Philip Kerr - Gridiron

'Nice shot,' said Richardson.

'Thanks.'

'But you missed your vocation. With an aim like that you should have been a critic.'

Fear crept down the corridors and along the atrium floor of the Gridiron like some psychotic night watchman. Most of those trapped in the building slept hardly at all, while others paid for their apparent lack of vigilance with vividly claustrophobic nightmares, their periodic cries and shouts echoing in the cavernous purgatory that was the dark, almost empty, office envelope. Buzzing with the memories of the day and the preoccupations of sudden mortality, all human brains stayed active until the dawn came, and light brought the false promise of safety.

Joan Richardson had a feeling for trees, especially this one. It had been her idea to have a tree in the atrium. The strength of a tree, she had argued to her husband and then to Mr Yu himself, would enter into the building itself. Never a man to do things by halves, Mr Yu had got hold of the biggest, strongest tree he could find and, in return, he had donated some enormous sum of money — paradoxically — to preserving several thousand acres of Brazil's rain forest against the slash-and-burn system of clearing. Joan had admired the gesture. But, more especially, she admired the tree.

'Ray, tell me,' she said, 'in all seriousness. Do you think that I can really do it? That I can climb it?'

Richardson, who wasn't sure at all she could do it, but was perfectly willing that she should try, placed both hands on his wife's shoulders and looked her squarely in the eye.

'Look, love,' he said quietly, 'in all the time we have known each other, have I ever been wrong about what you could and what you couldn't do?

Have I?'

Joan smiled and shook her head, but it was plain that she had her doubts.

'When we first met I told you I thought you had the potential to become one of the world's great designers.' He shrugged eloquently.

'Well now you are. You are. Your name, Joan Richardson, is a byword for excellence in graphics, lighting and furniture design, with awards to prove it, too. Major awards.'

Joan smiled thinly.

'So when I say that you can climb this tree, it's not because I think you ought to try, but because I know you can climb this tree. That's not bullshit, love. That's not just positive thinking. It's because I know you.'

He paused, as if allowing his short speech to sink into her mind. Dukes also wondered if she could do it. She looked too fat to make it. Carrying all that weight was going to make it difficult. But she looked strong. Her shoulders were almost as big as her buttocks.

'Sure you can do it, lady,' he said encouragingly.

Richardson shot the security guard an irritated sort of smile.

'No,' he said. 'You don't know what you're talking about. What you say is right, but for the wrong reasons. You only imagine that she can make it, based on nothing more than the seat of your pants. I know she can make it.' Richardson tapped his head with a forefinger. 'In here.'

Dukes shrugged. 'Only tryin' to help, man,' he said stiffly. 'How do you want to do this?'

'I think maybe you should go up first. Then Joan. With me bringing up the rear, OK?' Richardson smiled. 'Not least because she is going to have to take off her skirt and climb in just her panties.'

Dukes nodded unsmiling. He was through trying to be nice to this guy. The man was a loose cannon.

'Sure. Whatever you say.'

'Joan? Are you ready?'

'I will be. After Mr Dukes starts his climb.'

'That's the spirit.' Richardson glanced up at the top of the tree and slipped on his sunglasses.

'Good idea,' said Joan. 'It is kind of bright in here. We wouldn't want to get dazzled or anything.' She bent down and retrieved her sunglasses from her handbag.

Richardson spat on his hands and took hold of a liana.

'Either of you two know the correct way to climb a rope?' he asked.

'Well, I guess so,' said Dukes.

Joan shook her head.

'Then you're both in luck. During my two years' national service, I did a fair bit of rock climbing. I've climbed more ropes than Burt Lancaster. You curl one shin around the rope, like this, and take hold above your head. Raise the shin wrapped around the rope and then pin the rope between your feet. At the same time you raise your hands and take your next hold.' He dropped back on to the ground.

'It's going to be hard going for the first sixty or seventy feet. Until we get to the first branches, where we can take a rest. Dukes? Do you want to try a couple of shin-ups?'

The other man shook his head and took off his shirt to reveal an impressive physique.

'I'm as ready as I'll ever be,' he said and started up one of the lianas, almost as if he was enjoying himself. When he was about twenty feet off the ground he looked back and laughed. 'See you guys up there,' he said. Joan unzipped her skirt and dropped it to the ground.

Richardson swung a second liana towards her.

'Take your time,' he told her. 'And don't look down. Remember, I'll be right behind you all the way.' Then he kissed her. 'Good luck, love,' he added.

'And you,' she said. Then she curled her shin around the liana the way he had shown her and began to climb.

She was, he thought, the standard Venetian type beloved of Giorgione, Titian and Rubens, a poetic personification of the abundance of nature, a softly luminous Venus as on some pagan altarpiece. Her abundant size was the reason Richardson had married her. The real reason. Even Joan herself was unaware of that.

'That's it,' he said savouring the sight of his wife above him as a greedy dog might have regarded a fleshy ham bone. 'You're doing fine.'

It was his turn.

Richardson climbed slowly, not wanting to get beyond his wife in case he needed to help her, sometimes not moving at all while he waited for her to gain some height, giving words of encouragement and pieces of advice where he thought she needed them.

When Dukes got up as far as the first branches he settled himself across a bough to wait for the other two. For about ten minutes he watched them, until they seemed near enough to speak to.

'What kind of flower is this, ma'am?' he called down, handling a brightly coloured bloom on the trunk of the tree.

'An orchid, probably,' said Joan.

'It's really beautiful.'

'It's hard to think of it as a parasite isn't it? Because that's what it is.

'Are you serious? I've seen flowers like this at the Wall Street Flower Market, ten bucks apiece, minimum. And that's wholesale.'

Joan had almost reached the branch. Dukes reached down and held out his hand to her.

'Here,' he said. 'Catch my wrist. I'll pull you up.'

Gratefully Joan took hold of his wrist and found herself lifted up on to the branch beside Dukes. When she had recovered her breath, she said,

'My, you're a strong man. I mean, I'm not exactly a featherweight, am I?'

'You're all right,' he grinned. 'Me Tarzan. You Joan.' Glancing down the trunk at Richardson he added, 'Hey, Cheetah, how's it coming there?

Ungawah. Ungawah.'

'Very funny,' grunted Richardson.

'You know what? The minute I get on to that twenty-first floor it's Miller time for me. There's two dozen in the refrigerator. Carried them up there myself.'

'Always assuming they haven't been drunk by someone else already,' said Joan.

'People have been murdered for lesser offences.'

Richardson heaved himself on to the branch alongside his wife and let out a long sigh.