Thirteen Steps Down (40 page)

ibuprofen, stripped off his clothes and lay on his bed, thinking, I killed a

woman who was already dead.

Although she had resolved on the night of Darel's party that she would

never go near a fortune-teller again, that it was obvious nonsense and

she should never have fallen for it, everyone said so, Nerissa was again

consulting Madam Shoshana. It would be the last time, she was

determined on that, but she hadto have the soothsayer's opinion on

whether or not she had achance with him. Before she went out she tidied

her bedroom, putting used tissues and scraps of cotton wool into the

wastebasket, picking up discarded garments and dropping them intothe

linen bin. She even pulled back the quilt to air sheet and mattress before

Lynette came to make the bed. Downstairs everywhere was already tidy.

It was a dreadful chore and it wore her out but as she took dirty glasses

into the kitchen, she thought how approving Darel would be when at last

he camehere, that he'd think how suited she was to be his girlfriend and

even what a wonderful wife she'd make.

Johnny Cash and the girl who loved the boy next door who worked at

the candy store had been put away. The CD, currently on the player was

Dvorak. Two new books from Hatchard's, one on European politics in the

post-Cold War period and the other called The Case Against the Occult,

lay on the coffee table, from which everything else had been cleared

away. If only he would come and see the civilized, even intellectual,milieu

in which she lived!

Fear of again meeting Mix Cellini on the stairs at the spa troubled her

during her drive to Westbourne Grove. She hadput on baggy jeans and a

gray sweatshirt because she knewthese clothes did nothing to flatter her,

and she hadn't made upher face. Still, it hadn't escaped her notice that

makeup does very little for a black woman who is already beautiful. Her

dad even said--of course he would--that she looked better without it. She

just had to hope it wouldn't be Cellini's day for doing whatever he did to

the spa's machines. If she had to see him she wanted it to be in

Campden Hill Square, where she'd at least have a reason for phoning

Darel. In the event she got up those stairs without an encounter of any

kind. She knocked on the door and the unprecedented happened.

Shoshana asked her to wait one minute. Take a seat and wait just a

minute. She noticed from her watch that she was two minutes early.

Learning to be punctual was also part ofthe Darel-pleasing drive. Unless

she had sat on the floor there was nothing on that tiny landing to sit on,

so Nerissa stood, thinking about Darel Jones and her new Face of 2004

job and a photo shoot for Vogue and Darel Jones and the books

shemeant to read to please him. Then Madam Shoshana called,"Come,"

in her low, thrilling voice.

She had asked Nerissa to wait because the girl was early for once, and

when she knocked on the door Shoshana had been busy with Hecate's

spine-crippling spell. She had renewed it once and now decided it was

time to call a halt. Not because she had any pity for Mix Cellini, but due

to her own frugality.The spell could be re-used four times; she had only

done the business twice and who knew when someone else would come

along that Shoshana would think desereved a bad back? Afterall, she

was going to have to pay for it. Just because no account had yet come in

from Hecate, this didn't mean the witch wasn't going to charge her.

Hecate was like those very upmarket doctorsor dentists who send in their

accounts and give you a nastyshock months after their treatment has

ended and you've forgotten all about it.

The table was still littered with the paraphernalia requiredby the spell.

Not exactly eye of newt and toe of frog but severalvessels of distilled

water, a phial of sulphuric acid, and one ofpregnant woman's urinesometimes difficult to get, that one, but Kayleigh, who was living with

Abbas Reza and expecting his child, had happily produced it-a jar of

bicarbonate of sodaa nd a bottle of green ink. Not that she was going to

use any of it, he had had his two weeks of pain, but she had to throw the

urine away, restore the bicarb to the cupboard where it belonged,and put

the sulphuric acid back in its ribbed green bottle.All this must be put

away before Nerissa came in and the gemstones were laid out instead.

Nerissa had always been in awe of Madam Shoshana. She was more

than a little afraid of her and she disliked the wizard and the owl, the dirt

(though not the untidiness) repelled her, and Shoshana herself was

possessed of an ugliness that made her shrink. Today the soothsayer

had got herself up in a feather-trimmed robe, grayish and bluish, and

she wore a crestof black feathers on her head so that, to Nerissa, she

looked like some evil bird of prey. Her clawlike hands played

mysteriously above the ring of stones.

"When we've done that," Nerissa said tentatively, putting her hands

inside the circle, "may I ask you something?"

"Why not ask the stones? Which ones do you feel drawing toward your

fingers?"

Knowing very well that whichever she said she felt moving toward her,

Shoshana would say she had picked the wrong ones, Nerissa said the

first colors that came into her head.

"The yellow one and the mauve one."

"Really? I don't believe you are concentrating. Plainly, it'sthe blood-red

carnelian and the pallid rose quartz that aredrawn to you today. Make

your request to the carnelian."

"All right." The guests at Darel's party might have been gratified if they

could have seen what a fool Nerissa thought she was, asking a piece of

rock its opinion. But, blushing, she asked it. "There's a man," she began

and faltered. She clearedher throat. "There's a man that I want to know, I

want to getsome idea if he'll--well, if he'll ever love me."

Not surprisingly, the dark red crystal remained silent. Nerissa, feeling

better now the words were out, almost giggled at the idea of its finding a

voice. I wouldn't feel like laughing if it did though, she thought.

Shoshana appointed herself its interpreter and Nerissa felt very unlike

laughing at what she said.

"You will have to summon him. Call him and he will come. And then,

when he comes, all will depend on how you speak to him. What you say

then will determine your fate--for the restof your life." Shoshana looked

up and met Nerissa's eyes.

"That is all. The carnelian has spoken."

The fifty pounds paid, for Madam Shoshana had put up her fee, Nerissa

went back down the stairs, half afraid of encountering Mix Cellini. The

only person she saw, waiting downstairs,the stairs being too narrow for

two people to pass, was a woman and Madam Shoshana's next client.

The backache was still there when Mix woke up, but it had become

subdued and dull, and the scratches on his ankle wer ehealing. He had

slept well but for one bad dream. He showered, washed his hair under

the shower, and dressed carefully, feeling much better, though unable to

forget the dream. It had concerned his stepfather and his, Mix's, journey

up to Norfolkto find Javy and kill him. This was something he had often

fantasizedabout while still a child and hadn’t thought of for years.Javy

had walked out on Mix's mother when Mix was fourteen and gone to live

with another woman in King's Lynn or near it.But the desire to kill him

in a painful way and watch him die in agony came back in the dream

and when wide awake, as he now was, Mix saw nothing irrational or

impractical in it. After all, he had killed two people (or thought he had)

and got awaywith it, so there was no reason why he shouldn't kill a third.

Christie would have thought nothing of it, it would have been all in the

day's work to him. javy had done more to deserve being his victim than

either of those women, the young or the old.

There was little point in his going to Campden Hill Square before ten.

The morning was fine, the sky clear and blue, and breakfast television

told him it was going to be a warm and sunny day with the slight chance

of a shower. The walk ahea'd of him seemed a pleasant prospect and

what came at the end of it ... He had a plan for getting into her house

and to this endarmed himself with an orange cardboard folder left over

fromhis job with the firm, a couple of election pamphlets he'd keptfor

some forgotten reason, and two ballpoint pens. At twenty past nine he

was ready to leave when he heard the front dooropen and close and

someone enter the hallway below.

Of course it was Ma Winthrop. It was bound to be oneof them. They

were like buses, another would be along in a minute. He should have got

that key from them, by force if necessary. Imagine the fuss there'd have

been as a result! Atfirst he felt at her arrival that tautening of the

muscles which isone of the signs of fear, and then he reminded himself

thathe had nothing to be afraid of. Old Chawcer was as hidden

andinvisible as if she really was in Cambridge; more securely hidden, for

no one could run her to earth where she was. So he said, "Morning," to

Ma Winthrop as he passed her in thehallway, and "Lovely day," as he

opened the front door. MaFordyce was turning in at the gate.

"Another meeting of the Women's Institute?" said Mix rudely. "Must be

great to have so much time on your hands."

Olive walked past him with her nose in the air.

She and Queenie spent a while indignantly discussing his behaviorand

tearing his character to bits. Then, with two milky coffees with grated

chocolate on top, in cups that Queenie had brought with her, and a

Danish pastry each, they sat by the open French windows in the drawing

room, holding a council as to what should be done about Gwendolen.

Opening thosewindows had not been easy. The bolts were stuck until

Olive oiled them. Finally she managed to wrench the two glass doors

apart. About fifty dead spiders and their accumulated webs of aquarter of

a century fell down onto the floor and somethingthat looked like a very

old and long-deserted swallow's nestcollapsed on the steps, scattering

mud and sticks and shatteredeggshells everywhere.

"How anyone can live like this!" exclaimed Olive, not forthe first time.

Queenie gave an exaggerated shudder. "It's quite awful. But you know,

dear, we have to think what we're going to do about Gwen. If that man is

to be believed she went to catch a train forCambridge on Monday

morning, two days ago. Suppose he made Cambridge and the train up?

Suppose she was just going for a little walk and while she was out she

collapsed and nows he's in hospital somewhere? Who would know? Who

would they tell?"

"Yes,but why would he?"

"Who knows what goes on in the mind of a man like that? He might be

planning to get her out of this house so he can take it over. I've heard of

unscrupulous tenants doing that to old people who are their landlords

and he's exactly the type."

The more practical Olive said they could try phoning hospitals.

"Yes,dear, but which hospitals? There must be hundreds inLondon.

Well, dozens. Where do we start?"

"Around here. If she went for a little walk, like you saidt hough it seems

very unlike Gwen to me--she wouldn't have got far before she collapsed.

So it's going to be St. Charles around the corner here or St. Mary's

Paddington, isn't it? I'll phone St. Charles the minute I've finished my

coffee. Oh,Queenie, look what I've found down the side of this chair! It's

that thong thing poor Gwen went on and on about."

"How very peculiar. I'm going to shut those doors, dear, or more flies

will come in."

Before leaving home, he had fortified himself with two strongv odkas. No

tonic, just a couple of ice cubes. Not Dutch but Russian courage. He set

off to walk along Oxford Gardens toward Ladbroke Grove. His backache

had gone but for the occasional faint twinge to remind of what had been,

and he feltc harged with confidence. Passing the house where Danila had

lived, he told himself how silly he'd been to worry about her.Nothing had

come of it. Most of the things you have worried about have never

happened. He had read that somewhere andi t was true.

Above his head, Kayleigh was at one of the windows of the first-floor flat

she now shared with Abbas Reza, looking down into the street. Trees,

still in full leaf, grew on both sides alongit, but outside this house one

had been cut down and removedso it was possible to get a clear view.

They were going out for lunch, which they planned to have in a pub on

the river. Kayleigh wasn't due for work at the spa before four, and she

wass tudying the pavements for evidence of raindrops. She

neverbothered with macs or umbrellas herself but Abbas, being older,

took a serious view of these things.

She called to him, "I don't know what those splashes on the window

was, Abby, but it wasn't rain. Come and see."

Abbas came over, put his arm around her waist, and lookeddown. A

man in the kind of clothes called "smart casual" waswalking past in the