Chapter 145: A Longer Memory II

At 8 o’clock exactly Deniz got out of the white van with his reading glasses up on his head. His lad came behind with 2 buckets in each hand.

Deniz took in the tea, and then the bin bag under the blanket.

"Who told you that?"

"Ray, next door."

"Ray’s right. Plaster gets in everything." He took a tea. "I’m out Thursday night. Then it wants the weekend and the Monday dry before anybody hangs 30 kilo off it."

"So the hood goes up Tuesday."

"Tuesday at the earliest. And he screws into the joists, not my board."

Danny got his phone out there and then.

Errol. Skim finishes Thursday. Deniz says hood Tuesday the 2nd at the earliest, fixings into the joists. That’s before your fortnight. Can you be there to wire it when it goes up?

Then he took the shop key off his ring and held it out.

"I’ve got a bank at 10. You said you don’t do keys under pots. So here’s one in your hand."

Deniz looked at the key and didn’t take it.

"You’re giving me your door."

"For 4 days. I’m back by 1. If I’m not, lock it."

"And put it where?"

"Through Ray’s letterbox."

"I don’t put keys through letterboxes either." Deniz took it and buttoned it into the top pocket of his overalls. "I’ll give it you in your hand Thursday night, and you’ll give me 3,200 in mine. Bank transfer’s fine. Go to your bank."

The phone buzzed before Danny was back at the scooter.

2nd is fine. 8am. Not 5 past.

Naomi’s email came at 9:01, while he was sat at the lights on the Clapham Road with his visor up.

Mr Flynn. My letter to the insurer went at 9:00. It withdraws my declaration on your previous address, on the grounds I gave you on Friday. A copy is attached. I have copied your solicitor because she is named in it. The directory board will be changed at 11. N. Adeyemi

He opened the attachment at the next red. Nothing about post and nothing about Mara. One line in the middle:

A filing on which I relied did not exist.

The lights went green and a bus behind him leaned on its horn.

Priya was outside the HSBC at 5 to 10 in a navy coat, glasses on their chain, a biro through the buttonhole of her cardigan, a file under her arm.

"You are early. That is twice in 2 meetings." She held up her phone. "At 9:01 I was copied into a letter by a woman I have never met, who names me in the second paragraph. It is a very good letter."

"She said Monday morning. It’s Monday morning."

"Pat."

"Patricia Mulvey. Flat 4 over the bookies on Verney Road."

She wrote it on the front of the file, against the bank’s window.

"Have you told her?"

"Thursday. She comes in at 25 to 2."

"Good." Priya held her hand out. "Your father."

He took the 2 sealed envelopes out of his inside pocket. Black capitals and birds on the stamps.

Priya turned them over and copied what was on the back onto her pad. She put them in the file still sealed.

"They go in my drawer this afternoon," she said. "Shut."

"What’s in your file? For the bank."

"Your identity, your address, and your source of funds." She patted it. "Lorraine will want all 3. She always does."

The October file. Exchange statements from when I was 23, and an account that grew a past while I sat on a scooter outside her stairs and watched it happen.

You told Jodie you knew. Are you going in, or not?

He held the door for her.

Lorraine Teague had an office on the first floor with a glass wall and a fan heater humming under the desk.

She was a big handsome woman of about 55 in a plum suit, with a silver bob cut sharp at the jaw and gold hoops. Her red nails went across the keyboard like rain on a car roof.

She kissed Priya on the cheek.

"14 years and she still won’t let me buy her lunch," she told Danny. "Sit down, my love."

"Priya said you’d see the shape of it on paper."

"I’ve seen it. Right. Your trust opens in January when Camberwell send me the deed, but I onboard you as settlor now. My compliance take 5 weeks and I’m not having my January eaten. ID?"

He put his driving licence on the desk. She typed.

"And you bank with us already. Lovely, that saves me a job." She turned the screen a few degrees towards Priya. "Customer since you were 23. Address history next. I need 3 years."

"Pembury House, Hackney. 11 years, till October."

Lorraine typed, and waited, and frowned.

"The agencies haven’t got you at Pembury. They haven’t got you anywhere before the 11th of October." She scrolled. "That happens with people who’ve only ever rented. Have you got anything with Pembury on it?"

He found the photos on his phone.

"My landlady’s rent book. 31 pages. She’s posting a signed letter on her letterhead tomorrow."

Lorraine swiped through 6 of them with one red nail and laughed.

"A rent book. I’ve not seen one of these since my nan’s." She counted back on the screen. "That’s 2 years, though. I need 3. Who had you before her?"

"A company. It’s been shut down."

"Course it has." She sighed. "Then I’ll take the 2 years and her letter and note the rest. People who rent fall through gaps all the time. Send me those."

He sent them. She went back to the screen and opened something else, and the laugh went off her face.

"No, hang on." She tapped the glass. "You’ve been with us since you were 23, and we report every customer to all 3 agencies every month. So they should have 5 years of you off us alone. They’ve got nothing. Not one month."

Priya’s hand had gone flat on the file.

Source of funds is next. Priya signed those statements off in October. It’s her name on that file.

Get up and withdraw, and Lorraine refers it anyway, and Priya’s left holding a file she can’t explain. Let Priya hold them back, and she’s a solicitor hiding paper from a bank.

Or you say show her. You don’t say they’re true. You told Jodie whatever they find, they find.

"Priya," he said. "Show her the source of funds. The exchange statements."

Priya turned her head and looked at him over the glasses.

"Mr Flynn, I would like to take your instructions on that outside."

"You’ve got them. Show her."

Priya held his eye a second longer. Then she opened the file and laid the statements on the desk and turned them round.

Lorraine put her glasses on. She typed an account number off the top sheet, then another, then sat back and read her screen with her lips pressed together.

"Our side’s got every one of these," she said at last. "Same dates. Same amounts, to the penny."

Nobody said anything. The fan heater hummed.

"Right." Lorraine folded her red nails on the desk. "I need to do some more checks, Mr Flynn. I’m going to refer your onboarding to my team, and I’m not able to tell you any more than that."

"How long?"

"As long as it takes them, my love." She looked at Priya. "I’ll ring you."

Outside, Priya walked him 20 yards up from the bank door before she stopped.

"Mr Flynn. In October you gave me statements by Wednesday, and I read every page of them and found nothing wrong."

She did not raise her voice.

"This morning that bank says you have been its customer for 5 years, and in 5 years it has told nobody. Not one agency, not one month."

"Lorraine said."

"That is 60 reports. Either 3 agencies lost all 60 of them, or those records were not in that bank when the reports went out. And my file agrees with those records to the penny." She waited for a bus to go past. "Did you make those statements?"

"No."

"Did somebody make them for you?"

Say yes and she asks who. Say no and it’s a lie, and she’ll hear it before you’ve got to the end of it.

"I can’t answer that."

"You asked me to put them on that desk."

"You’d signed them off. If you’d kept them back after what she’d just said, you’d have been the one hiding them. I wanted it to be me that put them there."

Priya took her glasses off and let them drop on their chain.

"You did that for me," she said. "And from that moment I could not advise you in that room."

"So where are you?"

"Listen to all of it. I will finish your will this week, because your mother will need it whatever happens. I will not act on the trust."

"And then?"

"And then I need to consider my position, Mr Flynn. In my office, on my own."

"Are you still my solicitor?"

"I will write to you by Friday."

She went off up the Clapham Road towards the dry cleaner’s with the file held against her chest and her coat flapping open.

There was a café 2 doors up. He went in and sat at the window with his coat still on and got Keisha’s number up on his phone.

What do you tell her? That a bank’s looking? She said the day she finds out it’s dirty. Is a bank looking the day she finds out?

And Tobi’s on the 63 at half 5 either way.

He put the phone face down. Then he went to the counter, asked for a tea, and held the phone to the reader.

The lad behind the counter looked at his screen, then at Danny.

"It’s saying declined, mate."