Thirteen Steps Down (12 page)

card from the landing outside Danila's room.

Mix shambled home through the close humid night. Colder air might

have sobered him up a bit but this was like a lukewarm bath. Otto was

on the stairs again, washing his face as if he'd just been eating

something. To Mix there was something odd and perhaps not pleasant

about the cat being up here on the stairs so much. It never happened

when he first came. Their dislike was mutual, so he wasn't the

attraction. What was?

Chapter 8

Nerissa was having a party. None of her own friends was invited,not

Rodney Devereux or Colette Gilbert-Bamber or the model whose ankle

had ended up thicker than the other one, but only her own family and all

its extensions. The onlyoutsiders she asked were the Joneses from next

door to her parents. She sent one of her beautiful purple cards, lettered

in gold, to Mr. and Mrs. Bill Jones and Mr. Darel Jones, and at the foot

she wrote in white ink: Do come, love, Nerissa.

A nice enough, but rather cold, letter came back from Sheila Jones. It

said they couldn't come and that she was sorry, but not why they

couldn't. Nerissa had no very high opinion of her own intelligence but

even she could read between the lines that Mrs. J ones thought the party

would be too grand for them with too many smart people attending, too

much fashion on show and too much talk about things they wouldn't

understand. Nerissa was disappointed and not just because the refusal

included Darel. The senior joneses were the sort of people she liked,

straightforward, unassuming, and down-to-earth.

If only they understood the sort of party it really was, given for her dad's

birthday (which she'd said on the invitation) and that his brothers would

be there with their wives, the seven children they had between them, his

cousin who was a leadinglight in the Transport and General Workers'

Union, her mum's younger sister, elected last year to Tower Hamlets

Council, her mum's elder sister who met and married the sweetheart she

hadn't seen for a lifetime, her mum's auntie from Notting Hill, her three

baby nieces and her three-year-old nephew, and her grandma, the

matriarch born just ninety-two years ago inAfrica.

It was the Joneses' loss, Nerissa said defiantly to herself as she and

Lynette handed round cups of tea to those who didn't want champagne

cocktails. But she admitted silently that it was her loss too, and when

Lynette and the TGWU cousin had moved some of the furniture back and

dancing began, she imagined the happiness she might have had in

Darel's arms, drifting gently round the floor. To make things worse, just

as her grandma was telling her an enthralling tale about her own mother

and a witch doctor, the phone rang. It was Rodney. Nerissa took the

phone into the study and listened impatiently while he asked her why he

hadn't been asked to the party and was she mad, entertaining all those

relations?

"It's a well-known fact that everyone hates their parents," said Rodney.

"You know what what's-his-name said. 'They fuck you up, your mum and

dad.' "

"Mine didn't. And whoever it was said it, they were sick."

"For God's sake, leave them to it, and I'll pick you up in five minutes."

"I can't, Rod," said Nerissa. "My dad's just going to cut the cake."

She went back to the party and fed the little ones chocolate biscuits and

ice cream because none of them liked fruitcake.

"You'll have one like that yourself in a couple of years," said her Tower

Hamlets auntie.

"I wish." Nerissa thought of Darel, out somewhere with his girlfriend, no

doubt. Maybe even getting engaged to her now, while she spoke. "I'll have

to get married first."

"Most of them don't bother anymore," said her auntie from Notting Hillwell, great-auntie really.

"I would," said Nerissa, wiping a small mouth, open, birdlike,for more.

She put on Johnny Cash singing "I Walk the Line," turned up the CD

player, and went to dance with her dad.

Gwendolen would have been horrified and deeply shocked had she

known the fantasies her tenant created about her past life. But she had

forgotten the brief conversation they had had in the hall on the subject of

her visit to 10 Rillington Place. That Mix Cellini had come to believe she

had known Christie as well as Ruth Fuerst or Muriel Eady had known

him, that she had been a frequent visitor to his house and that he had

come here because she needed an abortion, would have humiliated her

beyond words. He had gone further, concluding that because she was

still alive, she must ultimately have refusedChristie's offer of an illegal

operation because she couldn't afford to pay for it, and therefore given

birth to a child. A middle-aged man or woman by now--did he or she ever

come here, had he, Mix, ever seen this mysterious person? But

Gwendolen, mercifully for her, knew nothing of these feverish workings of

his mind.

She had been humiliated enough by her visit to the Internet cafe, where

for a time she received no help from anyone. And she was utterly in the

dark. Whether other people, all of them very young, expertly using the

machines, found her bafflement absurd, she couldn't tell, but she felt

they did, interpreting the half-smile on a face and the turning away of a

head as signs of amused contempt. Although she had paid and she hated

wasting money, she would have got up and left, abandoning foreverthese

means of finding Stephen Reeves. But just as she pushed back her chair

in despair a young man who had just come in asked her if she had a

problem.

"I am afraid I can't seem to make it ... "

"What is it you want to know?" he asked.

Would there be any harm in telling this stranger? She would never see

him again. And surely he couldn't guess her reasonfor searching for

Stephen Reeves? Deciding to confide in him was one of the biggest

decisions of Gwendolen's long life.

"I wish to discover the--er, whereabouts of a Dr. Stephen Makepeace

Reeves." She sensed that giving Stephen's age would rouse incredulity in

this twenty-year-old, but she couldn't help that. "He would be eighty

years old. He's a doctor of medicine and he once practiced here in

Ladbroke Grove--oh, a long long time ago, fifty years ago."

If her helper found the request an odd one he gave no signof it. In spite

of her shyness and her very real fear of the computer and what it might

do, she was fascinated by the quick sure way he conjured up one picture

after another on the screen; columns of text, squares of printing, and

boxes of information followed one another, unfolding and rolling, and in

somany different colors. Then, there he was: Stephen MakepeaceReeves,

25 Columbia Road, Woodstock, Oxfordshire, with a phone number and

something the young man said was an e-mail address, and then a kind

of biography of him, telling her when and where he was born, where he

took his medical training, that he had been married to Eileen Summers

and they had ason and a daughter. He had left Notting Hill and become

apartner in a practice in Oxford, where he had remained until his

retirement in 1985. In the years that followed he had written several

books on the life of a doctor in a famous university town, one of which

had been the forerunner of a television series.

His wife, Eileen, had sadly died recently, aged seventy-eight.Gwendolen

sighed happily and hoped the young man didn't notice. All she wanted

now was to be alone, but curiosity remained and she had to know.

"Does everyone have something like that in there?" She pointed with

one finger close to the screen, half afraid, half hopeful, that her own

history might be concealed in its depths.

"Not like that. He's got a website, you see. On account of writing those

books, I guess, and getting that stuff on TV"

Gwendolen hadn't the faintest idea what he was talking about, but she

thanked him and left. She had shopping to do but not just at present,

she couldn't do anything now but think. Mr. Cellini's car, which had

been parked outside when she left, was gone. She was relieved. Although

she and he had little contact,the fact that he was in the house, though

all the way upthere in what her mother had called the attics, slightly

interfered with the absolute peace she needed to think in and remember

and plan.

For a while she sat in the drawing room where the dusty

atmosphereand the smells of fabrics uncleaned for half a century, damp,

mildew, flaking plaster, and dead insects combined to remind her

comfortingly of distant happy times. But something that hadn't been

there half a century before, the grind and screech and throb of traffic

passing outside the window,sent her upstairs to her bedroom, where

things were marginally better.

Otto was eating a mouse in front of the fireplace, where ashes from a

fire lit in 1975 still lingered in the grate. He never brought mice to her as

a gift, as most cats would to their owners, but took them to his favorite

places, bit their heads off, and ate as much of the rest of them as he

fancied. Gwendolen took no more notice of him than she had ever done,

apart from putting his food down, since he had walked into St. Blaise

House from nowhere a year before. She kicked off her shoes, lay on the

bed, and pulled the pink silk eiderdown over her feet and legs.

Perhaps she would go to Oxford. Perhaps even, daringly, spend a

weekend there. At the Randolph. That was where Papa always stopped if

he wasn't invited by the master of some college to stay in a set

designated for distinished guests. While there she would take a taxi out

to Woodstock, though perhaps there was a bus. Taxis were very

expensive. Or write a letter. It was usually best, in these circumstances,

to write first. On the other hand, she had no previous experience of these

circumstances ...

The music she had been vaguely aware of since she came into the

bedroom seemed gradually to increase in volume. It wasn't coming

through the wall but through the ceiling. So Mr. Cellini must be at home

in spite of the absence of his car. Perhaps it had gone to be mended or

whatever one did with cars. She went to the door and opened it, annoyed

but at thesame time rather gratified that her tenant liked real music,

afterall. Whatever he said, that must have been he playing Lucia theother

day. This time it was a Bach toccata.

Gwendolen would have been incredulous if, before the arrival of Mr.

Cellini, anyone had told her she would tolerate with patience, and even

pleasure, sounds coming from the rented flat. But, really, classical music

was another thing, and she didn't have to pay for the electricity used up

in playing it. So long as he didn't fancy Prokofiev--she couldn't stand

those Russians--she wasn't at all perturbed. Back on the bed, she

imagined coming face to face with Stephen Reeves outside the gates of

Blenheim Palace. He would know her at once, and taking both her hands

in his, tell her she hadn't changed a bit. Then she would show him her

mother's engagement ring she wore in place of the one he hadn't given

her. Perhaps he would slip it off her finger and transfer it to her left

hand. With this ring I thee wed ...

At Shoshana's Spa, Mix attended to the next batch of machines. It was

his fourth visit, he had finished what he was coming to call the "day job"

and got here just before five. On the other occasions he had chosen

morning on his day off, early morning before work, and the middle of the

day in his lunch break, buton none of these visits had he seen Nerissa.

Now there wasnothing left to do to these machines for at least six months

andhis only excuse for coming back was to see Danila.

If Mix had his way he would never have set eyes on Danila again.

Unfortunately, she very evidently felt the reverse about him. Not an

analyst of character, he nevertheless understood she was a loser, a

woman with little if any self-esteem, one who was looking for a man to

cling to, love, and obey as a pet dog might. In him she believed she had

found that man. Recognizing her, if dimly, as a victim and one who,

seeing herself as of no account, merited being treated that way, he was

unwilling to spend money on her or take her anywhere she might be seen

as with him. He wasn't proud of her flat chest and skinny legs, he

rweasel face and hungry eyes. Their evening at the Kensington Park

Hotel was an isolated visit. Since then he had simply called around at

her place in Oxford Gardens with a couple of bottles and spent the

evening there.

She regarded him as her boyfriend. He wanted to know if she had told

any of her friends about him and she said she hadn't really got any

friends. There was Kayleigh, of course, but she hadn't mentioned him to

Kayleigh. It might upset her. She hadn't a boyfriend of her own. Danila

had only been in London six months. Before that she'd worked at

Shoshana's Beauty Zenana in Lincoln.

"Madam Shoshana wanted me to work late, but I said I couldn't, I was

seeing my boyfriend. I never said it was you on account of you having

that contract with her. I thought it would look funny."

Mix understood that he could drop her whenever he felt like it. There

would be no repercussions. Meanwhile he didn'tmind shagging her, his

body and mind, and hers, desirous and relaxed from the sweetish red

wine. In some ways, she was a better option than Colette GilbertBamber, who thrashed about, wriggling and biting and shouting

instructions. Danila lay passive and yielding, asking nothing, receiving

what she ould get and smiling as the long shudder passed through her.

For such a bony girl, she felt surprisingly soft, and when he kissed her,

as he occasionally did, her thin lips seemed to swell and grow warm.

But it wasn't enough to hold him, as he told himself when he returned

to St. Blaise House at midnight, wrapping his darkscarf round his eyes

as he climbed the tiled flight blind, in case Reggie's ghost was in the

passage. He said nothing about the ghost to Danila, but asked her if she

knew Ruth Fuerst had lived just down the road.

"Who?"

It was always a surprise to Mix to discover anyone living in, Notting Hill

not knowing about Christie and his murders. Fifty years ago it may have

been, but it was still fresh in theminds of intelligent people. What could

you expect from a girlas thick as Danila?

"She was the first woman Christie murdered. She lived at number 41."

He told her about Reggie as they lay on her bed after sex. Ruth Fuerst,

Muriel Eady, very probably Beryl Evans and her daughter Geraldine,

several others, and Ethel Christieherself. All of them strangled and

buried in the house or the garden. "If I was him and you were one of

them," he said. "I'd have screwed you the moment you were dead."

"You're kidding me."

"Oh, no. That's what he did. You can go and see where he lived if you

like. It's not far, but it's all changed, not the same."

He didn't offer to show her. "The old woman my flat belongs to, I mean

it's her house, she knew him, they were close, he was going to do an

abortion on her but she ran away."

"You're giving me the creeps, Mix."

He laughed. "I'm going to open the other bottle. Don't get up."

A quarter of an hour before midnight he put his clothes on, a male

Cinderella, preparing to be home at the appointed hour. A real dump, he

thought, looking round the room, not particularly dirty, but an untidy

mess and not a decent piece of furniture to be seen. The curtains looked

as if made from a bedsheet split down the middle. "You can come to my

place next time," he said, carefully considering the implications and

deciding St.Blaise House was safe and a lot more comfortable. It amused

him to think how impressed she would be. "About eight onFriday?"

"Can I really?" She looked at him with shining eyes.

"What a creep, he thought, hasn't got a clue. He didn't really like her.

No, that was wrong. He hated her and he realized why. She reminded

him of his mother. Here, in her, was thes ame weakness and passivity,

the same inadequacy--look at the mess in that room of hers. Like his

mother, she wasn't goodlooking or clever or successful at anything, she

hadn't a scrap of pride and she let any man screw her who wanted to.

The first time he and she went out she'd let him. To be worth having,

women should be hard to get. Not that Colette was, but she was a

nymphomaniac, all the reps said so. His anger with his mother was

transferring itself to Danila. That was the effect she had on a man, he

thought. She made him want to strike her just as his mother did.

He was relieved none of Danila's neighbors were about, no sign of the

Middle Eastern man, and he had to tell himself not to be so anxious as

he emerged into the cold night air, he wasn't Reggie, he wasn't a

murderer fearful of being recognized neart he scene of a crime. "What did

it matter if anyone saw him? They'd forget in five minutes, anyway.

Abstractedly, he fingered the cross in his pocket. These days he found he

did this more and more, especially when in contact with the

numberthirteen, passing 13 Oxford Gardens, for intance, or attending to

the thirteenth treadmill at Shoshana's.

More deserving of his attention, he thought next day, was getting to

know Nerissa. So far he was nowhere. His next move might be to put

himself on the Shoshana Spa waiting list for membership. It would be a

simple matter to get Danila to move him up the list, move him to the top,

even perhaps let him in without his going on it at all. Then he'd be able

to go there whenever he liked. And it would be good for him. He had to

admit that he wasn't getting very far with his walking or cutting down on

junk food. Only half an hour ago, on leaving Colette's, he'd bought a

Cadbury's fruit and nut bar and a packet of crisps, all of which had

mysteriously been consumed while he sat in the car thinking.

He'd ask Danila on Friday. Correction, he'd tell her on Friday, tell her

what he wanted and to do it. If he went to the spa every day for a week

he'd be bound to see Nerissa, and once he'd seen her ... Mix told himself

he was confident in his relations with women and he understood that it

was because of this confidence that he managed to get the ones he

wanted. Mostly. If he were strictly honest with himself, he'd admit that

when it came to one he really wanted a lot, he wasn't so successful. "Why

was that? He must remember that and once he'd met Nerissa, go slowly,

carefully. There was no doubt he wanted her more than he ever had

anyone before. For herself, ofcourse, but also for the fame she'd bring

him.

All this introspection wearied him and as he drove off to his next call,

his mind wandered into a fantasy of escorting Nerissa to some glittering

function, say the Bafta Awards ceremonywhere they laid red carpet out

on the pavements for the stars towalk on when they stepped out of their