Chapter 164: Uncapped I

Ding. 17.

The corridor was carpeted and silent, with the lights on their night setting. Jodie walked beside him with her jeans done up wrong and his shirt untucked under her coat.

"It’s gone 11," she said. "He’s 90. His brother died yesterday morning."

"He told me at half 9 this morning to sign nothing that comes about the flat. 13 hours later something comes. I want to watch his face when he reads it."

"Then I’m watching yours," Jodie said. "Knock."

He knocked twice. A chain went, then a bolt, and the door opened on Pemberton in a maroon dressing gown with his half-moons on and a fountain pen in his hand, capped.

He looked at Danny, and then at Jodie, and back.

"Mr Flynn. And this is Miss Carter."

He’s seen her once, across the lobby, with Mara stood next to him, and nobody said her name.

"How do you know my name?" Jodie said.

"Mr Flynn’s record has had your name on it since last week, Miss Carter."

"Who told you that?"

"Mm." Pemberton stood back from the door. "Come in. Both of you. You will want to sit down for whatever that is."

The front room smelled of the gas fire and of oranges. The crossword was on the arm of his chair, finished, in ink. The door to the back bedroom was shut.

Danny didn’t sit. He took the envelope out of his inside pocket and held it out.

"This came for 40 at 20 to 11. A driver in a black car gave it to the night desk and wouldn’t sign the book."

Pemberton took it and ran his thumb along the edge of the card inside before he even had it out, the way Danny’s mum felt a towel for damp.

Then he read it. His lips moved on The occupant has been before. He read it a second time and handed it back.

"That is from the house."

"You’ve had one before."

"I have had 4 of those since 1958. The same weight of card, the same typewriter." He lowered himself into his chair and put the pen down on the crossword. "The last one came in 1994."

"Did you ask for this?"

Pemberton took his glasses off and folded them.

"After you left me at the pool, I asked. In the way I was told." He looked at the gas fire. "I asked that you not be harmed by what Mrs Anand is doing. That was all I asked for."

Jodie was in the doorway with her arms folded.

"So you told them about Priya."

"Her name has been on those companies since October, Miss Carter. Somebody put it there, and it was not me. Whoever runs those companies knew her name before Mr Flynn did." He turned to Danny. "This card is the answer to what I asked. They will see you. That is how they answer."

"Alone," Danny said. "At the house I walked into in October and got paid for. Do I go?"

"Yes."

"Why should I?"

"If you do not go, they will decide without you, and you will read what they decided in a letter." Pemberton took hold of the arms of his chair. "So go.

"Take nothing they give you. Sign nothing they put in front of you. And when they ask you something you cannot answer, say you cannot answer it, in those words."

"How do you ask them? You don’t ring. You don’t write. Osei’s book says you’ve not been out of this flat since 25 to 10 this morning. So how did it get there by tonight?"

"Mm."

"You said on that bench you’d tell me what you did, every time I asked."

"I have told you what I did. I asked." The old man’s hands were tight on the chair. "How it is done is the house’s. It is not mine to give, Mr Flynn, any more than the name you wanted this morning."

He asked for this, and he’ll not say how. He knew Jodie was on the record. And he’s sat up in a dressing gown at 20 past 11, the day after his brother died, with his pen out.

He was waiting for me.

Danny reached into his coat and took out the soft folded tenancy with his own 17-year-old signature on it, the D too big, and put it on the crossword beside the pen.

"That’s yours. You said I could have it till Monday. I’ll not walk into that house with anything I’ve borrowed off you."

Pemberton looked at it. Then he put his hand flat on top of it.

"Thank you, Mr Flynn."

At the door he held it for Jodie.

"Miss Carter. A dark suit on Monday. And make him eat breakfast."

The lift took them up to 40 without either of them saying anything. Jodie had his hand.

"He knew I was on your record," she said. "I’m on a record somewhere and a man of 90 on the 17th floor knows."

"He knew Deniz and the key and the bank before I’d said a word on Thursday."

"He’s frightened, Danny. Did you see his hands on that chair?"

"White at the knuckles. The whole time he was telling me to go."

"Frightened for you," Jodie said, and leaned her head on his arm till the doors opened.

At 9 on Saturday morning Danny rang his mum first, from the window of flat 40, with Jodie asleep in the bed behind him and the river flat and silver.

"It’s Saturday," his mother said. "Has the money gone up again?"

"No. Something come last night at 20 to 11, after I’d seen you. You’d have been asleep, so this is as near same day as I can make it."

He read her the card. She made him read it twice.

"And you’re going."

"Monday at 10."

"Then bring her tomorrow and we’ll talk about it over the chicken," his mother said. "I’m not doing this down a phone."

Then he rang Priya.

She picked up on the second ring.

"It is Saturday, Mr Flynn."

"There’s a card."

He read it to her, every line. He told her about 17 at 20 past 11, the dressing gown, the 4 cards since 1958, and that Pemberton had asked for this and wouldn’t say how.

Priya didn’t say anything until he’d finished. He could hear a radio behind her, and a man asking where the good scissors were.

"Photograph both sides of the card and the envelope and send them to me now," she said. "Then put them somewhere that is not your coat. You will go."

"Pemberton said the same."

"I am not saying it for his reasons. I want to know who these people are, and so do you, and they have just told you where they will be sitting."

Paper moved.

"You will take my card in your top pocket. You will sign nothing. You will take nothing away with you that you did not bring in. And you will ring me from the pavement when you come out."

"What if I’m in there all morning?"

"You go in at 10. If you have not rung me by half past 11, I ring the police, and then I ring Lorraine and tell her where her customer is. I will be at my desk from 9 with the kettle on and that card in front of me."

A pause.

"And Mr Flynn. If they offer you the flat in your own name, with a pen, you will say your solicitor reads everything first."

"And if they take it off me?"

"Then they will have to do that in writing as well, and I will read that too."

The man behind her found the scissors. Priya rang off.

Danny opened the gold screen at the glass and typed.

Is Monday a shift?

[ That is not a question the Concierge is able to answer. ]

It’s sent me through every door since October. It won’t say whether this one’s its own.

"Who are you talking to?" Jodie said from the bed, with her face in the pillow.

"The phone. It won’t answer. My mum’s doing chicken and she wants it all over the table tomorrow, and Priya’s ringing the police at half 11 if I’ve not rung her."

"Good. All of that’s good." She rolled over. "Come back to bed. And bring me tea."