Chapter 188: A New One I

Jodie read it twice with the page flat on her knee and the wind trying to take the corner.

"You’ve written I choose," she said. "You’ve not written which."

"I’ve not chosen. I was sat in there 4 hours and she never asked me which, and I never said."

"Then why’ve you written it on your mum’s page?"

"Because it’s the rule. Time in, address, who, time out. And what it cost." He put the pen back in his inside pocket. "That’s what it cost."

Hale had stopped writing. He was looking from one of them to the other with his notebook open on a blank page and his hat still under his arm, a big lad of about 35 with a shaving rash and the kind of face that went red in the cold.

"I’m going to need some of that explaining to me," he said. "In English, when you’ve finished whatever this is."

The glass doors at the top of the ramp slid open behind them.

The secretary came down the ramp with her grey coat buttoned to the throat and the folder under her arm, in the flat black shoes his mother had remembered off the walkway 11 years ago, without any hurry in her at all. At the kerb beyond the railings the long black car had pulled in without anybody seeing it arrive, with its engine running and a driver in a dark suit sitting with both hands on the wheel.

Jodie was off the bench before Danny could move.

"Excuse me." She got herself between the secretary and the gate in the railings. "I’ve got a question, and it’s about me, so I’m asking it myself."

The secretary stopped. She looked at Jodie the way she looked at everything, without hurry.

"Miss Carter."

"If he closes mine," Jodie said. "My record. If he says my name to you by Thursday and it’s shut. And then on Friday morning he gets a gold message on his phone and he holds it out and shows it me, like he did the first night. What happens then? Does the house write me down again?"

Danny sat on the bench with his hands gone still on his knees.

I never thought of that. 4 hours sat by that bed and it never crossed my mind.

"A closed record is not opened again," said the secretary. "If the host shows Miss Carter the work after it is closed, the house will begin a new one."

"And if he only tells me?" Jodie said. "Out loud, at a table, with the phone in his pocket?"

"The house writes down what it is shown, Miss Carter. It does not listen at tables."

"So the only way I stay off is if he never holds his phone out to me again, or takes me past a door with him, for the rest of his life."

"Yes, Miss Carter."

Hale stepped up beside Jodie with his notebook.

"Sorry, madam. PC Hale, Metropolitan Police. I’ve been dealing with Mr Pemberton’s missing person report. I understand you brought him into St Thomas’ on Friday evening. Can I take your name, please?"

"That is not a question I am able to answer, officer."

"I’ll need it for my report, madam."

"Good evening," said the secretary.

The sun was out over the Hackney Empire. She went past Hale and through the gate in the railings, and the driver got out and opened the back door for her without looking at any of them, and she got in, and the door shut, and the car pulled out into the traffic on Mare Street.

Hale had his radio up to his mouth before it reached the lights. He read the number plate into it, clearly, letter by letter.

Jodie opened her left hand. The ink on her palm had gone grey with washing and the cold, but it was still there.

"That’s last night’s plate," she said to Danny. "Letter for letter."

They waited on the pavement. Hale stood with his back to them and the radio against his ear. When the answer came, they watched his shoulders change.

He lowered the radio and stood looking at the traffic for a second before he turned round.

"Right," he said. "Well. I’ll tell you the little I can, and I’ll tell you how I feel about it, and I’m not supposed to do that. That plate comes back with a marker on it. I’ve seen it twice in 9 years in the job. It means the details are held somewhere I’m not allowed to look, and I’m to make a note of where and when I saw it and not stop the vehicle. That’s what it means. That’s all I’m getting.

"And I’m stood here thinking, I’ve just asked a woman her name in the street, a woman who walked a 90-year-old into A&E and walked off, and she’s told me no, and she’s got into a car I’m not allowed to stop. And I don’t like it. I’ll tell you that straight, Mr Flynn. My sergeant’ll tell me to write it up and leave it, and I’ll write it up.

"And there’s another thing, and then I’ll shut up. I went next door in Kensington after I texted you. The lady with the Pekingese. She says a black car came at 7 this morning and 2 men in it carried a table and a clock out of that house into a van, and went. 7 in the morning. She was out with the dog. So it’s not been empty for years, whatever the dust says. It was emptied today, before I got there at 10."

Danny stood up off the bench.

Ida said it was empty because nobody was asking today. Ida said she’d seen it like that in 1979. She’s not seen this. Somebody carried that hall out at 7 o’clock this morning, 3 hours before a policeman walked in.

"Then somebody knew you were going at 10," he said. "Did you tell anybody the time?"

Hale looked at him.

"My sergeant and the log." He put the radio back on his vest. "And I put it in my letter to the company on Friday that I’d be calling back on Monday morning. I said morning. I never gave an hour."

"They knew anyway," Jodie said.

Hale wrote that down. Then he closed the notebook.

"Who’s Mrs Marsh, Mr Flynn?"

"An old lady who used to do my job, before me. She’s dying. She’ll be dead by Thursday, she says." Danny looked at the glass doors. "She’s not done anything to anybody that you could write in that book."

"And what’s your job?"

Danny didn’t answer straight away. Jodie put her hand in the crook of his arm.

"He sits with people," she said. "When they ask for somebody. That’s what he does. Mostly old people. Mostly at the end."

Hale looked at her, and then at Danny.

"And somebody pays you for that?"

"It pays," Danny said. "I’ve got the bank statements to show it, and a solicitor in Clapham who’s written down every penny."

They got the 55 at the top of Mare Street. Jodie sat by the window and didn’t speak till they were past Old Street, with her hands pushed into her coat sleeves and her knees pressed together in the black tights.

"So that’s it, then," she said. "That’s the actual choice. Not me or him. It’s me kept out of the work for good, or him."

"I can still tell you everything. She said it. The house doesn’t listen at tables."

"Danny. The work’s the whole of you at the minute." She turned on the seat to face him.

"You think I’m going to sit across a table from you for 50 years while you go out at half 9 on a Monday and come back at 2 and tell me all about it, and I’m never allowed to see one word on that phone? You’d be watching yourself every day in case you slipped. And the first time you did, at 3 in the morning, half asleep, I’m back on it. And you’d have given his away for nothing."

"You never asked to be on it. I put you on it. I held my phone out at 20 to 12 on a Monday night and I put you on a list you’ll be on till you die, with a woman in a grey coat who knows where you sleep. I did that. If I can take it back, I should."

"You can’t. She just told you on that ramp." Her eyes had gone bright and she was furious about it. "And he’s 90, and he’s burying his brother on Thursday, and all he wants is to go in the ground beside him with nobody writing it down. And you’re going to give that away to keep me off a list I’m happy to be on?"

"Happy? On a list kept by that house?"

"I hate that car and I hate that woman’s coat. But I’d sooner be written down next to you than kept off it on my own." She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand, hard. "It’s his. I’m telling you it’s his. Write that on your mum’s page as well."

He didn’t write it. He took her cold hand out of her sleeve and held it on his knee all the way into town.