Philip Kerr - Gridiron

He strode down the corridor working the slide on the automatic to load the gun's firing chamber.

Mitch, kneeling by the breathing but still unconscious figure of Willis Ellery, stood up when he saw Curtis coming.

'Better stand well out of the way,' yelled the policeman. He took a marksman's aim at the washroom services patching cabinet. 'I'm not such a good shot. Besides, there might be a few ricochets. With any luck one of them might hit your pal Beech.'

'Wait a minute, Frank,' said Mitch. 'If Bob manages to take Abraham off-line then we might need those electrics to open the door.'

'Forget it. Abraham's here to stay. It's official. Your macho friend just put up his fucking hands and surrendered. The goddamn disassembly program or whatever the hell he calls it doesn't fucking work.'

Curtis fired three shots at the box of electrics. Mitch covered his ears against the deafening noise, and a shower of sparks flew out of the box.

'I can't think of anything else to do,' yelled Curtis, and squeezed off three more. 'And I'm not about to let my partner drown like a kitten if I can prevent it.'

Cable glands blew away from cable ends, and clips from casings as two more 180-gram rounds thudded into the WSPC.

'What I wouldn't give right now for the scatter-gun in the trunk of my car,' yelled Curtis and finished off the rest of the 13-shot magazine. Rubbing his shoulder Curtis dragged the kitchen table up to the door.

'Give me a hand here,' he said to Mitch. 'Maybe we can batter it down.'

Mitch knew it was useless, but by now he also knew that it would have been quite hopeless to have argued with Curtis.

They lifted the table, stepped back to the other side of the corridor and rammed the table's corner against the door.

'Again.'

Once more the table banged against the door.

For several minutes they kept up the battery until, exhausted, they collapsed on top of the table itself.

'Why did you have to build the damn thing so strong?' panted Curtis.

'Jesus, it's a fucking washroom, not a bank vault.'

'Not us,' breathed Mitch. 'The Japanese. Their design. When modules are used you just fit them in.'

'But the rest of it. What the hell's so wrong with a human toilet cleaner anyway?' Curtis was almost crying.

'Nobody wants to do that kind of job any more. Nobody you can rely on. Not even the Mexicans want to clean toilets.'

Curtis picked himself off the table and hammered on the door with the flat of his hand.

'Nat? Nat, can you hear me?'

He pressed an ear still ringing against the door and found it cold from the mains water that was pressing against it.

Frank Curtis heard the unmistakable sound of a single gunshot. Curtis sat down against the wall. He could feel the cold of the water now filling the men's room through his shirt. Helen Hussey sat down beside him and put her arm around his shoulders.

'You did everything you could,' she said.

Curtis nodded. 'Yeah.'

Leaning forward he drew his gun from the clip under the belt at the back of his pants and then leaned back again, this time more comfortably. The black polymer grip made it seem more like something that he might have considered shaving with than a weapon. He thought he might as well have used an electric shaver on the door for all the damage the gun had inflicted. He remembered the day he had bought it.

'That's a nice gun you've got there,' the gunsmith had said. He might have been describing a friendly-looking labrador.

Curtis hefted the gun in his sweating hand for a moment, then threw it across the corridor.

When Helen Hussey called the atrium on the walkie-talkie to report that Nathan Coleman had shot himself to escape drowning, Ray

Richardson understood for the first time the gravity of their situation. For him the worst thing was the realization that what had happened was going to affect his whole future. He doubted that the Yu Corporation would pay the balance of his fees and wondered if anyone would ever commission a smart building again. Certainly he could not see how the Yu Corporation building would become anything but notorious. People already hated modern architecture, and this would confirm their prejudices. But even among architects themselves what was happening seemed destined to consign Richardson to some kind of professional wilderness. Gold medals for excellence were not handed out to architects whose designs were found to be responsible for eight, maybe nine fatalities.

Of course you had to stay alive to be able to defend yourself against your critics. Stuck on a baking hot atrium floor, without food or water, how long could they hold out? Richardson went to the front door and peered to see through the tinted glass. Beyond the empty piazza was the Babel-like landscape of downtown: the monuments of modern worship, monuments to function and finance, well-designed tools for the classification and efficient exploitation of labour, liberating the ground for the speedy circulation of the life-blood of capitalism, the office worker. He rubbed the glass clear of condensation and looked again. Not that he really expected to see anyone in the darkness out there. The only consideration given to what happened in these urban areas at night, when the last hot desker had gone home, armed with his portable phone and his laptop so that he might do some more work, was how to deter the poor and the destitute from coming there to sleep, to drink, to eat, and, sometimes, to die. It did not matter where they went, as long as they kept moving, so that by daybreak when the office workers returned to the area, their arrival might not be obstructed by those who lived on the Nickle.

If only he had not been so committed to the principle of design deterrence. If only he had not thought to add Choke Water to the fountain, or render the piazza's surface inhospitable to those who might have slept there. If only he had not made that call to the deputy mayor's office and had those demonstrators removed. He meandered around the base of the tree looking up towards the top. He kept walking until he remembered that one of the upper branches came very close to the edge of the twenty-first level. And the tree itself was covered in lianas that ran the whole length of the trunk, and were as strong as ropes. Could they climb up to the twenty-first level, to food and water?

'Are you thinking what I'm thinking?' asked Dukes.

'Incredible as that might seem, yes, I am,' answered Richardson.

'What do you think our chances are?'

'I dunno. How strong is your wife?'

Richardson shrugged. He was not sure.

'Well,' Dukes said, 'better than down here. Reckon I'm going to try anyway. I used to climb a lot of trees when I was a kid.'

'In LA?'

Dukes shook his head. 'Washington state. Up near Spokane. Yes, sir, I climbed me a lot of trees in my time. Never did see a tree like this one though.'

'It's Brazilian. From the rain forest.'

'Hardwood, I guess. What do you say we try and get some sleep? Take a shot at it in the morning.'

Richardson glanced at his watch and saw that it was close to midnight. Then he looked at the piano. It was playing another strange piece.

'Sleep?' he snorted. 'With that fucking noise? I've tried telling the hologram to put a sock in it, but no dice. It just goes on and on. Maybe the computer's planning to drive us nuts. Like General Noriega.'

'Hey, no problem,' said Dukes and drew his gun. 'To shoot the piano player, you just shoot the piano. What do you say? I mean, you're still the boss round here.'

Richardson shrugged. 'I'm not so sure about that,' he admitted, 'but go right ahead. I never did like the piano much anyway.'

Dukes turned, worked the slide of his Clock 17 automatic and fired just once into the polished black woodwork, dead centre of the Yamaha nameplate. The piano stopped abruptly, in the middle of a loud and hectoring finale.