Philip Kerr - Gridiron

'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.

'Jesus, what the hell's going on? A set of commands to do what, Abraham?'