Ruth Rendell - Thirteen Steps Down

Two policemen called on Mr. Reza and then at Shoshana's Spa. When they had been told at both places that Danila Kovic had left her work and her rented room without notice, without a word to employer or landlord, they began to take things seriously.Their press release was too late for the Evening Standard but in time for the BBC Early Evening News and the next day's papers, where it nearly, but not quite, took precedence over the "hottest day since records began" story.

Nerissa heard it while baby-sitting for her brother but, in the absence of a photograph, failed to identify her as the girls he'd seen on the stairs. Mix also saw the news. He thought he'd been quite worried enough, but now he understood he had been living in a fool's paradise, continuing to believe that Danila's disappearance would never be noticed. He had had another bad day, beginning with his failure to see Nerissa, then a terrible row with Colette Gilbert-Bamber, who threatened to report his lapses to the firm if there was ever another. Leaving her house without any lunch or even a glass of wine, he had had to go straight to the doctor.

Ever since he had known the appointment was to be madehe had taken it for granted he was perfectly well, a young, fithealthy man. The doctor disagreed. He insisted on taking ablood sample to be checked for cholesterol. That was on accountof Mix's blood pressure, which ought to have been somethinglike 130 over 40 and instead was an alarming 170 over 60.

"Smoke, do you?"

"No, I don't," said Mix virtuously.

"Drink?"

"Not much. Maybe four or five units a week."

That would have been little more than a single bottle of wine. The doctor looked at him suspiciously. Exercise, a fat freediet, tablets were prescribed and no salt.

"Come back and see me in two weeks' time-you don't want to be a diabetic by the time you're forty, do you?"

Blood pressure could be raised by anxiety, Mix had read somewhere. Well, he'd had plenty of anxiety recently. The doctor's admonitions had brought on a headache and a queasyfeeling. He'd call head office, tell them he wasn't well and gohome. Maybe he'd got old Chawcer's flu. The sun was dazzlinglybright today, for once lighting up this gloomy house, showing up the dust that lay everywhere and the cobwebs dangling from defunct hanging lamps and bem:imed moldings on the ceilings. Someone had opened the downstairs windows and all the curtains were drawn back. He opened a door he had never touched before and found himself looking into a vast room with a dining table down the middle, twelve chairs arranged around it and oil paintings on the walls of dead deer and rabbits, ugly old women in crinolines and cows in fields.

On the first landing he met a woman he hadn't seen before, and he immediately thought, she must be the one Reggie hadn't managed to destroy, old Chawcer's daughter. But she was too old for that and she introduced herself as Queenie Winthrop, smiling and for some reason fluttering her eyelashes.

"Poor darling Gwendolen is very poorly indeed, Mr. Cellini. She has a temperature of over a hundred degrees. And that doctor won't come until tomorrow afternoon. I call it a.disgrace."

Mix, who had grown up measuring degrees in Celsius, thought she had made a mistake. "What could you expect at her age? "Shame," he said.

"A shame is just what it is. These doctors should be ashamed.

Now, if you can just make her a cup of tea in the morning, I or Mrs. Fordyce will be in by eight-thirty. We have a key."

"Me?" said Mix feebly.

"That's right. If you'll be so kind. I don't know who will let that wretched doctor in but one of us will manage it somehow."

"Well, I can't," said Mix, escaping upstairs, and for once forgetting to look out for Reggie

He sniffed. It seemed to him that he could smell it out here.That might be in his head too. How did you know which things were real and which your imagination? Still, he wouldn't go in there this evening. He'd think, make a plan. It was just after eight when Ed phoned. Mix wished he hadn't answered it because Ed would only start again on how he'd let him down. But instead he was asking for bygones to be bygones. He shouldn't have blown his top like that. His excuse was that he wasn't really over his flu and still feeling under the weather.

"There's a lot of it about," Mix said, thinking of oldChawcer.

"Yeah, and it's not only that. Me and Steph are having problems getting a mortgage."

He went on and on about this flat they were hoping to buy,calculating their joint incomes, Steph's chances of promotion,and what would happen if she fell pregnant.

"You'll have to see she doesn't." Mix had always found it difficult, practically impossible, to apologize. Admitting he waswrong seemed to him the ultimate humiliation. He couldn'tsay he was sorry but he had to say something. "Feel like going for a drink?" he hazarded. "Maybe tonight?"

"Yeah, well, I can't tonight. Sun in Splendour at eight tomorrow? And a word to the wise, Mix, eh? They're getting very hot under the collar about you at head office. I just thought I'd give you a hint."

Mix nearly forgot about old Chawcer's tea in the morning. He hardly ever drank the stuff himself, but he kept a packet of teabags next to the coffee jar and when he saw it he remembered. He'd have to take the sugar down too in case she took it.

She didn't. That was the first thing she said to him after he knocked and went in. "You need not have brought that, Mr.Cellini. I don't take sugar." Nothing about how kind of him. No "Good morning." Her voice was weak and she kept coughing. As she struggled to sit up he could see great wet patches onher nightdress where she had sweated. "What day is it?"

Impatiently, he told her.

"Then it must be tomorrow that the woodworm people will be here. They're coming to see about the woodworm in the room next to your flat. I can't remember what their name is but it doesn't matter." Coughing shook her. "Oh, dear, I can hardly speak. One of my friends will let them in. I expect they'll takeup the floorboards, find out what that ghastly smell is… "

Old clothes lay all over the bedroom. Surely she could have cleared up the ashes in the fireplace. She hadn't always been ill. The air felt unbreathable and enormously, palpably, hot. Flies were everywhere, swarming in the dusty shaft of sunlight.

"Shall I open a window?"

She wasn't too ill to round on him. "Please don't unless you want me to freeze to death. Just leave it." Cough, cough,cough…

Nerissa recognized the girl from the photograph in the paper, Kayleigh cried when she saw it, and Abbas Reza tried tocomfort her by saying Danila would surely turn up safe and sound. Shoshana never read newspapers. The barmaid in the Kensington Park Hotel might have recognized her as Mix'scompanion, but she didn't see the photograph. She had gone to Spain to work in a seafront bar on the Costa Blanca. Mix had no need to see it. It was enough for him to know that photographor another would be there. The newspaper had got it from one of Danila's brothers, who handed it over while his stepfather was out.

Mix sat downstairs in the drawing room, studying the Yellow Pages, though he should have been at work an hour before.There were so many messages on his mobile that he had erased the lot without looking at them. Ideally, he should phone all these woodworm specialists and check which one of them was coming, but there were dozens, if not hundreds. He'd made atentative attempt at two of them and had had to hold on solong, pressing this key and that, listening to piped music, thathe gave up. The only thing to do was take a day off, stay hereI ad let the man in himself. Or, rather, not let him in, tell himI his services weren't needed. If the Fordyce woman or the other one insisted on staying, they might have a tussle on the doorstep. He must somehow stop that happening.