Her aunt shrugged. 'Places don't if you don't clean them.'
'Youk now, this carpet is actually blue but it's got such a mat of cat's hair covering it that it looks gray.'
Hazel opened the door of the wardrobe and was met bythe powerful reek of camphor. Gwendolen's ancient dresses crowded together on hangers long ago covered in ruched silk and hung with lavender bags. Shoes were jumbled together underneatht hem, not placed in pairs. Olive began to count them.
'Seven,' she said. 'And that's significant. She told me notlong ago she had seven pairs of shoes.'
'She must have bought some more.'
'I'm sure she didn't. She would have told me. I'm not saying she made a special confidante of me, only that Gwen couldn't buy anything, let alone a big item like that, without moaning about the cost of it to everyone she spoke to.'
'She couldn't have gone awaywithout any shoes,' said Hazel.
'Nor without her ruby ring, dear.' Queenie had opened the jewel box and was looking inside. She held up a ring with a redstone. 'It was her mother's and she never went out without it.'
Chapter 28
'You are saying I sit at this window all day every day in case this man comes by? You are not serious, Kaylee.'
' Yes,I am, Ab. If it's him and he's taken Danila hostage and got her shut up somewhere, handcuffed and tied up and all that, you won't be able to live with yourself if you don't goto the cops. I bet he comes down here a lot. I bet he lives round here.'
'Kaylee,' said Abbas in the voice of someone to whom a great revelation has been vouchsafed on the road to Damascus.
'Oh, Kaylee… '
'Whatever is it? You've got quite-well, pale, if you see what I mean.'
'Kaylee. That night, after I see him on the stairs, I pick up a card from the floor I see him drop. He is drunk, you understand,and it fall from his jacket. I bring it here, into my ownflat and… '
'Where is it now, Ab?'
'Do you think I keep it? A strange man's visiting card?'
'But you read what was on it?'
Abbas sat down and pulled Kayleigh on to his knee. 'Sit with me, my flower, and help me to think. I think hard what was on it.'
'Yes, you do that, darling. If you let poor Danila down now,what's our baby going to think of you.”
Their baby, as yet a very small fetus in its mother's womb,need know nothing about it, as far as Abbas could see, and would hardly be concerned with its father's memory processes for another fifteen years, if then. But he could understand that if it was in his power to help the police find the author o fDanila's wrongs, whatever they might be, untimely death possibly, though he wasn't going to say that to Kayleigh, who was in a fragile condition and might easily be upset, he was bound to do so. He thought.
'One word I remember from that card,' he said. 'Not a man's name or address… '
'Oh, Abby… '
'Wait. One word. It is Fiterama. Yes, Fiterama. What it means, I cannot tell. But this is on the card.'
Kayleigh jumped off his lap. She was very excited. 'I know what it means, Ab. It's the name of the firm the man works for as services the machines at the spa. Madam Shoshana told me. He didn't come back with the parts so she gave them a ring to slag him off.'
The secondhand crime bookstore wanted to charge Mix twentyfive pounds for a book on Christie, published forty years before.He had just happened to take it down from the shelf to look at an illustration, when the shop assistant pounced.
'It's daylight robbery,' he said. 'I hope you don't find a buyer.'
'There's no need to be abusive,' said the shop assistant.
Walking home from Shepherd's Bush, Mix told himself he would buy no more books on Christie, he would read nothing more about Christie, it was all over. He might even bring the books he had and see if that chap would buy them. But for Christie, Danila would be alive and he, Mix, would never havekilled a dead woman. If he were being strictly honest, he'd say Christie had killed them both himself, bringing his total up to eight.
Before he set up his own business he'd have to get himself work, and he certainly couldn't take any of the clerks' and janitors' and council drivers' jobs on offer. He'd be in Javy's class if he did that. Javy-ever since he'd had that confrontation with Nerissa's bully boy he'd been thinking of Javy, brooding on him, even dreaming of him. It was thirteen years since he'd seen the man but his hatred hadn't diminished. He'd thought it had, that it was in the past, but he'd been wrong. Javy had seemed an obstacle he could never surmount, but now he had dealt with those two women-'dealt with' was a more realisticway of putting it than 'killed”-taking revenge on his stepfather presented itself as quite feasible.
Ahead of him, still parked at the curb, he could see the Brunswicks' old Volvo. It would just be trouble, he thought, a car, however reputable, of that age, breaking down on longer journeys, requiring endless maintenance. While he stared at it,noticing that the ?300 notice on its windscreen was now hanging lopsidedly, Sue Brunswick came out of her front door, carrying a large sooty-brown cat in her arms. In the events of lastweekend, he had forgotten all about pursuing her.
'Have you thought any more about buying our car?'
'I don't reckon I want it,' he said.
The cat he recognized. If he hadn't known him by his color and size he would have by the look of contemptuous hatred Otto turned on him. The eyes of imperial jade lingered coldl yand then, snuggling against Sue Brunswick's full bosom, Otto buried his face lovingly in her neck.
'I see you're admiring my cat. Gorgeous, isn't he? He just walked in on Monday and we've adopted him. We're calling him Chockie on account of his color. I don't know wherehe came from, but he's so affectionate and sweet, I justadore him.'
It sounded very unlike the Otto he knew. A faint throbbingin his ankle reminded Mix of their last encounter. 'Well,cheers,' he said and passed on. Back at home, he went into thebedroom where she lay under the floorboards. None of thebooks, none of the court proceedings, told him whether Christiehad sometimes checked the hidden places to which he had consignedhis dead wife and those others. Did he sniff the air as Mix was doing now? Did he stand at a rear window and contemplate the garden of 10 Rillington Place, assuring himself that the graves of Ruth Fuerst and Muriel Eady were undisturbed?
He could smell nothing beyond the usual odor of this house outside the confines of his own flat, a smell of dust and dead insects and aged never-cleaned fibers. The scent of an old person, but not a dead one. His next natural move was to the window that overlooked the garden. In spite of the lack ofrain, weeds were growing, green and vigorous, over the slight hump of Danila's grave. To everyone but him it would soon be undetectable.
Why not go away for a bit? Use up the time between nowand the day he'd fix on for seeing Nerissa again. He couldn'tremember when he'd last had a holiday. Of course, going toColchester to stay with one's sister wasn't what most peoplewould call a holiday, but this trip would have another purpose.He'd find out from Shannon where Javy was now. Not stillwith the woman who had succeeded their mother, he was sure.Javy would have moved on, to a new life, a new girlfriend, anew benefit office.
It was funny, what you'd call ironical, that the member of his family he got on with best, the only one really he got on with at all, was the sister Javy said he'd tried to kill. And it wasn't as if she didn't know about it. Javy had taken care to tell her. Mix could hear his words now.
'You wouldn't let him handle your dolls if you knew what he'd done. Tried to kill you, he did. Would have bashed your brains out if I hadn't got there in time.'
They went to the police station in Ladbroke Grove together on Friday morning. Hazel said they didn't need her, she had to get home, but they were to tell her what the police said and everything that happened. A Middle Eastern
