I was expecting to find only the inside of the roof but there was far more than that. Apart from the vast labyrinth of steel girders that supported the huge structure, there was a maze of pipework providing drainage together with miles of wiring and a gigantic electrical switching box, similar to mine at home but about twenty times bigger.
Stretching away into the distance was a wooden walkway with metal-pipe handrails down either side. The walkway appeared to extend the full length of the grandstand and above it at about twenty-foot intervals were hung a series of naked light bulbs to provide illumination.
I started to move along the walkway and the two of them followed, closing the door to the corridor behind them.
‘Stop,’ Bob instructed. I stopped.
‘Waste him,’ Steffi said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
‘Hold on a minute,’ Bob said. ‘Let’s find out who he is first.’
‘Why?’ Steffi said. ‘Just waste him.’
I heard an automatic being cocked behind me.
Was this the end of the road? Was it time to play the only remaining trump in my hand?
‘Tony Andretti and Norman Gibson know all about you two,’ I said. ‘You’re finished. You kill me and you’ll both be executed for killing a federal officer.’ It was the first time I’d spoken and I had dropped the Irish accent.
There was a silence that seemed to go on for ever.
Had I misjudged? Was I about to get a bullet in the back of my skull?
‘He’s bluffing,’ Bob said calmly into the stillness.
‘I’m not bluffing,’ I said quickly. ‘Your names are Bob Wade and Steffi Dean and the cops are already on their way.’
Bob grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me round to face him. He tore off the dark glasses I was still wearing and stared at me.
‘You?’ he said, clearly seeing straight through my disguise. ‘But you went back home to England.’
‘No, I didn’t,’ I replied. ‘I’ve been chasing your tails and now I’ve caught you.’
‘You seem to be forgetting something,’ Bob said, smiling and waving his silenced Glock 22C in my face.
‘Are you really going to kill a federal agent?’ I asked.
‘You’re not a federal agent,’ Steffi said.
‘As good as. I was invited here by your Deputy Director as a temporary member of FACSA. I am sure the jury will consider me as a federal agent when they choose to give you the death penalty.’ I hoped it was so, even though I doubted it. ‘Do they still electrocute murderers in New York?’
All the while I had been talking, I’d been moving myself further away from them, fraction by fraction, simply by rocking from foot to foot, shuffling an inch or so backwards each time.
‘The death penalty is abolished in New York State.’ Steffi sneered at me as she said it.
‘Not for federal crimes,’ I said. ‘Sizzle, sizzle.’
‘Shut up,’ Bob shouted in my face. Another inch away. ‘I tell you, he’s bluffing about the cops.’
‘And about the ten grand in Steffi’s purse?’ I said. ‘George Raworth has been most helpful.’
He wasn’t to know otherwise.
Another couple of inches away.
I looked at Steffi’s thick black hair, tied back in a ponytail. ‘They’ll shave all that lovely hair off your head,’ I said to her. ‘To make a better contact. The current will fry your brain inside your skull.’
I was quite certain that ‘Old Sparky’ had, in fact, long been consigned to history, replaced by the banality of a lethal injection. Equally as effective, no doubt, but far less dramatic. Nevertheless, Steffi was clearly rattled.
‘Shut him up,’ she demanded. ‘Or I’ll do it.’
She reached into her bag, presumably for her gun.
Bob Wade began as if to say something and he took his eyes off me as he, too, looked down towards Steffi’s bag. I didn’t need a second invitation.
I reached to my left and grabbed the handle on the front of the electrical switching box and rotated it a quarter-turn from ON to OFF.
With a loud clunk, all the lights went out.
I turned and ran down the walkway into the darkness as if my life depended on it, which it probably did, at the same time bending down to reduce my target size.
I didn’t hear any guns being fired behind me over the sound of my own footsteps, no doubt on account of the silencers, but I certainly heard the bullets as they whizzed past me before ricocheting off the steel roof girders.
I didn’t stop but bolted onward at full pelt, guiding myself by running my hands along the handrails on each side and praying that no one had left anything on the walkway that I would trip over.
I was still running at top speed when the lights came on again, just in time for me to see the walkway ahead take a sharp zigzag to the left round a large vertical pipe.
As I negotiated the turns, I glanced behind me.
I had run a good forty yards in the dark and neither Bob Wade nor Steffi Dean had followed. They were standing where I’d left them next to the switching box, and they were looking in my direction.
I hoped and half expected that they would give up and leave but they clearly had other ideas as they both started down the walkway towards me. Steffi fired at me, not that I heard the retort of the pistol, but the bullet zipped past somewhere close to my left arm and I heard that all right.
It was all the incentive I needed to keep going along the walkway deeper into the roof space.
I looked to both sides for some sort of weapon but the only thing movable I could find was a five-tread wooden stepladder, no doubt left behind by some idle workman who hadn’t returned it to its rightful storage place.
It was far too cumbersome to use as a club but I picked it up nevertheless and went on swiftly down the walkway using the ladder to break each light bulb above my head as I passed by. If they were going to find me, they would have to do so in the dark.
33
The walkway must go somewhere, I thought, as I continued to run down it. There surely had to be more than one way out of this roof.
I hurried on further, ever conscious that, as long as I stayed on the walkway, I was extremely vulnerable.
But dare I leave it? Was the skin of the roof below strong enough to take a man’s weight? It was a long way down to the viewing seats far below if I got it wrong.
My instinct was to stay as far away from the two special agents as I could. Distance between gun and target was my friend. All handguns have short barrels and are pretty inaccurate at anything over twenty-five yards, but these two were marksmen, Steffi had said so on my first day at the FACSA offices.
As if to confirm the fact, a bullet crashed into the ladder over my head, sending splinters into my hair. Too close. Much too close.
At last I came to the end of the walkway and that was all it was, a dead end. No door. Nothing. No way out. The walkway was only there to service the pipework and electrical fittings in the roof, not as an access to anywhere else.
I now had no choice other than to leave it but, before climbing over the handrail, I spent a second or two taking a mental image of the pattern of steel girders that held up the roof. Then I used the ladder to smash the last remaining light bulb, plunging the whole end of the roof space into near darkness.
I climbed away from the walkway using the girders like a climbing frame.
In a modern structure the steel beams would have had a circular cross section and be welded together like those visible in new airport terminals, but this roof had been constructed in the 1960s and was all made from H-beams held together with nuts and bolts, like a gigantic Meccano set.
But that was an advantage as it provided me with plenty of hand and foot holds as I quickly moved away from the walkway towards the back of the grandstand until I was up against the far edge of the roof.
The problem with the lack of light was that, even though Bob and Steffi were unable to see me, I couldn’t see them either.
/> So what was my plan?
Staying alive was uppermost, but I couldn’t stay here forever, waiting for them to find and shoot me. I had to get out.
I could hear the two of them talking but could snatch only the odd word.
I thought I heard something about a flashlight. That was not good news.
However, even with the broken bulbs, it was not totally black.
The lights were still on near the exit door, where I had run under them before finding the ladder. As far as I could tell, that was the only way out and my foes had clearly grasped that fact as well. In the pools of light beneath the remaining bulbs, I could see Steffi striding back along the walkway towards the exit door to cut off any escape bid.
Being as silent as possible, I started again climbing through the steelwork, also making my way back towards the door but keeping in the deep shadow close to the far edge, well away from the walkway. It was a dangerous strategy but I could see no alternative.
Where was Bob?
I looked back over my shoulder and strained my eyes looking for him in the gloom. I could just make out his shape on the walkway and he seemed to be standing on the stepladder that I had used to break the light bulbs.
A light came on above him. He had obviously moved an unbroken bulb from further along. I watched as he went back along the walkway, set up the stepladder and reached above his head to unscrew another, which went out. It came on again down the line.
At this rate, he would soon have enough light to see me, especially if he followed me into the girder maze. One advantage, however, was that with every bulb he moved, it got progressively dimmer near the door.
It began to rain. I could hear it beating on the upper skin of the roof.
It was quite clear that Bob Wade and Steffi Dean had no intention of giving up. They were determined to get me. Maybe I would have been too if I’d been in their shoes. Contrary to what I had told them, no one else knew. Silence me and they might very well get away completely undetected.
It was such a prospect that made me all the more resolute to get out of here alive. Of course I didn’t want them to kill me but I was absolutely damned if I would allow them to get away with it and to carry on undermining the work of their anti-corruption agency.
But how could I?
I edged closer to the door, making sure that I kept some of the larger girders between Steffi and me. My eyes were becoming accustomed to the dimness and there was enough light for me to plot a route in my head for the quickest way to the exit.
‘I still can’t see him,’ Bob called out from the far end. ‘He must be down here somewhere.’
His voice was partly drowned out by the noise of the rain and Steffi moved three or four steps down towards him before replying.
‘Maybe he’s hiding under the walkway,’ she shouted back.
I had thought of that and now I was glad I’d rejected it.
‘I wish we had a damn flashlight,’ Bob said, almost to himself.
‘I can’t hear you,’ Steffi shouted.
She moved forward another five paces.
I had to move. Not only was it likely to be my only chance to get to the door but, if she took another stride or two, she would be able to see me clearly.
I eased myself around the girder I was clinging to, trying to keep the metal between us.
The rain got harder, and louder.
Steffi walked forward another few paces.
‘Do you need any help?’ she shouted.
There was no audible reply.
She went further down the walkway.
‘Do you need any help?’ she shouted again.
She was now some thirty or forty yards from the door. Indeed, I was already behind her. It had to be now or never.
Once I started there would be no going back. My rapid movement would give me away, even in this light.
I swallowed hard and tried to generate some moisture into my mouth. This was it, and I was scared, bloody terrified in fact, but I was not petrified by fear. Indeed, it was the fear that drove me on.
I almost ran across the roof grid, giving a good impression of a monkey as I swung from girder to girder in a straight line for the exit.
I was almost back at the walkway before Steffi realised. Only five yards to go.
I leaped over the handrail and fairly sprinted for the door, yanking it open.
Something punched me hard in the right arm, almost knocking me off my feet. I’d been shot.
But I could still run – out through the door, along the corridor and back towards the lift.
I could hear Steffi shouting behind me.
My arm hurt like hell and I was dripping blood from my fingers, but I found I was laughing. I was out of that damn roof and I was still alive.
I pushed the lift button but the doors didn’t open. The bloody thing was down the bottom and I didn’t have the time to wait for it.
I’d be dead before it arrived.
I dived through a door marked ‘Emergency Exit Only’.
This was an emergency.
I bounded down the stairs, but they didn’t go all the way to ground level, rather they exited through double doors into one of the restaurants in the closed-off section of the grandstand. It was deserted.
The restaurant exit was at the far end of the room and I could already hear footsteps on the stairs behind me. So I went through the door into the kitchen only to be confronted with a mass of stainless steel – half a dozen rows of chef workstations with long preparation worktops interspaced with gas hobs and ovens below and extraction hoods and open storage shelves above. Even the ceiling was lined with stainless steel.
But there were no chefs. No kitchen staff at all. And no obvious route to an exit.
Damn it.
I was leaving a trail of blood droplets, a dead giveaway to my whereabouts, so I grabbed an apron that was lying on a work surface and wrapped it round my hand. Maybe it wouldn’t stop the bleeding, but it should prevent the blood from dripping onto the floor, at least for a while.
I had a quick look at my upper arm. The bullet had missed the bone, slicing through the flesh about three inches above my elbow. It was very painful but, thankfully, I was still able to use it.
I looked around for a knife. This was a kitchen, right? There had to be knives, but all I could find was a small vegetable knife with a blade about three inches in length. I’d have much preferred a nice heavy meat cleaver, but three inches was better than nothing. At least it was sharp.
I saw the door begin to move so I ducked down beneath one of the worktops, many of which had stainless-steel cupboards beneath.
‘He’s in here,’ Steffi said. ‘There’s a blood trail.’
‘How could you have missed him?’ Bob said, breathing heavily.
‘I didn’t miss him,’ Steffi said, clearly pained. ‘Do you think he bled spontaneously? Of course I hit him.’
‘But you didn’t stop him though, did you? You let him get out.’ Bob was clearly in no mood to be kind to his lover. ‘I told you to guard the goddamn door. If you’d done what you were told, we wouldn’t be in this mess.’
My eyes were down at floor level and I could see their feet under the cupboards, over by the door. I watched as Bob’s moved. He started walking slowly down the first line of workstations. I crawled the other way.
For some reason, it reminded me of the children hiding from the Velociraptors in the Jurassic Park movie.
Who would be the T. rex that would come to my aid? No one. The racing was all over for the day, and everyone had gone home.
If Bob and Steffi had worked together as a team they would have caught me easily. But, they didn’t.
‘You stay by the door,’ Bob said sternly to Steffi. ‘And don’t move this time.’
‘All right.’ She sounded cross. ‘But there must be another way out of here. The door to the restaurant can’t be the only one. How do the staff get in and out?’
That was a good question, I thou
ght. Could I find it?
There followed a game of cat and mouse, where I was definitely the mouse, scampering around on all fours.
Bob moved up and down the lines of chef workstations, slowly advancing across the room. I did the same on my hands and knees, always keeping at least one line ahead of him. But I was running out of space – and of time.
Whenever I crawled round one end or the other of the workstations, I looked for the exit. Get it wrong and I’d be finished. There would be no prizes for trying to escape into a dead end.
I took a big gamble and doubled back. Instead of crawling down the last line, I turned the other way and went back where Bob had just been. It was another dangerous strategy as it put me between the lovers, hence there was definitely now one of them between me and any exit. But the alternative was no more attractive – guessing where to go and ending up with a bullet in the head if I were wrong.
‘Where the hell is he?’ Bob said, sounding so close that it was as if he was standing on top of me.
‘He must have gone out another exit. He certainly didn’t come past here.’ There was something of a sarcastic edge to Steffi’s voice, as if she was still somewhat miffed by Bob’s earlier comments.
‘You wait here,’ Bob instructed. ‘I’ll go check.’
I heard Bob walk away, his shoes making a slight squeak on the scrubbed tile floor with each step. He soon returned.
‘The only other exit door is locked from the inside,’ he said. ‘He must still be in here.’
Bugger, I thought. This isn’t going well.
Where could I hide?
Nowhere.
Most of the worktops had cupboards beneath, which were all shut with sliding doors, and there was no way I could open one without Bob or Steffi hearing. But, at a few places, there was just a single shelf about six inches from the floor that stretched right through from one side of the worktop to the other. Most of them were covered in pots and pans, and there was no chance of moving those silently either.
However, on my crawling travels I remember spotting one empty shelf. It was where I had seen Bob not just from the ankles down but everything below his knees.
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