Chapter 155: Pemberton II

Danny put his fork down on the cloth.

"And before you ask," Adaeze said, "I knew it before you did. I walked into your lobby at half 6 yesterday morning to drop the letter off, and while your lad wrote down what I told him, I read your board. FLYNN at the top. And PEMBERTON on 17, in letters gone yellow at the edges. That’s why I’d not leave it on his desk." She looked at him. "So you tell me who he is."

"He’s 90. He swims at 9 every morning in a navy cap, and he’s been in that pool longer than anybody. He took my neighbour to Gennaro’s on Saturday." Danny looked at the completion statement. "And a few weeks after I moved in, he stopped me coming out of the lift. He’d never stopped for anybody. He said Miss Doyle had been asking after me, twice, and he’d told her he hadn’t seen me."

"Mara," Jodie said.

"Mara. He told her he hadn’t seen me when he had. And then he made sure I knew he’d done it."

"Covering for you."

"That’s what I thought. I didn’t know why."

"The old man in the lobby on Saturday," Jodie said slowly. "The one who walked off along the railings by himself when I came over."

"That’s the one."

"Pemberton and Hollis," Jodie said. "That’s not brothers. Not with different names."

"Ken said the same, to his face, in that room." Adaeze turned the completion statement round to face her. "The old man said, half-brothers, Mr Ashworth. Our mother married twice. And the power of attorney said Hollis, and the old man’s ID said Pemberton, and the solicitor was happy, and Ken took me for my lunch."

Say it, before she does.

"So his brother’s company owned Pembury," Danny said. "My stairs. For the 9 years before Adaeze, I was paying rent into a company his brother owned, and he’s the one who signed it away."

He looked at the completion statement.

"Then in October I leave Pembury and walk into his building, and Pembury comes off every computer in the country with me."

"Or," Jodie said, "he’s a 90-year-old man who’s sold a lot of buildings in his life and swims at 9 and likes the look of you."

"Then why stop in the lobby? Ask Kieran. Ask Thomas on the door. He goes from the lift to the pool and back."

"He stopped for Mara on Saturday," Jodie said. "I saw him."

"Because she was sat on her own on a bench in his lobby looking like that. With me he stopped dead coming out of a lift, in my first month, to tell me something nobody had asked him to."

"Because he liked the look of you."

"In my first month? Before he’d said one word to me?" Danny put his hand flat on the completion statement. "Did he know who I was? Did he know I’d come from Pembury, from his brother’s stairs?"

Nobody answered. The radio on the sill was doing the travel.

Adaeze picked up the red book off the side and held it out to him across the table.

"Then you’ll want this for Thursday, and for Monday. Take it till your man’s been. Monday night it’s back in that drawer with my napkins. Not Tuesday."

He took it.

"I’ll ride it over myself," he said.

"I’ll know if it’s late." She got up and put the puff-puff on the table in a bowl with sugar on it. "Eat."

On the stairs going down, Jodie took his arm.

"She’s gorgeous," she said.

"She is."

"You didn’t have to say yes that fast."

"You’d have known if I’d lied."

"I would." She held on to his arm all the way down. "She gave me more rice."

"Seconds and thirds."

"I liked her." Jodie stopped under the light at the bottom of the stairwell. "I want to go home. Mine. Your shift’s at 6 and I’m not having you go into it from a bed with Mara under it."

She got the bus, and he rode behind it on the scooter all the way to Lavender Hill, stopping when it stopped, with her face in the back window watching him the whole way.

Her door shut behind them.

She turned round in the dark hall and pushed me up against it.

"Tell me again," she said against my mouth.

"Gorgeous. And I’m in your hall."

She kissed me hard, lipstick and pepper and sugar, and her hands went straight to my belt. The coats on the hooks were behind my head and her boots were under my feet. She got my jeans open and her hand inside them and took hold of my cock.

"You sat at her table for 2 hours," she said, stroking me slowly, "and I watched her look at you. And I watched you look at me." She squeezed. "I liked that. I want paying for it."

"How?"

She went down on her knees on the hall floor in the blue dress.

She took me in her mouth, all the way in one go, and I put my head back against the door and my hand on her pinned hair. She went slow and wet, her eyes up at me dark, and her lipstick going on my dick in a red ring.

"Jodie," I said. "If you keep doing that..."

She let me go and sat back on her heels.

"Then I’ll stop." She lay back on the hall floor among the boots, with her knees up and the blue skirt falling down her thighs. "Come here."

There was nothing on under it.

"All night?" I said.

"Since the staff toilet at Marie’s. Every time she said you’ll eat it." She held her arms up to me. "Come here."

I got down over her. She drew her knees right up to her chest and held them there, and the skirt fell back to her waist, and I put my hands on the backs of her thighs and pressed them back further.

"Like this," she said. "Deep. I want it deep."

I pushed into her slowly with her thighs pressed back to her chest, and went deeper than I ever had. She was soaked and tight and burning hot, and she made a sound I had never heard her make, low, from the bottom of her.

"Oh," she said. "Stay there. Don’t move."

I stayed. I felt her clench round my cock, once, twice, and then she grabbed my wrists.

"Now move."

I fucked her on her own hall floor with her knees at her chest and her hands locked on my wrists. Long and deep, all the way out and all the way back in, and every time I bottomed out in her pussy she said "yes" through her teeth.

She let her legs slide down and wrapped them round my waist, and let go of one wrist and pulled the square neck of the dress down off her shoulder herself, and lifted her tit out of it in her own hand, full and freckled, the nipple dark and tight.

"Mouth," she said.

I bent down and put my mouth on it and sucked, and she arched up off the floorboards and swore.

"She’s gorgeous," Jodie gasped, "and you’re in me. Whose?"

"Yours."

I got a hand down between us and found her clit with my thumb and rubbed it in time, and her cunt started to grip and flutter round me. I got my other hand under her arse and lifted her into every stroke.

She came hard, back arched off the floor, her mouth open and no sound coming out for 3 whole seconds before it all came out at once.

I couldn’t hold it after that. I drove into her once more, as deep as I could get, and held there and came, pulsing into her with her legs locked round me and her fingers in my hair.

She pulled my head down onto her shoulder and kept it there. We lay on the hall floor among her boots with the blue dress round her waist and her hair coming down, and I could feel her heart going against my mouth.

At 5 the alarm went. At 20 past, Danny was dressed and stood in Jodie’s kitchen with the kettle on and his helmet on the side, and Jodie was in the doorway in her dressing gown with the pad and the pen.

"Same day," she said. "I’m writing it as it comes."

At 5:30 exactly, the phone lit gold in his hand.

[ 06:00. ] [ Flat 17, the Sterling Riverwalk. ] [ Grade 4. ]

Danny read it once.

17. Pemberton’s.

A Sunday in November, the fire doors on 12 to 19. Naomi on the 17th-floor landing with her clipboard, writing a 4 and underlining it. "That one’s a job."

And Pettit on the pavement at 7, outside the one building he wanted to see you in.

It ends at 10. 40’s 23 floors up from 17. He can have every wardrobe at 10:05 and still make the 11:03 from Euston.

"Where is it?" Jodie said.

"Home," Danny said. "Pemberton’s flat."

He typed it with his thumb and sent it before she’d finished writing.

Mr Pettit. The address is the Sterling Riverwalk. My own building. Be on the pavement by the front doors at 7 and I’ll come down to you. At 10, come up to 40 and open every wardrobe. You’ll make your train.