Chapter 14

Abbas Reza noticed Danila's absence only when she failed to pay her rent. He expected his rents to be paid in cash, preferably fifty‑ and twenty‑ pound checks, put in an envelope and pushed through the letterbox in his door. No checks and nocredit cards. Ms. Kovic hadn't paid her rent last Saturday and now another week had gone by. He had already banged on her door to ask for it and got no answer, not even at half‑ past midnight. She had never seemed one of those stop‑ outs to him, not a night bird at all, but he had been mistaken. Now she'd been in London a few months she was finding her feet, changing her good ways for bad ones, as happened to them all. Such was the corruption and creeping evil of the western world where God was mocked and morals had flown out of the window. Sometimeshe thought with nostalgia of Tehran, but not for long. On the whole it was better here.

The temp, who was still at Shoshana's Spa, was efficient, better‑ looking than the Bosnian girl, and a good advertisement for the spa with that queenly figure, fine posture, and face likea Nordic goddess. Pity she wasn't staying. Shoshana had had several replies to her ad and was interviewing applicants. Clients were coming thick and fast. That fool who thought he ived in a haunted house had been back and she'd had to stop herself laughing out loud at his face when she'd told him to avoid the number thirteen if he didn't want to see the ghost again. She had almost forgotten Danila's existence.

Kayleigh hadn't. Before she met Mix, Danila would have said Kayleigh was the only friend she had in London, not that they had ever seen much of each other socially.

Danila hadn't a phone in her room in Oxford Gardens, so Kayleigh had made several attempts to call her on her mobile. It rang and rang but always in vain. Kayleigh wasn't worried yet. If anything had happened to Danila, like her being mugged or attacked, it would have been in the papers. She might be ill and not answering her mobile. Still, she wouldn't go on beingill for a fortnight, and now it was over two weeks since Danilahad failed to answer her phone when Shoshana called her. Kayleigh went around to the house in Oxford Gardens.

All the rooms and the two flats had entryphones. Abbas Reza was proud of organizing things properly. Besides, hedidn't want visitors waking him at all hours. Kayleigh rang and rang Danila's bell and when she got no answer, pressed the keyabove, which was written rather mysteriously: Mr. Reza, Head of the House, as if he were a top prefect in a school. A slender, rather handsome man with a small mustache andhair so black and glossy it might have been painted on, answered the door. He looked in his late thirties. " What can I do for you? "

He was polite because Kayleigh was a pretty blonde of twenty‑ two. " I'm looking for my friend Danila. "

" Ah, yes, Ms. Kovic. Where is she? That's what I askmyself. "

" I ask myself too, " said Kayleigh. " She doesn't answer my calls and now you say she's not here. Could we get into her room, d'you think? "

Mr. Reza liked that " we. " He smiled reassuringly. " We try, " he said.

They knocked on her door first. Clearly, no one was inside. The landlord inserted his key, turned it and they were in. As he did so, the thought came to him that she might be lying in there dead. Such things happened, in Tehran as well as London, unfortunately. What a shock for this tender and surely uncorrupted young girl! But no, there was nothing. Nothing but the kind of untidiness they all seemed to live in, discarded clothes everywhere, an empty teacup with very old tea dregs in it and, in the sink, under cold water scummed with floating grease, a plate, a knife, and a fork. The bed had been roughly made. Beside it, on top of a stack of magazines, was a copy of the Shoshana's Spa brochure, glossy turquoise and silver.

" She has done a moonshine flit, " said Abbas Reza, thinkingof his rent. " I have seen it before, many many times. They leave all like this, always it is the same. "

" I didn't think she was that sort of person. I'm reallysurprised. "

" Ah, you are innocent, Miss‑? "

" Call me Kayleigh. "

" You are innocent, Miss Kayleigh. At your young youth you have not seen the wicked world as I have. Your purity is unsullied. " Mr. Reza had left his wife behind in Iran years before and considered himself free in amative respects. " There is nothingto be done. We cut our losses. "

" I haven't exactly got any losses, " Kayleigh said as they went down again. " Unless you count losing a friend. "

" Of course. Naturally, I count. " Mr. Reza was thinking that he could sell Danila's clothes, though they wouldn't be worth much. But while in the room he had spotted a watch that looked like gold and a new CD player. " Come, I make you a cup of coffee. "

" Oh, thanks. I will. "

An hour had passed before Kayleigh emerged once more into Oxford Gardens, quite high on the strongest and thickest coffee she had ever tasted and a date for the following evening with the man she was already calling Abbas. Danila had gone out of her head but she came back into it now and she found she couldn't altogether agree with her new friend that his tenan thad done a moonlight flit and simply vanished. She's amissing person, Kayleigh said to herself. The words sounded very serious to her. She's a missing person, she said again, and the police ought to know.

It was a cooler and duller morning than of late and Mix was once more sitting in his car at the top of Campden Hill Square. He should have been at Mrs. Plymdale's. She had called him on his mobile to tell him, but very nicely, that the new belt he had fixed to her treadmill had come off the previous evening. Would he come and put things to rights as soon as possible? Mix had said he'd be with her by eleven in the morning but instead he was outside Nerissa's house, desperate for a sight of her. It was as if she were his fix. He had made a call in Chelseaand another in West Kensington but a further shot of the drug was essential before he did any more work. Seeing her th eweek before, speaking to her and she speaking to him, hadn't improved things. It had made them worse. Before, he had wanted to get to know her for the fame being with her couldconfer on him. Now he was in love.

He waited and waited, reading the last chapter of Christie's Victims, but looking up every few seconds in case she appeared. It was half‑ past midday before she did, dressed in a white skirtsuit, chic and very short, and incongruous white trainers. She was carrying a pair of white sandals with four‑ inch heels. Those shoes were for putting on, he supposed, when she got to wherevershe was going, and the trainers were for driving. He'd follow her. Having seen her, he couldn't bear her to be out ofhis sight..

She passed him but he wasn't sure if she saw him or not. He followed her car along Notting Hill Gate and down Kensington Church Street. For once, there wasn't much traffic and he kept behind her. From Kensington High Street she went eastwardand he did too. At a red light she turned around and heknew she had spotted him. He waved and she gave a small halfsmile before driving on.

Before she went to the police, Kayleigh called Directory Enquiries and asked them for the number of a Mrs. Kovic living somewhere in Grimsby. They found just one woman of that name. Kayleigh phoned her and discovered she was English, a Yorkshirewoman who had married and divorced a man from Serbia. Danila's mother had been her sister‑ in‑ law. She gave, her a phone number and Kayleigh spoke to Danila's stepfather, who seemed scared of being involved.

" If anything's happened to her, " he said, " I don't want to know. We didn't get on. It's nothing to do with me. "

" She'd no one else, " Kayleigh said. " I've been very worried. "

" Yes? I don't know what you think I can do. You want to look at it from my point of view. I've lost my wife, I've got two young boys to bring up. Me and Danny didn't never have a good relationship, and when I saw her at the funeral I said I'dgo my way and she'd go hers‑ right? "

It had begun to seem to Kayleigh that no one had cared very much about Danila. Madam Shoshana had quickly forgotten her existence. This indifference frightened her. It was very unlike the feelings in her own family where her parents took a keen interest in everything their three children did and worried themselves into small frenzies if one of them wasn't immediately available on the phone. Kayleigh went to the police in Ladbroke Grove and filled in a missing person form, saying nothing about the conversation she had had with Danila's stepfather.

Lunch with her agent was Nerissa's reason for going to the restaurant in St. James's, and the request from a glossy magazine of international prestige to feature her on their frontcover and run a four‑ page article about her, the reason for thelunch. She parked the Jaguar on a meter in St. James's Square and changed her trainers for the stilt‑ heeled white sandals. The lunch would have to be a short one or she'd get clamped. As she locked the car that man arrived, the one who had spokent o her on Thursday outside the old lady's house. This was the third time she had encountered him and she knew with as lightly sick feeling that he was following her.

He wasn't the first stalker in her life. There had been several, notably one who persistently called at her parents' house when she was very young and still lived at home, but her father, who was very large and very black, a formidable threat in the caller's eyes, had finally intimidated him. Darling Dad made a wonderful bodyguard. The other stalker had been rather like the present one, waiting outside her house and following her. It had been the police who had warned him off. The funny thing was, Nerissa thought, as she walked through into St. James's Street, that they all looked very much alike. All were of middle height, in their early thirties, fair‑ haired with characterless faces and staring eyes. This one was following her along King Street now, probably fifty yards behind. She was a little early for her lunch and she wondered if she could make some move to shake him off.

The shops in St. James's Street are not the sort a woman can go into and browse about, if necessary concealing herself behind racks of clothes or disappearing into the ladies' powderroom. There was nowhere to hide. If she stopped to look into the hat shop window or crossed the street to linger outside the rather grand wine merchant's, would he make this as a reason to speak to her? The thing she mustn't do was look back. The strap above the high heel of her sandal had slipped down and the shoe flapped. She bent down to adjust it, felt the presenceof someone standing close by her, unwillingly looked up‑ andinto the face of Darel Jones.

She couldn't have been more delighted if it had been herfather and said, almost involuntarily, " Oh, I'm so pleased to see you! "

He seemed surprised. " Are you? "

" There's a man stalking me. Look. No, he's gone. That's your doing, I'm sure. He saw you, thought you were a friend of mine, and‑ and disappeared. How marvelous. "

If he minded being taken for a friend of hers he didn't show it. " This stalker‑ that's very serious. You'll have to tell the police. "

" I can't keep telling them. He's not the first one, you see. Perhaps he'll give up now. I always hope they will. But what are you doing here? "

" I might say the same for you. I'm a banker. " He pointed to a Georgian edifice with a brass plate that said Laski Brothers, International Bankers since 1782. " I work there. "

" Do you? " Nerissa had a very narrow idea of what a banker did. " D'you mean that if I went in there and asked them to cash a check you'd be behind a glass thing and you'd give me a bunch of notes? "

He laughed. " It's not quite like that. I've come out for my lunch. I don't suppose you‑? "

" I'm lunching with my agent, " she said. " I've absolutely got to. " She looked at him with yearning love, thinking of Madam Shoshana's prediction. " I wish I didn't but I must. "

" I'll say good‑ bye then. " Perhaps it was her imagination butshe had never seen him look quite like that before, interestedin her, curious about her. " You know, " he said, " you're quite different from the‑ the‑ er, misconception I had of you, " andhe was gone.

She went into the restaurant where she could already seeher agent waiting at a table. What did he mean by " misconception"? That he'd thought she was awful and had found out she wasn't? Or, more likely, in spite of that look that might have been mere sympathy, that he'd thought she was nice but now he knew she was horrid? Still, he'd been on the point of asking her out to lunch…

The urgent message summoned Mix to the head office. His departmental manager, Mr. Fleisch, had a few things to say tohim. A call had come from Mrs. Plymdale, no longer soft ande asy‑ going, to complain that the new belt he had installed on her treadmill had come adrift and though he had promised to repair it at eleven, he hadn't turned up. She had to use her treadmill every day or she would get out of the rhythm. She really needed to exercise. Both her parents had died of heart disease and she was frantic with worry. Not only that but Mr. Fleisch had heard from Ed West that Mix had failed to maketwo essential calls on his behalf that Ed was prevented frommaking by illness.

" I've been going through a bad patch, " Mix said without further explanation.

" What kind of a bad patch? "

" I've not been well. I've been depressed. "

" I see. I'll make a booking for you with the company's doctor. "

Mix would have liked to refuse this offer but he didn't know how. Matters would only be made worse by his failure to see the doctor, a dour elderly man, unpopular with the staff. Mix went home. It had been a bad day. All the time he was following Nerissa he had been planning what he would say to herwhen, having gained on her according to plan, she turnedaround and saw him. Remind her of last Thursday would be the first thing, then maybe put in a word about how sorry hewas if he'd offended her mother. Would she show him therewere no hard feelings by coming and having a coffee with him? She had been so sweet and gracious that previous time that hethought she would, she couldn't really refuse in the circumstances. And then that man had appeared, a young goodlooking man who appeared to be a friend of hers. Just his luck.

But he wouldn't let it put him off.

A message on his mobile summoned him to call on Colette Gilbert‑ Bamber the minute he finished work. It wouldn't be for something wrong with the equipment but what Mix called " a bit of the other. " He'd still get forty pounds for the call‑ out… If he was so attractive to Colette, surely he should be to Nerissa? But he wouldn't go. It had been a bad day and he didn't fancy it.

It was oppressively hot again and the house would be hot and stuffy. How it could be so dark when the sun was shining brilliantly he didn't really know. Didn't she ever draw the curtains back? Did she never open a window? He stood for a moment where Nerissa had stood last week and spoken to him so sweetly‑ and her mother so nastily. But he wouldn't think of that. And he wouldn't hold his arms folded like that across his body so that he could feel the roll of flesh round his waist that sagged over the belt of his trousers. Walk, he said to himself, get into a walking routine tomorrow and do it every day.

The place might have been uninhabited for years, he thought, as he started up the stairs. Would it do any good if he complained to old Chawcer about the lighting system, the way the low wattage lamps went out before he reached the next switch? Probably not. People like her thrived on darkness. It was ridiculous, anyway, having to put lights on in summer in the afternoon.

No cat's eyes glowed from the tiled staircase and, thank God, there was no sign of Reggie. It was all in my mind, he thought, I was right about going through a bad patch, I must have begun to see things that weren't there. Whatever Shoshana said, ghosts were always hallucinations, the result of stress or pressure. The Isabella lights, dull red and green and purple, lay as still as if they were painted on the floor, but bright golden sunshine streamed out of his hallway when he opened the doorto his flat.

Perhaps, before he went in, he ought to go next door to the room where Danila was. He really ought to check on her everyday until‑ well, until what? He got used to her being there? He'd moved her out and on to somewhere else? Leaving his own door wide open for the sake of the cheerful glow of light, he opened the bedroom door next to it.

The same sunshine was in here, or would have been if the window had ever been cleaned. But he didn't think about that once he had smelled the smell. It forced him to take a step backward. And now he knew what it was. For weeks th eweather had been almost unnaturally hot, yesterday had been unbelievably warm, and this smell was the result. He couldn't understand it; the body was wrapped and nailed down underfloorboards. He braced himself to go in, closed the door behind him, no longer thinking of ghosts. This was real; that had been all in his mind. He had never smelled anything like it and, standing there, taking in a long inhalation, he shuddered. Why had he come in here this afternoon when he already felt so bad?

Would it go away? Eventually, perhaps. He found he had no idea whether decay continued for weeks, months, even years, or if it faded at last. Old Chawcer might come in here at anytime. He couldn't risk it. He'd have to go to work and while he was out of the house he'd never have a quiet moment.

At present there was no point in staying here. After smelling that smell he felt he would never eat again. Those bodies in Reggie's house, especially the two he put in the recess in the kitchen wall, they must have smelled. Perhaps not, for it was December and cold and Reggie had been caught and arrested soon after he put them there. Mix stood at the top of the stairsand listened. Utter silence. He peered down the stairwell and began to move down. He was on the bottom step of the tiled flight when her bedroom door opened and she came out in a red silk dressing‑ gown and feathered mules. He was about to retreat but she spotted him.

" Is anything the matter, Mr. Cellini? "

" Everything's fine, " he said.

She sniffed. " I wish I could say the same. I believe I have the, influenza. "

Mix had once before in his whole life heard flu called that. His grandma had had a joke about it: " I opened the windowand in flew Enza. "

" Hard luck. " If she was ill she wouldn't be able to go intothat room. If only she could be very ill and for a long time! " You ought to be in bed, " he said.

" I need the bathroom. May I trouble you to do me a great favor and telephone my friend Mrs. Fordyce‑ you met heroutside my house last Thursday‑ and tell her of my‑ myplight? The number is in the directory by the phone. Fordyce. Can you remember that? "

" I'll try, " said Mix, putting a wealth of sarcasm into his tone. It passed unnoticed. He went downstairs, thinking it was typicalof her to get the flu on what was probably the hottest day ofthe year. He could barely see to find the Fordyce woman'snumber. Suppose she recognized his voice from Thursday? Heput on an upper‑ class intonation. " Miss Chawcer has a virus. She's very unwell. It would be an enormous help if you'd come to see her tomorrow and maybe her doctor would call, if you know who that is. "

" That's Mr. Cellini, isn't it? Of course I'll come. First thing in the morning. "

In which case, he'd better be out of there before she appeared, but without him she wouldn't be able to get in. Well, old Chawcer would just have to get up and answer the door. He wandered about and saw she'd left the back door unlocked. He locked and bolted it. That would be a fine carry‑ on, in a rough area like this, any amount of lowlife coming in and helping themselves to whatever they fancied. He was in enough trouble without that.

He had never been in this huge living room before. Drawing room, she called it. He couldn't understand why unless it was because people used to draw pictures in it before the days of television and radio. The dust and the musty smell made him wrinkle his nose, but as smells went, compared to the stench upstairs it was nothing, nothing. Light shouldn't have been needed at this hour but it was always dusk in this house. The main light switch didn't work. He went about turning on table lamps, the last one on the desk beside several half‑ finished letters.

Who the hell was she writing to in this crazy way? One started, " Dear Dr. Reeves, " another, " My dear Doctor, " athird, " Dear Stephen, " and the last, " My dear Stephen. " A lotof muddled stuff followed, all hard to read in her looped spideryhand, but the finest copperplate would be difficult in this twilight. Then a name caught his eye: Rillington Place. " I know you saw me in Rillington Place one day in the summer avery long time ago. You were driving past, on your way to acall, I expect. On the following day I came to your surgery forthe first time. As I am sure you recall, I and my parents had been patients of Dr. Odess. I found out, when the trial of Christie took place, that he had been that dreadful man's medical attendant. Not that this, of course, had anything to do with our leaving him to come to… "

A few more words were heavily scored through. She hadwritten no more. This proved she had been to Reggie for anabortion, Mix thought. Maybe she was writing to this doctorabout it because he was going to do the job but Reggie wouldbe cheaper. Reggie frightened her, so she found someone else to do the termination and this doctor was offended because he didn't get the money he'd expected. That must be it. He'd taken Chawcer off his list as a result and refused to treat her anymore. Now, after all these years, she was writing to explain.

The room wasn't simply dark as a place is before the lights go on. The lights were on, table lamps with cracked parchment or pleated silk shades, much frayed, but the effect of them was less to illuminate than to make shadows. Not one was in an alcove or beside a wall, so that the corners were in deep darkness. And it was so hot that the sweat began to stream from hisface and trickle down his back. Mix thought it the most dreadful room he had ever been in. With that carved dragon snaking across the top of the vast sofa and that blotchy mirror in a blackand gilt frame, it could be the setting for a horror film. She could make a bit of money like that, tell movie people about it and get a fat fee. They wouldn't have to change a thing.

Switching off the lamps was a creepy task. Darkness yawned behind him and after the last one was off he went to the French window and pulled back the long brown velvet curtains with violent jerks. Dust was shed in great clouds, making him cough. But light came in, plenty of light to dispel the worst of the horror. If downstairs had been nasty, holding God knew what secret things and hidden threats, upstairs loomed forbiddingly, with Reggie perhaps waiting for him and the body invisibly but surely decaying. It was almost as though it had a new life of its own, almost as if it were moving as it changed. Don't think of that, he muttered to himself. Forget what Shoshana said, it was all in your head.

He passed Chawcer's door. There was no sign of the cat and, of course, none of Reggie. As he'd used to do but hadn'tdone for a week now, he closed his eyes when halfway up the tiled flight, opening them at the top and looking down one passage after another cautiously and fearfully. Nothing there, not even Otto. Inside his own living room, sitting in a comfortablechair, a large gin and tonic at his elbow, he told himself allwas well, he was lucky, he'd been reprieved for a while. She'd be too ill to go up there again and he must use that time, perhaps a week, somehow to remove the body from that room.

Was there a way of getting it into the garden? Not if that Fordyce woman was in and out. She might not suspect the truth, she certainly wouldn't, but she'd tell Chawcer she'd seen him out there, digging. And Chawcer herself might see himfrom her window. That bedroom of hers must occupy the same area as the living room, which meant it had windows facingboth back and front. He dared not take the risk.

You'd better eat something, he told himself, but the thought of food made his throat close and rise. He was desperately tired. Once he'd had another gin or a Boot Camp maybe he'd go to bed, even though it was only six, go to bed and tryto sleep. Two messages were on his mobile but he wouldn't bother with them now, he'd do that in the morning. In front ofNerissa's picture he paused and made his obeisances, saying, " I love you. I adore you. "

How she'd smile when they were lovers and she saw her photo there and he told her how he'd worshiped it. Comforted, he wandered into the bedroom and at the window looked down into the garden, considering where it would be best to bury Danila's body. If he could get there, if he could gether downstairs and outside. Reggie had done it, and several times, though there was an old man living in the house on the middle floor and the Evanses at the top. The neighbors had seen him digging but thought nothing ofit:, exchanging withhim the wartime catch phrase about Digging for Victory.

There on the left, perhaps where the thick brambles could be held back and spread across the dug earth to conceal what he'd done. Or near the end by the wall, on the far side of which the guinea fowl man lived. But would he get the chance?

On the wall, stretched out to his formidable length, Otto lay luxuriating in the evening sun, his eyes closed but the tip of his tail giving an occasional flick.