Thirteen Steps Down

one insisted on staying, they might have a tussle on the doorstep. He must somehow stop that happening.

He'd have to call head office and tell them he was ill. The doctor would come some time in the afternoon, the woodwormman at any time. This evening he was supposed to begoing for a drink with Ed. Suppose he hadn't agreed to take oldChawcer her tea, he wouldn't have found out about the woodwormman-the outcome didn't bear thinking of. It drove him back into the room where Danila lay under the floorboards.T he smell in this extreme heat was worse, awful, like things rotting in the back of a fridge someone had turned off. He felt like breaking a window to let some of it out but he thought of the noise it would make and the fuss it would cause.

As soon as possible he must move the body. Once the woodwormman had been got rid of, the doctor and those women had gone, he would move it and drag it down all fifty-two of,those stairs. For the present, he couldn't stay in his own flat, it was too high up, too remote. He had to be sure he'd hear the doorbell when people came, preferably be stationed where he could see them coming. Halfway down the tiled flight he heard a key turn in the front door lock. Old Ma Fordyce or MaWinthrop. It was Fordyce, the one with the long red fingernails.He heard her slowly stumping up the stairs below himand they met outside old Chawcer's bedroom door.

'Good morning. How are you today?'

'Fine,' Mix lied.

'Did you feed the cat?'

'Me?'

'Yes, you,' said Olive Fordyce. 'I don't see anyone else around, do you? Please give the poor thing some food at once.' She went into old Chawcer's bedroom.

Talking to me as if I was her servant, thought Mix. Why shouldn't she feed the bloody cat? He was rather afraid of Otto, who gave him almost human stares of loathing, but he went into the kitchen and looked about him for cans of catfood.His mother had been as messy as Chawcer, the reason hewas such a fastidious housekeeper himself, so he had a good idea where to look. A tin decorated with a picture of a catwashing its paws came to light in the back of a cupboard full of sprouting potatoes and onions growing green shoots. He put half into a saucer and left it on the floor beside a large plasticbag stuffed full of moldy loaf ends and bread rolls.

It didn't really matter when the doctor came or if he came at all, except that while he was there Chawcer wouldn't be able to get out of bed and wander about. The important caller was thewoodworm man. Mix pushed a chair covered in fraying browncorduroy up close to the front window where he could sitand keep an eye on the street. He had left his mobile upstairs. Never mind, he could use her phone if he needed it. ThereOlive Fordyce found him half an hour later.

'I don't think Gwen's any better. That cough sounds like pleurisy. Imagine it, in this heat. What are you doing here?'

Mix made no reply. 'What's the name of the firm she's got coming to see to the woodworm?'

'Are you asking me? How should I know? Ask her.'

'She's forgotten.'

Olive sat down. For a ministering angel with stairs to climb, she was wearing highly unsuitable shoes, red, pointed, and with two-inch heels. Even without looking she could feel her ankles swelling. 'She wanted me to go up into that room and see what I thought. She says there's a funny smell.'

If he hadn't been sitting down, Mix thought he would havefallen. His head swam. He managed to say, 'The woodworm people will see to that.'

'Well, I must say I don't really want to go up there now. My poor feet feel bad enough as it is, it's always the same in hotI weather. Gwen really ought to have a stairlift.'

There was no answer to be made to this. She got up, having difficulty in balancing. 'You'll be here to let the doctor in,won't you?'

Mix wanted to shout something rude at her, but he remembered that, improbable as it was, this woman must be Nerissa's great-aunt. 'I suppose so,' he salid.

With scorn, he watched her totter down the street. If these old women knew what they looked like! It sounded as if neither she nor the other one would be back today, and that was to his advantage. He'd be in control of the house, who came and went. The woodworm man wouldn't force his way in, the doctor wouldn't want to go upstairs and find out where the smell was coming from. Hold on to that, he told himself, hold on to that. It's only a matter of waiting.

The call came for Nerissa as she was waiting for the taxi to arrive and take her to a shoot at the Dorchester. She had almost given up hope of hearing from him. If a man you've met (or remet) doesn't phone you within forty- eight hours, the chances are he won't phone at all. But the invitation he was extending to her was so unlike any she had ever previously received thatshe wondered for a moment if it was a joke.

'My parents and yours and your brother Andrew and his wife are coming to dinner on Saturday and I wondered if you'd like to join us.'

She couldn't ask him if he was serious. The temptation to say no was quite strong but warring with it was the lure of just seeing him, being with him, even if six others were there. She liked his parents and she and Andrew had always been close, he being three years the elder but still the nearest to her in age.

'Nerissa?' Darel said.

She spoke haltingly. 'Yes, thank you. I'd-I' d love to.'

He gave her the address, miles away in Docklands, somewhere near Old Crane Stairs. Wapping was the station on the East London Line.

'I expect I'll drive,' said Nerissa. 'Excuse me, I must go, my cab's come.'

What was the idea, she thought as she got into her taxi. Was he just very old-fashioned, or was he afraid of being alone with her? He wasn't gay, was he? Her heart seemed to beat very slowly but loudly. No, he couldn't be. Sheila Jones had talked about some girl friend he used to have. She considered. Perhap she just wanted to test her, see if the way he'd used to think about her was right or if she really had turned out to be different, as he'd said.

A client was with Shoshana, so Kayleigh talked to the police,though she had already told them all she knew. On that Friday Danila had worked at the spa as usual, Kayleigh herself had spoken to her on the phone at three-thirty, half an hour before she was due to take over from the Bosnian girl. She had seen her, exchanged a few words, and Danila had gone off home to Oxford Gardens. Of the other tenants in the house, one, a man on the second floor, had seen her come in at four-thirty orthereabouts. He had been in the hallway, sorting out his letters from the rest of the post. Danila had said hi to him and goneoff upstairs to her room on the first floor. Abbas Reza hadn'tseen her, though he believed he had heard her leave the house at about seven-fifty that evening. If she had a boyfriend he knew nothing about it and nor did Kayleigh. No one had seen her since.

If she were dead, the police believed, her body would have been found by this time. They considered suggestions of a secret lover. But why should she keep a lover hidden? She had nothing to be ashamed of or even discreet about. The only clue, and that tenuous, was that the tenant on the second floor, a man of Chinese origin called Tony Li, had heard Danila and a man talking to each other outside her room one eveninga bout three weeks before she disappeared. He hadn't seen theman, only heard his voice though not the words he spoke.

Waiting with nothing to do, no distractions, nothing to read or listen to or look at, is the slowest of all time- wasters. After two hours of it, Mix went upstairs and fetched Crimes of the Forties. Somehow he didn't want to read anything these days but books about Reggie, not magazines, not newspapers- definitely not newspapers. Coming back downstairs he heard old Chawcer coughing her lungs up. Otto was in the hallway, washing his face after eating the food Mix had put down. He behaved as ifno one else was there or as if this human male was so insignificant as not to count and certainly not to be considered as interrupting his cleaning routine.

There seemed nothing new in the book, nothing he hadn't,come across before. He knew all about Beresford Brown, an African Caribbean immigrant and new tenant of 10 RillingtonPlace, taking down a partition in the kitchen and finding twobodies pushed into an alcove. By then Reggie was far away, though not far enough to escape eventual arrest. All this was familiar stuff to Mix, but he read this author's version with interest just the same, anxious for details of the process of decaying corpses. It had been December and cold. Fifty years ago,b efore this global warming, even March would have been freezing, and as for August… Just his luck that today it was hotter