Episodul 157 · The Front Office

The man was on the side step of a van beyond the cones, a blanket around his shoulders and pale dust worked into the knees of his pants. A medic was packing a cuff into her bag. He recognized Soles before anyone introduced him; his eyes went straight to the sling.

— I heard about you.

— You should’ve seen the coat, Maxim said. Nearly brought the whole room home with him.

The man almost smiled. Soles let Maxim have that one. He tried to crouch beside the step, but his hip refused halfway, so Tesa fetched a folding chair and he sat in it like an old man at a parade.

The younger agent held out the corridor photograph. The man put his finger short of the tape.

— There. Like walking into a strong wind. Except my coat wasn’t moving.

He had turned sideways when it got bad. Then he had put a hand on the wall and pushed off, because he thought the resistance was something a man could get through if he managed one more step. His finger moved a little farther along the picture.

— Another step. Maybe two. Then I couldn’t breathe properly.

Same decision. It hurts, but I can bear it, so I’ll lean harder. Soles had made it himself, a few meters farther on, with more than muscle behind it.

— Did it throw you back? Tesa asked.

— No. I went down on one knee, and they pulled me out by the coat.

His eyes went back to the sling.

— Nothing like what happened to you.

— I kept going too, Soles said.

— They told me to stop. I thought they meant if I couldn’t get through. I was still moving.

The medic asked him to stand slowly. He stood fast instead, and for an instant he was upright, and then his knees went. Soles came out of the chair before he had decided to, reaching with the wrong arm, and pain caught him at the elbow and stopped his hand in the air. The medic already had the man by the arm. Tesa caught the chair before it tipped into her way.

— Let her do it, Tesa told Soles quietly.

He lowered his hand and let her. It was the second time that day someone had told him to let another person do it. He was starting to hear a pattern.

Tarn walked him a few paces back toward the shelter, out of the man’s hearing.

— You got farther than our men, he said. We need to know where it becomes too much.

— It was already too much. I kept going.

— If we found somewhere you could stand, without going that far —

— Not today, Tesa said. She had come up on his other side without a sound.

The corridor photograph was still in the younger agent’s hand. Saying yes would get them a number, a place on the floor where it became too much, and would get him another ceiling. Saying no meant standing outside while the line in their pictures crept past another mark. Neither choice closed anything. Only one of them put him back in that room with an arm he couldn’t lift.

— Get the times first, he said. And find me the people who worked in that wing before it fell. Not the ones who tried to get closer. The ones who were just doing their jobs.

— What are you looking for?

— I don’t know yet. That’s why I’d like to ask them.

Tarn took out his phone and walked toward the gate to make the call. For the first time that morning, he had not asked for anything in return.

Krista was standing by the truck with the envelope against her chest. Soles went over, because she had not come to him.

— You didn’t have to do that, she said.

— You did it for us yesterday.

— I did it badly.

— You did it so they’d stay out of the garden. They’ll stay out now. They can’t open it without us.

She looked at him in a way he did not want to read, so he didn’t.

— Thank you, she said, in the smooth, correct voice.

— Don’t thank me in that voice. It’s the one you use for sponsors.

That got her. It was only the corner of her mouth, but it was real, and the voice that came after it was her own.

— Then I’ll thank you properly later, she said. When nobody’s writing our names down.

Across the road, Tarn lowered his phone and turned toward the gate, where people were still coming out of the front offices with their coats over their arms. Most of them had gone into that building yesterday morning to work.

Soles stayed by the shelter while the front offices emptied. The policeman at the gate waved each employee toward the road.

The first to come was a woman carrying a coat over one arm. A temporary badge hung crookedly from her pocket. She stopped beside the shelter and waited while Tarn put his phone away.

— I work in the front office, she said. Records. They said you wanted to ask about before.

— Before the roof came down, Soles said.

— I wasn’t here that night.

— What about the days before it?

She folded the coat against her chest.

— The heating was wrong. People complained. I told the man who came to look at it.

— Wrong how? Krista asked.

— Hot along one wall. Not the others. Then there were the people.

Tarn’s pen stopped.

— Which people?

— You asked me about the building yesterday.

— I’m asking now.

She pulled a chair out, then left it standing where it was.

— A colleague kept saying he had to get home for his little girl. I thought he meant his granddaughter. He said no. His daughter. He wanted someone to finish his work so he could leave.

— When was that? Krista asked.

— The morning before the roof fell. He’d been restless the day before too, but I didn’t ask him why.

— Does he have a daughter?

— She’s in her thirties. She came to collect him after an operation a few years ago. I met her.

Soles glanced toward the van. The man from the corridor was still beside it, speaking to the medic.

— Is that him? Soles asked, with a nod toward the van.

— No. Mine works at a desk. He didn’t go into that corridor.