Chapter 156 - 17 I

Jodie wrote the last of it down and put the pen on the table.

"5:32," she said. "Sent."

"15 minutes on the scooter at this time. I’ve got till quarter to."

"Then sit down and drink that tea." She pushed the mug at him and sat on the edge of the kitchen table in the blue dressing gown with the pad on her knee. "I’m reading you back what I’ve got, so if I’ve got anything wrong you fix it now."

"Go on."

"Monday, 10:47. Café. Card declined." She turned a page. "11:00, Leeds.11:10, Priya."

She was barefoot with one heel on the chair next to his, and the dressing gown had come open over her knee to the top of her thigh.

I put my hand on her ankle.

"12:40," she read, a bit slower. "Keisha, Grange Road."

I slid my hand up the inside of her calf. She didn’t stop reading. She moved her other foot onto the chair on the far side of me, so she was sat on the table with a foot on each chair and me between them, and the dressing gown slid open to her hips.

"Marcus signed it against the window," she read, and her voice went. "Danny. I’m reading."

"Keep reading. Every word."

"Why?"

"Because if you stop, I stop."

She looked at me over the pad. Then she lifted it again.

I went down on my knees on the lino between the chairs and kissed the inside of one knee, then higher, and she read the next line in a voice that was all breath.

"3 o’clock," she said. "Mum’s. Pad of paper."

I licked her, once, the whole length of her cunt, slowly. She was swollen still from last night, and she tasted of sleep and of me.

"Fish fingers," Jodie said, very high.

I circled her clit with the tip of my tongue, round and round and not on it, till her toes curled on the chair seats either side of me.

"12... 12 fish fingers," she read. "Danny. Please."

"Next line."

"Fridge." Her free hand came down and gripped my shoulder through my shirt. "Empty."

I put my tongue flat on her clit and kept it there. Her thighs began to shake against my ears. The dressing gown slid off one shoulder and her tit came out of it, heavy and freckled, the nipple dark, and I reached up and took it in my hand.

"I can’t read," she said. "I can’t read, I can’t..."

"Then you know what happens."

"No... no, keep going, I’m reading, Tuesday..."

I slid 2 fingers into her pussy and sucked her clit while she gasped out the days of the week at me off the page, Tuesday, Wednesday, and her voice broke on Wednesday.

She came pressing the pad over her own mouth to keep it in, with her toes clenched on the chair seats and her other hand digging into my shoulder, shaking from her knees to her hips. Above them the upstairs tap went on.

When she could breathe she pulled me up by the collar and kissed me, and got her hand on the front of my jeans, where my cock was straining against the zip.

"Come here," she said. "There’s 6 minutes."

"10 o’clock," I said.

"What?"

"I’ll text you at 10. You can have the rest then."

She looked at me with her face pink and her hair flattened on one side and her hand still on my dick through the denim.

"You’re going to walk into that old man’s flat like that," she said.

"Thinking about you."

"Good." She took her hand away and pulled the dressing gown shut and picked the pad up off the floor. "Then go, before I change your mind for you."

At 5:47 Danny was on the scooter on Lavender Hill with his visor up and the cold in his face.

Get to 40 and change into the navy suit? 4 minutes up, 4 minutes back down, and you’re late on 17.

In Dulwich you wore the suit because you chose to. It never told you to. Is it going to care about jeans?

He was in the lobby at 5:58 in jeans and his coat. The night man on the desk looked up from a paperback and said, "Morning, Mr Flynn."

In the lift he got the phone out.

who is there

9 seconds.

[ 2 persons are expected. ] [ The host is the 3rd. ]

why me

[ The shift was available. ] [ The host confirmed it. ]

Ding. 17.

The corridor was carpeted dark green and quieter than his own. One door at the end, with a brass knocker and a brass number.

He knocked at 5:59.

Mr Pemberton opened the door in a grey suit and tie, white hair combed flat, half-moon glasses pushed up on his forehead, a cup and saucer in his hand. He looked at the coat and the jeans, and then at Danny’s face.

"Mr Flynn," he said. "6 o’clock, I was told. It is a minute to."

"Were you told it would be me?"

"I was told somebody would come." He stood back. "Come in. Keep your shoes on."

Danny’s phone buzzed against his ribs. He took it out in the hall.

[ Clocked on. 06:00. ]

The flat was books, floor to ceiling, the spines gone pale at the window end. A brass telescope pointed at the river and the gas fire ticked.

"Tea is in the pot," Pemberton said.

"What am I here for?"

"My brother. Half-brother. He is in the back bedroom." Pemberton put his cup on the mantelpiece. "He is 94. He will not go to a hospice and he has a form that says nobody is to start his heart again. The nurse comes at 11. I swim at 9, and I am not stopping for him or anybody. So I asked for somebody to sit with him while I am in the water."

"Asked who? Who do you ring?"

"I do not ring anybody." Pemberton looked at him over the half-moons. "I asked, in the way I was told to ask, a long time ago. And somebody comes."

"Who told you to ask?"

"Mm." He picked his cup back up. "Robin has been awake since 4 asking what time it is. Go and meet him."

The back bedroom was warm and dim with one lamp on. A hospital bed stood where a double used to be, and the dents from the old one’s feet were still in the carpet. On the bedside table, next to a glass of water, was a yellow form in a plastic sleeve. DO NOT ATTEMPT CARDIOPULMONARY RESUSCITATION. Signed.

The man in the bed was tiny and very old, with a long face and pale eyes. His hands were on top of the sheet, all knuckle.

"Robin," Pemberton said from the doorway. "This is Mr Flynn."

Robin. R. M. Hollis, director, typed at the foot of Adaeze’s completion statement. The brother who wasn’t well enough to come to Holborn.

"I know who it is." The voice was thin and flat and East London, nothing like his brother’s. "Sit there where I can see you, son."

Danny sat in the armchair by the bed. Robin Hollis looked at him a while, breathing slowly, with a click in it.

"Flynn," he said. "Pembury House."

He’s never seen you in a suit or in a lift. How does he know your face?

"I lived there 11 years."

"I give you the flat. Mare Street office." Hollis’s hand moved an inch. "You come in with 2 months’ courier money in an envelope and counted it out on my desk twice. You told me you were 18."

"I was 17."

"I know you was. You had a school bag. I give you it anyway."

"Why?"

"You counted it twice."

Why does that matter to a man with 4 blocks? Did somebody tell him to say yes to you an’ all?

"Have you still got it?" Danny said. "The tenancy. From then."

Hollis’s eyes went to the doorway.

"He keeps everything. Bureau, front room, second drawer. Pembury."

Pemberton stood in the doorway a moment longer. Then he went to the front room, and a drawer went clunk, and paper moved, and he came back with a single folded sheet gone soft along the creases.

ASSURED SHORTHOLD TENANCY. PEMBURY HOUSE. The date, 11 years ago in the autumn. Landlord: Pembury Estates Ltd, per R. M. Hollis.Tenant: Daniel Flynn. Age 18. And his own signature at 17, round and careful, with the D too big.

Everything else from before October came off every computer in the country. How did this not?

Because it was never on one. It’s been in a bureau, in a drawer nobody ever typed into.

And it sent you here. To the one man who could hand you this, on the morning Pettit comes. Is that a favour? Since when does it do favours? It said the shift was available. That’s all it ever says.

"Why’s mine in your bureau?" Danny said to Pemberton. "Out of 4 blocks?"

"It is not only yours. The second drawer is Pembury. 30 years of it, every tenancy Robin ever signed." Pemberton folded his arms. "I keep everything, Mr Flynn. Robin kept nothing. Somebody had to."

"Can I borrow this? Till Monday."

"Till Monday," Pemberton said. "Robin will ask."

"I’ll ask every hour," Hollis said.

At 5 to 7 Danny stood up with the tenancy in his inside pocket next to Adaeze’s book.

"I’ve got to go down to the front door for 10 minutes. There’s a man from the insurer on my flat."

"I know." Pemberton was in his chair by the fire with the newspaper. "He told the desk at half 6 that he’d be on the pavement at 7, and in the lobby for flat 40 at 10. The night man tells Kieran and Kieran tells me."

"Why do they tell you?"

"Because I have been in this building longer than the lifts." He turned a page. "Go on. I am sitting with him."