Chapter 149: Date and Time II

He wrote the date at the top. Then: 10:47. Café, Clapham Rd. Card declined. Then the yellow box and the woman in Leeds, the note on his file, Priya at 11, Deniz and the key, Errol’s voicemail, Ray, Marcus signing against the window, barred till 1 March.

She read it upside down while he wrote.

"Who’s your solicitor writing to you Friday?"

"Priya. She might drop me."

"Then you’ll want a solicitor who doesn’t. Write that." She watched him write it. "And what’s it in? Your money. Is it all in the one bank?"

"All of it."

"The flat as well?"

He stopped writing.

The flat’s not in the bank. The flat’s in a company. 8.4 million of it, stood on the river, with your name on a board as of 11 o’clock this morning.

Priya said don’t sign anything, don’t move anything. Till Friday.

And after Friday?

"The flat’s in a company," he said. "It’s not in the bank."

"Then that’s yours they can’t stop," his mother said. "Is it?"

"I don’t know. I’ll find out."

"Write that and all." She got up and opened the freezer. "Fish fingers. There’s 12. That’s tea for 3 nights, and if your solicitor wants to come round and tell me a fish finger’s a loan she can."

At the door she held on to the frame.

"Next time it goes up, I want to know the same day. Write it."

He turned to a clean page at the back and wrote Mum, same day, and his name under it. She tore that page off, folded it in 4, and put it in the pocket of her fleece.

He rang Jodie from the walkway at 6, with the bag of fish fingers going soft in a carrier off his mother’s door handle.

"I’m at my mum’s. She’s given me 12 fish fingers and a pad of paper."

"Bring them here," Jodie said. "I got in from Marie’s at half 5. I’ve done one sleeve and I’m putting the boiler on now, so you’ve got 20 minutes to be here before my 4 minutes start."

He was there in 18.

She opened the door in a towel, with her hair already down and the bathroom door open behind her.

"Clothes," she said. "Hall. I’m not wasting the hot on you being polite."

I got them off in her hall. The bathroom was the size of a wardrobe, a bath with a shower over it and a curtain that stuck to you. She dropped the towel and stepped into the bath and turned it on, and I stood there for a second in the doorway looking at her.

The water came down on her and her hair went from dark blonde to brown in one go. The freckles on her shoulders went bright under it. She’s built strong through the hips and thighs, and the water ran down the inside of them, and her tits were heavy and wet and her nipples were already hard from the cold of the hall.

"4 minutes," she said. "Starting now. Get in."

I got in. There was no room. I put my hands on her waist and turned her round to face me.

"What are you doing? I’m counting."

"Face me."

"Why?"

"Because I want to see you when the water goes."

She looked at me with water running off her mouth. Then she put one foot up on the edge of the bath, and I got my hand under that thigh and lifted it higher and held it, and she was wide open to me with the shower hammering down on the back of my neck.

"3 minutes," she said, a lot higher.

I put 2 fingers over her pussy and rubbed her clit fast with the flat of them, and she put both arms round my neck and hung on. She was slippery and swollen and hot, and she rocked herself against my hand in little pushes.

She got her hand down between us and wrapped it round my dick, and squeezed, hard.

"2 and a half," she said into my shoulder. "Danny. In."

I bent my knees and lined my cock up and pushed up into her, and she was so wet I went in to the root in one go. She swore against my neck. I held her thigh up against my hip and fucked up into her, short and hard, her back against the cold tiles and her front against me, and the shower poured over both of us.

"2 minutes."

Her arse was in my other hand. Every stroke lifted her up onto her toes. Her cunt gripped me tight, and she was making a noise on every one now, and the little bathroom rang with it.

"1 minute. Keep going. Keep going, I’m nearly..."

I didn’t stop. She came with her nails in my back and her mouth open against my jaw, shaking all the way through, her raised leg trembling in my hand.

Then the water went cold.

It went from hot to ice in one second, straight down my back and onto her face. Jodie shrieked. I came so hard my legs went, pulsing up into her with freezing water hammering on both of us and her shrieking and laughing into my neck.

She slapped the shower off. We stood in the bath dripping and steaming and shaking, still joined, with her foot still on the edge.

"4 minutes," she said through her chattering teeth. "Told you."

Afterwards she grilled 8 of the fish fingers in her dressing gown, and they ate them in white bread with ketchup in her bed with the duvet round both of them and her hair in a towel.

"Your mum gave you a pad of paper," she said.

"To write everything down. Who said what and when."

"That’s what we do when a till won’t balance." She licked ketchup off her thumb. "Your mum’s clever. What did she say about the 900?"

"That the bank’s right to look. And that she was last to know."

"Was she?"

"After you."

Jodie put the plate on the floor.

"Poor woman," she said. "Last after me. She’ll have stood at that sink and hated me a bit." She pulled the duvet up. "So same day, from now on. For both of us. I’m not doing last again either."

"Then here’s today’s, while it’s still today," Danny said. "Keisha’s not starting on the 17th. She’s stopping at her old place till the end of February, and so’s Tobi, and if my bank’s not let go by the 1st of March, they’re not coming at all."

Jodie turned her head on the pillow to look at him.

"That’s your bar," she said. "That’s your whole bar."

"That’s 13 weeks and 6 days. Keisha counted."

"Then I’m counting it too." She found his hand. "Shake on same day."

He shook her hand under the duvet. She held on to it and was asleep before 11.

Danny was not. He lay on his back in the dark, with Sarah’s wall on one side and the window on the other and the radiator ticking under it, and went through the pad in his head. Deniz Thursday. Priya Friday. Errol the 2nd. Keisha the 1st of March. The flat’s in a company.

At 11:40 his phone lit gold on his side of the bed.

He had it in his hand before it finished lighting up.

[ A shift is available, host. ] [ Thursday. 06:00 to 10:00. ] [ Grade 4. ]

Grade 4. 900,000 into an account a bank has stopped, 5 days after the last one.

Thursday. The same morning as Deniz and Pat.

And you’ve just said same day to 2 women in 9 hours.

He looked at Jodie asleep next to him with her mouth open and her hair coming out of the towel.

Put it face down, and what? Go on Thursday at 6 while she’s asleep, and come back at 11 with another 900 grand she finds out about on Friday?

She held your hand to go to sleep. Not an hour since.

What does the Concierge do if she sees it? You don’t know. It’s never said. It’s never said you can’t.

He put his hand on her shoulder and shook it.

"Jodie. Wake up."

"Mm. What time is it?"

"20 to 12. I need to show you something. It’s the answer to the thing you asked me for on the Wednesday. It’s the real one."

She came up on one elbow, squinting. He turned the phone round and held it out to her with the gold still on the screen.

She took it. She read it once, and then again, with her lips moving on host. Then she looked at him in the dark.

"Thursday, 6 till 10," she said. "That’s 4 hours. Same as Dulwich."

"Yes."

"Is this where the 900 came from?"

"This is where all of it came from."

Jodie sat all the way up. She held the phone in one hand and put the other out flat towards him, palm up.

"Pass me your mum’s pad," she said. "It’s in your coat. And a pen."

He got out of bed and found them in his coat in the hall and brought them back, and she put the pad on her knee and wrote the date at the top of a clean page in her neat shop hand.

"11:40," she said, writing it. "Grade 4, Thursday, 6 till 10." She looked up. "Right. Now go back to the very first one, Danny. Date and time."