Thirteen Steps Down (32 page)

him for failing to be there on time. On his way down to Chelsea he

checked his calls and was quite surprised to see a message from Mr.

Pearson's assistant. Would he call to arrange an urgent meeting with the

chief executive? This gave Mix a cold feeling but one quite unlike the

tremor that had lurched through him when he remembered the missing

thong. Surely Pearson wasn't all that concerned about a few missed

appointments. He was very polite to the man in Chelsea and showed him

how to adjust the belt on his treadmill himself, providing the weakling

was strong enough to wield a spanner. For all his working out, he still

had the muscle development of an anorexic girl. Since his exploits with

pick and spade, Mix had begun to pride himself on his physical strength.

Not anxious to appear in too much of a hurry, he fitted a new belt to a

machine in Primrose Hill before phoning Mr.Pearson's assistant. She was

a chilly young woman with an inflated idea of her own importance.

"You took your time," she said. "There's not much point in leaving you

people messages if you never check them."

"What time does he want to see me?"

"Immediately. Like twelve-thirty."

"For God's sake, it's a quarter-past now."

"Then you'd better get on your bike, hadn't you?" She suddenly became

almost human, if in a nasty way. "He's livid, incandescent. I wouldn't

want to be in your shoes."

Mix got on his bike, or rather, drove as fast as the traffic alloweddown

the Outer Circle and Baker Street. It was still nearly twelve forty-five

when the assistant showed him into Mr. Pearson's office. Pearson was

the only person Mix had evercome across who called people, in this case

his staff, by their surnames alone. He associated such usage with what

he knewof the army, men in prison or up in court, and he didn't like it.

"Well, Cellini?"

What kind of response was he supposed to make to that?"

“No answer was the stern reply," said Pearson, laughing athis feeble

joke. He added as if it were an afterthought, "We're going to have to let

you go."

Chapter 21

From her sofa in the drawing room Gwendolen saw the postman come.

She saw him walking up the path and heard the clatter of the letterbox

as he dropped Stephen Reeves's letteron the mat. Already feeling

stronger, she got herself off the sofa without too much strain and went to

the front door for theletter. It wasn't from Stephen but from a charity

appealing for funds to research cystic fibrosis. Her disappointment

quicklygave way to reason. If he was away on holiday he wouldn't

havecome back until Saturday or Sunday, so could hardly have got a

letter to her by today.

She was hardly back on the sofa, thinking that in an hour or so she

would go upstairs and have a bath, when Queenie arrived. Queenie

refused to burden herself with bags and had brought her offerings in a

shopping trolley.

"What an enormous appetite you and Olive must think I have," said

Gwendolen. She examined the packet of Duchy Originals, the bag of

marshmallows, the two tubes of Rolos, the dairy-free yogurts, and the

pack of couscous salad without enthusiasm. "Perhaps you'll put it all in

the fridge. Oh, and"--as Queenie went--"please don't mislay the flashlight

again."

Queenie wondered what eccentric quirk or whim would make anyone

keep a flashlight in a fridge but she didn't move it and, coming back, sat

meekly in a chair opposite Gwendolen.

The weather being so unseasonably warm, she had put on her new pink

suit and, though she knew such a happening unlikely, she had been

hoping for her friend to compliment her on her appearance. Instead she

was shown a red and black pouch thing on a kind of narrow belt that,

without ever having seen anything like it before, she immediately knew to

be part of the costume (if you could call it that) of a certain kind of

dancer. The realization made her flush darkly.

"I suppose you know what it is and that's what you're blushing about."

"Of course I know what it is, Gwen."

She had spoken as she always did, very mildly, but Gwendolen chose to

see it as recalcitrance. "All right, no need to bite my head off. Olive thinks

it may be the property of a--er, paramourof Mr. Cellini's."

"Does it matter, dear? It doesn't look as if it cost very much."

"I don't like these mysteries," said Gwendolen. "It means he or she or

both of them have been in my washhouse."

"You could ask him."

"I intend to. Of course he's out at present, doing whatever it is he does."

Gwendolen sighed. "I think I shall have a bath in a minute."

This was a hint to her friend to leave, but Queenie took it differently.

"Would you like me to help you, dear? I shouldn't mind at all. I bathed

my dear husband every day when he was so ill."

Gwendolen contrived a stagy shudder. "No, thank you very much. I can

manage perfectly. By the way," she said, though it wasn't by any way,

"that Indian has written to me that Otto has eaten his guinea fowl."

Temporarily forgetting Mr. Singh's prose prowess, she said, "Of course no

decent English person would break the law by keeping what amounts to

chickens in urban surroundings, virtually in the middle of London."

Very little roused Queenie, but as a voluntary worker forthe

Commission for Racial Equality, she. could become irate when

discriminatory remarks were made'.'"you know, Gwendolen,or perhaps

you don't know, that if you said something like that in public you could

be prosecuted. You're actually committing an offense." She added in a

less haughty tone, "Mr.S ingh is a lovely man. He's very clever, he was a

professor in the Punjab."

Gwendolen burst out laughing. "How ridiculous you are, Queenie. You

should hear yourself. And now I'm going to have my bath, so you'd better

run away."

On the way out Queenie met Otto in the hallway. He was sitting on the

stairs near the bottom, part of a mouse grippedin his jaws, its head lying

beside him on the worn carpet. "Go away,you horror," she said to him.

Otto gave her the sort of look that made Queenie very glad she was

quite a large human being instead of small, four legged,and covered in

fur. He managed to pick up the mouse's head as well as its hindquarters

and streaked toward the first floor with his burden. Mix coming in the

front door at that moment muttered something incomprehensible to

Queenie and followed the cat upstairs.

Mr. Pearson had insisted he continue working through the week,

though Mix would have liked to leave then and there. As for working out

four weeks' notice ... ! They'd pay him till the end of next month, that

was something. Of course it hadn't been the missed appointments and

failed calls that had made Pearson sack him but a call he'd had only that

morning fromthat old bitch Shoshana. Mounting the tiled flight, Mix

thought self-pityingly that nothing but trouble had come to him from his

association with Shoshana's Spa. He had gone there in the first place

only in the hope it would introduce him to Nerissa, but he had got to

know her anyway, she was almosthis friend now, and through his own

determination not through any help from the spa. That had simply

brought him an association with Danila, who had so insulted and

provoked him thathe'd had to react violently against her. Frankly, she'd

forcedhim to kill her. He'd agreed to produce and sign that contract,

again because of Danila, and now the result of it was that Shoshana had

called Pearson and told him about it and then had the nerve to allege

he'd never carried out his part of it. Thespite, the malevolence, took his

breath away.What had he everdone to her? Nothing but fail to restore two

pieces of equipment, not because he hadn't seen to them and told her

what was wrong but because he hadn't yet been able to get the parts. He

went into the flat and took a Diet Coke out of the fridge. When he had

peeled back the cover and opened the hole in the lid, he drank about an

inch of it and filled the can up with gin. That was better. Of course he'd

have to get another job. That meant the Job Centre and probably

drawing benefit for a while. The DSS would pay his rent, thank God. It

was time he got something out of the government, it was his right, he'd

paid enough in. Of course it wasn't just Shoshana's treachery that had

stitched him up, it was Ed too, going to head office instead of keeping

quiet for a few days when Mix hadn't made those two calls for him. That

was what started it.

One thing Pearson could be sure of. He'd take with him as many of his

clients as he could persuade to come. He'd undercut his old firm--why

shouldn't he set up in business on hisown? This might be the making of

him. He drank some moreof the gin and Coke mixture. Everyone knew

how much betterit was to be self-employed than an employee. A fantasy

beganforming in Mix's mind of himself as founder and boss of the largest

exercise equipment and gym fittings company in th ecountry, a megaconglomerate that took over Tunturi and PJFitness and of course

Fiterama. He pictured the joy of sitting at his huge ebony desk in his

glass-walled thirtieth-floor office, two glamorous secretaries in microskirt in the anteroom, and Pearson coming to him cap in hand to beg a

small pension for his enforced early retirement ...

Meanwhile, freedom lay before him. He'd use the time in cementing his

friendship with Nerissa. Maybe think of some other reason to call on her

and get inside the house. Suppose he delivered a parcel to her? It

wouldn't have to be real, itwouldn't have had to come from a mail order

company or besomething she'd ordered from a shop, it could be just old

magazines wrapped up in brown paper. She'd understand once it had got

him inside and she'd talked to him properly. Or he could pretend to be

peddling election campaign literature, takeher some candidate's

manifesto that had been delivered first tohim. There must be a local

election coming up next month, there always was, wasn't there? Anyway,

she wouldn't know anymore than he did.

Once he was taking her about, getting in the public eye, the offers from

TV and newspaper editors and fashion mags would start coming in. He

might not even need to set up in businesson his own. Or if he did, the

money he got from being Nerissa's squeeze would get him off to a flying

start. Dreaming on, he paused to congratulate himself on his resilience,

how rapidly he was recovering from losing his job, what those supposed

to know called one of life's major setbacks, comparable to bereavement.

Next day, though, he had to work. His head was banging from the gin

and sometimes it swam so that he nearly fell, but he had to work. Every

call he made he told the client he had resigned and would be setting up

in business on his own. If they would consider staying with him he would

make a specialc harge for them, less than they had been paying, and

they would be assured of top-quality service. Three said they would

remain where they were but the fourth agreed to come with him, after

telling him he looked pale and asking him if he was all right. At head

office he ran into Ed, who told him Steph was pregnant, so they had

decided to postpone the wedding until after the baby was born.

"Steph says she doesn't fancy looking fat on her wedding day. Her mum

thinks people will say we only got married because she was pregnant. "

"I've resigned," said Mix.

"So I heard."

Ed's expression told him that what he'd heard was a differentversion of

events. "You telling management I'd let you down, which was an

exaggeration to say the least, made it impossiblefor me to stay."

"Oh, yes? What do you reckon you did then? Acted like a mate? Stood

in for me when I was sick?"

"Why don't you fuck off?" said Mix.

That was the end of a beautiful friendship. He couldn't care less. He

thought of driving up to the spa and having it out with Shoshana. But he

ought to remember the spa was number thirteen, a fact which might be

at the root of all his troubles. And when he thought about it, about that

darkened room with the draperies and the figures, the wizard and the

owl, and above all of Shoshana herself, dealing as it seemed to him in

love and death, he realized he was afraid of her. Not that he put it like

that even in that part of his mind which talked to itself, advising,

warning, and resolving. There, he said he should be cautious. It was one

thing her getting on the phone and spreading slanders about him; he

was more wary of darker deeds, the kind of thing witches used to dospells cast, demons raised. All rubbish of course, but he'd once thought

ghosts rubbish and now he lived with one.

By Saturday he'd have more time, all the time in the world, and that

was when he'd begin his real efforts to see Nerissa. Meanwhile he'd plan

what his campaign was going to be.

A cosmetic company with a fast-expanding line in makeupfor black

women had asked Nerissa to be their "Face of 2004."This year they had

used a famous white model and Nerissawould be the first black woman