Touched (4 page)

Dan located his mug under a pile of floor plans that had swept over from Boris’s desk and made his way to the kitchen.

Not only was his head splitting but his throat was sore, raw from having to throw up in the night. This was going to have to stop. This wasn’t much of a job but he’d like to keep it. This was three – no four – times in the last week he had done that. It was becoming far too much of a habit to be comfortable.

He found Hannah in the kitchen already making a coffee.

‘Kettle’s just boiled, there should be enough water,’ she said without glancing up. Dan watched her stirring milk into her drink. The spoon seemed to rattle very loudly against the ceramic.

‘Thanks,’ he said. There was very little room in the tea making area so he hovered at the door waiting for her to finish. She was shaking out her shoulder length red hair however and Dan found himself watching as she drew it all back into a ponytail and held it in place with a scrunchy. Only then did she catch his eye.

‘God, Dan you look like shit.’

‘Thanks. That does seem to be the general opinion of everyone today.’  He decided he couldn’t wait and moved in next to her, spooning two generous measures of Nescafe into his mug.

‘Sorry. That just slipped out, didn't mean to be rude,’ said Hannah. ‘You need a woman  back in your life again to sort you out.’

‘Well if you’re offering…’

‘Ah, well I think my boyfriend might have something to say about that.’

‘You reckon?’

‘Oh yes.’ Hannah said, smiling as she pushed passed him. Briefly he felt the soft, warm, firmness of her body and caught her perfume. The feelings of loss and desire mingled once again.

‘Lucky boyfriend,’ he said quietly to himself, stirring his coffee.

Then he had an awful feeling he was not alone and, knowing what he was going to see,  turned to find himself looking straight into Hannah’s green eyes. She had obviously stopped in the doorway and now regarded him with eyebrows raised. Luckily she seemed more amused than annoyed.

‘Said that too loud huh?’ he said.

‘Yup!’

‘Ah…erm…sorry.’

‘Hey I’m not complaining, Dan. If only I was free eh?’

She grinned and went into the office.

‘Yeah, right.’ Dan muttered, but this time really quietly.

This was getting stupid, he really would have to sort out his life. Hannah was a good sport and could give as much as she took but this just wasn’t like him. Making smutty comments, indeed. Dan shook his head; OK it was mild but this was a slippery slope well and on the way to sexism, misogyny and perhaps much worse. He had never thought of himself as sexist but sometimes lately he just didn’t recognise himself. Perhaps this was his true self just coming through? He wasn't sure any more.

Picking up his coffee he followed her back through to the office.

‘So anything new in?’ he asked as he sat down at his desk.

‘You mean like a multi-million pound investment portfolio that means we get to travel all over Europe business class to do the inspections?’ said Boris.

‘That would be perfect,’ sighed Dan. ‘What have we really got?’

‘Three repossessions to value, a probate job and a new agency instruction in
Rochdale,’ said Hannah leafing through the printouts. ‘This is Bannister and Peters, not JLL I’m afraid.’

‘I had noticed,’ said Dan. ‘I’ll have whatever you two don’t want.’

‘Be careful what you wish for,’ said Boris, ‘Is that Rochdale thing a shop? I’ve got a few more down there that I could do with having a look at. If it is I’ll take it.’

Hannah flicked back to the right page.

‘’Shop with flat above’,’ she read, ‘Looks like that’s yours then, Boris.’ She passed over the paper to him.

‘That works well. I’ve got a viewing up there this morning so I can kill two birds,’ he said.

‘So you OK to split the rest, Dan?’ she said.

‘Sure.’

‘Right, well…if I give you the house in Salford and the probate, which is a flat in the Quays, you should be able to do both this morning. I’ll do the others. That OK?’

‘Fine by me,’ said Dan taking the proffered sheets, ‘I’m just the temp.’

Boris was dialling the number on his instruction, ‘I’m sure Ian wants to make you permanent. You are mates after all.’

Dan shook his head. They all knew the facts; there wasn’t enough work for two surveyors, let alone three. ‘Look we all know he’s just doing me a
favour until I can get something permanent. I’m not going to muscle into your territory,’ he said.

Hannah was looking something up on Google Earth. ‘Good job you’re not driving anything flash,’ she murmured.

‘Why?’ said Dan, suspiciously.

‘Oh, you’ll see,’ said Hannah, lightly.

Thursday mid-morning

He did see.

He didn’t recognise the street name when he put it into his SatNav but the postcode told him that it had to be somewhere close to the University. He was; just on the other side of the river Irwell and close to Peel Park. From where he had pulled up he could see the university’s Maxwell Building where he had had so many lectures when he was doing his degree. He also had had many on this side of the river too before the university retreated back to the far bank, demolished the buildings and had sold the land off for housing. The buildings were vague memories now but the feeling he always got when he was over this side was all too familiar; the vague, uncomfortable threat that always seem to lurk around these streets.

It was like someone was always watching you, which, Dan mused, was because they probably were.

He was in a suit too. Suits were not the uniform of choice in these streets. Suits meant police, or the defendant, or funerals, or Jehovah’s witnesses, or debt collectors and loan sharks. Being in a suit instantly put you on the back foot.

It also made you a target.

Dan looked around for somewhere to park. Ideally he wanted somewhere where he could keep the car in sight. He knew it all too well around here; maybe this was the land of the loveable scally of Shameless but it was also a place full of smackheads, a place where if it started to rain someone would smash your car window to get at an umbrella. Dan knew this only too well because it had happened to him.

He managed to get a spot right in front of the house he was going to value. He looked at it through the windscreen. Sometime back in the sixties or seventies this must have looked wonderful on some architect’s drawing board. Perhaps they had won a prize for their vision for modern urban living; fresh modern homes for those displaced from terraced back-to-backs.

Now it looked like shit.

‘My ideal home,’ Dan muttered to himself, ‘I’d blend in perfectly here.’

He looked again at the instruction. Valuations here were rare, most properties were still council or housing association so it had to be a right-to-buy. Really great policy, the creation of a property owning democracy. Dan wasn’t against it, actually quite the reverse, it got people on the property ladder who wouldn’t have had a hope of managing it otherwise. There could be those who were trapped by it though; if the area was really bad and you bought but none of your neighbours did then you were stuffed – to use a technical property term.

This looked like one of those. Virtually
unsaleable. Virtually no comparables to value the thing.

Thanks, Hannah, he thought, thanks a million.

Dan locked the car and had another look around. He might only have a Skoda but it was a VRs, a little pocket rocket that he secretly loved and which could embarrass cars many times its price. He would rather keep it in one piece.

The coast looked clear even if he knew that he would be being watched.

He had picked up the keys from the building society that morning. He walked up to the door and tried the first one in the lock

Then the second.

And the third.

None fitted. He checked the house number again, and the street name. Now a couple of youths in hoodies had sidled up and were leaning against the broken down, faded, stained fence by the end of the street. They feigned disinterest but Dan caught the look, the hungry eye of the thief, the interest in his car. He knew they were waiting for him to disappear inside somewhere then the jackals could get closer to the kill.

Well it didn’t look like he was going anywhere. He looked at the door again. It was roughly painted. It looked new, as did the lock. The frame showed signs of being forced, there were splinters around the keep.

With a sigh, he pulled out his mobile and called the building society to break the news that the house they had repossessed had been re-repossessed back. It was a short conversation.

He got back in the car and drove to the Quays, noting that the jackals had slunk off as soon as he had moved back towards the car.

He had to admit he like the Quays. He knew that they were not everyone’s cup of tea, Manchester’s (OK
Salford’s really but even the city was now branding itself as Salford, Manchester) docklands, started at the same time as London’s. At one point they were very popular with the scally’s from the streets that he had just left as a takeaway shop, a source of BMWs, Audis and nice TVs, but things had improved for the Quays. Lots of better quality buildings had gone up and the Lowry, the shopping centre, the Imperial War Museum North and lately Media City had made the place a lot more fashionable and safe. Dan, in his weaker moments had forgotten about his debts and lack of deposit for a moment and had toyed with the idea of buying a place here.

He quickly found the block where the apartment was. It looked like one of the newer ones and a nice one at that. It certainly looked fine from the outside. It was hard to believe he was only a mile from where he had just been, from the squalor and deprivation of the estates. Was Britain getting like America with its underclass forever stuck in poverty and crime? Dan wasn’t sure but the gap between the have and the have
nots certainly seemed ever bigger from the evidence of this morning.

Again he had the keys, this time collected from a solicitors office in Manchester close to the firm’s own place. There was a proximity card on the key fob. Dan decided to take a gamble that it would get a parking spot and so drove up the service ramp to the roller shutter door to the parking garage and pressed the card against the panel. It worked; the shutters rose in front of him. At least the car was going to be safe at this one and getting in boded well; it looked like he was at least going to get into this place.

It was mid-morning but the car park was virtually full. Dan guessed that most people worked in the city and caught the tram in or else walked into one of the offices on the quay and left their cars here. Cars would be for weekend trips and visits to IKEA and supermarkets. He found a space next to a dusty Alfa with flat tyres. He prayed the owner of the space wouldn’t come back in the 30 minutes or so he would be in the property. Hopefully his luck would hold this time..

The card also got him into the building’s lobby. It certainly was a high spec place; there was a uniformed commissionaire on the desk. Dan didn’t need to but he thought he would introduce himself anyway.

‘Hi, I’m Dan Jackson from Bannister and Peters? I’m here to do a valuation on Flat 714?’ He thought putting it as a question was odd the moment he said it, but it was what surveyors and the like always seemed to do. It said, quite clearly, ‘I’m expected, aren’t I?’ countering any challenge before it was made.

‘Oh yes, sir, you’re in the book. Apartment 714.’

The man seemed friendly at least; that was good.

‘Good. I’ve got the keys from the solicitor,’ Dan held them up, then felt a bit stupid; a key was a key, what was he trying to prove? Anyway onto the important bit; ‘Have many
fla..er…apartments been sold in here recently?’ Even in today’s internet world it was well worth having a few word-of-mouth comparables to follow up on.

‘I’ll do you a list should I?’ The commissionaire gave Dan a knowing smile.

‘You’ve met a lot of valuers, haven’t you?’ grinned Dan.

‘One or two, one or two,  lad,’ chuckled the man. ‘Pop back when you’ve done and I’ll have it ready.’

‘Thanks, much appreciated.’

Dan took the lift up to the seventh floor, making a few notes as he went. There wasn’t that much to residential valuations, nothing as technically challenging anyway as with a commercial one, but they were a sod if you got them wrong, because banks and building societies would always go for the ones with the indemnity insurance if the deal went sour, and the only people who had that were the
valuers. It was best for your firms renewal premiums to get them right first time.

The building itself was nicely done, as good inside as it looked from the out. It was well lit and finished with some nice tasteful and good quality materials. Dan found apartment 714 and, with a silent prayer and barely holding his breath, put the key in the Yale and turned it. It smoothly unlocked. He released his breath in a satisfied sigh; At last things seemed to be back on track.

The flat was unfurnished and, largely, immaculate. The hall led into a lounge which was neutrally decorated and newly carpeted, the trimmings from some of the underlay laying discarded in a corner, a calling-card that carpet fitters are wont to leave wherever they have been. Also off the hall was a shower room fitted out with an expensive curved glass enclosure – Dan recognised it as one Alice had looked at and had terrified him with the price, and a door to what Dan guessed was the bedroom.