Ruth Rendell - Thirteen Steps Down

She finally did at half-past six. From his bedroom window Mix watched her go. He should have asked when she'd be back again, though asking might look strange. While he was in thehouse but of course not when he was out of it, he could bolt the front door top and bottom, and that was what he'd do while he took the body down. A procrastinator, he would never normally have said there was no time like the present but he said it now. First he went down and bolted the front door. That was nearly as good as having the key back. Going up and downt hese stairs must be doing him good even if it didn't feel like it. Remembering to take his keys with him, he pulled the body out of his flat and to the top of the stairs, kicking the door shut behind him.

If she had been any heavier he doubted that he could have done it. On the first-floor landing he encountered Otto, mewing at old Chawcer's bedroom door. Mix didn't know why he opened the door to let him in but he did. Perhaps it was just fort he sake of having a rest from lugging this heavy bag down.When he got to the bottom he thought he couldn't take it anotherstep but he braced himself to drag it along the passage toward the breakfast room and kitchen. He had almost reached the breakfast room door when he heard the grating sound of a key turning in the front door. He froze but his heart raced.The door was bolted, no one could get in, he didn't haveto worry.

The key turned again, the letterbox flapped open and Olive Fordyce's voice called out, "Mr. Cellini, Mr. Cellini, are youthere?"

He was almost afraid to breathe. She called him again, then,"Let me in! What are you doing, bolting the door? Mr. Cellini!"

Hours seemed to pass as she shouted, tried the door again,rang the bell, flapped the letterbox. It was no more than threeminutes as he discovered, looking at his watch once he heardher feet clacking down the path toward the gate. It had frightenedhim too much for him to think of digging now. He feltweak and almost faint. But he summoned up the strength todrag the plastic-wrapped bundle through the kitchen into theplace called the washhouse. The huge old copper dominatedone comer of the room, an excrescence of bricks and mortarabout four feet high with a wooden lid at the top. Lifting the lid disclosed an earthen ware tub, quite dry and evidently unused for years. He lifted the body, puffing and gasping, and placing his hand on his lower back felt a bulge in his pocket. It was the thong. Before closing the lid he dropped it inside. He'd retrieve it later and bury it with the body. No one, certainly notone of those nosy old women, would have reason to look inside the copper. Old Chawcer had a usable if antiquated washing machine, an advance, in spite of its shortcomings, on this antique.

Going into the garden felt restful, almost restorative. The heat of the day had given place to a mild still evening. The unmowngrass was the color of blond hair and dry as a hayfield. Inthe garden beyond the rear wall the Indian man was trying tocut his lawn with an old hand mower and making little impressionon it. The guinea fowl padded about and clucked.

There wasn't a bare piece of ground where digging would be easy. Every inch was overgrown with grass and weeds. Mix had never in his whole life dug into soil of any kind and this, what he could see of it between sturdy thrusting thistles and aggressive things he didn't know the name of, looked as heavy as concrete but a muddy yellow color. Inside the semiderelict shed he found rusty tools: a spade, a fork, a pick. Tomorrow he'd do it and that would be the end.

Tell yourself that, he whispered, tell yourself that by the time it's done all the worry will be over. He went into the houseand drew back the bolts, top and bottom. Old Chawcer made no noise when she was at home. Reading is a silent occupation. Yet the house seemed quieter without her. An oppressive silence filled its spaces. His shoes were dusty from his explorationof the garden. Unwilling to leave behind any evidence ofhis visit to a place where he shouldn't have been, he took them off and carried them up the stairs, thinking of the task awaiting him on the next day. Perhaps he should.have tried the soil to see how hard it was and how heavy. But what would be the useof that? He would have to do it, however difficult the job. Afinal visit should be paid to the bedroom where she had lain. Itwould cheer him up if the smell was fading ad everything in there returned to normal.

He reached the top and opened the door. "Whether the smell had gone he never knew, he was in there too short a time to tell. The ghost stood in the middle of the room under the gas lamp, gazing down at the floorboards below which had been Danila's resting place. Mix fled. He scrabbled at his frontdoor, his hand shaking and rattling the key against the woodwork. Gibbering sobs rose in his throat. He wanted somewhere safe to hide and there was nowhere if he couldn't get inside. The key shook in the lock, stuck, came out. He managed to push it in again and the door opened. He fell onto the floor and kicked the door shut behind him, his eyes squeezed shut and his hands drumming on the carpet. Shoshana had been right. After a moment or two he had recovered enough to feel for the cross in his pocket, but by then it was too late to use it.

"She was only a kid," said Frank McQuaid.

He had heard this phrase many times in detective series on television and always hoped for the chance to use it. The policeman interviewing him said, "Yes? And you saw her walking along Oxford Gardens with a man. Can you describe him?"

''Just ordinary," said Frank who might have been readingf rom a script. Sitting opposite the detective sergeant in a room behind the bar, he assumed a grave and thoughtful expression as if millions were watching him. "Nondescript-know what Imean? Brownish hair, brownish eyes, I reckon. It was dark."

"It's never dark in London."

Frank considered this statement. It had an originality about it that made him suspicious. He decided to ignore it. "Middleheight or a bit less-know what I mean?"

"I suppose you mean a bit below middle height, Mr.McQuaid."

"Thats what I said. She was just a kid." Frank looked mournfully at an invisible camera. "Came from some foreign place. Albania? Maybe she was an asylum seeker."

"Yes, thank you, Mr. McQuaid. You've been" the policeman lied, "very helpful."

That night there was a storm at sea. That was what it soundedlike, the waves pounding on the shore. Why the Westwayshould have been so much louder than usual Mix didn't know. Perhaps the wind was coming from a different direction. He should have asked that doctor for sleeping pills. As it was, hehad no sleep until about four when he fell into a troubled doze. The brightness of the morning did something to reduce his terror to simple fear when he awoke at eight. His first thought was that he must move out, get away from this haunted house, his second that moving was impossible while that body remained downstairs in the washhouse. What he had seen the evening before so concentrated his mind that hebarely reacted when he went downstairs and picked up from the doormat the letter from the blood-testing lab via the company'sdoctor and saw that his cholesterol level at 8.8 was alarmingly high. So what? He could get pills for it, statins or something. How would he dare go upstairs when he came home from work?

Mix knew he couldn't miss any more calls or leave one other message unanswered. Colette Gilbert-Bamber was lost, but he had no regrets about her. Reluctant as he was to go near the place, he drove over to Westbourne Grove and Shoshana's Spa. It was ten o'clock in the morning.

He rang the bell and an unknown voice answered in an affected drawl of the kind he called "Sloaney." "Mix Cellini torepair the equipment," he said.