I get here around two-thirty a.m. We sort of look around for a doorbell or something and then we find that the door isn't locked anyway. So we walk into the lobby and that's when we see Kelly Pendry on the desk.' Hernandez shrugged. 'Well, she tells us where to come. She says to take the elevator to the basement. So we come down here and that's how we find him.' He pointed into the bloodied elevator car.

'So then what?'

'Cooney calls in the 187 while I take a look around. There's a security guard's office on the lobby floor that looks like this guy had just left there. The desktop computer is still switched on and there's a Thermos and some sandwiches.'

'What about the construction people? Do they know about this yet?'

'Well, I found a personnel file on the computer. You know? Foreman, clerk of works, that kind of thing. And so then I phoned my dad.'

'Your dad? What the hell for?'

'He used to be in construction. A riveter. I thought he'd know the best person to call. And he said that the site agent had control of the whole operation and instructed the trade foremen. Anyhow, I had no idea this was a woman. I mean, it just said H. Hussey. Maybe I should have called someone else. But anyway she said she'd get here as soon as she could.'

'That's her job, isn't it? To take responsibility for the work? Besides, working here she ought to be used to it by now.'

'Sarge?'

'Nothing.'

Curtis caught sight of Charlie Seidler coming towards the elevators and waved to him.

'Thanks, Hernandez. That'll be all. Hey, Charlie!'

'We seem to be forever here, don't we?'

'That's why they call it a smart building,' said Curtis. 'If you're smart, you stay the hell out. So what's the reader's digest on this one?'

'Well there's more than one head wound,' Seidler said cautiously. 'And that would seem to exclude the possibility that they were sustained during some kind of collapse.'

'C'mon, Charlie. You don't get a bump on the head like that from tripping on your fuckin' shoelace. This was no accident.'

Seidler's caution remained unabated.

'The blood splashing around the head would seem to indicate that the blunt head injuries continued after he had been felled. But- but-well, take a look at this, Frank.'

Seidler stepped into the elevator and motioned Curtis to follow him.

'Computer?' he said when Curtis was inside. 'Close the doors, please.'

'Which floor do you require?'

'Remain on this level, please.' He pointed at the inside of the closing doors. 'Now, look there. There's more blood splashing up to chest height. And yet none outside this car. On any of the upper floors. I know because I already checked every one of them.'

'Well, that's mighty efficient of you, Charlie.'

'I thought so.'

'So you're saying that he was struck while the doors were closed?'

'It looks that way, yes. But there's no protective bruising of the hands, so I'd say he was probably struck from behind.'

'With what? What should we be looking for? A bat? A length of pipe?

A rock?'

'Maybe. But it's not like there's much room to swing a weapon in here, is there? We'll have a better idea after the preliminary p.m.' Seidler turned towards the microphone. 'Open the doors, please.'

'You've certainly got the way of talking to that thing,' grinned Frank.

'This is one heck of a place, isn't it?'

The two men stepped out of the car.

'All this automation,' said Curtis, 'I don't know. When I was a kid we lived in New York. My dad worked for Standard Oil. They had an elevator operator and an elevator starter. I remember the starter real well. He had a panel where all the floor calls would light up and it was down to him when a car got dispatched. Just like a traffic cop.' Curtis waved his hand at the gleaming elevator doors of the Gridiron building.

'Just look where we are now. A computer's taken that man's job. Both their jobs. It won't be long before it takes over ours as well.'

'Yeah, well, a computer's welcome to mine,' yawned Seidler. 'I can think of better ways to start the day.'

'I'll remind you of that when they fire you. Nat, I want you to run a background check on Sam Gleig.'

'Sure, Frank.'

'Hey you! Calvin Klein! C'mere.'

Hernandez grinned sheepishly and turned to face Curtis. 'Sergeant?'

'I want you to hang around in the parking lot. And when this Hussey woman shows up, tell her to wait for me in the atrium, right? That's the room with the Christmas tree. I'm going upstairs for a look around the theme park.'

On his short tour Frank Curtis found meeting areas, coffee bars, halfbuilt restaurants, gymnasiums with no equipment, an empty swimming pool, a health clinic, a cinema with no seats, a bowling alley and a relaxation area. The Gridiron, when it was finished, was going to be more like some expensive country club or hotel than an office building. All except levels 5-10. On these floors Curtis found what looked to him like something from the pages of a DC Comic: row upon row of white steel pods, each of them a little larger than a telephone booth, with integral foldaway furniture, a loose wire to plug into something, and a curved sliding door. Sitting inside one of these sound-proofed pods, with the door shut behind him, Curtis felt like a rat or a hamster. But it was clear that the Yu Corporation and its designers expected people to work in these cocoons. Too bad if you were claustrophobic. Or if you liked having your workmates around to have a laugh and a joke with. There was probably nowhere for a laugh and a joke on a Yu Corporation time sheet.

He slid the door open and went down a couple of levels to get a better view of the atrium. Leaning over the balcony he saw an attractive woman emerge from the elevators on to the ground level. Her bright red hair looked like a drop of blood moving across the dazzling white. She looked up at him and smiled.

'Are you Sergeant Curtis, by any chance?'

Curtis grasped the handrail with both hands and nodded back at her.

'That's right. But, you know, I bet I could do a good Mussolini impression from up here.'

'What?'

Curtis shrugged, wondering if she was too young to have heard of Mussolini. He wanted to say something about Fascist architecture, then thought better of it. She was too good-looking to upset without reasonable cause.

'Well, it's that kind of building, ma'am. It's kind of inspiring, I guess.'

He grinned. 'Stay there. I'll be right down.'

The security office at the Gridiron was a gleaming white room with an electrically-operated Venetian blind screening a window that ran the length and height of the corridor. There was a large desk made of glass and aluminium and which was dominated by a 28-inch computer monitor and keyboard. Next to this were a videophone, a telephone, Sam Gleig's Thermos flask and, in an open Tupperware box, the dead man's uneaten sandwiches. Behind the desk was a tall glass cabinet containing what looked like another computer case still wrapped in plastic film. Curtis inspected the contents of one of the sandwiches.

'Cheese and tomato,' he said and started to eat. 'Want one?'

'No. No thanks.' Helen Hussey frowned. 'Should you be doing that? I mean, isn't that evidence you're eating?'

'Gleig wasn't hit over the head with a sandwich, ma'am.' Curtis inspected the glass cabinet and the unassuming white box in its protective wrapping. 'What's this?' he said.