My Clocking In System

He was awake at 5 and gave up on it at 20 past, and stood in the kitchen with the Argos kettle going and the sky doing nothing yet over the east.

He got to a 6.

That’s all he said. He said it on a wet pavement outside a hospital and then he walked off up the road in shoes with no noise on them, and I stood there like a lemon and let him go.

And I’ve been at it since half 3 and I’ve got nowhere with it, because there’s 2 ways of hearing it and one of them’s a promotion.

He made the tea and drank half of it and did not eat anything.

The lobby at 20 to 8 had the morning lot in it.

Priyanka behind the desk with a headset on and a stack of parcels going up the wall behind her, saying no, that’s the concierge desk, that’s not us to somebody for what sounded like the third time. The 2 gym kit women by the water wall with their green drinks. A man in a suit stood by the lifts with a cabin bag, checking his phone the way you check it when a car is late.

And the flowers on the desk had been changed, and the woman doing them was on her knees on the terrazzo with the old ones in a bin bag.

Thomas had the door.

"Morning, Mr Flynn. Miss Adeyemi’s in."

"Cheers, Thomas."

"She’s been in since 7." He said it with no weight on it whatsoever. "Second time this week."

Naomi Adeyemi’s office is behind the desk with a window onto the lobby and a blind that is never shut, and her coat was over the back of the chair from the day before, and there was a mug on the desk that had gone cold with the tea line dried down the inside of it.

She saw him through the glass and had the door open before he knocked.

"Sit down. It’s not a minute."

He sat, in his coat, with the helmet on his knee.

"She’s owned Pembury House 2 years," Naomi said.

"Adaeze?"

"Ms Nwosu. Monday morning, 8 minutes, and she was very good about you." A printed sheet came round on the desk under one finger. "She confirmed the tenancy, she confirmed you paid, she told me you got 2 months behind at the start of the year and cleared it, and she told me she never once had to chase you. I want that said before the rest of it."

"Go on."

"She’s owned it 2 years. You were in that flat 11. My form asks for 3." She let the sheet sit. "So there’s a hole in it, and it’s the 12 months ending 3 years ago, and I cannot fill it with a woman who was not there."

Out through the glass behind her the man with the cabin bag had gone. The flower woman was still on her knees.

"Who was there?"

"A company. Four blocks and a garage sold as a lot through an agent, and she’s got a name on a completion statement in a box in a loft, and she’s looking at the weekend." Naomi sat back. "And when she finds it, it will have been dissolved."

"You don’t know that."

"I have looked up 40 companies in 16 years." She said it without any pleasure in it at all. "Thirty-eight."

"Right."

"Mr Flynn, I’m not investigating you. My job is a form. But there’s a box on it that says previous address verified, and it takes a yes, a no, or unable to verify, and the third one takes the file off my desk."

"Where’s it go?"

"Croydon. A man I’ve never met whose whole job is the ones with that box ticked."

"And he rings me."

"He does not ring you." She turned the mug round without drinking any of it. "He runs you through 4 databases in an afternoon and sends me a list of what he didn’t find."

Danny sat in a chair in a small warm office with his helmet on his knee and a lobby going about its Wednesday through the glass.

Friday. A bloke in Croydon and 4 databases.

And there’s nothing in any of them, because a phone told me so in October and I read it stood at that window and I was pleased about it.

So what have you got. You’ve got 2 days and a woman in front of you who has not filed it yet and could have done on Monday.

Come on. What exists?

And it arrived while he was sat there with his thumb on the strap of a crash helmet.

"I bought a business in October," Danny said.

Naomi’s head came up.

"A leasehold. Verney Road in Bermondsey, completion on the 11th." He was forward with his elbows on his knees now. "And it went through a solicitor who would not let me sign a thing until I’d evidenced where every penny came from, because it’s her licence and not my café."

"That’s a business address."

"It’s an address that exists with me on it, and there’s a Land Registry entry, and there’s a woman who spent 3 weeks satisfying herself I was real before she’d take my money."

Naomi Adeyemi picked up a pen.

"It’s 6 weeks old. It does nothing for a box that asks about 3 years ago."

"I know."

"But it is the first thing anybody has been able to put in my hand about you since October." She had the pen over the sheet. "Solicitor."

Right.

Careful now. Because if you say that name she’ll ring that name, and it’ll take her about 4 minutes.

And what does Priya tell her? She tells her the truth. She tells her a man came up her stairs in February and she made him evidence the lot and he did, and she signed it off, and it’s filed.

That’s the one place in the world where somebody’s already done this to me and been satisfied.

So let her ring.

"Priya Anand," Danny said. "One room over a dry cleaner’s on the Clapham Road. There’s no plate up because somebody took it."

Naomi wrote it down and underlined it once.

"This does not fix Friday."

"No."

"It might buy me a week off them, and a week is a week." She put the pen down. "Thank you. I mean that. It is a great deal easier to write in progress than unable to verify, and I have been trying to find a reason to write the first one since Monday morning."

He got up.

"Miss Adeyemi."

"Mr Flynn."

"If Adaeze finds the name and it’s dissolved and there’s nothing behind it, what do you put?"

"What I find," Naomi said, and pulled the sheet back towards her, and he was still in the doorway when she started typing.

Wasim had 5 in the queue at 8 minutes past 9 and did not stop moving once.

"Two teas, bacon roll, no sauce, and he wants it done." Scrape. "You’re on your own today."

"Errol’s coming."

"He’s already there. He’s been sat in that van since 8 with the paper." Wasim slid a cup across without being asked for it. "He come down here for a tea at half 8 and told me about your floor."

"Did he."

"He said, and this is him, not me." He put the lid on. "He said, the floor’s the best thing in that shop and the bloke doesn’t know it yet."

Ray’s shutter went up while Danny was crossing the road with it. Rattle-rattle-CRASH.

"Morning."

"Morning, Ray. Barrels are getting done Friday."

"Six weeks I’ve been on about them barrels."

"Five."

"Six." He went back in.

The shop smelled different.

That was the first thing and it stopped him in the doorway with a cup in each hand. Three weeks of old fryer fat gone up into the plaster and cold brick under it, and now over the top of all that there was the smell of a new floor. Warm and sharp and slightly sweet, the smell a thing has when somebody has put 2 coats on it and let it dry.

Errol was on his knees at the back left with a channel already chased into the wall and a note taped to his own toolbag.

"ERROL. THE FLOOR." He held it up without turning round. "In capitals. Like I’ve never been in a building in my life."

"He’s proud of it."

"He wants to be." Errol got up off his knees in stages. "Come here. Stand there and look down it."

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.