Chapter 118: Client Account I

The woman in the dry cleaner’s was steaming a jacket on a pole and looked up at him through the glass, and he went to the flat brown door with the 4 screw holes in the brick and put his thumb on the buzzer.

Twenty seconds. He was going for it again when the intercom clicked.

"Yes."

"Priya, it’s Danny Flynn."

"Have you got an appointment?"

"No."

"Then you’ve got 40 minutes, because my half 3 has cancelled and I was going to eat my lunch." Bzzt. "Come up."

Narrow stairs with a bend in them and the smell of other people’s laundry coming up through the treads.

She had a sandwich out of a box with one triangle gone and she did not put it down.

"Sit down, you’re blocking my light." She had a bite. "Right. Before you start. Somebody rang me about you on Thursday."

Danny stopped with his coat half off.

"Who?"

"A woman at your building." Priya wiped her hands on a paper napkin. "Managing agent or building manager, I did not get a title out of her, and she rang at 2 in the afternoon out of nowhere."

Naomi.

Thursday afternoon. And I gave her that name on Friday morning.

No. Hang on.

I gave it her Friday. She rang Thursday.

He sat down slowly.

"What did she want?"

"She wanted me to confirm an address for you." She said it flatly. "I told her I could confirm I acted on a commercial leasehold completion in October, because that is a matter of public record at the Land Registry and there is no point pretending otherwise. And I told her that was the entire list."

"And that’s it?"

"That is not it, which is why I am telling you." She put the napkin down. "I told her that if she wanted anything else she could write to me, from the agent, in writing, with a reference on it, and that I would consider what I could properly say. Which was a polite way of making her go away."

"Has she written?"

"Not yet. She might not." Priya pulled a pad over. "But if she does, I will have to answer it, and what I say will depend on what you tell me now. So. Do you want me to say nothing at all, which is my instinct, or do you want me to be helpful?"

And Danny Flynn sat in a chair in a room above a dry cleaner’s being asked by his own solicitor how to answer questions about himself.

Careful.

She rang on the Thursday and I handed her the name on the Friday like I was giving her something.

So Naomi already had it. She got it somewhere and she was ringing round before I opened my mouth, and then I sat in that office and gave her the one thing she’d already got, and she wrote it down and underlined it and said thank you.

And she let me think I’d helped her.

"What did she sound like?" he said.

Priya looked up.

"Why?"

"Because I know her, and she’s straight, and I’d like to know whether she was fishing or whether she was stuck."

"She was stuck." No hesitation at all. "She was reading off a form and she was embarrassed about it, and when I said I would be struck off she said yes of course and did not push once."

"Right." Danny put his hands on his knees. "Then be helpful. If she writes, confirm the lease and the completion and that you acted for me and that the source of funds was evidenced and satisfied. That’s all true and it’s all on a register anyway."

"And your residential address?"

"You haven’t got it."

Priya’s biro stopped.

"No," she said. "I have not, have I. I have got a shop on Verney Road and a mobile number, and I have had them since October, and I have never once thought about it until this minute."

The machine downstairs went into a cycle and the dead plant moved with it.

"It never came up," Danny said.

"It never came up because I bought a lease, not a house, and a lease does not need where you sleep." She wrote something short. "Fine. I will confirm what is on the register and nothing else, and I will copy you."

"Thanks."

"Now." She squared the pad. "What have you actually come about?"

"Four things, and the first one’s gone wrong already."

"Go on."

"There’s a plasterer taking the whole ceiling out of that shop today. Lath and plaster, 60-odd years old, and it’s cracked in 2 places with a bit in the middle still holding, and he says it goes in March." He kept going. "He was outside at 8 minutes to 8 this morning and I’d not even got the key in the door, and I told him to take the lot and he started before half 9."

"Who is he?"

"Deniz. My designer booked him."

"And what did the lease say about it?"

"I don’t know."

"You do know, because it is in the report I sent you in October, and it is 3 pages long and you will not have read it." She was already turning round to the filing cabinet behind her. "Alterations covenant. Nothing structural without written consent, not to be unreasonably withheld."

"Is a ceiling structural?"

"A ceiling is arguable, which is worse than yes." She had the file out. "Up to you, this. I can write to the landlord and ask for retrospective consent, which alerts them, or I can say nothing and it comes out in 3 years when you assign the lease and a buyer’s solicitor asks."

"Write to them."

She looked up.

"You are quite sure."

"They’re going to find out the day somebody looks up," Danny said. "And I’d rather it was a letter from you than a bloke with a clipboard."

"Good answer." She wrote it down. "It is Westhill Estates, they are a pension fund, they will take 5 weeks and they will say yes, because you are improving their building at your own cost and they know it. Get your plasterer to photograph everything before he boards, today, and send it to me."

"Second thing. I’m employing people."

"How many?"

"Two. Keisha’s a barista and she’s the best I’ve ever seen, and the other one’s a lad called Tobi with a kid who I’ve promised a contract and who has not said yes yet."

"And has Keisha said yes?"

"Not out loud."

"Has she worked?"

Danny sat there.

"She’s been in that shop 4 times," he said. "She’s told me where the drain goes and which way the machine faces and she’s ordered my beans off a roaster."

Priya put the glasses on the top of her head.

"Then she is a worker whether either of you has said the word or not," she said. "And you have got no employer’s liability insurance, because you would have told me if you had. That is a £2,500 fine a day, and it is a day for every day, and if anything had fallen on her last week you would have been paying for it personally out of your own pocket."

"Right."

"Do not say right, say you will ring a broker this afternoon."

"I’ll ring a broker this afternoon."

"Two brokers, and I will give you both." She was writing a list. "PAYE registration, which takes about 10 days and goes in today. Contracts, which I draft, and I want an hourly rate from you by Wednesday and not a range. Food business registration with Southwark, which is free, and which has to be 28 days before you open, and everybody leaves it and then cannot open."

"Twenty-eight days."

"Twenty-eight. I have watched 2 people miss it." She turned the pad round. "That is my fee for the lot."