Chapter 158: In Your Hand I

Pettit put his coffee down on the lobby table and did not pick it up again.

"Died," he said. "This morning. On 17."

"This morning," Danny said. "He was 94 and he had a form on the side that said nobody was to bring him back. His brother was in the pool downstairs."

Pettit looked at the soft folded sheet, and at Danny, and at the lifts.

"Mr Flynn, I’m not the police and I’m not the coroner." He picked up his clipboard. "But you’ve no history before October, and you were on your own in a flat with a man when he died, being paid by somebody you can’t name. If I were you, I’d want the nurse to write down that you were there, and the time, and that he went the way his form said. In ink. Today."

He’s right. Date and time, the way Mum said. And the nurse writes it as well as you.

"She’s due at 11," Danny said. "I’ll go back up and ask her."

"Good. I’ve half an hour before I need to leave for Euston. Wardrobes."

Ding. 40.

Pettit stood in the hall of flat 40 for a full 10 seconds, looking down the length of it to the glass and the river.

"Right," he said quietly, and started.

The fridge first. He looked at the milk, the bread, the 9 eggs left in the box and the bag of potatoes, and wrote.

"When did you buy these?"

"Wednesday morning. Tesco by the bridge." Danny opened the pad at the back. "Receipt’s here. And the bank’s letter about what I’m allowed to spend on food."

Pettit read the receipt and gave it back.

"You write everything down."

"Since Monday. My mum taught me."

Cupboards. 2 mugs and the Argos kettle and the toaster and a box of tea, and a drawer with 4 forks in it.

The main bedroom had the bed slept in on Tuesday and not made. Pettit opened the wardrobe on a navy suit and a charcoal one, 4 shirts, and the shoes that make no noise.

"Who bought these suits?"

Not you. They came with the job, the navy for the hospital and the charcoal for Ashcombe’s, cut for shoulders nobody had measured.

Lie, and he’s caught you once already this morning on your age.

"They came with the job," Danny said. "I didn’t buy them. I don’t know who did."

Pettit wrote that down without looking up.

He opened the other 3 bedrooms, empty, with marks in the carpets from packing cases. He looked at the towel on the bathroom floor and the bath sunk in the marble. Then he stopped by the island, where a green carrier bag sat by the kettle, gone soft and white along the folds.

"What’s that?"

"My mum’s letters. Finance letters from 2014, and her answers to them. I brought them from her flat."

"May I?"

"No," Danny said. "They’re hers. I’ll ask her if you want, but I’m not opening them for you."

Pettit wrote that as well, and did not touch the bag.

At 10:31 he stood at the glass with the river behind him and read his notes over.

"Here’s what I’m putting. Occupant seen at the property at 07:00 and 10:05. Identity confirmed by licence. Living here, sparse, recently moved, food bought Wednesday with receipt. Documents for a previous address back to age 17. Occupant could not name his employer. Occupant states his clothing was supplied by the employer he cannot name." He turned the clipboard round. "Those last 2 lines I’m not taking off."

"Leave them on."

At the lift he stopped with his finger on the button.

"The old man’s brother on 17. Is he the one paying you?"

"He says he asked for somebody, and I came."

Pettit looked at him for a moment.

"Find out who’s doing the paying, Mr Flynn," he said. "Before somebody else asks you, and doesn’t write your answer down."

The doors shut on him.

At 10 to 11 Danny rang Jodie from the window of flat 40.

She picked up on the first ring, with the stockroom hangers behind her.

"Go on, then."

"Not on the phone," Danny said. "To your face, tonight. You’ll know it’s true because you’ll be looking at me while I say it."

The hangers stopped.

"6 o’clock," Jodie said. "Mine. Bring your pad. I want this morning line by line before you say anything else to me."

"Every line."

"Good," she said, and rang off.

Danny went up to 17 at 11.

The nurse was a tall woman in a navy tunic with grey braids pinned up and reading glasses on a chain. Her badge said COMFORT. She had Robin Hollis’s hand in hers and was writing with the other.

"You’re the young man who sat with him."

"I want it written down that I was here, and the time, and that he went the way his form said."

Comfort looked at Pemberton, who stood at the window with his hands behind his back.

"He’s right," Pemberton said. "Write it down."

She wrote. Present at death: Mr D. Flynn (sitter). 09:24. Peaceful. DNACPR in place and respected. She read it out and turned the page round.

"Sign under me."

He signed it. D. Flynn, with the D too big. Comfort packed her bag and went to make her calls in the kitchen.

"Mr Pemberton."

"Mm."

"The man from the insurer asked me who pays me. I couldn’t tell him. So I’m asking you. When you asked for somebody this morning, did you pay for it?"

"I asked. What it costs has never been my business." Pemberton turned from the window. "That is the truth, Mr Flynn, and it is all of the truth I have on that."

"Then who pays me?"

"I have no idea." He went to the bureau and opened the top drawer. "But I know who you owe this week. A plasterer has your door key in his pocket until you put 3,200 pounds in his hand, and your bank has stopped you."

"Who told you that? Kieran doesn’t know about Deniz. Nobody in this building does."

"No," Pemberton said. "Nobody in this building told me."

"Then who outside it?"

"Mm."

He took out a long brown envelope. On the front, in fountain pen, in an old man’s careful hand, he had written a single word. Plasterer.

"3,200. In twenties. I keep cash. I have kept cash since 1958."

Danny did not take it.

"My solicitor told me not to borrow from anybody while the bank’s looking at me. Not 50 quid off a friend."

"It is not a loan. I do not want it back."

"Then what is it?"

"A 90-year-old man paying the man who held his brother’s hand." Pemberton held it out. "Take it, or leave it on the bureau and I will take it to Verney Road myself this afternoon and put it in your plasterer’s hand."

He would. He knows the road and he knows the man and he knows the sum. You don’t know how.

Leave it here, and he hands it to Deniz this afternoon, and Deniz takes it thinking it’s yours. Pemberton paying for your shop and you not even in the room to say whose it is.

Take it, and at least you can tell Deniz the truth before he puts his hand out.

Danny took the envelope and put it in his inside pocket, next to his first tenancy.

"I’ve not decided what I’m doing with it."

"I have not asked you to," Pemberton said, and went back to the window.

Pat came to the shop at 25 to 2.

Deniz had the door propped with a bucket and the third coat going on, and the lad had a dust sheet over the bentwood chair. Danny was waiting on the pavement with 2 teas from Wasim.

"That’s smoother than my kitchen," Pat said, with her head back.

"Third coat," Deniz said from the trestle. "Mind the floor, love."

"I’ve minded floors since before your mother had you, love." She lowered herself onto the dust sheet and took the tea. "Ray says you’ve got a form."

"I have."

"Then get on with it, I’ve a bus at 3."

Danny crouched by the chair so he wasn’t stood over her.

"I’m making a will. If anything happens to me, this place goes to my mum. If anything’s happened to her as well, it goes to you."

Pat looked at him over her tea long enough that Deniz stopped trowelling.

"You what?"

"The lease and the machine and the lot."

"I’m 75 with a hip, Danny. You’re 28 and your mother’s what, 50-odd? I’ll be in the ground before either of you’s poorly."

"Then nothing happens and you’ve had a letter off a solicitor."

"And why me?"

"Because anybody else I could leave it to would sell it in a fortnight. You’d keep it open. You’d find somebody like Keisha and sit in that window on a Thursday."

Pat held the tea in both hands.

"My John’s mum left me that flat over the bookies," she said. "I was 24. She said, Patricia, you’re the only one of them that’ll keep it clean." She looked up at the new ceiling, and the 6 drops, and the machine under its blankets. "I’ve kept it clean 50-odd years."

"Is that a yes?"

"It’s a maybe. I’ll not say yes to a thing that’s not happened." She drank. "I want it in a letter from your solicitor, not off you crouched on a floor."

"I’ll ask her tomorrow."

"And you’re not to die. Put that in it and all."