Chapter 163: The Occupant Has Been Before II

Jodie opened her door at 7 with pins in her mouth.

She was in a dress that wasn’t finished, cut for herself off the last of the green roll. It had no sleeves yet. The side seams were pinned down both sides of her from armpit to hip, a row of silver heads glinting all the way down, and the wool pulled so close to her that he could see where her ribs started. The neckline was low and square and had chalk on it.

"Don’t hug me," she said round the pins. "I’ll bleed. Kitchen. Tell me everything, in order."

He told her at the kitchen table. She stood at the counter and took the pins out of her mouth one by one into the tin. The pool and the Wednesday, Mm, the borrowed name, it is not mine to give, Priya’s letter to Companies House, his mum and the phone box.

"Sunday," Jodie said. "Your mum’s. At 1."

"She’s doing a chicken."

"If she makes it, I’m eating it." She dropped the last pin in the tin. "I need something to wear. Not this."

"You’re not wearing that to my mum’s. I’d never get through the chicken."

"Good. I made it for you." She sat down opposite him and pulled the pad over. "Right. Deniz’s carbon book."

"What about it?"

"If the old receipt’s dated that Friday, Pemberton met him on the Thursday like he says, and it fits Robin ringing on the Wednesday." She turned the page round to him. "If it’s dated a week before you ever walked into Mare Street, then Pemberton knew you were coming before you did. And he’s sat on a bench in a towel and lied to you."

Danny was already getting his phone out.

"Ask him for the date," Jodie said. "That’s all you want off it."

Deniz answered on the 6th ring, outside somewhere, with traffic.

"I’m on a job in Streatham all weekend and there’s 6 books in that year. Monday. What do you want off it?"

"The date at the top. Nothing else."

"Then that’s what you’ll get." A van door slammed. "Night, Danny."

Jodie had stood up. She came round the table and stood in front of his chair in the pinned green with her hands on her hips.

"Now get me out of this. Carefully. There’s 46 pins, and I want 46 back in that tin."

I put my hands on her hips first, over the green, and felt the pins under my palms down both her sides.

"Top," she said. "Left side. Pull them straight or they’ll snag."

I stood and drew the first one out from under her arm. It came out with a tiny tick of steel and the seam gave half an inch, and a sliver of her bare side showed through, freckled and warm.

"1," Jodie said.

I dropped it in the tin. I did the next one down, and the next, and the gap down her side got longer. Her bra was green as well, from the same roll, and I could see the edge of it and the curve of her tit pushing at it.

"2," she said. "3. 7."

"You’ve jumped from 3 to 7."

"I have not. Keep going."

My hands were going by the time I got to her hip. I went round to the right side and started again from the top, and she stood with her eyes shut and her breathing changing.

At 30 I put my mouth on her bare side through the open seam and she gasped.

"Pins, Danny."

"Yes, miss. Sorry, miss," I said into her skin, and did the last 16 with my mouth on her neck.

When the last one went in the tin the dress was only hanging off her shoulders. She shrugged and it went, a heap of green round her feet, and she stood in her kitchen in a green bra and green knickers she’d cut off the same roll, with chalk on her collarbone.

"Count them."

I tipped the tin and counted them on the table with one finger. "46. Every one of them."

"Good lad." She stepped out of the dress and pushed it away from her feet with her toe. "Front room. On the rug."

She went ahead of me down the hall and I watched her arse the whole way in the green cotton. In the front room the oil heater was ticking by her cutting rug. She unhooked the bra and dropped it on the arm of the settee, hooked her thumbs in the knickers and pushed them down and stepped out of them.

Then she went down on her hands and knees on the rug and looked back at me over her shoulder with her hair falling down one side.

"Leave the pins in the tin," she said. "And come here."

I got my clothes off faster than I had ever got my clothes off and knelt behind her. I ran my hands up the backs of her thighs and over her arse and opened her with my thumbs. Her pussy was swollen and shining, and the heater was hot on my side.

I took my dick in my hand and rubbed the head of it up and down her, through the wet, over her clit and back, until she was rocking back against my hand, trying to catch me.

"Danny."

"Ask me nicely, then. Like you ask for the pins back."

"Please, you bastard."

I went in an inch at a time and watched myself disappear into her, and she dropped her head and moaned into the rug. When I was all the way in, with my balls against her, I held her hips and kept still and felt her whole cunt flutter round me.

Then I fucked her. Hard and long, pulling her back onto me by the hips, and every stroke slapped, and her tits swung under her with the nipples brushing the rug, and she pushed back to meet every one.

"Harder."

So I did. I wound her hair round my hand and pulled, gently, and her back arched and her head came up. She looked at the heater with her mouth open and swore at it.

She got one hand off the rug and down between her own legs, braced on the other, and rubbed her clit while I drove into her. I could feel her fingers working against my cock every time I pulled back.

"Don’t stop, I’m..."

She came shaking on one hand, her cunt clamping on me again and again. I lasted 4 more strokes, and then I came into her with my fist in her hair and both her knees sliding apart on the rug.

We went down onto it together on our sides, with me still inside her and the heater ticking.

"46 pins," Jodie said, out of breath. "And I couldn’t have told you how many times you went in me."

At 20 to 11 his phone went on the kitchen table, and he went down the hall in his boxers to get it.

The Sterling. Front desk.

"Mr Flynn, it’s Osei on the night desk. Sorry to ring this late. There’s an envelope come for 40, hand-delivered, about 10 minutes ago."

"Who brought it, Osei? Did you see a face?"

"A driver, sir. Black car, engine running. He gave it me across the desk and went. He wouldn’t sign the book, and I asked him twice."

"What’s on the front?"

"The Occupant, Flat 40. Typed. No stamp." A pause. "It’s heavy paper, sir. Heavy enough to stand up on its own."

"Leave it on the desk. Don’t let anybody else touch it. I’ll be there in half an hour."

Jodie was in the doorway in his shirt, already stepping into her jeans.

"I’m coming."

They went over the bridge at 10 past 11 on the Vespa, with her arms round his waist and her chin on his shoulder and the river black under them.

Osei had the envelope in both hands behind the desk, the way you’d hold a plate. It was cream, thick and soft, with the 4 words typed dead in the centre. He gave it to Danny and looked at the lifts.

Danny opened it standing at the desk. Inside was a single card of the same cream, typed.

The company will be represented on Monday at 10:00.

The occupant is asked to attend at the house in Kensington.

The occupant has been before.

The occupant will come alone.

Jodie read it over his arm, and her fingers tightened on his sleeve.

"The white house," she said.

"The one that paid me for walking in."

"Who knew? This morning. That Priya was writing today."

Count it properly, the way Mum would.

"Priya. Me. You, at 7 tonight. My mum at 11 this morning." Danny turned the card over. Nothing on the back. "And Pemberton, on a bench at half 9 with a towel round him, and he told me to sign nothing."

"Your mum’s been on a ward since 2. She’s not rung anybody in Kensington." Jodie looked at his coat pocket. "And the phone?"

"When you went on my record, the phone said the Concierge never put you there. Something else did. It could be that something and all." He turned the card over again. "Companies House doesn’t send a black car at half 10 on a Friday night. And Priya keeps her own husband out of her files."

"Then it’s Pemberton," Jodie said. "Or it’s whoever asked him."

Danny slid the card into its envelope and put it in his inside pocket, against Deniz’s receipt.

"Osei. Has Mr Pemberton been down tonight?"

Osei turned the book round and ran his finger down Kieran’s page and then his own.

"Up from the pool at 25 to 10 this morning, sir. Nothing since."

The lift came, ding, and they got in.

Jodie reached past him for 40.

Danny caught her hand, gently, and pressed 17.