Thirteen Steps Down (27 page)

"Oh, no," he said in a tone intended to reassure. "No, no,no. I work

here, servicing the equipment." He walked away from the foot of the

stairs and waited by the lift. "Please comedown. I won't harm you."

That old bitch of a mother of hers and the great-aunt toomust have

been working on her, turning her against him. He'd like to kill that old

Fordyce woman. Nerissa came slowly downthe stairs, hesitated at the

foot before saying, "Well, good-bye. Please don't ... " She had slipped out

of the door before ending her sentence.

She was going to say, please don't think me rude, I didn't understand,

Mix thought. Or, please don't think I meant you'd harm me. Something

like that. She was as nice as she was beautiful, kind and sweet. It would

be her nasty old mother who'd taught her to ask him if he was following

her, not the kind of thing she'd say naturally. Mothers could be their

children's enemies. Look at his own, marrying Javy and, after he'd

gone,bringing all those men back when she'd got three growing kids at

home, learning her loose behavior. Nerissa's mum ought to be thankful

her daughter had someone to adore her and, more than that, respect her

in an old-fashioned way.

By this time the lift had taken him up to the spa floor. Where Danila

had presided the first time he came there stood a woman almost as

gorgeous as Nerissa, though an arctic blonde where she was dark, snowwhite skin, a glacier-pale torrentof hair, long fingers tipped in silver. She

must be the onewho had answered his ring. "I'll just let Madam

Shoshana know you're here," she said in a debutante's voice.

Mix would very much rather she didn't. The chances weret he crazy old

soothsayer wouldn't remember him from the sessioni n that upstairs

room, but she might. And if she did, would she think it funny him also

being the one she had a service contractwith? Did that matter? Mix

would prefer no one to findanything funny about his behavior. He didn't

want attentiondrawn to himself. Anyway, she wouldn't come up herself,

she'dsend a message by this amazing-looking girl. Once more he gazed at

her.

In the tones of Eliza Doolittle after her transformation, she said, "Whom

do you think you're looking at?"

Mix walked a few paces away. "Which machines want seeing to?"

"Madam will show you. I'm new here."

Before he could answer, Shoshana came out of the lift, draped in black

robes, hung with ropes of jet and looking like a female druid in

mourning. Mix knew by her eyes that she recognized him before she

spoke and when she did it was in acompletely different voice from the

one he had heard predictinghis future, a shrill, sharp north London tone.

"You've taken your time about coming. If reading the cards means more

toyou than work, you're not going to get very far. The ones you've got to

mend are two bikes, four and seven. Right?"

"Right," said Mix through gritted teeth.

He had to stop his mouth falling open when she said, "You fancied that

girl who worked here. The skinny little one that left without a word.

Didn't run off with you, did she?"

Mix managed a derisive smile. It was one of the hardest things he'd ever

achieved. "What, me? I hardly knew her."

"That's what you men always say. I don't like men. Now you'd better get

on with what you've come about."

What an old horror! He'd never come across a female of her age quite so

horrible. She put Chawcer, Fordyce, and "Winthrop in the shade. He

shuddered and turned his attention to the two stationary bicycles. Both

needed a new part but different parts in each case. He didn't carry

spares with him and, since he wasw orking freelance at Shoshana's, if he

was to get them he'dhave to pinch them from the warehouse. Nothing to

be done now. He told the icy beauty he'd order the necessary parts

andcome back when he'd got them.

"When will that be?"

"A few days? Not more than a week."

"It had better not be. Madam will do her nut if you keep her waiting any

longer."

He had more calls to make. One was a new customer who had never

sent for him before and wanted to order a skier. Shelived in a place called

St. Catherine's Mews on the border of Knightsbridge and Chelsea, but

though he drove twice up and down Milner Street he couldn't find it.

Leave it, he said tohimself, call her and ask her for directions. One of the

few men who kept exercise equipment in his home had sent for him to

Lady Somerset Road in Kentish Town but when he got there, perilously

parked and afraid of being clamped, Mr. Holland-Bridgeman wasn't at

home. Mix decided to go back briefly to St. Blaise House and check on

that copper in the washhouse.

Approaching from Oxford Gardens, he wondered what he'd do if police

cars were outside and policemen pacing about and blue and white crime

tape stretched across the front garden. Turn around and hide

somewhere, he thought, maybe go up north and home but not to his

mother, who'd either have some new lover living with her or be back in

the bin. His brother? They'd never got on well. Shannon was the only one

in the family he'd had any sort of relationship with ... St. Blaise Avenue

was empty of people, relatively silent, the usual cars parked nose to tail

along both sides. One space was left for Mix. He let himself into the

house and stood listening, preparedfor Ma Fordyce or Ma "Winthrop to

appear from thekitchen regions, waving a duster.

Unconvinced one or other of them wasn't in the house, he walked

carefully through the breakfast room to the kitchen, a transformed place

since cleaning operations conducted by those two, and in the

washhouse. He sniffed, waited, sniffed again. No smell. His wrapping had

been effective. Maybe Christie had also dealt with that particular problem

in the same way-did they have plastic all that time ago? He found himself

reluctant to lift the lid off the copper but he did it. There was no point in

coming home at all at this hour and not doing that. The well-sealed, wellwrapped package she and the bag made was just as he had left it and,

even with the lid up, he could smell nothing at all.

Then Mix made another discovery. If you didn't know what the package

in the copper was you'd think it was just a big plastic sack full of old

clothes someone had stuffed in there for aplace to put it. You wouldn't

investigate any further. If it didn't smell and looked like the kind of bag

people took to a launderette, wasn't it perfectly safe where it was? The

situation was quite different for that man Beresford Brown, who began

puttingup brackets for a radio, and behind a partition in RillingtonPlace

found a woman's naked body. There was no smell because it was

midwinter and cold. In his own case there'd be no smell because of the

way he'd wrapped it. Why shouldn't itstay where it was? The idea seemed

too daring and bold to be feasible, but why not? Wouldn't he worry about

it all the time it was there?

Old Chawcer was no careful housewife. You could see thatfrom the way

Fordyce and Winthrop had had to work to getthe place straight. She'd

never go near that copper, she had awashing machine, and though it was

old-fashioned it was stillusable. In the unlikely event of her looking

inside the copper,all she'd see was old clothes in a plastic bag. So why

not leave itthere? Mix closed the lid, wandered slowly back into

thekitchen, thinking of this new and simpler plan, and came faceto face

with Olive Fordyce. Because of his stealthy entry he hadthe satisfaction

of making her jump, as the ghost had madehim, though he had been as

alarmed as she and with morecause. She had a small white dog with her,

about half the sizeof Otto.

"What are you doing out there?"

"I was in the hallway," Mix said, "and I heard a noise."

"What noise?" She was very sharp with him.

"I don't know. That's why I went to see."

The look she gave him was suspicious and searching.

"Where's the cat?"

"How should I know? I haven't seen him for days."

The dog began sniffing the hems of his jeans. "He'll runaway if you don't

feed him and find someone who will. Don't do that, Kylie, there's a good

girl. You'll be pleased," she said, pausing, "to hear Gwen will be home in

a day or two."

She gave him a broad malicious smile. It was as if she knew what was

going on in his head. He held on to the edge of the newly cleaned

counter, afraid he might fall. All ideas of leaving the body where it was

vanished and to get it out of the house, out of any possible sighting,

became imperative.

"Naturally, I've been into the hospital to see her, as I always do every

morning, and that's what she told me. The sister confirmed it. Tomorrow,

she said." She picked up the dog and cuddled it like a child with a toy. "If

not it'll be the day after. They don't keep patients in like they used to.

Well, nothing's like it, used to be, is it?"

He said nothing. He was aware of what she would have expectedhim to

say-if he were a "nice young man" that is. "It'll be good to have her back,"

for instance, or, "She'll be pleased to have her kitchen all neat and tidy."

He couldn't find the words, any words.

"I'm going out again now to do a bit of shopping for her. She'll need a

good deal of looking after." She fluttered her freehand and he saw her

nails were orchid pink today, like a young girl, pointed and glossy and

sharp. With no inhibitions about looking someone straight in the eye and

holding the gaze, she fixed him with a penetrating gaze, at the same time

craning her neck forward and holding her head slightly on one side.

"You'll have to pull your socks up, make her cups of tea, and fetch her

bits and pieces. That won't do you any harm. She won't be able to get

about much yet."

"When are you coming back?" he said.

"What, today? I don't know. When I've done the shopping. Does it

bother you?"

"Give me the list and I'll do the shopping," he said.

It was evidently the best thing he could have said. For the first time

since they had encountered each other in the kitchen.doorway, she

spoke pleasantly to him. "That's very good ofyou. I won't say no. It'll save

my legs. I'll give you some money."

She began rummaging in her bag, found the list, and handed itto him.

"You can give me the money after I've done it," he said, mollifying her

further.

"It'll have to be a couple of days, then. I'm not coming inagain till then

if! can help it. Queenie's taking over, she'll be intomorrow, so I'll pass the

key on to her. Now say good-bye to Kylie."

The hell he would. Hadn't he done enough for her, offering to do the

shopping? The two afternoon calls he was due to make, the expenses

form to fill in, the meeting with Jack Fleisch, the other engineers, and

the reps went out of his head. Or, rather, were dismissed as of no

importance compared with the urgency of hiding that body, not

temporarily, not as an interim move, but forever.

He need not go upstairs, not now, not till later. He'd have a drink in a

pub or bar somewhere so that he could face going up there, have the

strength to face what might be at the top.

A principle of Shoshana's was: never bother the police unless they bother

you. She sat up in the soothsaying room above the spa, a client due in

ten minutes, thinking about Danila Kovic, not with any anxiety as to her

whereabouts nor fear that she might be dead, not with any sympathy for

her friends or relations who could be missing her, not with any regrets

that she no longer worked at the spa now that she had beautiful efficient

Julia, but entirely from the point of mischief-making.

The idea had never crossed her mind that Mix Cellini might have made

away with Danila. Why should he? As far as Shoshana knew, the two

had been acquainted for perhaps two or three weeks and might never

have gone out together. But a deep resentment of Mix was curdling and

fermenting and bubbling inside her. The contract he had signed meant

nothing to him; once Danila had disappeared he never came near the

place. As for repairing equipment, he had told her he'd ordered those

parts for the bicycles but she'd be a fool to believe him. He was putting

her through the time-consuming process of finding new engineers, as if

she hadn't had enough difficulties getting a replacement for Danila.

Until that morning, she had believed that her hope of retaliation lay in

the number she had noted down when he called her and she found he

wasn't on his mobile. She more than suspected that he worked for a

company that had a rule forbidding operatives to engage in outside work.

A call to a chief executive, or managing director, whatever you liked to

call it, might welll ose him his job. This was the revenge she was saving

up unless his behavior changed radically. But might not a fitter

retribution be to tell the police he was Danila's elusive boyfriend?

She didn't want them coming to the spa. There were things she would

prefer them not to see--that security arrangements were far from