Chapter 141: Nothing In The Way II

Jodie stood there with her tape measure round her neck for about 10 seconds.

Then she turned and walked away from him down the pavement, towards the lamp and the old man and the copper hair.

Danny went 3 steps after her and stopped.

And do what? Stand between them and explain it?

She's not going down there to talk about you. She's going to find out if you're telling the truth.

Mr Pemberton saw her coming and took his arm out of Mara's and walked on along the railings by himself, 10 yards, and stopped, and looked at the water.

Jodie said something.

Mara turned round and listened with her hands in her pockets and the wind pulling her hair across her face. She answered. It was not long, and she did not once look up the pavement at Danny.

Jodie asked her something else.

Mara answered that too. Then she put out a hand and touched Jodie's arm, and took it back.

It took 4 minutes. Then Jodie came back up the pavement alone and stopped in front of him and did her coat up, button by button, to the top.

"She says the same as you. November. A Tuesday. Once."

"Because it's what happened."

"She says she worked it out in your lift on the way up that night, that there was somebody, and she asked you not to say it out loud." Jodie's voice was perfectly level. "And she says she's sorry. And she means it. And she's not the one I'm cross with, so don't you dare try and make me be."

"I wasn't going to. She's done nothing to you."

"I asked her what it sounded like from underneath."

He shut his eyes.

"She said it sounded like somebody having the best day of her life." Jodie's chin came up. "And then she said she was glad for me. And that she hoped she'd see one of my dresses on somebody in the street one day. And I believed every word, and I hate it."

"Can I get you a cab at least?"

"There's one on the rank." She was already walking. "I'm going home. I've got 14 dresses. And don't text me good."

She got in and did not look out of the window.

He stood on the pavement until the cab had gone round the bend.

Then he walked down to the railings.

Mara saw him coming and did not move.

"I'm sorry," Danny said.

"What for? Be specific. I'd like to know which bit you think it is."

"Telling her there was nobody under me. You having to sit under it. You having to be the one who told her on a pavement."

"I sat under that for an hour, Danny." Her hands were deep in her coat pockets. "I had my laptop open on an email to Rupert and I couldn't get past Dear Rupert, and then I couldn't hear myself think, and then I came down here and sat by those doors like a woman with no life, and I hated myself the entire time."

"You've got a life. You've got a solicitor to sack and a brother to sue."

That nearly made her laugh. She stopped it.

"And then she came out of that lift with a tape measure round her neck, laughing," Mara said, "and I thought, oh, she's lovely, and I couldn't even be angry with her. I wanted to be. It would have been so much easier."

"She liked you."

"It was mutual, and that's the trouble." She looked at him sideways. "What does she know? About you. About whatever all this is."

"The number. To the pence. And the flat, since this afternoon."

"So she knows more than I do."

"About the money. You know more than her about everything else."

"Does she know about Naomi? The insurer? Monday?"

"No."

"Then tell her before Monday, Danny, not after. Don't make her find it out off somebody on a pavement, I've done that job once tonight and I'm not doing it again." Her chin was up. "I told her the truth because she asked me straight. You had that coming from a long way off. I'm sorry it came through me."

She turned and went back along the railings to the old man and put her arm through his.

"Gennaro's, Mr Pemberton."

"I did say 6," the old man said, and they walked off along the river towards the bridge at the pace of somebody who is 90.

Danny went back into the lobby. Kieran looked up from the desk.

"Evening, Mr Flynn."

"Kieran. The board by the lifts. The names."

"The directory, sir?"

"What does it take to get a name on it?"

Kieran blinked at him.

"There's a form. Ms Adeyemi does the board, it goes on the Monday after."

"Have you got one?"

Kieran went through the drawer under the desk and came up with a single sheet and held it out.

Danny filled it in stood at the desk with the desk biro on its little chain. Flat number, 40. Name as it should appear. He wrote it in capitals.

FLYNN

He signed it and pushed it back across.

Kieran read it upside down, and then the right way up.

"Sir, can I say something?"

"Go on."

"There's been nothing on that board for 40 since I started in September. People ask me. I tell them it's a company let and nobody lives there." He turned the form round on the desk. "If I put this in Ms Adeyemi's tray, everybody who walks past them lifts on Tuesday knows who's at the top."

"I know they will."

"Mr Pemberton'll know. The gym ladies'll know."

"They already know there's somebody up there, Kieran. Now they'll know his name."

"I'll put it in her tray, sir."

"Thanks."

"Sir." Kieran was holding the form a bit carefully. "Do you want the grey line taken off the board tonight, or wait for Monday?"

"Monday's fine. It's waited 7 weeks."

At 11 that night the bath was still full.

He had not been in that bathroom since half 4. The water had gone cold and flat, and there was a long fair hair stuck to the marble ledge where she had put her head back and said oh.

He knelt on the warm floor and put his arm into the cold water to the elbow and pulled the plug.

It took a long time going down, and it was loud going.

Can she hear this from underneath? Does she know exactly what it is?

Course she can. You've never once in 7 weeks thought about what anybody under you can hear.

He stayed knelt there with his sleeve soaked to the elbow until it was empty.

At 10 to 2 on Sunday he was at the bottom of a stairwell on the estate in Hackney in a clean shirt with no flowers, and he had been stood there 4 minutes.

Don't go up. You've done enough damage to women this week to last a year. Ring her and say you're poorly.

She said don't tell me you're all right, because that is not what I asked.

And you said 2 o'clock. In writing.

He went up.

Halfway, a boy of about 9 was coming down the other way, bumping a bike down the steps one at a time with both hands on the bars. He stopped when he saw Danny and stood the bike up against the wall like he was hiding it behind himself.

"It doesn't live here," the boy said. "It's only passing."

"I know that bike. It lives in the stairwell at Pembury."

The boy narrowed his eyes.

"How d'you know that?"

"You put a cup out on the windowsill for the birds. 3rd floor, second from the end."

"That's my window."

"It used to be mine. For 11 years."

The boy looked at him for a long moment, the way 9-year-olds look at something they have decided to be suspicious about.

"Are you going to tell Adaeze about the bike?"

"Not if you don't tell her I've been stood at the bottom of these stairs for 4 minutes."

"Deal," the boy said, and bumped the bike on down past him, clank, clank, clank, all the way to the bottom.

On the landing where a woman once put her arms round his neck and he stood still for 4 seconds, he knocked.

There was a radio going inside, and the smell of a roast coming under the door, chicken and lemon and potatoes gone crisp in the fat.

The door opened.

"You're 6 minutes early," Adaeze said. "And you were stood at the bottom of my stairs for 4 of them. I watched you from the kitchen window."

She had on a black dress that sat close on her the whole heavy length of her, full at the top and wide at the hip. Her hair was down and there was gold at her ears.

She was barefoot on her own hall carpet with a tea towel over one shoulder. She had taken her time over every bit of it and she knew he could see that she had.

She looked at the clean shirt. Then at his face.

The tea towel came off her shoulder, slowly.

"Who," Adaeze said, "has done that to you?"