Gridiron

'Holy shit,' exclaimed Coleman pushing the head away with revulsion. It rolled across the floor like a broken coconut, and came to rest on the ragged edge of what has once been his neck.

The eyelids in the head lifted, and penetrating, undeniably living eyes fixed themselves on Coleman, with a mixture of indignation and regret. Then the nostrils flared and, instinctively, Nathan Coleman addressed the severed head.

'Jesus, what the fuck happened to you?' he said, shuddering.

Levine's head made no reply, but for another ten or fifteen seconds his eyes stayed on Coleman's own, before the lids drooped and life finally departed from the dead man's brain.

Between the pounding blows on the other side he could just hear Frank Curtis shouting. Once again Coleman pulled at the handle, but the door was still locked.

'Frank?' he shouted.

'Nat? Is that you?'

'I'm OK, Frank. But Levine is dead. It looks like he got hit by a fuckin'

Patriot missile. There's blood and pieces of this guy all over the washroom. It's like Sam Peckinpah's dinner in here, man.'

'What happened?'

'Hey, you tell me,' Coleman shouted. 'I just opened the door and it was like the guy blew apart in front of me.' He shook his head. 'I'm kind of deaf, too. My ears are ringing. Like I've been in a plane or something. Frank? Are you still there?'

'OK, Nat, we're going to get you out of there.'

But inside the washroom, a loud buzzer sounded.

'Wait a minute, Frank. Something's happening. Can you hear it?'

The voice came from somewhere up above Nathan Coleman's head, an Englishman's voice, and for a millisecond he thought it was God. Then he remembered Abraham.

'Please vacate the washroom,' said the voice. 'Please vacate the washroom. Automatic cleansing of this facility will commence in five minutes. Repeat. Please vacate this washroom. You have five minutes.'

'Frank? The man wants to clean up the mess in here. What do I do now?'

'Stand clear of the door, Nat. We're going to break it in.'

Coleman retreated into the only cubicle that remained clear of Levine's anatomical diaspora, tipped the seat on the toilet bowl and sat down. There followed a short silence and then, on the other side of the door, the dull, unmistakable impact of a man's shoulder. To Nathaniel Coleman, it was an informative sort of sound. Before being transferred to the Homicide Bureau he had been a patrolman. After three years cruising LA in a black-and-white you got to know the kind of doors you could break down and those you could not. Curtis went at it like some comic-book hero, but Coleman could tell that his effort was wasted and that the door would stand fast.

The buzzer sounded again.

'Please vacate the washroom. Please vacate the washroom. Automatic cleansing of this facility will commence in four minutes. Repeat. Please vacate this washroom. You now have four minutes.'

Coleman dropped his head back on to his shoulders and stared up at the blood-spattered ceiling and the small loudspeaker that was installed there.

'Well, if you could just open this fucking door I'd be glad to get out of your way.'

Then he stood up and returned to the door. 'Frank?'

'Sorry, Nat. Damn thing doesn't budge. We're going to have to try something else. Sit tight.'

Coleman glanced uncomfortably at Levine's head lying on the floor and hammered on the door.

'Frank? I don't want to end up like Levine here, so you'd better think of something quick. I just got the four-minute warning.'

A minute passed and the buzzer sounded a third time. 'Please vacate the washroom…'

Coleman lifted his eyes towards the ceiling and grimaced. He drew the Glock 9 millimetre from the clip holster he wore inside the waist of his pants and with a finger in one ear silenced the loudspeaker with a couple of shots.

'Nat? Nat, what the hell's going on in there?'

'It's OK, Frank, I just got tired listening to the fuckin' computer telling me to get my ass out of the can, that's all. So I bust some shots off.'

'Nice work, Nat. For a moment there I thought you had a 211 in progress.'

'No. Just the 207, same as before. Only I don't think old Abraham wants any ransom money. I think he wants my butt.'

-###-

Frank Curtis slapped the washroom door hard with frustration.

'What happens during automatic cleansing?' he asked Mitch, who shrugged and with a look turned the question towards Willis Ellery.

'The washroom is sprayed with a hot ammonia solution,' said Ellery.

'How hot?'

'Not boiling, but still pretty hot. After that it's dried with hot air before the air itself is changed under pressure and aromatized.'

'Is the cleansing program what killed Levine?'

Ellery shook his head. 'I doubt it. Being trapped in a washroom during a cleansing program wouldn't be a pleasant experience, but it's not necessarily a fatal one. The thing is — well, I should have thought of it before. You see, I was in there immediately before Tony and I nearly mentioned it to him. Only he said something to me that put it right out of my head.'

'Mentioned what?' Curtis asked impatiently. 'Come on, we haven't got much time here.'

'If Abraham is using the HVAC to make things uncomfortable for us, it stands to reason it might use the washroom for a hostile purpose. From what Coleman has said it sounds to me as if Abraham killed Tony using air pressure. It must have increased the psi in there to way above normal, like on an aircraft. But possibly that wasn't fatal until Coleman opened the door. Then there would have been a sudden and immediate depressurization. Enough to blow Levine apart.'

'Is there any way of stopping the cleansing program?'

'You mean that doesn't include Abraham?" Ellery laid his hand on a panel on the corridor wall beside the door.

'I've got a feeling that there's something behind here that might do the job,' he said, 'but I need to check it out on the laptop first.'

'Do it,' Curtis said urgently.

Ellery ran back towards the boardroom. Halfway there he stopped, turned on his heel and called back, 'If the program starts, tell Coleman to make sure he covers his eyes.'

'OK.'

Mitch was inspecting the way the panel cover was attached to the wall.

'Self-tapping screws. I'll speak to Helen and see if she found a screwdriver.'

Curtis hammered on the washroom door.

'Nat? We're working on an idea to get you out of there, but it's going to take a couple of minutes. If the program starts make sure you cover your eyes. The liquid contains ammonia. And it might be hot.'

'Fucking great, Frank,' said the voice behind the door. 'I'll look for a brush and see if I can't get some of this dirt out from under my fingernails, shall I?'

Curtis sprinted back to the boardroom, where he found Willis Ellery and Mitch studying a 3-D drawing.

'What have you got?' he said urgently, trying to make sense of the luminescent green drawing.

Not to be hurried, Mitch moved the trackball to turn the Intergraph drawing first one way and then the other.

'Each washroom is self-contained,' explained Ellery. 'Behind that panel are pipe, duct and cable tails, connected to building services. Water enters the washroom via the wet riser and the computer takes over, heating it, mixing it with ammonia for cleaning, whatever. If we can cut off the mains water supply we can effectively stop the whole cleansing program.'

'Right. How do we do that?'

'Just a minute,' said Ellery. 'Let me see.'

Curtis glanced about. Bob Beech was hunched over the computer terminal. Arnon and Birnbaum had one of the building plans spread on the table in front of them and were discussing something with one ear on the latest crisis. Jenny was sitting at Mitch's shoulder watching the laptop screen. At the far end of the table Helen Hussey had laid out a selection of tools and other useful objects as if preparing for surgery. There was a first-aid kit, a carpet knife, a small handsaw, a bevel, a jointer, a rasp, some tin snips, a plasterer's float, a pair of pliers, a shave hook, the scissors, some knives and forks, an assortment of coach-bolts, a couple of screwdrivers, a bottle opener and a large wrench.