Chapter 181: About a Flat I

Two beds down, an old man in a paper hat from somebody’s birthday was asking the nurse to put the football on. The tea on Pemberton’s table had a skin on it.

Danny said the words over to himself once, the way Pemberton said he’d done it 200 times.

"Goes to," he said. "She didn’t say comes to the house. Everything that woman says, she says the house. The house records where I live. The house doesn’t file in its own hand. This time she said the one who asked for him. So it’s a person. And I’m sent to where they are, and that’s not Kensington, or she’d have said the house like she says it about everything else."

Pemberton looked at him over the crossword.

"Yes," he said. "I came to the same place, at about 3 o’clock this morning."

Jodie had pulled the curtain half round the bed, and she was standing inside it with her coat open and her arms folded under her chest. She had the green dress on under the coat, the one with the pins out of it now, and it fitted her like she’d been poured into it from the neck down.

"And the address comes at half 9," she said. "That’s how it went last time. The location is issued at 05:30 on the day, for a 6 o’clock start. Half an hour. So Monday it’s half 9 for a 10 o’clock. You’ve 30 minutes to get wherever it is, and nobody can get there before you to look at the door first, not Priya and not me with your mum’s page. Whoever this is, they’ve set it up so you walk in on your own."

"That is why it is done at half past," Pemberton said.

"Then why tell him? Why say it on the phone with you sat there in the hall?"

"She thought I was asleep, Miss Carter."

"Did she?" Jodie looked at him. "She knew your speaking order on Thursday before anybody had said it out loud in that house. She knew the top flat at Pembury before Danny’d signed for it, and she walked you into A&E and gave them your GP off the top of her head."

She unfolded her arms.

"And then she thinks a man who’s sat bolt upright on a hard chair for a day and a night has dropped off, and she says the one thing on the phone that’d get Danny there. I don’t believe she thought you were asleep. I think you were the post."

Pemberton put the biro down on the crossword, square to the edge of the page.

"Mm," he said.

Danny sat forward on the plastic chair.

She’s right. And he’s known it since 3 this morning, and he still told me. Why would he carry it for them?

"You said do not go," he said. "Tell me why. Not Mm. Give me a reason I can actually use on Monday."

Pemberton was quiet. On the other side of the curtain the nurse found the football, and somebody scored, and the man in the paper hat said get in under his breath.

"Because I have gone to that house since 1958." Pemberton turned the biro a quarter turn on the page. "And in all that time I have been allowed to know whoever sits at the desk, and the chair in the hall. I have asked every year who sent my 5th card, and every year I have been told it is not a question she is able to answer."

He looked at the curtain, where the football was.

"Now that same person sends for you, and tells you only 30 minutes before where to go. I do not know what they want with you, Mr Flynn. I know they have taken a great deal of trouble to make sure nobody else is in the room when they ask for it. That is my reason."

"Then here’s mine." Danny kept his voice down. "Whoever it is asked for me 11 years ago, before your card came under the door. They got my ceiling done through you. They put Jodie on my record, and nobody asked her if she wanted to be on anything."

He looked at Jodie, and back.

"And they’re the only one who can tell me how a record gets closed without me signing that sheet. The secretary only says what the house lets her say. You’ve asked every year, and they’ve never let you in the room. Now they’re letting me in the room. If I don’t go, I’m sat on a mattress at Pembury at 10 o’clock on Monday wondering who it was, and you’re sat in 17 wondering the same thing till Thursday."

Pemberton looked at Jodie.

"And you, Miss Carter? You will let him?"

"I’m not his mum," Jodie said. "I don’t let him. But if he goes, I’m on the back of that Vespa at half 9, and I’m stood outside wherever it is with the page, and if he’s not out by 2 I’m going in after him with my shears."

Pemberton picked the biro up again and wrote a word into the crossword, 7 across, in small capitals.

"Then take a coat, Miss Carter," he said. "That pavement is cold at 10, wherever it is."

They came out onto the Embankment at 7 with the wind off the river and Parliament gold across the water. Jodie walked with her hands deep in her coat pockets and didn’t say anything till they got to the bike.

"I said that in front of him," she said. "About going in after you. I want you to know I meant all of it."

"I know you did. You had your hand on the bag with the shears in it when you said it."

"No, listen. You’re going to hear me out. I’ve been holding it in since 2 o’clock." She turned round with her back to the river wall. "You’ve not confirmed it. I know you’ve not. But you’re going to, tonight or tomorrow, and you’re going to do it in that voice, the reasonable one, where you’ve already decided and you’re reading me the minutes."

The wind took her hair across her mouth and she pulled it out.

"So I’m saying it now. I’m scared. I’m scared of a woman who tells a man of 90 he’s not allowed to die in her hall, like she’s reading out a bus timetable, and who knew my name before anybody told her. And I’m still coming. I’m scared and I’m coming, and you don’t get to pick one of them for me."

He put his hands inside her open coat, on her waist, through the green wool. She was warm in there.

"Tomorrow," he said. "After my mum. I’ll not confirm a thing till I’ve asked her. And you’ll be sat next to me when I do it."

She looked at him for a second. Then she pulled his face down by the collar and kissed him against the river wall with a coach party going past, hard enough that one of the coach party whistled.