Chapter 178: A Woman Who Left No Name II

At 8 Priya had the kettle on and the tenancy laid out on her desk in 3 neat piles with a ruler across the top of each.

"Miss Carter rang me at 7," she said, before he’d sat down. "I know about the note and the camera and the reference number. Sit. We do this first. It will not take long. Then we do that."

He sat.

"It is a good tenancy. 12 months. Rent monthly in advance, the same figure as her rent book shows for your last 2 years. I have checked it against her book line by line. A break clause after 6 months in your favour. Every clause in it I would sign myself." She turned the last page round. "Sign there. I will witness it."

He signed. D. Flynn, with the D too big. She signed under him and wrote the date and the time.

"Lorraine has agreed," Priya said. "On paper, by hand, in her branch, at quarter past 2 yesterday. Your rent will leave your account on the first of each month as a living expense, and she has written on your file that the payee is a landlord of 2 years’ standing. And Mr Pettit’s 3 lines went to his manager at 7 this morning. He telephoned me at 7:05 to tell me himself."

"He rang you?"

"He said he wanted me to hear it from him first." Priya put the cap on her pen. "Now the note."

He showed her the photographs. She read the note on his phone 3 times, making it bigger with 2 fingers.

"That is an instruction," she said. "From a man of sound and careful mind, in his own hand, to you, not to do a thing. If anybody ever says you should have signed that sheet to close his record, this is the answer. Keep it, and print me a copy."

"He’s 90. His brother’s dead. He’s gone off in a car to a house that keeps records of people, and he’s told me not to save him. Is that a man of sound mind?"

Priya looked at him across the desk.

"It is a man who knows exactly what he is doing, Mr Flynn," she said. "I did not say he was safe. Has anybody rung the hospitals?"

"The police said they would."

"Then I will ring them as well at 9, as a solicitor who has met him, and say so."

At 4 o’clock a policeman rang. PC Hale, from the local team, with a South London voice and a lot to say.

"Mr Flynn, I rang your building’s desk at 7 and they said you’d gone out, sorry I’ve been slow. It’s been passed to me. So. I went over to that Kensington address myself at 1 o’clock with a colleague. Black door, 5 steps. Knocked 3 times, rang the bell, nothing. Curtains drawn on all 4 floors. I had a look through the letterbox. I’m allowed to do that. The hall’s dark, there’s a table against the wall with nothing on it, there’s tiles. No post on the mat. Not even a pizza leaflet.

"So I knocked next door, and next door’s an old girl of about 80 with a Pekingese, and she says, oh, that house, it’s always been like that. Always, she says. I says how long’s always, and she says 40 years. She says people go in and out and they’re always very polite and nobody lives there. I says who owns it, and she says no idea, love, she’s never seen a removal van in 40 years. I’ve checked the title. It’s a company. I expect you know that."

"3 companies, 1 address in Clapham, and my flat’s owned by the same 3."

"Is it now." Danny heard his pen go. "So here’s my difficulty, Mr Flynn. A 90-year-old gentleman is missing, and that worries me.

"But he went to that address of his own free will, in a car he got into himself at half 8. Your porter read me the book down the phone. And I’ve no evidence he’s inside it now. No noise, no light, no reason to put the door in. I’ve put a card through with my number on. I’ve flagged it with the hospitals and the transport police. If he turns up, we’ll know."

"There was a woman with a key in his flat last night. On camera."

"Your porter sent the clip over this morning. I’ve watched it 4 times." A pause. "If he gave her that key, I’ve nothing to nick her for. I’ll be back at that black door on Monday, and I’m writing to the company today at the address on its title. And I’ll ring you, whatever happens."

"There’s a woman on 39 in my building, Mara Doyle. He told her he had an old account to settle after his brother died. Ring the desk and ask for her."

"An old account." Danny heard the pen again. "I’ll ring her."

At 7 Adaeze met them on the Pembury stairs with the keys on a green ribbon, and Ray behind her carrying the end of a mattress in plastic, with the other end on the shoulder of Ray’s nephew. Both of them were swearing at the bend on the 2nd floor.

"Double," Adaeze said. "New, still in plastic. I bought it this afternoon. You’re not lying under that ceiling on somebody else’s mattress again." She gave Jodie the keys, not Danny. "You keep these. He loses things."

"Ray," Danny said on the landing. "How’d you get roped into this?"

"Pat’s chair went down Verney Road at 8 this morning," Ray said, red in the face. "Jodie rang me at 6 tonight. Said Adaeze had bought a mattress and there was a top floor and no lift. I said I’ve a back, love. She said bring your nephew, then." He put his end down. "The lad doesn’t know whose flat it is and he’s not been told."

When they’d all gone, Jodie dragged the plastic off and dropped the mattress flat on the boards in the middle of the room, and sat down on it in her coat.

The blue cup was still on the sill. Danny stood in the doorway with his bag.

"First night," Jodie said. "Come here."

He came and stood over her. She looked up at him from the mattress.

"You’re thinking about him," she said. "In a car. In that house."

"I can’t stop. He’s 90 and he’s been gone since half 8 yesterday morning."

"I know. You can think about him all night." She unbuttoned her coat. "Give me an hour in this room first. Then I’ll lie here and think about him with you till morning."

She took her coat off, and her jumper over her head, and lay back on the new mattress in her bra and jeans, with her dark blonde hair spread out round her on the white cover.

I knelt down on the mattress over her. I put my hands flat either side of her head and kissed her, and she put her arms up round my neck.

"No," I said against her mouth. "Put them up. Over your head."

She looked at me. Then she slowly put both hands up on the mattress over her head, wrists together.

I took both her wrists in one hand and held them there.

"Oh," Jodie said, very quietly. "Oh, you’re doing it back to me."

"You tied me to a headboard with a tape measure."

"I did." She arched under me. "Hold them tighter."

I gripped harder. With my other hand I undid her bra at the front and pushed it off her tits, and bent and took a nipple in my mouth and sucked till she pulled against my hand, and I didn’t let go.

I got her jeans open and down her legs one-handed, her knickers with them, and she kicked them off the end of the mattress. My jeans went the same way. Then I knelt between her thighs with her wrists pinned over her head and pushed into her, slowly, watching her face the whole way in.

"Look at me," I said.

She looked at me. Her eyes were wet and her mouth was open.

I fucked her slow and deep on the new mattress in the empty flat, holding her wrists down, her legs coming up round my waist. Every time I went deep she pulled against my hand and I held her there, and her cunt squeezed my cock each time like she was answering.

"Tell me what you’ll do," she said. "Tomorrow morning. In here."

"Get that window open past 4 inches with a screwdriver. Buy a kettle from a shop. And make you come before you’ve had a single sip of tea."

"Swear it," she said, with her breath going.

"On that ceiling."

I got my free hand down between us and found her clit with my thumb, and rubbed it while I went into her slow and hard, and she said my name and pulled at her wrists and couldn’t get them free.

She came pinned under me, her wrists straining in my hand, her heels digging into the backs of my thighs, her pussy pulling on me in long hard squeezes. I let go of her wrists and she grabbed my arse with both hands and dug her nails in and pulled me into her, and my balls tightened and I came deep in her, with my mouth on her throat.

We lay on the new mattress with the plastic crumpled on the boards beside it, and she pulled her coat over both of us.

Just after quarter to 11 his phone lit up on the boards by the mattress. PC Hale’s number from the afternoon.

"Mr Flynn? It’s PC Hale. Sorry it’s late." He sounded out of breath, as if he’d been walking fast down a corridor. "We’ve got him. Mr Pemberton. He’s at St Thomas’, in A&E. He’s all right. He’s sat up. He’s dehydrated, he’s 90, and he’s not had a meal since yesterday, but he’s all right. The flag didn’t match up till the shift changed at 10, or I’d have rung you hours ago.

"And here’s a thing I’ve not had before. He was brought in at 6 o’clock this evening by a woman who walked him to the desk, sat him down, gave the nurse his name and his date of birth and his GP, and walked out again before anybody could get hers. Dark coat, dark hair, the nurse says, very polite, and no name."

Danny sat up on the mattress. Jodie was up on one elbow beside him in the light from the street.

"And Mr Flynn," PC Hale said. "He’s asking for you."