Ruth Rendell - Thirteen Steps Down

"What are you doing out there?"

"I was in the hallway," Mix said, "and I heard a noise."

"What noise?" She was very sharp with him.

"I don't know. That's why I went to see."

The look she gave him was suspicious and searching.

"Where's the cat?"

"How should I know? I haven't seen him for days."

The dog began sniffing the hems of his jeans. "He'll runaway if you don't feed him and find someone who will. Don't do that, Kylie, there's a good girl. You'll be pleased," she said, pausing, "to hear Gwen will be home in a day or two."

She gave him a broad malicious smile. It was as if she knew what was going on in his head. He held on to the edge of the newly cleaned counter, afraid he might fall. All ideas of leaving the body where it was vanished and to get it out of the house, out of any possible sighting, became imperative.

"Naturally, I've been into the hospital to see her, as I always do every morning, and that's what she told me. The sister confirmed it. Tomorrow, she said." She picked up the dog and cuddled it like a child with a toy. "If not it'll be the day after. They don't keep patients in like they used to. Well, nothing's like it, used to be, is it?"

He said nothing. He was aware of what she would have expectedhim to say-if he were a "nice young man" that is. "It'll be good to have her back," for instance, or, "She'll be pleased to have her kitchen all neat and tidy." He couldn't find the words, any words.

"I'm going out again now to do a bit of shopping for her. She'll need a good deal of looking after." She fluttered her freehand and he saw her nails were orchid pink today, like a young girl, pointed and glossy and sharp. With no inhibitions about looking someone straight in the eye and holding the gaze, she fixed him with a penetrating gaze, at the same time craning her neck forward and holding her head slightly on one side. "You'll have to pull your socks up, make her cups of tea, and fetch her bits and pieces. That won't do you any harm. She won't be able to get about much yet."

"When are you coming back?" he said.

"What, today? I don't know. When I've done the shopping. Does it bother you?"

"Give me the list and I'll do the shopping," he said.

It was evidently the best thing he could have said. For the first time since they had encountered each other in the kitchen.doorway, she spoke pleasantly to him. "That's very good ofyou. I won't say no. It'll save my legs. I'll give you some money."

She began rummaging in her bag, found the list, and handed itto him.

"You can give me the money after I've done it," he said, mollifying her further.

"It'll have to be a couple of days, then. I'm not coming inagain till then if! can help it. Queenie's taking over, she'll be intomorrow, so I'll pass the key on to her. Now say good-bye to Kylie."

The hell he would. Hadn't he done enough for her, offering to do the shopping? The two afternoon calls he was due to make, the expenses form to fill in, the meeting with Jack Fleisch, the other engineers, and the reps went out of his head. Or, rather, were dismissed as of no importance compared with the urgency of hiding that body, not temporarily, not as an interim move, but forever.

He need not go upstairs, not now, not till later. He'd have a drink in a pub or bar somewhere so that he could face going up there, have the strength to face what might be at the top.

A principle of Shoshana's was: never bother the police unless they bother you. She sat up in the soothsaying room above the spa, a client due in ten minutes, thinking about Danila Kovic, not with any anxiety as to her whereabouts nor fear that she might be dead, not with any sympathy for her friends or relations who could be missing her, not with any regrets that she no longer worked at the spa now that she had beautiful efficient Julia, but entirely from the point of mischief-making.

The idea had never crossed her mind that Mix Cellini might have made away with Danila. Why should he? As far as Shoshana knew, the two had been acquainted for perhaps two or three weeks and might never have gone out together. But a deep resentment of Mix was curdling and fermenting and bubbling inside her. The contract he had signed meant nothing to him; once Danila had disappeared he never came near the place. As for repairing equipment, he had told her he'd ordered those parts for the bicycles but she'd be a fool to believe him. He was putting her through the time-consuming process of finding new engineers, as if she hadn't had enough difficulties getting a replacement for Danila.

Until that morning, she had believed that her hope of retaliation lay in the number she had noted down when he called her and she found he wasn't on his mobile. She more than suspected that he worked for a company that had a rule forbidding operatives to engage in outside work. A call to a chief executive, or managing director, whatever you liked to call it, might welll ose him his job. This was the revenge she was saving up unless his behavior changed radically. But might not a fitter retribution be to tell the police he was Danila's elusive boyfriend?

She didn't want them coming to the spa. There were things she would prefer them not to see-that security arrangements were far from adequate, that there was no fire escape from anyof the upper floors, and no safety measures were in place. But she could go to them. Perhaps there was no great hurry. Do nothing on impulse, was another of her rules. Think it through. She began taking the pieces of quartz and lapis and jade fromtheir velvet bag and examining the cards to make sure they were suitably arranged.

The client, a new one, very young and obviously overawed by the room, its ambience, and by Madam Shoshana herself, tapped on the dor and came in rather fearfully. She crept to the chair that was waiting for her and lifted her eyes to thesoothsayer's half-veiled face.

"Place your hands on the mandala within the stones, breathedeeply and I will begin," said Shoshana in the mystical and occult voice she kept for forecasting the future.

Half a liter of milk, 200 grams of butter, cheese, sliced bread, alamb chop and a chicken breast, frozen peas, a carton of soup,and a great deal more. Mix put it away in the now wholesome and inviting fridge. He had done old Chawcer's shopping mechanically, buying what was on the list but still hardly noticingwhat he bought, losing the supermarket receipt so he had noidea what accounts to render to Ma Fordyce. A couple of gins in KPH had given him courage and a photograph in the Evening Standard of Nerissa modeling an Alexander McQueen gown cheered him up. She'd wear something like that at their wedding and carry a huge bouquet of white orchids.

Ma Fordyce wouldn't come back that afternoon and MaWinthrop wasn't due till some time tomorrow. It was half-pasttwo. He mustn't wait till tomorrow, he must get started now. He forced himself to go upstairs, glad of the bright sunlight penetrating the Isabella window. Because a little breeze wasblowing, the colors danced like strobe lights. Nothing there.Everything quiet andstill-and unoccupied. He sighed and let himself in. Mix had no shoes suitable for heavy digging but he put on his thick-soled trainers and a pair of old jeans. A faint smell still hung about his flat and it was stronger in the roomwhere she had been under the floorboards. That would fade in time. He bolted the front door top and bottom just in case Ma Winthrop decided to look in, and went outside into the garden.

The weather was still what people called glorious. He wouldrather it had been cold and gray, for this warmth and sunshine brought the neighbors out into their gardens. The people who kept theirs perfect were having a drink at a white metal tableunder a striped umbrella. Some of them could easily see whathe was doing from where they sat. He took the spade and fork from the shed and found a place where the soil showing between the sturdy weeds looked softer than the rock-hard clayey areas. Digging was unskilled labor, so anyone could do it, he'd probably find it a breeze. But at first the spade simply refused to go in. By making an extreme effort he could just penetratet he top layer of earth down to about two inches. After thatit might as well be rock he was encountering, it was so hard and apparently impenetrable. The pick might be the answer, though he was as wary of using it as he would be of plying a scythe. He fetched it from the shed, noticing with more misgivings that it was corroded, eaten into with rust. A patch of rot showed on its handle.