Chapter 154: Pemberton I

The indicator ticked 4 times before Pettit said anything.

"On a pavement," he said.

"With my licence in my hand and the address on your phone at half 5."

"And I don’t come in."

"You don’t come through the door. Whatever you can see through it."

A lorry went past him, close.

"Mr Flynn, in 22 years I’ve had people hide in wardrobes from me. I’ve had a man go out of a bathroom window in Solihull. Nobody’s ever rung me back and told me where they’d be."

Pages turned.

"I’ve a file that says you might not exist. A man on a pavement with a driving licence is more than I’ve got. Outside, at 7, Thursday. 10 minutes. And Monday at 7 at the flat, every wardrobe. I’m putting this call in my notes."

"Put it in word for word."

"That’s how I do them," Pettit said, and the line went.

Jodie had the green dress in her lap and the needle stopped halfway through the hem.

"You’ve just invited an insurance man to come and watch you at work."

"To stand outside it."

"Outside what? You don’t know where it is." She pulled the needle through. "What if it’s a shop with glass all down the front? What if it’s a house with a big window, and he’s on the pavement looking straight in at you and whoever’s in there?"

Where’s the line, then? It’s only ever said the door.

Is a window a door? Is somebody watching through glass attending?

"I don’t know," Danny said. "It’s never told me."

"Then that’s 2 things you don’t know about Thursday." She held up 2 fingers with the needle between them. "Where it is. And whether a man looking through a window goes on a list."

"Then I’ll ask it now."

He typed it on the rug while she watched.

does someone outside a graded door go on the record

9 seconds.

[ Attendance at a graded door is recorded. ]

what counts as attendance

[ That is not a question the Concierge is able to answer. ]

"So it won’t say," Jodie said.

"It says that to everything I want to know."

"Then you keep him on the pavement with his back to the glass," Jodie said, "and you stand in front of it."

He slept at the Sterling on Tuesday night, in his own bed over Mara’s ceiling, with his charger in the wall and his alarm on. Jodie had 2 hems to finish and Marie at 8.

The bank answered on Wednesday at 10 past 9, while he was sat at the island writing Tuesday into the pad.

Your request for essential living expenses has been reviewed. ￡300 has been made available. This does not change the restriction on your account.

He wrote it down. Wed 9:10. App. ￡300 living expenses. Restriction stays.

￡300 is food and petrol until somebody at that bank decides otherwise, and they’ll read every receipt. It’s none of Deniz’s 3,200 and none of Errol’s.

Then he texted Keisha, because same day was the rule now with everybody.

Bank’s released ￡300 for living. Account still stopped. Nothing new on the trust. Telling you so you hear it off me.

It came back in 4 minutes.

Thanks for telling me. Still the 1st of March. Eat something.

He sent Jodie the same, word for word, and she sent back a photo of a sandwich.

He bought milk and bread and eggs and potatoes at the Tesco by the bridge and kept the receipt in the back of the pad. He ate 3 of the eggs scrambled, standing up at the island, out of the pan.

At 5 to 6 he was at the bottom of Adaeze’s stairwell with the scooter chained to the railings, and Jodie came round the corner from the bus stop.

She had come straight from Marie’s on the bus and changed in the staff toilet, and she had made herself a dress he had never seen. Dark blue wool, close at the waist and full in the skirt, with the neck cut square across her collarbones so the freckles showed. Her hair was up properly with no pencil in it. She’d put lipstick on.

He stood there.

"Don’t look at me like that on her stairs," she said.

"Like what?"

"Like you’re going to say something." She had a parcel in brown paper under her arm and the red book in her other hand. "Go up."

Adaeze opened the door before they knocked.

"You stood at the bottom for 2 minutes," she said. "I heard your scooter and I counted."

She was in jeans and a cream silk blouse open at the throat, with small gold hoops in and her hair braided back tight off her face. The silk lay on her and moved when she did, the full heavy shape of her under it, and Jodie looked at her for exactly as long as it took to see all of it.

She’s not dressed for you. She said on Sunday she wasn’t doing it twice.

So who’s it for? Herself? Or so Jodie can see all of it on her own doorstep and know it’s not on offer?

"You’re Jodie," Adaeze said.

"Jodie Carter." Jodie held out the red book in both hands. "This is yours. I’ve kept it 3 days and I’ve not written in it."

Adaeze took it and opened it on the doorstep without a word, and went through it page by page, all 31, with her thumb at the corner of each one.

"Why did you keep it?" she said, without looking up.

"He told me through my chain there’s nothing on him before October. I wanted something in my hand that said he existed, if anybody official came to my door."

Adaeze turned the last page and shut it.

"That’s the right reason," she said. "Shoes there."

The kitchen smelled of pepper and tomato and frying onion, and the window had run with steam. The ironed cloth was on the table again, the creases in squares, laid for 3.

"Jollof and chicken," Adaeze said. "Puff-puff after. You’ll both eat it."

Jodie put the brown paper on the table.

"He said you’d said no flowers."

Adaeze unwrapped it. 4 napkins, dark green, hemmed by hand, folded square.

"That’s the green off the dress," Danny said.

"The offcut," Jodie said. "There was enough for 4."

Adaeze ran her thumb down one hem. Then she put one at each of the 3 places and the fourth in the drawer by the cooker, on top of the rent books.

They ate. The rice was red and smoky and caught at the bottom of the pan in the good way, and the chicken came off the bone. Jodie cleared her plate and asked for more, and Adaeze watched her ask, and gave her more.

"Before you tell me anything," Danny said, "there’s a man coming to see me on Thursday. From the insurer on my building. Naomi’s letter went in on Monday and he’s been sent to check I’m a real person who lives there."

Adaeze put her fork down.

"With what?"

"My licence. A look in the wardrobes on Monday. And anything I’ve got from before October, which is nothing."

"Which is my book." She looked at the red book on the side by the kettle. "Go on, then. Ask me."

"Who signed."

"I rang Ken in Margate on Monday night. Ken Ashworth. He sold me Pembury, he’s 77, and he remembers every sale he ever took somebody to lunch on." She wiped her mouth on Jodie’s green napkin.

"I said, Ken, the company I bought off. Who signed for it? I never met anybody. Their side was done in a solicitor’s office in Holborn, and Ken went in person to get the transfer signed because the seller’s people kept missing dates."

"And he remembers it."

"Because it nearly stopped the sale." She got up and took a folded sheet off the top of the fridge and put it down by Danny’s plate. "That’s my copy of the completion statement. The director on every page of it is a man called Hollis. I never met him either."

R. M. HOLLIS, DIRECTOR, typed, at the foot of the seller’s side.

"Ken says the man who came into that room in Holborn to sign wasn’t Hollis. He was an old gentleman in a good coat. 88 or 89, Ken thought. And he signed in his own name, in fountain pen, and that name isn’t on one line of that sheet, or on anything Ken had seen in 4 months of that sale."

Jodie had stopped eating.

"Ken said to the solicitor, that’s not the director. And the old man said, I am signing for my brother’s company, my brother is not well enough to come, and you will find the authority in the bundle. And it was in the bundle. A power of attorney, all in order. So it went through."

"What was the name?" Danny said.

"Pemberton."