Chapter 138: Nobody Either Side I

Martin Hale had one hand still raised towards the clock. Hannah Pryce had her pen on the folder, mid-word.

"What are you doing back?" Martin said.

Danny walked past him, through the dining room door to the sideboard, and opened the top drawer on the left. It ran out smooth and empty and smelled of lavender bags.

He put the box in it and shut it.

Behind him the front door banged against the wall and heels came fast up the hall.

"Martin? Martin. What’s he doing?"

"Gill, go and sit in the car."

"I will not go and sit in the car, I’ve been sat in the car since 6."

Hannah was in the dining room doorway now with the folder flat against her chest and her glasses down on her nose for the first time all morning.

"Lot 41’s back," Danny said to her. "Top left. Where you said."

Hannah looked at him for about 3 seconds. Then at Martin. Then she crossed the room, opened the drawer, took the box out, and opened it.

A ring with a small square stone on old cream silk.

She photographed it in the drawer, then on the sideboard, then back in the drawer.

"10:04," she said, writing. "Lot 41 present and correct, in situ, as per the September schedule."

Martin’s face had gone dark red up out of his collar.

"That’s my mother’s ring."

"It’s your mother’s ring and it’s your brother’s ring until somebody with a wig says otherwise, Mr Hale." Hannah did not look up. "My schedule has been with Stephen’s solicitor since October. If that box is in this drawer on Monday, you and I are fine. If it isn’t, I’m the one in a room in Guildford explaining it."

"She sat with her every Sunday," Gill said. Her voice cracked on it. "4 years. He sent flowers."

"I believe you, Mrs Hale, and you’ll probably win." Hannah’s voice came down. "Just not with it in your handbag in a car at the end of the road."

In the kitchen Col’s radio was doing the travel. Nobody moved.

Danny went down the hall.

"Oi." Martin, behind him. "Who sent you? It wasn’t me. I got a call Thursday saying there’d be one more in the house I didn’t need to talk to. Who made that call?"

Danny stopped on the doormat.

Good question. Who did?

"I don’t know," he said. "You’ll not believe that, and it’s still true."

Gill was looking at him from the hall with her mascara gone, the woman whose hand he had looked at through a car window 6 minutes ago. She would know his face in a supermarket in 10 years.

He went down the path.

He had the helmet half on when Hannah caught him at the gate. Her coat was open and the pencil had gone out of her hair, so it had come half down on one side.

"Wait. I need something off you."

He took the helmet off.

Up close in daylight her eyes were grey and there was a small white scar through one eyebrow.

"Stephen’s solicitor is going to ask me on Monday who put it back," she said. "He’ll ask whether it ever left the house. And I’ll have to write down that a man I can’t name walked out of the gate with it and walked back in again."

"Write down that it never left the grounds."

"I can’t, because I watched you go out of the gate from the landing window." She held his eye. "I put down what I saw. That’s the only reason anybody pays me. So I need a name for the file."

"Danny."

"Danny what?"

"Danny’s what you’re getting."

Hannah Pryce looked at him for a long time, with the cold going pink across her cheekbones.

"I’ve done this 7 years," she said. "I’ve never once watched anybody walk back up a path with something they’d been paid to carry off it."

She took a card out of the folder and wrote on the back of it, pressing on the gatepost.

"My mobile. If Stephen’s man wants a witness to how it got back in that drawer, I’ll need to be able to find you, and I’d rather it was you ringing me than me looking." She held it out between 2 fingers. "And if you ring it about something that isn’t Lot 41, I’ll decide then."

He took the card.

She was already halfway up the path.

He rode home the long way with her card in his inside pocket next to his father’s letters.

At the lights on the Walworth Road he got the phone out.

who rang him on thursday

Nine seconds.

[ That is not a question the Concierge is able to answer. ]

who booked the shift

[ The shift was available. ] [ The host confirmed it. ]

The van behind him leaned on its horn. He went.

At 10:58 it came in on its own.

[ 14 Calton Avenue has been added to your record. ] [ All parties present are recorded. ] [ Mr Hale. Miss Pryce. Mr Mullen. Mr Brennan. ]

Same as Jodie. Nothing happens to them. They’re just on it.

And Gill’s not on it, and she’s the one who’ll remember my face.

At 1 o’clock, sat on the edge of the island, Adaeze texted.

Tomorrow. 2 o’clock. You never said yes so I’m saying it for you. No flowers.

2 o’clock. No flowers.

And a clean shirt. Somebody will be looking at you.

He looked at the green carrier bag at the end of the island and the empty room going up 2 floors over it.

Jodie’s never seen any of this.

She’s had my balance to the pence since Thursday, and she thinks I sleep on Pembury.

At 20 to 3 her light was on in Battersea and he could hear the sewing machine from the bottom of the stairs, fast and flat, stopping and going.

He knocked. The machine stopped.

The door opened on the chain. In 11 years it had not been on the chain for him. Jodie looked at him through the gap with a tape measure round her neck and 3 pins in her mouth.

She took the pins out one at a time.

"I said I didn’t know."

"You did."

"And you’ve come anyway."

"I’ve come to give you something. If you want me to go after, I’ll go."

"I’ve told you, I’m not having..."

"It’s not money. It’s an address."

That stopped her.

"Whose?"

"Mine. I’ve not lived at Pembury since the middle of October."

The chain stayed on.

"I’ve been sending you stuff about your stairwell being cold for 6 weeks."

"7."

"Where, then?"

"The Sterling. That tower on the river by the bridge."

"With the blue light on top that you can see from my bus."

"Top floor."

"How much of the top floor?"

"All of it. It’s one flat."

Jodie shut the door.

He stood on her landing. He heard her say oh, for God’s sake to herself, and the chain went, and the door opened with her coat on over the jumper she sews in.

"I’m coming to look," she said. "I’m coming to look so I know, and then I’m coming home. And we’re getting a cab, I’m not going on the back of that thing with you, I’ve got pins in this jumper."

The cab driver had the radio on a phone-in about parking and talked over it to both of them all the way down Battersea Park Road.

"Where on the river, mate?"

"The Sterling. By the bridge."

"Oh, very nice." He looked at Jodie in the mirror, tape measure and all. "Working there, love?"

"Apparently I’m visiting," Jodie said.

"Lovely. They’ve got a pool in that one, my brother-in-law did the tiles. Said the bloke on the top’s not been down for a swim since he moved in."

Jodie turned her head and looked at Danny.

"I’m not a swimmer," he said.

"You’re not anything I know, at the minute," she said, and looked back out of the window.

Thomas had the door before they reached it. He looked at Jodie, tape measure still round her neck, and then at Danny.

"Afternoon, Mr Flynn."

"Cheers, Thomas."

"Madam."

Jodie did not say a word across the whole of the lobby. She looked at the marble and the water wall and the flowers on the desk and the bronze doors at the end, already standing open.

"You didn’t press anything," she said, inside.

"It comes for me."

"Lifts don’t come for people, Danny."

"This one does. It’s there when I get to it, every time, and I’ve stopped asking."

She looked at the one unmarked circle on the wall and kept her hands in her coat pockets all the way up.

The doors opened straight into the room.

Jodie took 2 steps out and stopped.

The glass went floor to ceiling with the river moving grey under it and the Shard close enough to touch, and the room in front of it held 2 sofas facing across a rug nobody had sat on, an island the size of a small boat with an Argos kettle on it, and stairs with no risers going up to another whole floor.

She walked to the island and put 1 finger on the marble and took it off again.

"How much?"

"Jodie..."

"How much is the flat, Danny?"

"8.4 million."

She put both hands flat on the stone.

"You sat on my bed on Thursday," she said, "and you gave me a number to the pence. One million, two hundred and sixteen thousand, four hundred and twelve pounds and 87 pence. You said it to my face like it was the whole of it."

"It was the whole of what was in the bank."

"And this?"

"It’s in a company."

She turned round. "So on Thursday you told me the truth, and the truth had a whole tower block left out of it."

"I didn’t think the flat counted. It’s not money I can spend on anything."

"Don’t you dare be clever with me in here."

He stood there.

"And is it still the pence?" Jodie said. "Is it still 87p? Because you’ve got a face on."

Tell her.

You came here so there’d be one thing she didn’t find out off somebody else.

"No," he said. "It’s gone up."

"By how much?"

"900 grand."

"Since Thursday?"

"Since this morning."

Jodie looked at him across the kitchen island for a long time.

"What did you do this morning?"

"I stood in a hall in Dulwich for 4 hours."

"And somebody paid you 900,000 pound for it."

"Yes."

"Is it drugs?"

"No."

"Is it people?"

"No. I stood in a hall and I watched a man take his mum’s ring out of a drawer, and he gave it me to carry out to his wife’s car, so his brother couldn’t have it. And I got as far as the car and I walked back in and put it in the drawer."

"Why?"

"Because his brother wasn’t there, and nobody was going to stick up for him."