Chapter 177: A Woman Who Left No Name I

Danny didn’t pick the note up.

He stood over the chair with his hands in his jumper pockets and read it twice more by the lamp. Then he got his phone out and photographed it where it lay, square to the edge of the seat, once close and once from the doorway so the chair and the cold gas fire and the locked bureau were all in it.

Don’t touch anything. If somebody’s been in here with a key, their hands have been on the door and the lamp. Priya would say leave it. Mum would say write the time.

He wrote the time on the back of his hand with the biro from his pocket. 22:52.

Then he went down in the lift to the night desk.

Osei was eating a sandwich out of a foil wrapper behind the desk with the lobby lights turned half down. He put it away when he saw Danny’s face.

“Sir?”

“17’s on the latch. Mr Pemberton’s not there. He’s left me a note. Somebody’s been up there tonight, Osei. Have you got a camera on the lift lobby on 17?”

“Every floor, sir. Lift lobbies and the stairwell doors. Not the corridors, the residents won’t have it in the corridors, there was a whole meeting about it before my time.” Osei was already pulling the keyboard across. “Hang on. What time do you want?”

“From when you came on. 8.”

Osei scrolled back with his tongue between his teeth, and talked the whole time.

“So this is 17 lift lobby. That’s nothing, that’s nothing, that’s the cleaner at 8:15 with the hoover, she does 15 to 20 on a Thursday. Nothing. 9 o’clock, nothing.

“I’d have seen him, sir. I’d have seen anybody come in the front. I’ve not left this desk except the once to the gents at quarter past 10, and I locked the door to do it. Kieran’s book’s got him out at half 8 this morning and nothing in, and I’ve been through the front camera twice since half 8 tonight. I’ve had nothing else to look at. It’s dead on a Thursday night.”

He stopped talking, and his finger stopped on the mouse.

“Hang on,” Osei said. “There.”

21:41 on the time stamp. The lift doors on 17 opened and a woman stepped out in a long dark coat to her calves, with dark hair cut straight at the jaw, in flat shoes. Her face was turned away from the camera, down the corridor. She had a key ready in her hand before the doors had finished opening.

She walked out of shot towards 17.

Osei ran it forward. 21:47. The woman walked back into shot, pressed for the lift and stepped in without turning her face. The doors shut.

“6 minutes,” Danny said. “With a key she’d got out in the lift.”

“That’s not a resident. I know every resident.” Osei was frowning at the screen. “And she never came past this desk. Front door, 21:30 to 21:50, nothing. Garage, nothing.” He clicked into another window. “Lift log. Where was it called from?”

He read it and sat back.

“B2,” Osei said slowly. “The plant room. Nobody goes down there but the engineers, and they need my key.” He clicked again. “And the B2 lobby camera’s been black since half 9. Just black. I never noticed. There’s 60 cameras on this screen.”

Danny looked at the woman’s back on the frozen picture. The dark hair at the jaw. The flat shoes.

“I’ve met her,” he said. “Twice this week, in a house in Kensington. She’s the one Mr Pemberton went to see this morning.”

“Do you want me to ring the police, sir?”

“I’ll ring them. You save all of it. The lift, the front door, the garage, the black camera on B2. Can you put it on a stick?”

“I’ll put it on 2 sticks,” Osei said. “One for you, one in the safe.”

Danny rang 101 standing at the night desk at 23:04. He thought about 999 and decided against it; nobody was hurt that he knew of, and he wanted somebody with time to write it all down. The call handler was a woman with a Welsh voice and a slow keyboard.

He told her plainly. A man of 90 who lived alone on the 17th floor of the Sterling Riverwalk. His brother had died a week ago today. At half 8 that morning he’d gone out in a black car to an address in Kensington, and 3 people had seen him sat in the hall of that house at 10:44: Danny, Danny’s solicitor, and a man from an insurer.

He hadn’t come back. His flat had been left on the latch, and a woman with a key had gone into it at 21:41 and left 6 minutes later. There was a note.

“What does the note say, my love?”

Danny read it to her.

There was a pause on the line.

“And the address in Kensington?”

He gave it her off the sheet in his pad. She typed it slowly and read it back.

“I’m logging him as a vulnerable missing person,” she said. “Given his age, and the brother, and the note. Somebody from the local team will ring you back. It might be the morning, it might be before. Don’t go to that address yourself tonight, please. Leave it with us.”

“Can I give you the name of a woman he talks to in the building? She might know where he meant to go.”

“Give it to the officer when they ring. Your reference number’s coming now. Write it down.”

He wrote it on the back of his hand, under 22:52.

Jodie was asleep on the settee at 40 when he got back up, with the green cushion from Pat’s chair under her head. He didn’t wake her. He sat on the floor beside the settee till 3 with the photograph of the note on his phone, and then he slept where he was.

She woke him at half 6 with her hand on his hair.

“You’ve slept on a floor in your clothes,” she said. “What’s happened?”

He told her. 17, the note, the woman on the camera, 101. She sat up and read the note on his phone twice.

“Does Priya know?”

“Not yet. I’m seeing her at 8.”

“I’ll ring her at 7, she’ll be up. Her card’s in your suit pocket.” Jodie was already reaching for it. “She’ll want it before you walk in, not after. And I’ll let Ray in for the chair at 8. Go and ring your mum. You promised her same day.”

He rang his mum at 6:40, before her shift. She listened to all of it without saying a word.

“Find him, love,” she said then. “A man that age, on his own, with his brother gone. Find him and then ring me back.”

She put the phone down.

At quarter to 8 Danny came out of the lift into the lobby, and Mara Doyle was coming the other way from the pool corridor in black leggings and a cropped zip top over her wet swimming costume, with her copper hair twisted up in a clip and a towel round her neck, water still running off her collarbone.

She stopped dead when she saw him.

“Oh, it’s you. Have you heard? About Mr Pemberton? Kieran says he’s not come home. Kieran says the police rang the desk at 7 asking about him and the night man’s left a note for Naomi in capitals, and Naomi’s not even in till 9, and I’m stood here dripping on the marble trying to work out if it’s any of my business.

“I’ll be honest, I feel awful. I had dinner with him at Gennaro’s, you know that, I told you, and he did all the Italian for me and the waiter had to translate it back, and he was lovely.

“And he said a thing at the end I didn’t think about at the time. We were waiting for a cab home, and he said, Miss Doyle, when my brother has gone, I have an old account to settle, and I may be away a while. And I said where are you going, somewhere nice, and he just said Mm and got in after me. I thought he meant a holiday. People his age go on cruises. Daddy’s friend went on a cruise at 91.”

She stopped and pulled the towel tighter round her neck.

“Sorry. I’m babbling. I’ve not had coffee.”

“An old account to settle,” Danny said. “Was it those words?”

“Exactly those. I remember account. I thought what a funny old-fashioned way to put it, like a bank.”

An old account. A house that keeps records.

“Thank you, Mara. Tell the police that if they ask you. Word for word.”

“Will they ask me?”

“I’ll tell them to. They’ll ring the desk.”

She looked at him properly, with the water running down into the zip top.

“You look like you’ve slept on a floor,” Mara said.

“I have. By a settee, till about 3, with my phone in my hand.”

“Go on, then.” She stepped aside. “Go wherever you’re going. If he comes home I’ll knock on 40 myself.”