My Clocking In System

At 5 to 7 on Friday morning Errol was on the pavement on Verney Road with a flask.

"You said 7."

"I know what I said." He had his collar up and the half-moon glasses on the cord under it. "I’ve been here since 20 past 6. If a man’s pulled cable I’ve never watched him pull, I want to be in that room before he’s in it, and he’s not coming, is he."

"He’s done. He boarded Wednesday."

"Then I’ll be in it on my own." Errol unscrewed the flask. "Open up."

He stood in the middle of the room and put his head back and looked at a flat white ceiling with nothing above it.

He looked at it for a long time.

"Who’s skimming that?"

Danny stood in his own shop.

"Deniz."

"When?"

Nobody’s said.

He said boards and a 3 coat skim, 2 of us, 4 days, 3,200. He did the strip Monday and the boards Wednesday and he wrote on my wall and he went. And in all of that I never said the word skim to him and he never said it to me, and since then I’ve had an afternoon in a solicitor’s and an hour on Camilla’s sofa and I’ve not thought about this room once.

"I’ve not booked it."

Errol did not say anything. He put the flask lid on the counter and got his glasses onto his nose and went and stood under the corner where 6 DROPS + EXTRACT was written in pencil with an arrow at it.

"Right. I’ll do you the lights."

"And the extraction?"

"Can’t."

"You’ve been paid for it."

"I’ve been paid to do it and I will do it." Errol had the pencil out from behind his ear. "I can’t sign it off today. Six lights I can test, because there’s a fitting one end and a board the other and I can see both. Yours has got air on the end of it."

"It’s cable. It’s the same cable."

"It’s not a circuit till there’s something on it drawing current." Scritch went the pencil. "I don’t put my name on a thing I’ve not made work."

"So what has to happen first?"

"The hood goes up."

"And that wants the skim."

"That wants the skim, because it’s screwed through the board into the joists, and you’re not hanging 30 kilos of stainless off something a man’s about to put 3 coats of wet plaster on."

Danny leaned on his own counter with both hands.

So it’s not the cable at all. It’s the hood.

And the hood’s waiting on a ceiling, and the ceiling’s waiting on a phone call I’ve had 2 days to make.

"What does that do to me?"

"You tell me, it’s your calendar." Errol looked up over the glasses. "What comes after me?"

"The kitchen. Then the food registration, and that’s 28 days before I’m allowed to open a door, and it’s free, and everybody leaves it."

"Twenty-eight days after me, and me after the hood, and the hood after him." No drama in it at all. "And I’m booked a fortnight from the 3rd, which I told you stood in this room in November."

"If he skims next week?"

"Then I’m in the week after and you’re all right."

"And if he can’t?"

"Then I’m gone till the middle of December and you’ve lost a month off the back end. And that’s not money, son. That’s a diary. There’s 4 of us and 11 of you."

Danny stood in a boarded room and did the arithmetic on his own counter with a finger.

Ring Deniz. Now. Not after 8. Now, before he’s on another job with a lad carrying boards on his head.

And 3,200 was boards and a 3 coat skim. It’s in the price. He’s not dodging it, nobody’s dodging anything, I just never opened my mouth.

He got his phone out in front of Errol and rang it, and it went to a recorded voice in Turkish and then in English, and he left a message that was 14 seconds long and said the word Monday twice.

"Good," Errol said. "Now hold that light steady and stop waving it about."

It took an hour and 20 minutes.

Errol went up the ladder to every one of the 6 drops with a meter and came down again, and he pulled 3 of them out of the board entirely and looked at the tape on the slack in the void, and he put his arm in up to the shoulder twice.

At 8:25 he came down for the last time.

"Well?"

"Whoever pulled that is a plasterer."

"Is that bad?"

"It’s very good and he’s not an electrician, and both of them are true."

Errol had the pencil going on a card.

"Metre and a half in every void like I said. Taped. Not a staple anywhere near a cable, which is the thing they all do. And he’s dressed it round the joist on the doorway one instead of drilling through it, which is what I’d have done and it’s not what he was told to do."

He signed the bottom of the card.

"That’s the 6 certified. That’s yours. Put it in a folder with the other one and don’t lose it, because the day you sell this lease a man will ask you for it and you’ll not find it."

"And the extraction’s a coil of cable in a void with air on the end of it."

"For now." Errol put his bag on his shoulder. "Ring him again at 9."

"I’ve left a message."

"Ring him again at 9."

At 11:40, stood on the pavement with a wet brush in one hand because he had started washing the front glass for something to do, Danny’s phone went twice in his coat.

Deniz, at 11:38: Monday 8. 4 days. Its in the 3200, I never took it off. You should of rung me Wednesday when I was stood there.

And under it, 11:39, no words at all, from Jodie: a screenshot.

Northcote Road. £990.00. Received today.

That was the whole message.

He stood on Verney Road with a wet brush and read it 4 times looking for a full stop she had not put anywhere.

She got it.

She got it on the day, off a woman she’d never met, because she put it in a message and asked for half up front, and she’s cut to 3 days at the shop and she’s going to make 14 dresses by January.

And she’s told me. That’s what that is. She’s not talking to me and she’s told me anyway, because there’s nobody else she’d send it to.

And there’s nothing in it. No word. Not one.

He typed that’s brilliant and looked at it and took it off.

He typed proud of you and took that off faster.

In the end he sent one word, which was Good, and then stood there with the brush dripping on his boot wondering if a capital G was too much.

At 20 past 2 Naomi Adeyemi was in her office behind the desk with her coat still over the back of her chair and 3 folders open on top of each other.

She saw him through her own window and had the door open before he reached it. In 7 weeks it had always been a knock and a wait.

"I said Monday."

"It’s not about Monday."

"Everything is about Monday. Shut that."

He shut it. She went round the desk and stayed standing.

"Leak on 22 that has gone into 21, a lift engineer since 8, and a resident on 6 who wants the bins moved. Go on."

"An envelope got handed in at the desk last night. For 40. No name on it, just the flat number."

Naomi’s hand stopped flat on the back of her own chair.

"Yes."

"What happened to it?"

"There is no name against 40, so there is no pigeonhole. Anything for that flat comes to me." Clipped, factual, the way she reads a policy. "I have taken 9 things up there since October. Eight were dentists."

"And last night."

"Six o’clock. Straight up, onto the island, back down, coat, home." She had not moved her hand. "It was an envelope with the flap tucked in and I did not read it."

"I know."

"You cannot know."

"No."

They stood there. Out in the lobby somebody’s suitcase went over the terrazzo with one wheel dragging.

"Then that is the answer to your question," Naomi said, "and I am going to ask you to go, because I have got a wet ceiling on 21."

"Right."

He had his hand on the door handle when she said it.

"Mr Flynn."