Chapter 173: Paper Only I

Danny rang Priya from the landing with the card in his other hand and the door of the empty flat still open behind him.

She answered on the second ring.

"Mr Flynn. Have you seen it?"

"I’ve seen it. I’m stood outside it. There was a card under the door while we were inside." He read it to her. "The host is recorded at Pembury House. Top flat, end. It’s the same paper and the same typing as Friday’s, and there’s nobody on the stairs."

The machine at the dry cleaner’s wasn’t going. He could hear her breathing, and the tick of her wall clock.

"What time did you arrive?"

"3. I rang Adaeze at quarter past 10 to ask for it, with Jodie stood next to me. Adaeze let us in at 5 past 3 and went at about 20 past."

"And the card was found when?"

"10 past 4. It wasn’t there at 3."

"Write that down. Now, while I wait." He heard her pull her own pad across. "At 11:40 this morning I sent an email to Lorraine at the bank asking that your rent be released as a living expense. I am looking at it. The subject line reads, D. Flynn, Pembury House, top flat, rent release."

Danny sat down on the top stair.

"So the bank had the address at 11:40."

"The bank had it at 11:40, and my email account had it at 11:39, and anybody who can read either of those had it before you had climbed the stairs." Her voice stayed level. "Adaeze had it at quarter past 10. Miss Carter had it the same minute. I do not know which of us it came from. Neither do you."

"Jodie says maybe nobody had to tell them."

"Miss Carter may be right. I cannot write that in a file." The biro went. "From this moment, Mr Flynn, nothing about where you will live goes in an email, a text or a telephone call. It goes on paper, in an envelope, carried by hand. I will write to Lorraine again tomorrow on paper and take it to her branch myself."

"You’re going to walk to the bank."

"I am going to take a bus to the bank. And on Thursday I am going to stand on a pavement in Kensington and ask to read a sheet of paper." She paused. "Bring me that card on Thursday. Do not put it in your wallet. Put it flat in a book."

Jodie was stood in the doorway with her coat on, holding the boy’s blue cup.

"The bank," she said, when he’d rung off.

"Or her email, or Adaeze’s phone. Priya’s email had the flat in the subject line. Pembury House, top flat."

"Top flat. Not end." Jodie put the cup back on the sill where she’d found it. "Remember that."

At 6 the door was already open when they reached the top of Adaeze’s stairs. She was stood in it in a mustard wrap dress tied tight at the waist, barefoot on her kitchen lino with her hair down out of its braids for once, thick and black past her shoulders, and the smell of fried onion and thyme coming round her. She took the key off Danny and looked at his face, and then at the card he held out.

She read it standing in the doorway. She read it twice.

"In my building," she said. "In my stairwell. On my landing, in front of my door, while you were stood behind it."

"While we were inside."

"Come in. Both of you. Shoes off, I’ve done the floor." She went back to the cooker with the card in her hand and turned the gas down under a pan without looking at it, and then she started, and didn’t stop.

"I’ve owned that block 2 years. I’ve had kids on the stairs, I’ve had a man sleeping in the bin store for 3 weeks in February, I’ve had the council about the lift so many times the woman on the phone knows my voice.

"I’ve had a tenant who kept a snake. I’ve had the nurse’s boy’s bike on the landing from the week she moved in. But I have not had somebody walk up my stairs and push something under one of my doors and walk down again without a single person seeing them. That street door’s on a code. 4 digits. Who’s got the code? Me, the tenants, my cleaner, and the man who reads the meters."

She put the card down on the counter, face up, square to the edge, and looked at it.

"And who knew you’d be there? I’ll tell you who knew. I knew. I put it in my diary on my phone at quarter past 10 in that basement in Clapton. Pembury, Danny, 3. That’s all it says. I didn’t tell a soul. I didn’t even tell my cleaner, and I tell my cleaner everything."

"Priya emailed the bank at 11:40 with the address in it," Danny said. "For the rent. The subject line says Pembury House, top flat."

Adaeze turned round with her hands on her hips.

"So it’s the bank, or it’s my phone, or it’s her email, or it’s my cleaner, or it’s the meter man. Or it’s a thing nobody can see that writes on cream card and walks up stairs." She took a breath. "I’m changing the code on that door tomorrow morning. I’m telling every tenant to their face, on paper. Nobody gets it on a phone."

"Priya said the same thing. Paper only."

"Then she’s got sense." Adaeze looked at Jodie. "You’ve not said anything."

"I was listening," Jodie said. "Your diary said Pembury, Danny, 3. It didn’t say which flat. Priya’s email said top flat. It didn’t say end." She looked at the cooker. "On Monday night, stood right there with the spoon, you said top floor, end of the landing. Out loud. In this kitchen."

Adaeze stopped with the spoon half out of the pan.

Adaeze looked round her own kitchen, at the window and the radio on the sill and the drawer by the cooker.

"And the card says top flat, end," Jodie said. "Near enough your words."

"Nobody was in here on Monday but the 3 of us and a pot of stew."

Nobody said anything for a moment. The pan hissed.

"I’ll take the tenancy to your solicitor Thursday night," Adaeze said. "By hand. In my own handbag." She held the card out to Danny. "And you’re eating before you go."

On Wednesday at 7 in the evening Danny knocked on 17 with the card from Pembury in a library book under his arm.

Pemberton opened in his shirtsleeves and a cardigan buttoned wrong by one, with the evening paper folded under his arm. He looked at the book and raised his eyebrows.

"The Cruel Sea," he said. "Is that for me?"

"It’s to keep a card flat. My solicitor’s orders."

"A sensible woman." He stood back. "Come in."

The flat was warm again, with the gas fire on and the radio low on the sideboard, a man reading the 7 o’clock news. Danny didn’t sit.

Priya says paper only. And here I am about to tell the one man in this building who talks to the house. Do I want it going there? Let it go there. They’ll see the 3 of us on Thursday whatever I say tonight. He opened the book on the table under the window and showed him the card.

Pemberton put his glasses on and bent over it without touching it.

"Pembury," he said. "Yesterday?"

"Under the door, while I was viewing it. I’m taking my old flat back. 12 months, my own name. The woman in grey gave me 28 days to sign her sheet or leave 40, and I’m not signing it."

"No," Pemberton said. "I did not imagine you would."

"Tomorrow at 10 I’m going back to that house. With my solicitor, and with the man from the insurer who’s been following me. He’s going to knock on that door whether I go or not, and I’d rather he did it with 2 people writing down what’s said."

Pemberton straightened up slowly and took his glasses off.

"The insurer’s man," he said. "Through that door."

"He found out the companies that own 40 own the house as well. For 7 pound and a laptop."