Hagget was yet again going to be an unhappy man, but I didn’t want him to be an unhappy man for a few days yet – not that I cared about Hagget, but I needed time, and needed it badly; I didn’t want anyone discovering this corpse just yet. A bunch of keys in Bruhnler’s pocket gave me an idea. I went up onto the roof and found the key that fitted the hatch to the elevator motor room. I stepped in and looked at the maintenance certificate. It was dated 28 November. That would be the annual date. Provided nothing went wrong with the elevator in the meantime, it would be eleven months before anyone would go looking inside that hatch.

I pulled Bruhnler’s body through and lowered him onto the roof of the elevator. Anyone riding up or down would be quite unaware of the joyless rider on the roof. Not that I intended to let him remain there for eleven months; I would ask the long-suffering Hagget to notify the authorities in a matter of weeks.

I didn’t enjoy killing, but I enjoyed the thought of being killed even less. I wondered how long Bruhnler had been watching me, and it made me shiver. I wondered how he had come to be in the building, and whether he had been sent especially – but I decided that was unlikely. He had probably been given the job of keeping an eye on the building over the Christmas weekend and hadn’t bothered on the first two days. On the Sunday afternoon, he had probably decided he had better check up, so that if anything was amiss, it wouldn’t look as though he hadn’t been doing his job when someone else discovered it on Monday morning. Although I shouldn’t have done, I grinned at the thought of Bruhnler’s strange tomb. Life has its ups and downs, and so, for Kurt Bruhnler, had death.

It was time to depart, and Bruhnler had at least kindly given me the opportunity to leave earlier than I had hoped. When Bruhnler had entered the building, the computer would have noted it. The fact that it was Max Flynn and not Bruhnler who departed was something that was unlikely to bother the computer greatly. All it was concerned with was balancing the numbers, and that my departure would do nicely.

It took me a couple of hours to tidy up and conceal, as best I could, the bullet hole in Sleder’s office wall, and I was well pleased with my efforts. It was eight o’clock by the time I got back to the Warwick. I ordered some food up to my room, then sat down in the armchair, and continued the thoughts that Bruhnler had so rudely interrupted.