Chapter 171: Top Flat, End I

Danny put his hand flat on the roof of the Skoda before it could move.

"Don’t," he said. "Not on your own."

Pettit kept his foot on the clutch and looked up at him.

"Why not?"

"Because on Friday night that house sent a car to my building at 20 to 11 with a card, and the driver wouldn’t sign the book. Because there’s a woman in there with no name who knew my solicitor’s name before I’d said it. And because you don’t know what’s behind that door, Mr Pettit. I’ve been through it twice and I don’t either."

"Then tell me what you do know."

"I can’t answer that."

Pettit looked at him with the engine running. Wasim’s awning flapped once in the wind behind them.

"That’s the 3rd time you’ve said that to me in different words," he said. "On the pavement on Thursday, and in your flat on Thursday, and now."

"Then listen to this bit instead. My solicitor wants to read a sheet that’s kept in that hall. She’s going in with me to read it. Come with us. Thursday, 10 o’clock, the 3 of us on that pavement. You ask your questions with a solicitor stood next to you, writing down every word they say back."

"A solicitor in the room while I ask."

"And you writing, and me writing. 3 sets of notes."

"I don’t normally work with the other side’s solicitor at my elbow."

"You don’t normally sit outside a man’s building from 8 in the morning either," Danny said. "And your file will stand up better with 2 other people’s notes beside yours. You know it will."

Pettit knocked the car out of gear and took his foot off the clutch.

"What’s her name? For my notes."

"Priya Anand. Clapham Road."

Pettit looked down at the Land Registry printout on his clipboard, at the biro under the company numbers, and then back up.

"She’s on these," he said. "Her name’s on all 3. Correspondence address."

"She never said yes to that. She found out on Friday. She’s written to Companies House to get it taken off."

"Has she, now." Pettit wrote that down too, in small square capitals, and underlined it. "Then she’ll want to see behind that door as badly as you do. Right. 10 o’clock Thursday, across from the door. If you’re not stood there at 10, Mr Flynn, I knock on my own at 1 minute past, and I write down that you weren’t there."

"I’ll be there. So will she."

Pettit wound the window up, swung the Skoda round in the mouth of the bookies’ yard and went off towards the lights.

Ray watched it go with his arms folded.

"Well," he said. "He’s polite, for a man who’s been following you about."

"He’s doing his job, Ray."

"Then he can do it up somebody else’s road." Ray picked his mug up off the tyre stack. "Go on. Go and look at your ceiling. You’ve been on about it for a week."

The shutter went up, ksssshhhh, and Danny ducked under it, and Jodie came in behind him.

The ceiling was dry. It had gone from grey to white, flat and even from wall to wall over the 6 drops, without a mark on it anywhere, and in the cold light from the door it looked poured. Jodie stood under the middle of it with her head back.

"That’s beautiful," she said. "Look at it, Danny."

"Deniz says it’s the best one he’s done this year."

"He said that about the last one he did for you."

"He did," Danny said, looking up. "And he was right about that one and all."

At half 9 the trolley came in under the shutter before Pat did.

She shoved it over the step with her knee, the way she’d done it every Thursday for 16 years when this was the old café, and came in after it in her good coat with a long white envelope in her other hand. She had her lipstick on and she was out of breath, and she started before she’d got her gloves off.

"Right. Ray rang me. He said you’d be in, and I’ve had this off your solicitor since first post, and I’ve read it 3 times sat on my bed, and I’ll tell you now, Danny, she writes like a vicar. Every sentence ending dead, no short words, Mrs Mulvey, I write on behalf of my client, as if I’d not know who her client was. I’ve known her client since he came up this road with a broom and no chairs.

"And it says what you said. If you go and your mother goes, God forbid, this comes to me. A specific gift of the business, it says, together with the lease and the equipment. I had to ask my sister’s lad what equipment meant. He said it’s the coffee machine, Auntie Pat. I said I can’t work a coffee machine. He said you’d only have to own it, Auntie Pat, somebody else would work it.

"So I rang Norman. Norman said don’t sign anything. I said Norman, there’s nothing to sign, it’s a letter telling me, and he said well don’t sign it anyway. That’s Norman all over. And then my trolley wheel went on the corner by the bookies, it’s been going since Easter, and I thought, I’ll take it down Verney Road and Ray can look at the wheel and I can tell Danny to his face."

She stopped. She lowered herself onto the bentwood chair with the dust sheet still on it, heavily, with her bad hip turned out.

"So it’s a yes," Pat said.

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

"Last week it was a maybe. You said you’d not say yes to a thing that hadn’t happened."

"It’s still not happened, and you’re still not to die." She folded the letter back into its envelope and put it in her coat. "But a woman who writes like that has written it properly. So it’s a yes, with conditions."

"Go on, then. What conditions?"

"1. You keep it open. I’m not having a shut shop left me. 2. You get that girl something proper to sit on, she’s been stood up since I came in." She nodded at Jodie. "And 3, you get me a chair with arms on it. I’m 75. I’m not getting up off this every Thursday like it’s a deckchair."

"Ray told me to get you one before you asked," Danny said. "He said you’d never ask."

"Ray’s not 75 with a hip." Pat looked up at the ceiling and her face went soft. "Oh, that’s dried lovely. You could skate on that if it was the floor."

Jodie was laughing.

"I’ll find you one with arms, Pat. Proper wood. I’ll have it here before Thursday."

"Good girl."

Ray came in for her at 5 to 10 and took the trolley out to look at the wheel, and Pat went after it holding on to the shutter rail, telling him about Norman.

At 10, with the shop empty and the shutter half down, Danny rang Priya.

"Mr Flynn."

"The insurer’s man was going to knock on that door himself on Thursday morning. On his own. I’ve talked him into going in with us. 10 o’clock, across from the door. Will you come?"

The dry cleaner’s machine thumped behind her. He heard her biro start.

"I was going to that house in any case. I would rather go with a witness from the insurer than without one." The biro went on. "His notes and mine together will carry more weight with your bank than mine alone. Yes. Thursday at 10."

"He knows your name’s on the 3 companies. He found it himself."

"Good. Then I will not have to explain it to him." A page turned. "What else?"

"Adaeze’s got my old flat at Pembury. The top flat. It’s been empty since the end of last month."

"A tenancy in your own name, from a landlord who has 2 years of your rent in her own handwriting." She stopped writing. "That is the best thing you have said to me since October. I will write to Lorraine today and ask for the rent to be released from your account as a living expense. Bring me the tenancy before you sign anything. Friday."

"I’ve not even seen it yet."

"Then see it today, Mr Flynn."

He rang Adaeze at quarter past.

"I’m stood in a basement in Clapton looking at a damp wall that the tenant says is the neighbour’s fault and the neighbour says is the tenant’s," she said. "Is this about the flat?"

"Yeah. Today, if you can."

"3 o’clock. Pembury. I’ll bring the key."