Chapter 107: Unable to Verify II

Danny went and stood at the door end and looked down the length of his own room.

Honey, wall to wall, corner to corner, going away from him under the counter and out to the back, with the low winter light coming through the glass and lying along it in a long flat stripe.

No line down the middle. No grey. You could not see where a man had stopped in October and you could not see where he had started again on Monday.

He stood there a good long while.

"Yeah," Errol said. "There you are."

"How’s he done that?"

"Twenty-two years and a very slow last hour." He was already going back to the wall. "Right. Your ceiling."

"I know."

"You’ve known since Friday."

"I’ll get somebody."

"It’s 2 days and about £900 and I’m not running extraction through that plaster till it’s done." Scritch went the screwdriver. "And I’ve got a fortnight booked from the 3rd, so it’s next week or it’s December."

"Next week."

"Then it’s a plasterer today. Not tomorrow, today, because a plasterer’s got a diary an’ all." Errol put his hand out without looking up. "And hold that light steady, you’re waving it about like a man directing traffic."

The spur went in back left, which is where Keisha said it would have to go, and which is going to cost her 4 steps 400 times a morning for as long as she stands in that room.

Danny held the light and got told he was holding it wrong twice, and made 2 teas on a camping stove because there is still no kettle in that shop, and at 20 past 12 Errol packed up and left him with a floor and a hole in a wall.

Yvonne Baptiste’s schedule came through at 1:02 as a PDF with 14 pages in it, and he opened it sat on an upturned bucket on a sheet of hardboard.

Elevations of a room he recognised. A lighting layout with 9 things on it he could not read. A page about the ceiling with the word absorption on it and hatching over the whole thing. Three options for the June sun on that window, with the middle one circled and a note next to it in her handwriting that said this one, and don’t let anybody talk you into the blind.

Page 14 was a table with a number at the bottom.

£46,850.

Danny sat on a bucket and looked at it with the light going along the floor.

That’s more than the electrics and the counter and the machine and Lloyd put together.

Two weeks ago that number shuts the shop.

He rang her at 25 past and she answered in a car on the second ring.

"You’ve got it."

"I’ve got it."

"Right. Before you start. The ceiling doesn’t come out and I’ll not do you a version without it, because it’s the one page in there still doing its job in 10 years."

"I’m not asking you to take the ceiling out."

"Then it’s the joinery, and if you take the joinery out you’ve got a room that looks like every other room and you’ve paid me for a drawing you didn’t use."

"Yvonne."

"Or it’s my fee. And I don’t move on my fee."

"Yvonne, will you let me get a word in."

She stopped.

"Do the lot," Danny said. "All 14 pages, nothing out."

There was a pause with a motorway in it.

"No, hang on." Her voice had gone somewhere else. "Friday you had 9 things on a list and no name over that door and you wouldn’t take a wall out. I liked you for it. And it’s Wednesday lunchtime and you’ll do 47 grand on a phone call."

"I’ve been sat with it an hour."

"You’ve been sat with it 23 minutes. I sent it at 1." A blinker went on and off. "Where’s it come from?"

"I’ve had money come in."

"Since Friday."

"Yeah."

"Right." Nothing for a second. "Because it’s my name on that schedule, and I have been on the wrong end of that answer twice in 30 years, and both times it was a man who was about to find out he hadn’t got it."

"I’ve got it."

"Then you’ll not mind paying me 40 percent up front instead of 25," Yvonne said. "That’s how I like to be reassured. Not with a conversation."

Danny stood up off the bucket.

"Send it. It’ll be gone today."

"It will, will it." A pause. "Right. Then I’ll book Deniz for your ceiling, because Errol’s right, and he’s slow and he’s the best in South London and he’ll want a fortnight."

Click.

He stood in the middle of a room he had just spent £46,850 on, on a floor he had watched a man finish that morning, and understood that he had solved a ceiling and put a hole 3 feet to the left of it, and that Yvonne Baptiste had charged him an extra 15 percent for the privilege of not being asked again.

He locked up at half 5 and sat on the scooter on his own road with the engine off and the light gone.

Then he got the phone out.

i need a previous address

The answer came back inside 4 seconds, which it does not usually do.

[ For Section 4. ]

Danny sat very still with his feet on the road.

how do you know about section 4

[ Miss Adeyemi’s form was filed on your behalf. ] [ Everything filed on your behalf is on your record. ]

then fix it

[ An address can be filed. ] [ Confirm and it will be filed by 09:00. ]

His thumb went over the screen and stopped there.

Because there was a thing that had been sat at the back of his head since a wet pavement outside a hospital, and it had got a shape to it during the afternoon, and he made himself go all the way round it before he touched anything.

Filed.

Not found. Not confirmed. Filed.

Same word it used in February when Priya wanted a source of funds and it had 7 years of statements on my phone in about 3 hours.

And I never once asked what that cost.

So ask it now.

what happened to my real one

Nine seconds.

[ Which, host. ]

pembury house. 11 years. what happened to it

[ It was removed in October. ]

Danny sat on a scooter in the dark on Verney Road and read that about 4 times.

removed why

[ Because it was a record. ]

i dont understand

[ You are not findable. ] [ Pembury House was 11 years of you. ]

He sat there with a bus going past 20 feet away, lit up inside, full of people on their way home from work, and one of them looking straight out the window at nothing at all.

There’s no hole in Naomi’s form.

There’s a hole where I was.

Eleven years of a boiler that gave you 6 minutes and a lift that never worked and a woman upstairs who never once chased me, and it’s not in anything, anywhere, because I read a message in October about being safe and I was pleased about it.

He typed put it back and it took him 3 goes to get it right with his thumbs gone stiff.

[ Nothing is put back, host. ] [ An address can be filed. ] [ Confirm and it will be filed by 09:00. ]

Same 3 lines it had opened with. Same 3 lines it would be saying at midnight.

And what does that one cost me.

It won’t say. It’s never said. It’ll do it and it’ll be done and something else of mine will be gone, and I’ll find out about it in February when somebody can’t find something.

Or I say no, and Naomi writes it on Friday, and a bloke in Croydon runs 4 databases on a man who isn’t in any of them.

He put the phone in his coat without answering it.

Then he started the engine and went 200 yards up the road to the lights instead of north over the river, because it was 20 to 6 and Wasim does 4 till 9.

"Tea. No sugar."

"You’ve got a face on."

"Have I."

"Everybody’s got a face on at 20 to 6." Scrape, went the folded cloth over a griddle with nothing on it. "That’s when they’ve had the day."

He put the lid on and slid it across and put his hand up when Danny went for his pocket.

"Go on. You bought 3 off me for 2 old people."

Danny stood on the pavement at a set of lights holding a cup of tea he had not paid for, with the traffic going both ways and a man behind him wiping down a griddle for the fourth time in an hour.

Then he got the phone back out, and he did not open the gold thing.

He rang his mother.

She picked up on the second ring with a game show going behind her.

"Danny. What’s happened?"

"Nothing’s happened."

"You never ring at teatime."

"I’m stood at a set of lights having a cup of tea."

"Whose lights?"

"Verney Road. There’s a van does teas."

"Well, that’s nice." The telly went down a bit. "Have you eaten?"

"Mum."

"I’m only asking."

"I’ve not eaten."

"Right, well." He could hear her getting up. "There’s a shepherd’s pie in that freezer with your name on it, and don’t you dare do it in the microwave, it wants an hour at 180."

"Mum."

"What?"

He stood at the lights with the tea going cold in his hand and a bus coming up on the inside.

"Have you got anything with the old address on it? Pembury. Anything at all. Letters, bank statements, anything with me on it and that flat on it."

The game show carried on for a second on its own.

"Why?"

"Because somebody’s asked me to prove I lived there," Danny said, "and I can’t."