Thirteen Steps Down (23 page)

woman was in and out. She might not suspect the truth, she certainly

wouldn't, but she'd tell Chawcer she'd seen him out there, digging. And

Chawcer herself might see himfrom her window. That bedroom of hers

must occupy the same area as the living room, which meant it had

windows facingboth back and front. He dared not take the risk.

You'd better eat something, he told himself, but the thought of food

made his throat close and rise. He was desperately tired. Once he'd had

another gin or a Boot Camp maybe he'd go to bed, even though it was

only six, go to bed and tryto sleep. Two messages were on his mobile but

he wouldn't bother with them now, he'd do that in the morning. In front

ofNerissa's picture he paused and made his obeisances, saying, "I love

you. I adore you."

How she'd smile when they were lovers and she saw her photo there

and he told her how he'd worshiped it. Comforted,he wandered into the

bedroom and at the window looked down into the garden, considering

where it would be best to bury Danila's body. If he could get there, if he

could gether downstairs and outside. Reggie had done it, and several

times, though there was an old man living in the house on the middle

floor and the Evanses at the top. The neighbors had seen him digging but

thought nothing ofit:, exchanging withhim the wartime catch phrase

about Digging for Victory.

There on the left, perhaps where the thick brambles could be held back

and spread across the dug earth to conceal what he'd done. Or near the

end by the wall, on the far side of which the guinea fowl man lived. But

would he get the chance?

On the wall, stretched out to his formidable length, Otto lay luxuriating

in the evening sun, his eyes closed but the tip of his tail giving an

occasional flick.

Chapter 15

Having been in the kitchen, put a blackened kettle on the gas, and cast

her eye around the drawing room, Olive was toiling upstairs with tea on a

tray toward Gwendolen's bedroom. Whens he had arrived she had rung

the bell and that man Cellini had come down, though with an ill grace,

and been quite surly with her on the doorstep. Speaking to him on the

phone, she had no idea this was the same man who had accosted darling

Nerissa out on the pavement. It was quite a shock when he opened the

door. Naturally, she wasn't very forthcoming either.

The heat in here was punishing. Like being in India at

midsummer,stuck in some backstreet ghetto, dusty and smelling nasty.

Somehow she must manage to get windows open. The one in the kitchen

refused to budge. When she'd seen to Gwen she must attempt those in

the drawing room.

Gwen's door was ajar. Olive was concerned at her appearance,the

wasted white face, the weak hands lying limp on thecoverlet. When Gwen

spoke in a cracked voice, she had tobreak off and cough breathily.

"You'll have to see the doctor, dear. No doubt about it."

"Yes, I will. I must." More coughing. "Dr. Reeves. Dr. Reeves will come if

I send for him, he always does."

"I don't know any Dr. Reeves around here, Gwen. Is he new?"

"Papa said to leave Dr. Odess and try the young doctor andwe have."

Olive thought it best to ask no more questions. Answering made poor

Gwen cough so distressingly. "You drink your tea, dear, and I'll find your

doctor and phone the practice. I expectt he number is in your phone

directory, isn't it?"

She dragged the carpet sweeper downstairs with her. It had been in

front of the fireplace so long that dust had settled thickly on its surfaces.

A hunt for the telephone directory finally resulted in her finding it on top

of an ancient copper in the washhouse. No Reeves in the directory but a

Dr. Margaret Smithers. Olive would never have expected Gwen to have a

lady doctor but very likely, all the lists being overfull, she hadn't a

choice. It was a scandal, and worse, Olive thought, when Dr.Smithers's

receptionist said she couldn't come today but would tomorrow when she

was making her afternoon calls.

"Make sure she does," said Olive sharply.

Gwendolen's coughing sounded all the way downstairs. Olive went up

again, hanging on to the banister. How much more sensible it would be,

at Gwen's age, to live in a flat. "The doctor'sc oming tomorrow."

"I'll wear my new blue dress."

"No, you won't, Gwen. You'll stay in bed. I'm going to bring you a jug of

water and a glass. You must drink plenty. It's better if you don't eat. I

told Queenie you were ill and she'll bei n at midday. Wheres your door

key?" Gwendolen didn't answer. She was coughing too much. "Never

mind. I'll find it."She did, after a ten-minute hunt.

One of the messages on Mix's mobile was from the departmental

manager to tell him a doctor's appointment had been made for him for

Wednesday, at 2 P.M. The other, from someone called Kayleigh Rivers,

reminded him that he had a contract with the spa and would he come as

soon as possible as a stationary bicycle and a cross-trainer had both

ceased to function.

The spa was the last place he wanted to go near. One of the clients

might remember seeing him chatting up Danila. Besides, he had a kind

of general undefined aversion to the place. He knew he'd feel bad once he

set foot inside. He'd let it go for now and then he'd try to terminate that

stupid contract. The doctor he'd have to go to. He was bound to say there

was something wrong with him, doctors always did, and this would be to

his advantage, a ready-made excuse for forgetting calls and neglecting

jobs. It wasn't that he wanted to skive off work permanently, it was just

that at present he wasn't up to it, what with the body and the smell and

women coming and going inthe house at all hours--and Nerissa.

He was down the hill from her house now and had beensince nine. It

was therapy for the way he was feeling. At eleven, when she still hadn't

emerged, he gave up for the day, drove himself to Pembridge Road, and

in the secondhand bookshop there, found a new book called Crimes of

the Forties he'dnever heard of before. He bought it because it had a

chapter on Reggie.

Back once more in Campden Hill Square, he opened thebook to find

there was even less about the Rillington Placemurders than he had

thought at first. A bit of a waste of money. Still, the photographs were the

best he had yet seen. The frontispiece, a large picture of Reggie driven to

court, was particularlygood. Mix gazed at the rather well-sculpted face,

the narrow mouth and large nose, the horn-rimmed glasses. What would

you do in my position? he asked it. What would you do?

Nerissa saw him from an upstairs window and thought of some action

she might take. Phoning the police, for instance. But he wasn't doing any

harm. He would get tired of waiting, he must surely have work to do, and

she wasn't going out till midday. She would like to have gone for a run

first but that was impossible with him there.

Last evening she'd been sure Darel jones would call her. He could easily

get her phone number from his mother, who would get it from Nerissa's

mother. She had stayed in all evening, waiting for him to phone. Actually

sat by the phone incase it rang and she couldn't get to it in time. Like a

teenager. Like she was aged fifteen, with her first boyfriend. When it had

gone ten she knew it wasn't going to happen. Plenty of men would phone

after ten, after eleven come to that, but no tDarel. Somehow she knew

that. Disappointed, she had gone to bed early.

Some women wouldn't wait, they'd phone a man themselves. Why

couldn't she? She didn't know, something to do with the way Mum had

brought her up, no doubt. Tomorrow they were going to start on the

shots for that magazine cover, and feature and soon after that the

London Fashion Fair began.S he and Naomi and Christy would be on the

catwalk for that. These were her last days of freedom but instead of

enjoying herself she was standing here at the window, watching a man

watching her. The price of fame, her agent had told her, and then told

her to tell the police. She flinched from doingt hat. Maybe she'd pluck up

her nerve and get into the car, not looking in his direction, go over to her

sister-in-laws, see the baby. Or perhaps she'd wait awhile, give him half

an hour. Madam Shoshana first, the stones or the cards and the latest

installment of her future foretold. If only that guy would giveup and go.

She had a shower, sprayed herself with Jo Malone's Gardenia,and

accidentally dropping the cap of the bottle on the floor, put on combat

trousers and a canary yellow sweatshirt. A difficult shade, her mother

said, while acknowledging that, with her coloring, she could wear it.

Letting fall the tracksuit she'd been wearing, leaving behind her a trail of

tissues, cottonwool, and orange sticks, she took another look out of her

bedroom window. He was still there. If only this house had another way

out, an escape route into a back lane as some Notting Hill houses had.

She should have thought of that before she bought it.

If she didn't hurry she'd be late for her appointment. She went

downstairs, deciding to risk it, run the gauntlet, whatever that meant,

but when she took a final look he was gone. An overwhelming sense of

relief flooded her. Perhaps he wouldn'tcome back, perhaps he'd had

enough.

All the way to Shoshana's she half expected his car to appear suddenly

from a side turning-blue, a small Honda, index number starting LCO

something--but he must have gone. Presumably he did work somewhere.

She was ten minutes late,t hanks to him. Mounting the stairs, she

suddenly remembered once coming down them and meeting a young girl

comingup, a dark, sharp-featured girl who reminded her of pictures she

had seen of women in that war in Bosnia. Funny I should think of her,

she thought. Shoshana had told her (when sheasked) that the girl

worked at the spa and her name was--was itDanielle?

The room was dark and incense-smelling as ever but today Shoshana

was in black silk with moons and ringed planets embroidered on the

bodice. A veil covered her hair, secured inplace by a kind of tiara.

"I'll have the cards, not the stones," Nerissa said firmly.

Shoshana disliked being instructed but she liked the money and

Nerissa was a good client. "Very well." Underlying her words was the

implication: on your own head be it. "Take a card."

The first one Nerissa took was the queen of hearts, and the second and

the third. "You are promised great good luck in love," Shoshana said,

wondering how she had managed to allow three queens to appear in

sequence. The next one had better be the ace of spades. But it wasn't.

Nerissa smiledhappily.

"I have never seen such astonishing good fortune," Shoshana said,

hissing and cursing inwardly. She much preferred doom-laden forecasts

but she could hardly invent a negative future when Nerissa so obviously

knew what the queen of hearts signified. "Take a last card."

It was bound to be the ace this time and it was. Shoshana concealed

her pleasure. "A death, of course." She put her hands into the bag of

stones, took out the lapis and the rose quartz and rolled them between

her palms. "It's not you or anyone close to you. It's happened already."

"Maybe it's my great-aunt Laetitia. She died last week."

Shoshana disliked clients coming up with their own interpretations.

"No. I think not. A young person, this is. A girl. Ic an see no more. The

words were written but clouds have obscured them. That is all."

The cards were put away,the stones replaced in their bag.Nerissa hated

the way the wizard seemed to move when the candles flickered. The white

owl had its amber eyes fixed on her. "Forty-five pounds, please," said

Shoshana.

" That girl I met on the stairs once, she looked nice. Danielle, is she

called?"

"What about her?"

"I don't know. I just thought of her."

"She's left," Shoshana said, opening the door to speed Nerissa on her

way.

Two policemen called on Mr. Reza and then at Shoshana's Spa. When

they had been told at both places that Danila Kovic had left her work and

her rented room without notice, without a word to employer or landlord,

they began to take things seriously.Their press release was too late for

the Evening Standard but in time for the BBC Early Evening News and

the next day's papers, where it nearly, but not quite, took precedence

over the "hottest day since records began" story.

Nerissa heard it while baby-sitting for her brother but, in the absence of

a photograph, failed to identify her as the girls he'd seen on the stairs.

Mix also saw the news. He thought he'd been quite worried enough, but

now he understood he had been living in a fool's paradise, continuing to

believe that Danila's disappearance would never be noticed. He had had

another bad day, beginning with his failure to see Nerissa, then a terrible

row with Colette Gilbert-Bamber, who threatened to report his lapses to

the firm if there was ever another. Leaving her house without any lunch

or even a glass of wine, he had had to go straight to the doctor.

Ever since he had known the appointment was to be madehe had taken

it for granted he was perfectly well, a young, fithealthy man. The doctor

disagreed. He insisted on taking ablood sample to be checked for

cholesterol. That was on accountof Mix's blood pressure, which ought to

have been somethinglike 130 over 40 and instead was an alarming 170

over 60.

"Smoke, do you?"

"No, I don't," said Mix virtuously.

"Drink?"

"Not much. Maybe four or five units a week."

That would have been little more than a single bottle of wine. The

doctor looked at him suspiciously. Exercise, a fat freediet, tablets were

prescribed and no salt.

"Come back and see me in two weeks' time--you don't want to be a

diabetic by the time you're forty, do you?"

Blood pressure could be raised by anxiety, Mix had read somewhere.

Well, he'd had plenty of anxiety recently. The doctor's admonitions had

brought on a headache and a queasyfeeling. He'd call head office, tell

them he wasn't well and gohome. Maybe he'd got old Chawcer's flu. The

sun was dazzlinglybright today, for once lighting up this gloomy house,

showing up the dust that lay everywhere and the cobwebs dangling from

defunct hanging lamps and bem:imed moldings on the ceilings. Someone

had opened the downstairs windows and all the curtains were drawn

back. He opened a door he had never touched before and found himself

looking into a vast room with a dining table down the middle, twelve

chairs arranged around it and oil paintings on the walls of dead deer and

rabbits, ugly old women in crinolines and cows in fields.

On the first landing he met a woman he hadn't seen before, and he

immediately thought, she must be the one Reggie hadn't managed to

destroy, old Chawcer's daughter. But she was too old for that and she

introduced herself as Queenie Winthrop, smiling and for some reason

fluttering her eyelashes.

"Poor darling Gwendolen is very poorly indeed, Mr. Cellini. She has a

temperature of over a hundred degrees. And that doctor won't come until

tomorrow afternoon. I call it a.disgrace."

Mix, who had grown up measuring degrees in Celsius, thought she had

made a mistake. "What could you expect at her age? "Shame," he said.

"A shame is just what it is. These doctors should be ashamed.

Now, if you can just make her a cup of tea in the morning, I or Mrs.

Fordyce will be in by eight-thirty. We have a key."

"Me?" said Mix feebly.

"That's right. If you'll be so kind. I don't know who will let that wretched

doctor in but one of us will manage it somehow."

"Well, I can't," said Mix, escaping upstairs, and for once forgetting to

look out for Reggie

He sniffed. It seemed to him that he could smell it out here.That might

be in his head too. How did you know which things were real and which

your imagination? Still, he wouldn't go in there this evening. He'd think,

make a plan. It was just after eight when Ed phoned. Mix wished he

hadn't answered it because Ed would only start again on how he'd let

him down. But instead he was asking for bygones to be bygones. He

shouldn't have blown his top like that. His excuse was that he wasn't

really over his flu and still feeling under the weather.

"There's a lot of it about," Mix said, thinking of oldChawcer.

"Yeah, and it's not only that. Me and Steph are having problems getting

a mortgage."

He went on and on about this flat they were hoping to buy,calculating

their joint incomes, Steph's chances of promotion,and what would

happen if she fell pregnant.

"You'll have to see she doesn't." Mix had always found it difficult,

practically impossible, to apologize. Admitting he waswrong seemed to

him the ultimate humiliation. He couldn'tsay he was sorry but he had to

say something. "Feel like going for a drink?" he hazarded. "Maybe

tonight?"

"Yeah, well, I can't tonight. Sun in Splendour at eight tomorrow? And a

word to the wise, Mix, eh? They're getting very hot under the collar about

you at head office. I just thought I'd give you a hint."

Mix nearly forgot about old Chawcer's tea in the morning. He hardly

ever drank the stuff himself, but he kept a packet of teabags next to the

coffee jar and when he saw it he remembered. He'd have to take the

sugar down too in case she took it.

She didn't. That was the first thing she said to him after he knocked

and went in. "You need not have brought that, Mr.Cellini. I don't take

sugar." Nothing about how kind of him. No "Good morning." Her voice

was weak and she kept coughing. As she struggled to sit up he could see

great wet patches onher nightdress where she had sweated. "What day is

it?"

Impatiently, he told her.

"Then it must be tomorrow that the woodworm people will be here.

They're coming to see about the woodworm in the room next to your flat.

I can't remember what their name is but it doesn't matter." Coughing

shook her. "Oh, dear, I can hardly speak. One of my friends will let them

in. I expect they'll takeup the floorboards, find out what that ghastly

smell is ... "

Old clothes lay all over the bedroom. Surely she could have cleared up

the ashes in the fireplace. She hadn't always been ill. The air felt

unbreathable and enormously, palpably, hot. Flies were everywhere,

swarming in the dusty shaft of sunlight.

"Shall I open a window?"

She wasn't too ill to round on him. "Please don't unless you want me to

freeze to death. Just leave it." Cough, cough,cough ...

Chapter 16

Nerissa recognized the girl from the photograph in the paper, Kayleigh

cried when she saw it, and Abbas Reza tried tocomfort her by saying

Danila would surely turn up safe and sound. Shoshana never read

newspapers. The barmaid in the Kensington Park Hotel might have

recognized her as Mix'scompanion, but she didn't see the photograph.

She had gone to Spain to work in a seafront bar on the Costa Blanca.

Mix had no need to see it. It was enough for him to know that

photographor another would be there. The newspaper had got it from one

of Danila's brothers, who handed it over while his stepfather was out.

Mix sat downstairs in the drawing room, studying the Yellow Pages,

though he should have been at work an hour before.There were so many

messages on his mobile that he had erased the lot without looking at

them. Ideally, he should phone all these woodworm specialists and check

which one of them was coming, but there were dozens, if not hundreds.

He'd made atentative attempt at two of them and had had to hold on

solong, pressing this key and that, listening to piped music, thathe gave

up. The only thing to do was take a day off, stay hereI ad let the man in

himself. Or, rather, not let him in, tell himI his services weren't needed. If

the Fordyce woman or the other one insisted on staying, they might have

a tussle on the doorstep. He must somehow stop that happening.

He'd have to call head office and tell them he was ill. The doctor would

come some time in the afternoon, the woodwormman at any time. This

evening he was supposed to begoing for a drink with Ed. Suppose he

hadn't agreed to take oldChawcer her tea, he wouldn't have found out

about the woodwormman--the outcome didn't bear thinking of. It drove

him back into the room where Danila lay under the floorboards.T he

smell in this extreme heat was worse, awful, like things rotting in the

back of a fridge someone had turned off. He felt like breaking a window

to let some of it out but he thought of the noise it would make and the

fuss it would cause.

As soon as possible he must move the body. Once the woodwormman

had been got rid of, the doctor and those women had gone, he would

move it and drag it down all fifty-two of ,those stairs. For the present, he

couldn't stay in his own flat, it was too high up, too remote. He had to be

sure he'd hear the doorbell when people came, preferably be stationed

where he could see them coming. Halfway down the tiled flight he heard

a key turn in the front door lock. Old Ma Fordyce or MaWinthrop. It was

Fordyce, the one with the long red fingernails.He heard her slowly

stumping up the stairs below himand they met outside old Chawcer's

bedroom door.

"Good morning. How are you today?"

"Fine," Mix lied.

"Did you feed the cat?"

"Me?"

"Yes, you," said Olive Fordyce. "I don't see anyone else around, do you?

Please give the poor thing some food at once." She went into old

Chawcer's bedroom.

Talking to me as if I was her servant, thought Mix. Why shouldn't she

feed the bloody cat? He was rather afraid of Otto, who gave him almost

human stares of loathing, but he went into the kitchen and looked about

him for cans of catfood.His mother had been as messy as Chawcer, the

reason hewas such a fastidious housekeeper himself, so he had a good

idea where to look. A tin decorated with a picture of a catwashing its