Philip Kerr - Gridiron

Ray Richardson dropped about ten feet and swung through a perfect arc towards the facade again. Jesus Christ, it was hard work, he thought. The small of his back felt like it had taken a hard kick. The experts made abseiling look so easy. But he was fifty-five years old. He looked up at the descending cradle, now no more than forty feet above him, and bounced away again. Not so good that time. Only five or six feet. It was plain that the thing was going to catch him, and he realized he was going to have to take evasive action. What? And what the hell did Curtis think he was doing? It was like standing in the middle of the San Andreas fault. Ishmael could drop the whole cradle any time it liked.

Richardson bounced again and winced. His knee was starting to ache quite badly and it was getting harder to push himself away. But it was as nothing compared to the growing pain of the waist harness itself. In his thin linen Armani trousers and light cotton shirt, the harness was inflicting a friction burn on his waist and on the inside of his thighs every time he checked his descent. Maybe he should have let Curtis go. The man was a cop, after all. He was probably used to a certain level of discomfort.

Suddenly he felt the rope grow wet in his hands, and looked up. The wash-head was operating, spraying the windows and his abseil rope as it travelled down after him. Why the fuck did clients want clean windows anyway? To improve the attitude of staff? To impress the public? It was not like it was a question of hygiene.

Richardson kicked away and let some rope slip through the descendeur , trying to remember if the window-cleaning formula was chemically corrosive. Chemical contact was, he recollected from his basic training as a climber, the most common cause of total rope failure: if you even half suspected that your rope might have become contaminated you were supposed to throw it away. That was good advice unless you happened to be clinging on to the rope when the contamination occurred. He sniffed at the vaguely soapy liquid on his hands. It smelt like lemon juice. So did that make it organic or acid?

The machine was only twenty feet above him now. He was amazed it had not already fouled the rope. There was room for just one more ab before he had to swing out of the way. He kicked himself off a glass window, half wishing he could have smashed through it like a Navy Seal, and found himself returning to the facade rather sooner than he had expected, having descended no more than three or four feet. Of course!

The wash cradle was pressing the rope against the building. There would be just enough time to build a little momentum and scramble to one side.

Richardson was walking from one end of the window to the other, preparing to swing his way clear of the descending cable when it dropped, closing the ten-foot gap in a second.

Underneath his feet, Curtis felt the bottom of the cradle strike Richardson hard. He looked over the rail and saw that for the moment the rope held, although the impact had knocked the architect unconscious.

It was while tying Mitch's wrists behind his back with a plastic thong that one of the arresting officers noticed the electrically subdued suspect's wristwatch.

'Hey, look at this,' he said to his colleague, who was still holding the Taser gun in case he needed to give Mitch another jolt.

The other officer bent closer. 'What?'

'This watch. It's a gold Submariner, man. A Rolex.'

'Submariner, eh? Maybe that's why he's so fuckin' wet.'

'How come a doper's wearing a ten-thousand-dollar watch?'

'Maybe he stole it.'

'Naw. A doper would have sold a watch like that. Maybe he's telling the truth. What'd he say he was? An architect?'

'Hey, architect.' The cop slapped Mitch lightly on the face. 'You hear me, architect?'

Mitch groaned.

'How much T you give him?'

'Just the one mug.'

They untied Mitch's wrists, sat him in the back of the black-and-white and waited for him to recover.

'Maybe something's wrong in there after all.'

'The building attacked him? C'mon.'

'The guy at the county gaol said the elevator killed someone, didn't he?'

'So?'

'So, maybe we should check it out.'

The other cop shifted awkwardly and looked up at the sky. His eyes narrowed on the Gridiron's facade.

'What is that? Up there.'

'I dunno. I'll get the night sights.'

'Looks like window-cleaners.'

'At this time of night?' The cop fetched a pair of Starlight binoculars from the trunk and trained them on the front of the building.

Two hundred feet above the heads of his fellow LAPD officers, Frank Curtis struggled to recover the semi-conscious body of Ray Richardson that was hanging helplessly at right angles to his own ropes beside the Mannesmann cradle. The control rope had fallen from Richardson's hands and it was only the friction action of the descendeur that had prevented him from plummeting to his death. There was blood on the side of his head, and even when he opened his eyes and caught sight of Curtis's outstretched hand it was a minute or two before he felt strong enough to grasp hold of it.

'I've got you,' grunted Curtis as he pulled Richardson towards the cradle.

Richardson grinned wearily and held on.

'Yeah? But who's got you?' He shook his head, trying to clear it, and added, 'use the abseil rope to tie us off or we'll both be killed. Hurry, man. Before it decides to drop us down again.'

Curtis reached towards Richardson's harness and grasped a handful of the rope that was hanging beneath him.

'Make a loop,' Richardson ordered.

Curtis pulled a loop through the handrail and started to tie a figure-ofeight knot back on itself, the way he had seen Richardson tie the rope earlier.

Richardson nodded his approval. 'That's good,' he sighed. 'Make a climber out of you yet.'

A second or two later the knot tightened as once more Ishmael overrode the Mannesmann's brake checks to let the cradle run free on the cables.

'What did I tell you?' said Richardson as the cradle dipped down on one side like a capsizing boat. The rope slipped up to the corner of the handrail and the two men found themselves pressed close together. Suddenly the cables went taut again and the cradle straightened.

'What now?' said Curtis, struggling back on to the diminutive platform.

'It looks like we're going up again,' observed the other man. 'What's the matter? Don't you like the view from my new building? Hey, you want the world? Take a good look. I give it to you.'

Thanks.'

'My guess is that when Ishmael gets us up to the top it'll drop us back down again. Try and jolt us off.'

Curtis looked up at the top of the building and saw that the rocketlauncher profile of the yellow Mannesmann was moving away to the left.

'No, I think Ishmael's got something else in mind,' he said. 'Looks like it's dragging the cradle round the other side of the building to try and break the knot on your rope.'

Richardson followed the line of Curtis's pointing finger. 'Or maybe break the anchor. Or the rope itself.'

'Will they hold?'

Richardson grinned. 'That all depends on what Ishmael uses to wash the windows.'

Dilute solution of acetic or ethanoic acid to clean building's windows. Cleaning surfactant based on California citrus juices. But in concentrated, undiluted form, acetic acid almost pure, colourless and highly corrosive, especially to core of continuous nylon filaments encased in woven sheath of climbing rope. Nylon and acetic based on carboxylic acids. Soon as undiluted cleaning surfactant in contact with nylon rope, orientation of filaments' specially stretched molecules will alter.