Ruth Rendell - Thirteen Steps Down

A cheerful film on television, a not-so-old Hollywood musical, a mug of hot chocolate with a drop of whiskey in it, and three Maryland cookies finished the job of reassurance. Still, once he started on his fitness regimen, all that sort of eating and drinking would have to stop. It was warm in the flat but not too hot, 27 degrees. That was the kind of temperature he liked. Warmth, sweet filling food, a thick soft mattress, lazing around, doing nothing-why were all the nice things bad for you?

The cat and its eyes were banished for the duration of the musical. Above his head, outside his front door, he could hear no sound, and when the television was off the silence was disturbed only by the sighing of traffic on the Westway. He feltbetter. He congratulated himself on his-what was the word?-resilience. But in bed, with the bedside lamp off, he thought ofthe cat and the door again and, although there could be nothingto see, kept his eyes shut against the darkness.

The next morning he woke up to awareness that he had been frightened the night before and for a moment he had to think why. But fear and the memory of fear began to fade when he saw the sunshine and heard children playing in the garden next door to the guinea fowl man. Otto must have opened the door himself and it must have shut behind him of its own volition. He got up, had a shower and, telling himself it was a good start to a workout program, set off for a walk. But before starting he went rather cautiously along the passage toward the door of the room the cat must have come out of. Sure enough, the doors down here had handles. He left, unreasonably relieved, more as if he'd just had a wonderful piece of news instead of only finding out what he already knew was true.

Now for a walk. Blow the cobwebs away in more senses than one, let unlight and energy into his life. There was a big Catholic church near the convent and, about to march on pastit, he stopped for a moment to watch the people going in to mass. A lot of people, more than he'd have thought likely. A kind of regret came into his mind and a wistfulness. Those people wouldn't have his problems, his doubts and fears. They had their religion, they had something to turn to, something or someone to bring them comfort. If they saw a ghost or heard footsteps and doors closing, they'd call out the name of their god or utter the appropriate curse. In stories, that usually worked. He had had religion when he was small and his grandmother was alive to take him to church. But that was long ago and it was all gone now. He'd not thought about it since and didn't believe in any of it. If he went in there and along with them asked someone up in the sky for help, he'd feel such a fool, he'd be embarrassed. Much the same went for asking their vicar-their priest? Mix couldn't imagine how he'd explain to the man or what the man would answer. It was beyond him.

On Monday and Tuesday he was busy at work and for once was relieved he had work to do. There was a new treadmill coming to a ground-floor flat in Bayswater that he had to set up and demonstrate. Half a dozen steps on that and he was breathless, in spite of his walks. Then all the calls for help with brokendown equipment to answer, e-mails, complaining or demanding. On the second evening he managed a visit to Shoshana's Spa and Health Club, where he told Danila he was making a survey and a servicing plan. This was to put her off the scent. Because he was really looking for Nerissa. He was on the point of asking Danila about her, which were her days for coming to the club, was she a regular visitor, that kind of thing, but he decided it would sound funny. It would sound as if his contracting to look after the club's machines was no more than a ploy to meet the famous model-as indeed it was. He handed over acopy of his contract and left.

On Wednesday evening he went to the Coronet cinema with Ed and Steph and afterward to the Sun in Splendour for a drink. When the men each had a gin and tonic in front of them and Steph a vodka and blackcurrant, he asked her what he'dbeen planning, in fact rehearsing, saying to her all day. The elaborate, hedging-of-bets, covert way of asking a simple questiongot lost and he came out with a few simple words.

"Do you believe in ghosts, Steph?"

She didn't laugh or scoff. "There's more things in heaven and earth… " she began but couldn't remember the rest. "I think, like, if there's been an awful thing like a murder in aplace, the dead person or the killer-well, they may come backand revisit the scene of the crime. It's their energy," she wenton vaguely, "it kind of hangs around and makes the person well, materialize ."

Just what he thought. He was going to ask her about the mysterious opening and shutting of that door, but then he rememberedthe cat had done it. "Would it have to be the scene of the crime? I mean, where someone died? Could it be a placewhere another crime was committed?"

"She's not an expert, Mix," Ed said. "She's not a medium."

Mix took no notice. "Suppose it was a murderer who'd tried to do another murder but it went wrong? Would he come back to the place where it went wrong?"

"He might," Steph said rather dubiously, and then, "Look, is this really happening? That funny old place you live in, is it haunted or what?"

"Funny old place" was right, but Mix didn't much like someone else calling it that. It seemed an insult to his beautiful flat. "I reckon I may have seen-something," he said carefully.

"What sort of something?" Ed was agog.

The more sensitive and perhaps intuitive Steph read the expression on Mix's face. "He doesn't want to talk about it, Ed. I mean, would you? You know what Ed said, Mix. You need help."

"Do I?"

"Look, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll let you have a loan of this and you can drive the thing away with it if it comes again." She unfastened the Gothic cross of purple and black stones thathung round her neck from a silver chain. "Here, you have it."

"Oh, no, I might lose it!"

"Not the end of the world if you do. It only cost me fifteen quid. And my mum says I shouldn't wear it, she says it's what's the word, Ed?"

"Blasphemous," said Ed.

"That's it, blasphemous. My mum knows a medium and she said it would work. If I needed it. She said any cross would work."

Mix studied the cross. He thought it ugly, the stones so obviously glass, the silver so evidently nickel. But it was a cross and as such might do the trick. If he threw it at Reggie or evenif he only held it up in front of him, the ghost might melt away like a spiral of smoke or a genie going back into a bottle.

Gwendolen had found a plastic bone in her bedroom. At first she couldn't think what it was doing there or where it had come from and then she remembered Olive's little dog playing with it. She offered it to Otto, who shrank away with an expression of contempt on his face, as if repelled by the smell of dog. The bone wrapped up in a sheet of newspaper and put inside the washing machine for safekeeping, she waited for Olive to phone and complain about her loss.

With the diminishing of her income, Gwendolen had become very careful with money and disliked spending it on unnecessary phone calls. If Olive wanted her animal's toy, let her phone or come around and fetch it. But the days went by and there was no call and no visit. Gwendolen used the washing machine only when she had accumulated a stack of dirty laundry. When this happened she nearly washed the bone and the newspaper, stuffing the clothes in before she noticed. There were a number of small Asian-run shops as well as the bigger grocers in Ladbroke Grove and Westbourne Grove where she did her shopping, carefully comparing prices-every single penny piece counted-before making up her mind. To reach any of them she had to pass the block of flats where Olive lived. Putting on her good black silk coat with the tiny covered buttons, now some thirty years old, and an all round straw hat because the day looked warm, she set off with the bone in the bottom of her shopping trolley. This was covered in Black Watch tartan and, being only nine years old, quite smart still.