13 Steps Down by Ruth Rendell

Author:Ruth Rendell [Rendell, Ruth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-49377-4
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2004-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Nerissa recognized the girl from the photograph in the paper, Kayleigh cried when she saw it, and Abbas Reza tried to comfort 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's companion, 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 photograph or 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 a tentative attempt at two of them and had had to hold on so long, pressing this key and that, listening to piped music, that he gave up. The only thing to do was take a day off, stay here and let the man in himself. Or, rather, not let him in, tell him 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.

He'd have to call head office and tell them he was ill. The doctor would come some time in the afternoon, the woodworm man at any time. This evening he was supposed to be going for a drink with Ed. Suppose he hadn't agreed to take old Chawcer her tea, he wouldn't have found out about the woodworm man—the outcome didn't bear thinking of. It drove him back into the room where Danila lay under the floorboards. The smell in this extreme heat was worse, awful, like things rotting in the back of a fridge someone had turned off. He felt like breaking a window to let some of it out but he thought of the noise it would make and the fuss it would cause.

As soon as possible he must move the body. Once the woodworm man had been got rid of, the doctor and those women had gone, he would move it and drag it down all fifty-two of those stairs. For the present, he couldn't stay in his own flat, it was too high up, too remote. He had to be sure he'd hear the doorbell when people came, preferably be stationed where he could see them coming. Halfway down the tiled flight he heard a key turn in the front door lock. Old Ma Fordyce or Ma Winthrop. It was Fordyce, the one with the long red fingernails. He heard her slowly stumping up the stairs below him and they met outside old Chawcer's bedroom door.

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