Thirteen Steps Down (10 page)

which last he was sent to prison for stealing postal orders. Imprisoned

again for stealing a carfrom a Roman Catholic priest who had befriended

him, he nevertheless volunteered for the Emergency Reserve of the London

Police Force and was acceptedin the year he and his wife came to

Rillington Place, Notting Hill, west London.

Apparently the police made no inquiries about his past, or if they did their

findings were not serious enough to disqualify him, and in 1939 he

became a full-time Special Constable. Four years later, while still a

policeman, he met the girl who was to be his first murder victim ...

Reluctantly, Mix raised his eyes and slipped a marker in between the

pages. Having told Danila at Shoshana's Spa and Health Club that he

would be arriving at ten to service five machines, he had better go. The

book, by a certain Charles Q.Dudley, was the fourth or fifth he had read

on the Rillington Place murderer and the facts he had just absorbed were

already known to him. This he had expected. What he was looking for

and expected to find, perhaps halfway through the book, was some hint

or suggestion that Christie sometimes visited his prospective victims'

homes. Had he noticed anything of this sort when he read the book for

the first time? He couldn't remember.

Mix was taking the day off in lieu of working on a previous Sunday. It

was useless trying to do the Shoshana job before or after work because

these were the least likely times for Nerissa to be there. Models get up

very late in the mornings, Mix had read somewhere, while their evenings

are occupied with film premieres, clubs, public appearances, and parties

at manorhouses in the Home Counties. When the happy time came, he

fantasized, he and she would lie in together, maybe until midday or later.

A maid would bring breakfast, but not before eleven, and when it came it

would be what he had ordered, buck's fizz, caviar on toast, and eggs

benedict.

He returned to reality and recognized that parking was going to be a

problem. He knew that before he got there. Eventually he found a meter

and paid for two hours, but it wasa long way from the health club. He

told himself that all this walking must be improving his figure. Arriving

on the dot often, he turned his eyes away from the chrome number

thirteenand got quickly into the lift. Glancing round the girls and acouple

of young men working out, he saw at once that Nerissa wasn't among

them. Probably it was a bit early for her. His fussy eye appraised Danila

and he decided that though skinny and scared, she wasn't so bad.

Knowing her better might helphim in his quest.

"Madam Shoshana said to ask you not to fiddle about with the

machines the clients are using. I'm only telling you what she said."

"You can trust me," he said. "I know what I'm doing."

"And she says not to use any oil or stuff like that because if it gets on

the clients' gear they're going to go ballistic. It's what she said, not me."

"I only use invisible fat-free oil," Mix lied.

He had brought three new belts with him and spanners for adjusting

the parts. Shoshana's hadn't been open very long, so servicing wasn't

necessary, but he whiled away the time taking ellipticals apart and

checking handlebar positions on stationarybikes. Whatever came out of

it, he was really going to squeeze Madam Shoshana for putting him

through this tedious business. Pity Danila had been told to keep an eye

on him or he'd settle down in a corner and read a bit more of Christie's

Victims.

Danila was very thin. So was Nerissa but hers was a different kind of

thinness. You couldn't see her bones sticking out the way Danila's did.

And Danila's face was like a bird's with a beaky nose and not much chin.

Still, she had great legs and more tangled-up dark hair than Mix could

ever remember seeing on a woman's head. He had almost given up

looking for Nerissa that day. It was eleven-fifteen and if he wasn't going

to get clamped or towed away or whatever they did around here, he had

to be back at the car by ten to twelve.

Danila was sitting behind her counter, drinking a cup of black coffee.

"Would there be another one of those going?"

"There might be, but don't say a word, will you?" She disappeared into

some inner recesses of the club and came backwith coffee, a milk jug,

and sweetener in little tubular packs." Here you are. Shoshana'd kill me

if she knew. We're not supposed to give coffee to anyone but staff."

"You're a star," said Mix and got a smile. No time like the present, he

thought, and keeping his eye on the door in case Nerissa did just happen

to come in at eleven-forty, said, "You feel like having a drink? Say

Wednesday or Thursday if you want."

She was surprised. He would have liked her better if she'd taken such

invitations for granted and as her due. "I don't mind," she said, and then,

spoiling it, "Are you sure?"

"I'll pick you up then. Where d'you live?"

“Oxford Gardens." She gave him the number.

"Not far from me," he said. "We'll go to KPH," he said,forgetting she

wouldn't know what those initials meant. "Eight suit you?"

No point, he thought, in spending the whole evening with her. Suppose

Nerissa was one of those clients, the ones she'd talked about last time he

was here, who only came to the club four times and then lost interest. He

mustn't be impatient because she hadn't come today, she wouldn't come

every day, no matter how keen she was on fitness. Next week he'd do his

servicing on a Wednesday instead of a Tuesday. And maybe he'd psych

himself up to walk here. It couldn't be more than a mile.

Olive had forgotten about leaving the bone behind in Gwendolen's

house, had hunted for it all round the block's communal gardens and

even grubbed about in various bins outsideshops. Kylie, the little white

dog, had been frantic. So calling on Gwendolen was not to retrieve the

bone, but to pour out her heart to a sympathetic ear.

Gwendolen's was never that. It was with some amusement that she

listened to her friend's woes. The bone had been sent to Kylie by an

American friend who shared Olive's love of poodles.Kylie had adored it

from the first. Now it was lost and Olive had no idea what to do, it being

impossible to buy such a toy here. Nor would she dare write to her friend

in Baltimore, confessing her carelessness and asking for a replacement.

Gwendolen laughed. "Your troubles are over. It's here."

"Kylie's bone?"

"You left it here. I did call to give it to you but of course you were out."

If Olive disliked that "of course" she gave no sign of it. Gwendolen

hunted about for the bone in her dirty cluttered kitchen, finding it at last

on top of a heap of newspapers dating from the professor's time and

under a twenty-five-year-oldpack of vacuum cleaner bags.

"You have made a little dog very happy, Gwen."

"That's a relief."

Gwendolen's sarcasm wasn't lost on Olive, but she was too happy at the

recovery of the bone to take much notice. She went off cheerfully in the

direction of Ridgemount Mansions. Gwendolen, who preferred her own

company to that of her friends, was glad to see the back of her. In the

past few dayssince she had decided, daringly, to try and find where

Stephen Reeves now was, she had considered asking her tenant for help.

He possessed a computer. She had seen him carrying it one day when

they had met by chance in the hall.

"You'll think I'm asking for trouble carrying this about with me," he had

said, "but I won't leave it on one of the seats. It'll go in the boot."

Gwendolen hadn't thought anything like that as she had no idea what

he was talking about. "What is it?"

He looked at her warily, the way the unthinking look at the mentally

disturbed. "It's a PC, isn't it?" Her blank look was maintained. "A

computer, isn't it?" he said desperately.

"Really?" She shrugged her thin old shoulders. "Then you'd better go

and do whatever you have to do with it."

The information she needed--was it somehow automatically shut up in

that thing in the small flat case? Would all of,them provide it? Or did you

have to have a special kind of machine attached to it? And where was the

screen she'd seen on them in shops? She was well aware that Mr. Cellini

had found her ignorance ridiculous and she was anxious not to make a

fool of herself again. Not that there was anything intrinsically foolish in

someone who had read the whole of Gibbon and the complete works of

Ruskin not knowing how these modern inventions worked. Just the

same, she preferred not to ask him. She preferred not asking Olive too. If

she went round to Golborne Mansions she would have to witness Kylie's

ecstasy, hear the tale of the lost bone all over again, and maybe--something she always, unreasonably, dreaded--that paragon of a niece

would be there or her mother.

It would do no harm to visit one of those Internet restaurants--no,

cafes. She was clever, she knew that. Stephen Reeveshad called her an

intellectual and even Papa had several timestold her she had a good

brain for a woman. Surely therefore she could master the handling of one

of those computers andget it to disgorge its information. She put on her

hat, reflectingon the one Olive had been wearing-bright red grosgrain

tomatch her nails-then the black silk coat and black net gloves because

it was hot. Papa had given them to her for her fiftysecond birthday and it

was wonderful how they had lasted. No need for the trolley today.

It was bright and sunny. All the days this summer were hot and the

temperature was going up. Several young men and girls about the streets

were wearing short-sleeved T-shirts and sandals. One girl had a bikini

top on and a boy appeared to have left his shirt somewhere, for he was

wearing only a vest. Gwendolen shook her head, wondering what her

mother would have said if she had tried going outdoors in her brassiere.

Nerissa had been to the gym, had an all-over body massage and a facial,

and now, once more wearing the dark glasses she hadput on to walk

here and not be recognized, she was going upstairs to Madam Shoshana.

The stairs were steep and narrow. Covered in brown linoleum of a

vintage before Nerissa's mother was born, they had metal rims to the

treads, which, coming away in places, made tripping likely and the risk

of a nasty accident great. She trodcarefully. A model friend of hers had

fractured her tibia on death-trap stairs and when the break had mended

one anklewas noticeably thicker than the other. The stairs smelled nasty,

like stale cabbage and cheap burgers, in spite of the little window

halfway up being wide open. A very dirty lace curtain blewout and

flapped against Nerissa's face. She was used to it. She came here once a

week to have her future foretold.

A notice on the sagging brown door said: Madam Shoshana,Soothsayer.

Please knock, and below this in straggly ballpoint, (Even if you have

appointment). Nerissa knocked. A low, thrilling voice called out, "Come."

The room was the most crowded and cluttered and stuffed with bric-abrac that Nerissa ever went in. It was also almost too hot even for her

and she liked heat. Strange things not only filled the shelves and covered

the surfaces but sprouted from the floor and hung from the ceiling.

Artificial plants in pots, mostly cypress trees but lilies too and passion

flowers, stoodabout like stalagmites while stalactitic rods and chimes

and mobiles and crystal pendants hung from the ceiling. The strangest

thing of all was Madam Shoshana herself, a skinny old woman enveloped

in layers of robes in many shades, but all of them the colors of a stormy

sky, indigo and charcoal, dovegray and slate gray, grubby white and

violet, angry blue and silver. Her waist-length yellowish white hair hung

in straggly locks over her shoulders and down her back, entangling in

places with the silver chains and crystal strings she wore around her

neck. Though she had developed a range of cosmetics that she sold on

the premises at inflated prices, she never wore make up herself and

looked as if she didn't wash her face much. Nerissa thought her nails

looked like birds' talons, not human at all.

The velvet curtains were drawn and, for some reason known only to

Madam Shoshana, pinned together in several places with old-fashioned

brooches of Celtic design. A number of stuffed birds, dominated by a

large white owl, were arranged to stare at the supplicant as she or he

entered the room, but perhaps its most disquieting feature was the figure

of a man in Merlin-like (or Gandalf-like) gray robes, holding inexplicably

a staff of Aesculapius. This waxwork stood behind Madam Shoshana as

she sat at her wide marble table as if advising her on ancient lore,

witchcraft, necromancy, astrological prognostication, or whatever she

might require. A single low-wattagetable lamp, vaguely art nouveau in

design, all pewter and dullstained glass, gave the only light.

On the marble table was arranged a ring of crystals, rose quartz,