Chapter 170: The Sunday Night II

In the bedroom she pulled his hoodie off over her head, stepped out of her jeans and knickers, and lay down on the bed on her front under the lamp with her face on her arms and her dark blonde hair across the pillow. The lamp lit the long line of her back and the freckles across her shoulders, and the round of her arse, and the backs of her thighs pressed together.

"On Sunday at mine I made you be quiet," she said into her arms. "Tonight I want something else. Lie on me. All of you. I want to feel you on me, here, in this bed, not on some card in somebody’s drawer."

He undressed and got onto the bed beside her.

I lay down on her, the whole length of her, my chest on her back and my hips against her arse and my legs along hers, and let my weight down slowly. She breathed out all the way under me.

"Heavier. Don’t hold yourself up."

I let my arms go. She took all of me, and made a sound into the pillow like she’d put a bag down after carrying it the length of a street.

I kissed the back of her neck, and across her shoulders, one freckle and then the next. I slid my hands under her chest and found her tits pressed into the sheet and her nipples hard against my palms. She pushed her arse up under me an inch. My cock was hard between her cheeks, and she pressed back onto it.

"Inside me," she said. "Like this. Stay on me."

I got a hand down between us. She was wet already, her pussy hot and slippery, and I rubbed her clit from behind with 2 fingers until she was rocking back into my hand under my weight.

Then I slid into her from behind, lying flat on her, slow, until I was as deep as I could get with all of me pressed down on all of her.

"Oh," she said. "Oh. Wait. Just wait."

I waited, and lay in her with my mouth by her ear and my hands over the backs of her hands, our fingers locked on the pillow.

"Now," she whispered.

I moved slowly, short and deep, rolling my hips down into her without ever pulling far out, every stroke pressing her into the mattress. With her legs shut under mine her cunt was tighter on my cock than I had ever felt it, and she gripped my fingers hard.

"Tell me what it’s like," she said. "In there."

"Hot. Tight as a fist. You’re so wet I can hear it every time I go in."

"More."

"Your arse comes up to meet me every time. My balls are against you. You squeeze me when I go deep like you’re trying to keep me there."

"I am," she said. "Keep going. Don’t stop talking."

I told her everything, into her ear, and kept moving the same, slow and heavy, and she couldn’t move under me except to push her arse up into each stroke. Her feet started to go against the backs of my calves, flexing, and her fingers went white in mine.

"Danny. Fuck. Danny..."

She came pinned under me, unable to move anything but her hips and her feet and her hands, her toes curling against my legs and her fingers crushing mine and her cunt pulsing round my cock in long squeezes I could feel all the way up my spine. I stayed deep in her through all of it with my weight on her. Then I gave in and came into her, pressed down on her, my mouth open on the back of her neck.

I didn’t get off. She wouldn’t let go of my hands.

"Stay there," she said, a long while after. "I can breathe. I’ll tell you if I can’t."

At 8 on Tuesday morning she sat up in bed and looked at her own palm as if she’d forgotten it was hers.

"I’ve not looked at this since Adaeze’s." She held her hand flat out in the grey light. The biro had gone fuzzy round the edges, but the 7 characters were still there in her neat capitals. "There’s a government website. You put a number in and it tells you the car and every MOT it’s ever had. My dad used to check every car he looked at."

She typed it into his phone with her thumb.

"Grey Skoda Octavia. Estate. 61,000 miles at the last MOT." She looked at the plate on her palm again. "And it starts with R. My dad knew every one of these. He’d stand on the pavement going that’s Leeds, that’s Bristol. R’s Reading. It was first registered in Reading."

She put the phone down on the duvet.

"Who lives in Reading, Danny?"

He told me on the phone. On the M4 going home. Midlands voice, lives in Reading. Why didn’t I ask her for that number yesterday, on the pavement?

"Pettit," Danny said.

"The man from the wardrobes."

"The man who told me on Thursday to find out who’s doing the paying before somebody else asks me." He was already reaching for his jeans. "He was sat across from that house for 49 minutes yesterday. He followed us to Kensington."

"Why would he do that?"

"He told me he’d not take that line off his file. He’ll have wanted to see where I go of a morning in a suit."

Jodie threw the duvet off.

"It’s my day off," she said. "I’m coming. Where are you going?"

"Verney Road. The ceiling’ll be dry. I want to see it before anything else happens to me."

They came down Rotherhithe New Road on the scooter at 10 to 9 with her arms round him and her chin on his shoulder. Wasim was winding his awning out over the van. Danny’s shutter was down.

Ray was stood in the bay door of the tyre place with a mug, and he started talking before Danny had the stand down.

"Don’t look round," Ray said. "Don’t look round. There’s a grey Skoda estate come down the road behind you. I watched it come round that corner by the lights about 6 car lengths back, and it’s pulled in outside the bookies with its engine off. Man in it, big lad, moustache. He’s got a board on his knee and he’s not on his phone.

"And I’ll tell you what gets me about that. My nephew’s on his phone at the dinner table. My sister took it off him Sunday and he sulked till this morning. This one’s sat there writing on a board like it’s 1985."

He drank his tea.

"I’d go over and ask if he wants his tyres looking at, give him a fright. Only it’s your business, so I’ll not. Pat rang about her trolley wheel and I said I’d ring her back. Who is he?"

"He’s from the insurer on my building," Danny said. "His name’s Pettit. He’s not going to hurt anybody."

"Then why’s he following you down Rotherhithe New Road at 9 in the morning?" Ray put the mug down. "Go on. I’ll stand here and look big."

Danny walked back up to the grey Skoda outside the bookies and knocked on the driver’s window with his knuckle.

The window came down. Graham Pettit looked up at him with his red-rimmed eyes and his grey moustache and a clipboard on his knee, in the navy anorak, with sausage roll crumbs down the front of it.

"Mr Flynn." The Midlands voice was flat. "I wondered when you’d come up the road."

"You followed me to Kensington yesterday."

"I did." He brushed a crumb off the anorak. "I came back down from Birmingham on Sunday night and rang my manager for till Friday on the way. I sat outside your building from 8 on Monday. You came out at 20 past 9 with her on the back of the scooter, and I followed you along the embankment and up through Chelsea, and parked across from that black door with the engine off. And at 10:47 when you came down the steps and she put her arms round you, I pulled out."

Jodie was stood behind Danny’s shoulder.

"I wrote your number on my hand," she said. "I’m Jodie Carter."

"I saw you do it, Miss Carter." Pettit nodded at her. "You’re sharper than he is, and good luck to you."

"Why were you there?"

"Because my file was due on Monday with a hole in it where your employer goes. I’d rather it went up full." He lifted the clipboard. "So I did what anybody can do on a laptop. I paid 7 pounds for the title to the house he went into. Companies House did the rest for nothing."

Danny’s mouth had gone dry.

"Who owns it?"

"A company." Pettit turned the board round. There was a printout clipped to it with the Land Registry crest in the corner, and company numbers written under it in biro. "And that company’s owned by another one. And the other one’s owned by a third, and the third one owns the first. Round in a circle."

He tapped the 3 numbers.

"And those are the same 3 numbers, Mr Flynn, that own your flat. I checked them twice and then I checked them again in the car this morning."

Ray had come out of the bay door and was stood on the pavement with his arms folded.

"So here’s where I am," Pettit said. "On Friday my file goes up. And it’s going to say the occupant of flat 40 can’t name his employer. It’s going to say the company that owns his flat also owns a house in Kensington, and that the occupant went into that house in a suit at 10 on Monday and came out at 10:47 looking like he’d been sick."

"Leave that line out."

"It’s what I saw." He started the engine. "I’d rather put who they are. You won’t tell me. That company won’t tell me. It’s not even got a phone number."

He put the car in gear and looked up at Danny through the open window.

"So on Thursday morning, Mr Flynn, I’m going to go and knock on that black door myself."