Philip Kerr: Gridiron

Mitch turned the engine off and amused himself for a moment by listening to the ninety-second description of the property on the designated wavelength he could receive on his car radio via a computerized transmitter inside the house. He was surprised that they were asking so much, and that Jenny could have afforded such an expensive neighbourhood. There must be more money in feng shui than he had imagined.

Feng shui , the ancient Chinese art of 'wind and water' land magic, involved locating sites and building structures so that they harmonized with and benefited from the surrounding physical environment. The Chinese believed that this method of divination enabled them to attract desirable cosmological influences, ensuring that they would have good luck, good health, prosperity and a long life. No building on the East Asian Pacific Rim, however large or small, was ever planned or constructed without regard to feng shui precepts.

Mitch had had considerable experience of dealing with feng shui consultants, and not just the one he was sleeping with. When designing the Island Nirvana Hotel in Hong Kong, Ray Richardson had planned on cladding the building in a reflective glass exterior until his client's feng shui master had told him that glare was a source of sha qi , the harmful breath of the dragon. On another occasion the firm had been obliged to alter its award-winning design for the Sumida Television Company in Tokyo because the shape resembled the short-lived butterfly.

He got out of the car and went up the path. Jenny was still in her silk dressing-gown when she answered the door.

'Mitch, what a pleasant surprise,' she said and let him in. 'I was going to give you a call this morning.'

He was already slipping the gown off her shoulders and pushing her into the bedroom.

'Mmm,' she said. 'What did you have, steroids with your Cheerios this morning?'

Half Chinese, Jenny Bao reminded him of a big cat. Green eyes, high cheekbones, and a small delicate nose he had decided was probably cosmetic. She had a bow mouth that was more Odysseus than Cupid and it was set between the parentheses of two perfect laugh lines. She loved to laugh. She carried herself well too, with the long, leggy, self-conscious stroll of the cat-walk. She had not always looked so good. When Mitch had first met her she had been maybe ten or fifteen pounds overweight. He knew how much time she had needed to spend in her local gymnasium to be in such fabulous shape now.

Underneath the robe she was wearing a garter belt, stockings and panties.

'Did the dragon tell you I was coming?' he grinned, pointing at the antique feng shui compass that was mounted on the wall above the bed's headboard. The compass was a circular disc marked with about thirty or forty concentric circles of Chinese characters, and Mitch knew it was called a luopan , and that she used it to assess the good and bad qualities of the dragon in a building.

'Of course,' she said, lying back on the bed. 'The dragon tells me everything.'

His tremulous thumbs gathered the elastic waist of her panties and plucked them down over the twin golden domes of her behind and back up over the suspended sentences and Sobranie filter-tips of her stocking tops as, obligingly, she brought her knees up to her chest. She straightened her feet and the little stealth bomber of black lace and silk was his.

Quickly he threw off his own clothes and rolled on top of her. Detaching mind from over-eager gnomon and its exquisitely appointed, shadowy task, he began to make love to her.

When they had finished they lay under the sheet and watched TV. After a while Mitch glanced at the gold Rolex Submariner watch on his wrist.

'I ought to be going,' he said.

Jenny Bao pulled a face and kissed him.

'What were you going to call me about?' he asked.

'Oh yes,' she said, and told him why she had wanted to speak to him.

As soon as Mitch sat down at his desk in the studio he saw Tony Levine coming towards him and stifled a groan. Levine was too pushy for Mitch's taste. There was something hungry-looking about him, a generally wolfish effect that was enhanced by the gap teeth shown through his near-permanent smile, and eyebrows that were joined in the middle. Then there was his laugh. When Levine laughed you could hear it all over the building. It was almost as if he were trying to draw attention to himself, and that made Mitch feel uncomfortable. But there was no sign of a smile on Levine's face now.

'Allen Grabel resigned,' said Levine.

'What? You're kidding!'

'Last night.'

'Shit.'

'He was working late on this Kunstzentrum thing when Richardson showed up and started throwing his Limey weight around.'

'So what's new?'

'I mean, really tyrannical. Like he was ready to burn the place down. Like he was fucking Frank Lloyd Wright, y'know?'

Levine uttered a dumb-sounding guffaw and smoothed a small ponytail of dark hair. For Mitch the pony-tail was another reason to dislike him, not least because Levine insisted on calling his hair arrangement a chignon.

'Yeah, well, the ego's about the same size. He thinks he's a genius. That means he has an infinite capacity for making himself a pain in the ass.'

'So what do we do, Mitch? Get another designer on the job? I mean the job's nearly finished, right?'

Levine was the Yu project manager.

'I'd better give Allen a call,' said Mitch. 'There are a couple of problems I'll need his output on, and I'd like to keep Richardson away from what still needs to be done if it's at all possible.'

'Too late,' said Levine. 'He's already been through Grabel's diary. He's coming to this morning's project meeting.'

'Shit. I thought he was going to Germany.'

'After. What problems?'

'That's all we need. You know, Allen would just have sorted things out. But Richardson is bound to make an issue out of it.'

'Out of what? Will you please tell me what the problem is?'

'Feng shui.'

'That? Jesus, Mitch, I thought we sorted that fuckin' shit.'

'We did, but only on the drawings. Jenny Bao has been round the building and she's worried about a number of things. Mainly she's worried about the tree. The way it's planted.'

'That fuckin' tree's been a headache right from the beginning.'

'You're not wrong there, Tony. She's also worried about the fourth floor.'

'What's the hell's wrong with it?'

'Apparently it's unlucky.'

'What?' Levine guffawed again. 'Why the fourth floor and not the thirteenth?'

'Because it's not thirteen that's unlucky for the Chinese, it's the number four. The word for four is also the word for death, she tells me.'

'My birthday comes on the 4th of August,' said Levine. 'Too bad for me, eh?' He cackled loudly. This Kung Fu shit is just too fuckin' much.'

Levine emitted an even louder bray of laughter.

Mitch shrugged. 'Well, I say give the client what he wants, Tony. The client wants space acupuncture, he gets space acupuncture. That way we get to present our bill as soon as possible.'

'I thought the client was in with the Commies. Aren't the Commies atheists and down on all that superstitious nonsense about spirits and good luck?'

'That reminds me,' said Mitch. 'Something else we have to discuss this morning. Remember those demonstrators? The ones who turned up when we had that cosmetic topping-out ceremony? Well, they're back.'

There were four teams working on the Yu Corporation project — designers, structural engineers, mechanical engineers and the building management systems (BMS) engineers — and it was Mitch's job to make sure that they all built the same building. Frequently a firm of architects was only responsible for the design of the building and relied on outside engineers as consultants. But being such a huge practice, employing some four hundred people, Richardsons had its own in-house mechanical and BMS engineers. An experienced architect himself, it was down to Mitch as technical coordinator to translate the designer's lofty ideas into practical instructions and to make sure that when changes were made everyone was aware of their impact.