that it was aghost at all made you look at the world in a different way. Heshivered, thinking that perhaps it wasn't too early to mix himselfa Boot Camp.
Chapter 14
Abbas Reza noticed Danila's absence only when she failed to pay her rent. He expected his rents to be paid in cash, preferably fifty- and twenty-pound checks, put in an envelope and pushed through the letterbox in his door. No checks and nocredit cards. Ms. Kovic hadn't paid her rent last Saturday and now another week had gone by. He had already banged on her door to ask for it and got no answer, not even at half-past midnight. She had never seemed one of those stop-outs to him, not a night bird at all, but he had been mistaken. Now she'd been in London a few months she was finding her feet, changing her good ways for bad ones, as happened to them all. Such was the corruption and creeping evil of the western world where God was mocked and morals had flown out of the window. Sometimeshe thought with nostalgia of Tehran, but not for long.On the whole it was better here.
The temp, who was still at Shoshana's Spa, was efficient, better-looking than the Bosnian girl, and a good advertisement for the spa with that queenly figure, fine posture, and face likea Nordic goddess. Pity she wasn't staying. Shoshana had had several replies to her ad and was interviewing applicants. Clients were coming thick and fast. That fool who thought he ived in a haunted house had been back and she'd had to stop herself laughing out loud at his face when she'd told him to avoid the number thirteen if he didn't want to see the ghost again. She had almost forgotten Danila's existence.
Kayleigh hadn't. Before she met Mix, Danila would have said Kayleigh was the only friend she had in London, not that they had ever seen much of each other socially.
Danila hadn't a phone in her room in Oxford Gardens, so Kayleigh had made several attempts to call her on her mobile. It rang and rang but always in vain. Kayleigh wasn't worried yet. If anything had happened to Danila, like her being mugged or attacked, it would have been in the papers. She might be ill and not answering her mobile. Still, she wouldn't go on beingill for a fortnight, and now it was over two weeks since Danilahad failed to answer her phone when Shoshana called her.Kayleigh went around to the house in Oxford Gardens.
All the rooms and the two flats had entryphones. Abbas Reza was proud of organizing things properly. Besides, hedidn't want visitors waking him at all hours. Kayleigh rang and rang Danila's bell and when she got no answer, pressed the keyabove, which was written rather mysteriously:
He was polite because Kayleigh was a pretty blonde of twenty-two. 'I'm looking for my friend Danila.'
'Ah, yes, Ms. Kovic. Where is she? That's what I askmyself.'
'I ask myself too,' said Kayleigh. 'She doesn't answer my calls and now you say she's not here. Could we get into her room, d'you think?'
Mr. Reza liked that 'we.' He smiled reassuringly. 'We try,'he said.
They knocked on her door first. Clearly, no one was inside.The landlord inserted his key, turned it and they were in. As he did so, the thought came to him that she might be lying in there dead. Such things happened, in Tehran as well as London, unfortunately. What a shock for this tender and surely uncorrupted young girl! But no, there was nothing. Nothing but the kind of untidiness they all seemed to live in, discarded clothes everywhere, an empty teacup with very old tea dregs in it and, in the sink, under cold water scummed with floating grease, a plate, a knife, and a fork. The bed had been roughly made. Beside it, on top of a stack of magazines, was a copy of the Shoshana's Spa brochure, glossy turquoise and silver.
'She has done a moonshine flit,' said Abbas Reza, thinkingof his rent. 'I have seen it before, many many times. They leave all like this, always it is the same.'
'I didn't think she was that sort of person. I'm reallysurprised.'
'Ah, you are innocent, Miss-?'
'Call me Kayleigh.'
'You are innocent, Miss Kayleigh. At your young youth you have not seen the wicked world as I have. Your purity is unsullied.' Mr. Reza had left his wife behind in Iran years before and considered himself free in amative respects. 'There is nothingto be done. We cut our losses.'
'I haven't exactly got any losses,' Kayleigh said as they went down again. 'Unless you count losing a friend.'
'Of course. Naturally, I count.' Mr. Reza was thinking that he could sell Danila's clothes, though they wouldn't be worth much. But while in the room he had spotted a watch that looked like gold and a new CD player. 'Come, I make you a cup of coffee.'
'Oh, thanks. I will.'
An hour had passed before Kayleigh emerged once more into Oxford Gardens, quite high on the strongest and thickest coffee she had ever tasted and a date for the following evening with the man she was already calling Abbas. Danila had gone out of her head but she came back into it now and she found she couldn't altogether agree with her new friend that his tenan thad done a moonlight flit and simply vanished. She's amissing person, Kayleigh said to herself. The words sounded very serious to her. She's a missing person, she said again, and the police ought to know.
It was a cooler and duller morning than of late and Mix was once more sitting in his car at the top of Campden Hill Square. He should have been at Mrs. Plymdale's. She had called him on his mobile to tell him, but very nicely, that the new belt he had fixed to her treadmill had come off the previous evening. Would he come and put things to rights as soon as possible? Mix had said he'd be with her by eleven in the morning but instead he was outside Nerissa's house, desperate for a sight of her. It was as if she were his fix. He had made a call in Chelseaand another in West Kensington but a further shot of the drug was essential before he did any more work. Seeing her th eweek before, speaking to her and she speaking to him, hadn't improved things. It had made them worse. Before, he had wanted to get to know her for the fame being with her couldconfer on him. Now he was in love.
He waited and waited, reading the last chapter of
She passed him but he wasn't sure if she saw him or not. He followed her car along Notting Hill Gate and down Kensington Church Street. For once, there wasn't much traffic and he kept behind her. From Kensington High Street she went eastwardand he did too. At a red light she turned around and heknew she had spotted him. He waved and she gave a small halfsmile before driving on.
Before she went to the police, Kayleigh called Directory Enquiries and asked them for the number of a Mrs. Kovic living somewhere in Grimsby. They found just one woman of that name. Kayleigh phoned her and discovered she was English, a Yorkshirewoman who had married and divorced a man from Serbia. Danila's mother had been her sister-in-law. She gave, her a phone number and Kayleigh spoke to Danila's stepfather, who seemed scared of being involved.
'If anything's happened to her,' he said, 'I don't want to know. We didn't get on. It's nothing to do with me.'
'She'd no one else,' Kayleigh said. 'I've been very worried.'
'Yes? I don't know what you think I can do. You want to look at it from my point of view. I've lost my wife, I've got two young boys to bring up. Me and Danny didn't never have a good relationship, and when I saw her at the funeral I said I'dgo my way and she'd go hers-right?'
It had begun to seem to Kayleigh that no one had cared very much about Danila. Madam Shoshana had quickly forgotten her existence. This indifference frightened her. It was very unlike the feelings in her own family where her
