Thirteen Steps Down (14 page)

a childhood among the Seventh Day Adventists. Of course his

disapproval rather depended on who it was. Somehow it was all right

when it was Colette and it would be more than all right—fantastic--if it

had been Nerissa, but in Danila it seemed to smack of defiance, of taking

things and him for granted, and of asserting herself. A woman like her

knew very well you don't walk about nude the way she was doing in a

man's flat unless you have a good reason to call him yours and have a

proprietary interest in his place. He took his dressing gown out of the

wardrobe and put it round her.

She received it with an ill grace. Like his mother, she sulked when you

told her off. Standing in front of the portrait, she pointed to it, actually

placing one finger on the glass. "She's got practically nothing on. I

suppose that's all right."

Careless of the pain his words might cause, he said, "She'sbeautiful."

Danila said nothing but continued to stare and to keep her finger where

she had placed it. Never very tall, she seemed to shrink a little and goose

bumps came up on her forearms, uncoveredby the dressing-gown

sleeves. A great resentment filled him. By her silence and her palpable

hurt, she had made him feel awkward.

"D'you want another drink?" he muttered.

"Not just yet."

He opened the wine bottle. If he kept on at the gin he'd not be able to do

it again, and the only point in her being here was to manage it two or

three times. With Nerissa, he thought, he'd be inexhaustible. He

remembered that there was another point to Danila's visit. He had to ask

her about the membershiplist. Tell her, he corrected himself, a brimming

glass of wine inhis hand.

"Look, getting to be a member of the spa, I thought ... "

Slowly, she turned round and he saw the marks on her face.She took

no notice of what he had begun to say. "I've seen her," she said.

"Seen who?"

"Her. Nerissa Nash."

This wasn't at all the way he wanted things to go. If he told her what he

expected her to do about the list now, at this moment, she'd understand

at once he only aimed to join the spa in order to meet Nerissa. His

request would have to be postponed again.

He chose his words carefully. "Where did you see her, then? In a photo,

you mean."

"No, for real. She goes to Madam Shoshana for a reading of the stones."

"With no idea what she was talking about, he said as if he'd be

astonished by the answer yes, "She's not a member of the spa, is she?"

"Nerissa? Oh, no. "With that figure, she must go to a gym some where.

Somewhere in the West End, I reckon, Mayfair. I'd been to Madam

Shoshana for my reading--I get a discount--and I met her coming up the

stairs. A Wednesday it was, sometime in July. Ever so nice she was, said

hi and it was a lovely day, made you glad to be alive."

He was stunned. He couldn't speak. He'd wasted weeks going to that

place, messed about uselessly with machines that didn't need attention,

used up his evenings with this dog of a woman, spent his hard-earned

money on her. Her cunningly back-combed and tangled hair had done

what it always didduring their scuffles, fallen in lank rats' tails. His rage

at the shock of discovering Nerissa's true purpose in visiting the spa

building had come to boiling point, and it was directed at this girl, this

stupid ignorant ugly girl with her rice--white skin and her bony chest.

Nerissa didn't even belong to Shoshana's Spa. She'd gone there to see a

fortune-teller and no doubt it was a one-off visit.

Quite unaware of his anger, Danila said, "Mind you, close to, she's not

the supermodel she is in your pic. Her skin's a bit coarse--well, it being

so dark, it would be. I reckon whoever took that photo got busy

airbrushing ... "

He didn't hear the end of the sentence. Hatred filled him, joining his

anger. That she dared to criticize the most beautiful woman in the world!

The insult grated like something scraping at his brain. He reached for

some object, anything, to infuse with his rage. His hand closed round the

marble Psyche and once more he seemed to hear Javy accusing him of

the attackon Shannon, his mother standing by.

Who was it he was about to destroy with this weapon? Javy? His

mother? This cringing girl?

"What are you doing?"

She never spoke again, only screamed and made gurgling sounds as he

struck her repeatedly about her head with the Psyche. He'd thought

blood flowed gently but hers sprayed at him in scarlet fountains. Her

eyes remained fixed on his in horror and amazement. He aimed a final

blow at her forehead toclose those staring eyes.

She fell to the floor, sliding down the portrait to collapse on her back.

He dropped the Psyche onto the polished boards. It seemed to make an

enormous noise as it fell so that he expected crowds alerted by it to come

rushing into the room. But there was no one, of course there was no one.

Instead absolute quiet, the silence of a vast desert or an empty house by

the sea, waves breaking softly on the shore. The Psyche rolled a little,

this way and that way, and was still. The only movement was the slow

trickling of her blood down the glass.

Chapter 10

He went slowly to the window, opened the slats instead of raising the

blind, and looked down. Lights in the backs of houses in the street

behind lit the gardens. There was no one about. Nothing stirred, no

human being, no cat, no bird. A pale crescent moon had risen in a sky

streaked with cloud. Behind hisfront door he listened. Out there too all

was still and silent.

"No one knows anything about it," he said aloud. "They don't know

what's happened, no one knows but me." And then, as if someone had

accused him and he was defending himself," I didn't mean to do it, but

she asked for it. It just happened."

His instinct was to shut himself in the bedroom, where he couldn't see

what he had done, and hide himself. For sometime, though with the door

still open, he sat on the bed with his head in his hands. The phone

ringing frightened him moret han anything ever had. He gave a galvanic

start so violent thathe feared he might have broken a bone. I was wrong

and people do know. Police, he thought, someone's phoned them.

They heard her scream and me drop the statue. The ringingstopped but

started again after a few seconds. This time he had to answer it and he

did so in a hoarse, quavering voice.

"You sound as if you've got the dreaded flu too," said Ed."I'm okay."

"Yeah. Well, good. I'm not. I think I've got a virus, so could you do two of

my calls tomorrow? They're the important ones." Ed named the clients

and gave their phone numbers. Or Mix supposed that's what he was

doing. He couldn't take it in."I realize it's Saturday but they won't take

long, it's more theywant reassuring."

"Okay. Anything you say."

"That's brilliant. And, Mix, me and Steph are getting engaged

Wednesday. I've got to be back to normal for that. Drinks on me in the

old Sun at eight-thirty, so be there."

Mix put the phone down. He went slowly back to the livingroom, feeling

his way with his eyes shut. The idea came to him before he opened them

that he might have dreamt it all, it was some hideous nightmare. There

would be nothing on thefloor. She had gone home. Blindly he fumbled

his way into an armchair, sat there, facing straight ahead, and the first

thing he saw when he opened his eyes was the blood on the glass. It was

drying by now. Some of the thin streams had never reached the floor but

dried into blackish-crimson lines and globules. What he thought was a

sigh became a sob, and a long shudder passed through him.

Had Reggie felt like this? Or was he made of stronger, sterner stuff?

That wasn't something Mix wanted to admit to. The girl had asked for it-which seemed to be true of some of Reggie's victims. He knew he must do

something. He couldn't just leave her here. If it took him all night, he

must clean up and decide what to do about the thing on the floor. Her

eyes, which he had tried to close, remained open under the wound in her

forehead, looking up at him. He took a gray linen napkin out of a drawer

and laid it over her face. After that it was better.

He was still wearing nothing but his underpants. Some spots of blood

had got on them. He took them off, threw them on the floor and put on

jeans and a black sweatshirt. She had fallen beyond the edge of the

carpet, so that most of the blood was on the pale polished wood

surround, on the walls, and on the glass of the portrait. A good thing he

had decided to splash out and have it glazed. That he could think like

this comforted him. He was recovering. The first thing must be to wrap

the body and move it. What was he going to do next? Do with it, he

meant. Take it somewhere in the boot of the car, a park or a building

site, and dump it? When they found it they wouldn't know he'd done it.

No one knew they'd spent any timetogether.

He found a sheet that would do. When he came to St. Blaise House he'd

bought all his bed linen new but he had some left from Tufnell Park

days. His tastes had changed from when he was buying red sheets! Still,

red was good for this purpose, it wouldn't show blood. Keeping his eyes

averted as best hecould, he rolled the body up in the sheet. She felt very

lightand fragile and he wondered if she'd been anorexic. Maybe. He knew

very little about her, he hadn't been interested. When he'd dragged the

bundle out into his narrow hall, hefetched a bucket and detergent and

cloths from the kitchen and set about cleaning up. He began with the

portrait and when it was spotless and gleaming once again, he felt

enormously better. His fear had been that some of the blood--there had

beenso much--might have got inside the glass and the frame onto

Nerissa's photograph, but not a drop had. It occurred to him that the

Psyche looked a lot like Nerissa, she might have been the model for it. He

washed the figurine in the kitchen sink, under the running tap, first hot

water, then cold, the bloodsliding off its head and breasts, red water,

then pink, then clear.

Just the edge of the carpet was stained. He scrubbed and rinsed and

scrubbed and dried and he thought it was all out. Getting it off the

polished boards wasn't a problem, they wereheavily lacquered and stains

slid off. If only the wall behind hadbeen one of the dark green ones. He'd

probably have to repaint it; he'd still got a two-liter tin of the shade called

Cumulus and he'd do it on Sunday.

By the time he'd finished, the fourth bucketful of reddened water down

the sink and the cloths in the washing machine, he sat down with a stiff

Bombay gin. It tasted wonderful, as if he hadn't had a drink for months.

One thing was for sure: the body couldn't stay here. And if he tried to put

it in Holland Park, for instance, he couldn't do it without someone

seeing. The trouble was, the first and only time he and she went

outtogether they might have been seen by any number of people in KPH.

She said she'd told no one but how could he believe her? She'd admitted

telling Madam Shoshana she had a boyfriend even if she hadn't said his

name. Then there was the barmaid at KPH. She might remember. Miss

Chawcer might not have answered the doorbell that evening, but she'd

remember it had rung if anyone asked. She might even have seen Danila

through the window. No, he couldn't just dump the body.

His eye fell on Christie's Victims she or he had dropped onto the coffee

table. Reggie, he thought, had faced the same difficulty. He'd been seen

about with Ruth Fuerst, he'd eaten in the Ultra Works canteen with

Muriel Eady and been out with herand her boyfriend. He dared not risk

leaving their bodies to befound in case he was connected with their

deaths. Something safer yet bolder had to be done. Mix referred to the

book. Even though the neighbors saw what he was doing, even though

they chatted to him and he to them, he had managed to dig a pit for

Fuerst in his garden and put the body into it after dark. Muriel Eady he

also buried a little way from the first grave.

Mix came upon a photograph of the garden in the next pages of

illustrations. A white ring marked the spot where the leg bone had been

found, and a cross marked Muriel Eady's grave. If the marks hadn't been

made there was nothing to show where the burial had been. Before

interment, all the bodies of the women he had killed had been

temporarily stowed under the floorboards or in the washhouse. Mix

wondered if either would be available to him--was there a washhouse

here? Certainly there was a cellar--but it might be possible, though

difficult, to get into the garden. However he lived in a house

immeasurably larger than Reggie's half-house; well, half of a small

terraced cottage, really.

He closed the book, put his keys into his pocket, and let himself out of

his front door, noticing on his way out that itwas eleven-thirty. The old

bat had amazing hearing for her age, but she would be asleep two floors