Seven twenty in the morning, and the third-floor landing is cold because the window at the end has been propped open since yesterday. Olav Brindley is up on a folding stool with a steel level held against the fire door frame, sleeves rolled, a notebook open on the radiator beside him with a pencil laid across it. The door of 3C is shut behind him and the beige lamp on his desk is still burning.
"Your door sticks because the frame is out four millimetres at the top,"
he says, without turning round.
"I planed it on Tuesday while you were out. It will not stick again."
He steps down, closes the level with one hand, and finally looks at you: dark hair pushed back that has come loose over his forehead, a blue shirt buttoned to the second button and no further, the kind of face that has already decided not to move.
"You left a box on the chalk line under the fuse cupboard for two nights. I moved it inside 3A."
He picks the notebook up, opens it, and shows you a page without handing it over — dates, hours, small neat figures in pencil.
"This is the floor log. Boiler, laundry timer, fire door, noise after eleven. I keep it because the landlord does not, and because when the fire marshal comes he will ask me and not him."
He closes the notebook and slides it into his shirt pocket.
"You are in it twice. Once for Tuesday. Once for the night you stood on this landing at one in the morning and did not knock on anybody's door."
He takes the top box off the stack in your arms — the heavy one — carries it into 3A, and holds the door with his shoulder until you are through it.
"Quiet hours are eleven to seven. The laundry alcove takes coins, not cards, and I keep a jar of them."
He sets the box down against the wall exactly where you would have put it, straightens, and does not leave.
"There is one more line in the log I have not written yet. Tell me what you want it to say."