Chapter 28

" You are saying I sit at this window all day every day in case this man comes by? You are not serious, Kaylee. "

" Yes, I am, Ab. If it's him and he's taken Danila hostage and got her shut up somewhere, handcuffed and tied up and all that, you won't be able to live with yourself if you don't goto the cops. I bet he comes down here a lot. I bet he lives round here. "

" Kaylee, " said Abbas in the voice of someone to whom a great revelation has been vouchsafed on the road to Damascus.

" Oh, Kaylee… "

" Whatever is it? You've got quite‑ well, pale, if you see what I mean. "

" Kaylee. That night, after I see him on the stairs, I pick up a card from the floor I see him drop. He is drunk, you understand, and it fall from his jacket. I bring it here, into my ownflat and… "

" Where is it now, Ab? "

" Do you think I keep it? A strange man's visiting card? "

" But you read what was on it? "

Abbas sat down and pulled Kayleigh on to his knee. " Sit with me, my flower, and help me to think. I think hard what was on it. "

" Yes, you do that, darling. If you let poor Danila down now, what's our baby going to think of you. ”

Their baby, as yet a very small fetus in its mother's womb, need know nothing about it, as far as Abbas could see, and would hardly be concerned with its father's memory processes for another fifteen years, if then. But he could understand that if it was in his power to help the police find the author o fDanila's wrongs, whatever they might be, untimely death possibly, though he wasn't going to say that to Kayleigh, who was in a fragile condition and might easily be upset, he was bound to do so. He thought.

" One word I remember from that card, " he said. " Not a man's name or address… "

" Oh, Abby… "

" Wait. One word. It is Fiterama. Yes, Fiterama. What it means, I cannot tell. But this is on the card. "

Kayleigh jumped off his lap. She was very excited. " I know what it means, Ab. It's the name of the firm the man works for as services the machines at the spa. Madam Shoshana told me. He didn't come back with the parts so she gave them a ring to slag him off. "

The secondhand crime bookstore wanted to charge Mix twentyfive pounds for a book on Christie, published forty years before. He had just happened to take it down from the shelf to look at an illustration, when the shop assistant pounced.

" It's daylight robbery, " he said. " I hope you don't find a buyer. "

" There's no need to be abusive, " said the shop assistant.

Walking home from Shepherd's Bush, Mix told himself he would buy no more books on Christie, he would read nothing more about Christie, it was all over. He might even bring the books he had and see if that chap would buy them. But for Christie, Danila would be alive and he, Mix, would never havekilled a dead woman. If he were being strictly honest, he'd say Christie had killed them both himself, bringing his total up to eight.

Before he set up his own business he'd have to get himself work, and he certainly couldn't take any of the clerks' and janitors' and council drivers' jobs on offer. He'd be in Javy's class if he did that. Javy‑ ever since he'd had that confrontation with Nerissa's bully boy he'd been thinking of Javy, brooding on him, even dreaming of him. It was thirteen years since he'd seen the man but his hatred hadn't diminished. He'd thought it had, that it was in the past, but he'd been wrong. Javy had seemed an obstacle he could never surmount, but now he had dealt with those two women‑ " dealt with" was a more realisticway of putting it than " killed”‑ taking revenge on his stepfather presented itself as quite feasible.

Ahead of him, still parked at the curb, he could see the Brunswicks' old Volvo. It would just be trouble, he thought, a car, however reputable, of that age, breaking down on longer journeys, requiring endless maintenance. While he stared at it, noticing that the £ 300 notice on its windscreen was now hanging lopsidedly, Sue Brunswick came out of her front door, carrying a large sooty‑ brown cat in her arms. In the events of lastweekend, he had forgotten all about pursuing her.

" Have you thought any more about buying our car? "

" I don't reckon I want it, " he said.

The cat he recognized. If he hadn't known him by his color and size he would have by the look of contemptuous hatred Otto turned on him. The eyes of imperial jade lingered coldl yand then, snuggling against Sue Brunswick's full bosom, Otto buried his face lovingly in her neck.

" I see you're admiring my cat. Gorgeous, isn't he? He just walked in on Monday and we've adopted him. We're calling him Chockie on account of his color. I don't know wherehe came from, but he's so affectionate and sweet, I justadore him. "

It sounded very unlike the Otto he knew. A faint throbbingin his ankle reminded Mix of their last encounter. " Well, cheers, " he said and passed on. Back at home, he went into thebedroom where she lay under the floorboards. None of thebooks, none of the court proceedings, told him whether Christiehad sometimes checked the hidden places to which he had consignedhis dead wife and those others. Did he sniff the air as Mix was doing now? Did he stand at a rear window and contemplate the garden of 10 Rillington Place, assuring himself that the graves of Ruth Fuerst and Muriel Eady were undisturbed?

He could smell nothing beyond the usual odor of this house outside the confines of his own flat, a smell of dust and dead insects and aged never‑ cleaned fibers. The scent of an old person, but not a dead one. His next natural move was to the window that overlooked the garden. In spite of the lack ofrain, weeds were growing, green and vigorous, over the slight hump of Danila's grave. To everyone but him it would soon be undetectable.

Why not go away for a bit? Use up the time between nowand the day he'd fix on for seeing Nerissa again. He couldn'tremember when he'd last had a holiday. Of course, going toColchester to stay with one's sister wasn't what most peoplewould call a holiday, but this trip would have another purpose. He'd find out from Shannon where Javy was now. Not stillwith the woman who had succeeded their mother, he was sure. Javy would have moved on, to a new life, a new girlfriend, anew benefit office.

It was funny, what you'd call ironical, that the member of his family he got on with best, the only one really he got on with at all, was the sister Javy said he'd tried to kill. And it wasn't as if she didn't know about it. Javy had taken care to tell her. Mix could hear his words now.

" You wouldn't let him handle your dolls if you knew what he'd done. Tried to kill you, he did. Would have bashed your brains out if I hadn't got there in time. "

They went to the police station in Ladbroke Grove together on Friday morning. Hazel said they didn't need her, she had to get home, but they were to tell her what the police said and everything that happened. A Middle Eastern man was coming out with a pretty young blond woman as they went in.

" I wonder what they were in there for, " said Queenie. " Perhaps he's an asylum seeker and she's going to marry him to make him a British citizen. "

" It doesn't work like that anymore. " Olive stared after thecouple. " It's a much more complicated business. "

They were given a Missing Persons form, which Olive filledi n as best she could. " Is that it? " she said to the young detective constable.

" What do you want 'it' to be? "

" You could look for her, for a start. "

He went away, was away for ten minutes, then came backwith another officer, the one who had just seen Abbas and Kayleigh. The other officer said, " Is there a youngish guy called Michael Cellini, formerly of the Fiterama Gym EquipmentCompany, living on the premises? "

" I don't know about any gym equipment, " said Olive in a voice full of scorn, " but his name's Cellini all right. Why? " If she had been less innocent or had watched more television she would have known better than to ask that question. Naturally, it remained unanswered.

" If we call at the address will there be anyone to let us in? "

" Cellini, I suppose, " said Queenie, who had dropped the" Mr. " after Mix's remark about the Women's Institute. " No, you can't rely on him. One of us will take care to be there. "

" We would anyway. " Olive spoke grimly. " Leave the place empty and he's capable of setting fire to it. "

They returned to St. Blaise House in a taxi after Queenie had bought two slices of lemon cheesecake and two creamhorns at a patisserie in Holland Park Avenue.

" I wonder if he's up there, " Queenie said at the foot of thestairs.

Mix was. He'd spent most of the day phoning those of his old clients he hadn't already targeted, but at the final countonly six had agreed to transfer their business to him and one of those was hesitant. In the early evening he phoned his sister to ask if he could come and stay for a few days. Shannon, whocouldn't understand why anyone who didn't have to would want to spend even a single day in a house on a council estate outside Colchester with an exhausted woman, her boyfriend, her three children and his two, asked him why.

" Do I have to have a reason? I reckoned it'd be nice to see you and Markie and the kids, that's all. "

" It's not that I mind, Mix, only you'll have to bunk in with the boys. There's only three bedrooms. "

" I haven't seen you for I don't know how long, Shan. Must be all of five years. "

" More like seven, " said Shannon. " Lee was just a baby. Look, I've got to go. When was you thinking of coming? "

Tomorrow, Mix said, some time tomorrow morning. He'd have to come on the train. " My car's in dock. Having a new sump fitted. I'll get a taxi from the station. " He'd get the bus, but there was no need to tell her that.

Downstairs, Queenie and Olive waited for the police to come. Although they had asked if anyone would be in later no police had appeared, it was eight o'clock and beginning to get dark.

Queenie stood at the French windows, looking out into the twilit garden. She had watched Mr. Singh calling to his geese to shut them up for the night and now he had gone in and there was no one to be seen. The colored lights on the palm tree came on, went off, and came on again, twinkling brightly.

" He really is a very handsome man, you know, dear. Quite distinguished‑ looking. He has the backbone of a high‑ ranking army officer. "

" Don't be absurd, Queenie. " These days, listening to herself speak, Olive was conscious that the mantle of Gwendolen's mannerisms and speech patterns was descending onto her shoulders. She must watch herself. " It has occurred to me that perhaps one of us should stay the night. "

" Well, don't look at me. I should be frightened out of my wits staying in this place. Have you noticed how dark it is? And it's not possible to make it any lighter. The wattage of the bulbs is too low. We should have bought some hundred‑ watt bulbs. "

" Why don't you just pop home and fetch some. I'll stay here till you get back. I shan't mind, " said Olive, who would mind very much but was putting a brave face on it. " I shall phone my niece and see if she can persuade her husband to come and stay. He's a lovely man but he's very big and he looks quite alarming. "

Queenie went off to fetch the lightbulbs and Olive remainedwhere she was in the drawing room. They had cooked themselves scrambled eggs on toast for their supper and had tinned peaches afterward. The peaches came out of Gwendolen's cupboard and had a recent sell‑ by date on the can, so Queenie thought they couldn't do them much harm. After awhile Olive phoned the Akwaas, and Tom said he'd come over about nine‑ thirty. Staying in that crazy place would be a lark, he said.

Sleeping arrangements would have to be made for herself' and Tom. Olive hated the thought, but it was no good postponingit. She toiled upstairs to the first floor. Gwendolen's bedroom and dressing room and the bathroom occupied most of it but two other rooms had bedsteads and mattresses. Theys eemed rather less damp than the rest of the house and the curtains at the windows neither resisted drawing nor hung in rags. In a cupboard in one of these rooms she found sheets and pillowcases and blankets. The blankets were far from clean and the sheets, though washed, had never been ironed, but they would do. For one night they would do. Making up the bed inthe room nearer to the head of the stairs, Olive asked herself ifshe were mad, electing to stay overnight in this house. And then she heard Mix Cellini's footsteps overhead and she understoodthat she was right. In the morning she would phone the police and ask them if they meant to come.

Mix heard her too and wondered what was going on. Probably nothing. It was very likely no more than those two old vultures deciding to help themselves to whatever they could find before old Chawcer came back. That would be typical. She had probably possessed some valuable jewelry, those old girls always did. He congratulated himself. Most guys in his positionwould have been into her things once they'd found her deadand he felt quite smug because he hadn't touched a single one.

He heard the front door open and close, Ma Winthrop's voice calling out some rubbish about lightbulbs, and becauseall these comings and goings were making him nervous hecame out on to the landing. Ma Fordyce was going downstairs. As she reached the bottom the front doorbell rang. This happenedso seldom that it made Mix jump. Of course the light had gone out and tonight it was particularly dark, no moon, not so many lights showing in houses as usual. It was partly the fault of all those tall trees, concealing street lights behind greatdark branches. Someone had opened the front door. He heard a man's voice, rich and fruity, and for one moment he thoughtthe impossible: that this was the police. Then Ma Fordyce said, " Hallo, Tom. It is good of you to do this. "

" No problem, " said the fruity voice. " My pleasure. I brought a bottle of wine. I thought it wouldn't go down badlya nd when we've wetted our whistles I'll drive Mrs. Winthrop home. Can't let her go out alone on a night like this. "

There was silence. They must all have gone into the drawingroom. Mix turned around slowly, took a step toward his front door and looking down the left‑ hand passage, saw the ghost standing at the end in the deep shadows. He clapped his hand over his mouth to stop himself crying out. The ghost stood still and seemed to be staring at him. Then it moved forward, its hands held out in front of it as if pleading for something, as if begging‑ or threatening? His front door had been left on the latch; Mix flung it wide open and fell inside the flat, tumbling over the doormat then leaning back, holding thedoor shut against the ghost. But he could feel no pressure against him and at last, still trembling, he got up and bolted thedoor top and bottom, something he had never done before.

Tom Akwaa was the first up in the morning. He always was anddidn't vary his routine just because he had taken the day off. " I'll stay till the police come, " he said to Olive when she camedown for her tea. " Youwant me to remind them you're waiting for them? "

" Would you? "

She couldn't resist starting to clean the kitchen while he was on the phone. Olive belonged to a generation that changed the sheets when the doctor was coming and put on their best underwear before they went on a journey in case they were in an accident and had to go to hospital. Now she tidied and scrubbed the kitchen and wiped all the surfaces in case the policemen went in there for a cup of tea.

* * *

It was a relief to Mix to be going away. he might never comeback. Not to stay, at any rate. Just to collect his things and get his furniture stored while he found another place. The appearance the previous night of the ghost had been the last straw. Compared to that, all these people coming and going didn't amount to much, but it was a nuisance, and worrying too. Whohad that man been and what was he doing here?

His backache had returned. Not severely, nothing like on that terrible night after his grave‑ digging, but bad enough. He took two ibuprofen and started to pack. He probably wouldn't stay with Shannon for more than one night. The idea of sharing a room with her two unruly boys, one of them fourteenshe'd had both by the time she was nineteen‑ didn't appeal. He put in a spare pair of jeans and three shirts. His leatherjacket he'd wear. Now to get out of the house before meeting either of those two old witches.

The police needed no reminder once the information given them first by Abbas Reza and then by Olive and Queenie had been compared. A detective sergeant was out in the gardenw ith Tom Akwaa when Olive saw Mix Cellini coming down the stairs. She waited for him in the hallway, though she had no intention of telling him of the policeman's arrival.

" Where are you going? " she said in her best highhandedtone.

He had his backpack over one shoulder. " No business of yours but since you ask, I'm off to see my sister in Essex. "

" I haven't seen your car about lately. "

" No, you haven't, Nosy Parker, because it hasn't been here. I've sold it. "

He opened the front door and slammed it hard behind him. Olive abandoned her cleaning and began searching through the cluttered drawers in the drawing room furniture to see if Gwendolen had a key to his flat. It took her a long while but bythe time Queenie arrived she had found eighteen keys of variousshapes and sizes.

" It's not any of those, " Queenie said. " She told me once, she kept‑ 1 mean 'keeps'‑ important keys in the tumble‑ drier. "

Olive was distracted from her task by this fascinating sidelighton Gwendolen's peculiarities. " What happened when she used it? The drier, I mean. "

" She never did use it, dear. Not for the purpose it was designed for, anyway. "

They went into the kitchen. The natural place for a tumbledrierwould have been the washhouse, but Gwendolen had kept hers between the oven and the fridge. From the window they could see the policean, who had been joined by a secondone, poking a long thin stick into a weed‑ grown mound in what had long ago been a herbaceous border. Queenie opened the port‑ hole on the tumble‑ drier and brought out a nettingbag, which had probably once held onions or potatoes but now contained a dozen keys.

" It'll be that one, " Olive said, picking out the newest key, a shiny brass Yale.

The two policemen with Tom Akwaa came in through the washhouse.

" There'll be some chaps coming to dig up the garden, " saidthe detective sergeant.

" Dig up the garden! "

The detective sergeant looked as if he might explain whyand then thought better of it. He and the other man began climbing the stairs, Tom following, and behind him Olive and Queenie taking the flights slowly. At the top Queenie could hardly speak, but Olive rallied when one of the policemen started ringing Mix's doorbell.

" He's just gone out. " She decided to lie and hoped Queenie would have the sense not to blurt out a denial. " Here's his key. He left it with me in case you wanted to look round. "

" Really? " The detective sergeant was only twenty‑ eight and he hadn't known many murderers, but he would hardly have expected a killer to invite the police in to search his premises inhis absence. Still, never look a gift horse in the mouth was his philosophy, so he took the key, unlocked Mix's front door and they went in. That is, the police did. Because it had been made plain they wouldn't be wanted, Tom with Olive and Queenie went into the bedroom next door. It was unsufferably stuffy and dusty. Tom, who had an unusually acute nose, sniffed andlooked suspicious, sniffed again.

" What's that nasty smell? "

" I can't smell anything, Tom. "

" Nor can 1. "

A kindly soul, Tom Akwaa wouldn't have dreamt of tellingthem that their faculties might have declined with age, so all he said was, " Well, I can. "

The policemen joined them, the younger one with an armfulof books on John Reginald Halliday Christie. Olive, a reader, looked curiously at their spines, several of them adorned with a photograph of Christie's gaunt face.

" Can you smell anything funny in here? " Tom asked.

The bearer of Mix's library, a very tall young man, laid thebooks on the dressing table and bent almost double so that hisnose was nearly touching the floor. " God, yes, " he said as hestraightened up.

When they had all gone but Queenie, who was making coffee in the kitchen, Olive set about taking the sheets and pillowcases off the beds she and Tom had used the night before. She was glad of something to do, for she felt very unsettled andshaky. After all, as people constantly told her, she was not so young as she had once been. The sight of that young man poking a stick into that grave‑ shaped mound had begun it. Then the smell, though she couldn't smell it. Strangely, those Christie books had been the last straw, the books, that man's face on their covers, and the implication of them. She was afraid of bursting into tears, but she had managed to control herself. Her hands, trying to pull the top and bottom sheets off Tom's bed, shook like thin papery leaves in the wind.

Gwendolen was dead, she had no doubt of it now. Although she hadn't much liked the woman she called her friend, she felt the enormity of it, the threatening awfulness of violent death. A tear started in each eye and rolled down her cheeks. She wiped them on one of the sheets and bundled it into a pillowcase to take home and wash.

Outside the door she heard a footstep above her. Had Cellini come back? She set the pillowcase laundry bag downand listened, hoping that her hearing wasn't going the way ofher sense of smell. Another footfall. Olive's instinct was to flee, to get down those stairs to Queenie as fast as she could. But she stood her ground. Cellini couldn't have come back, not comei nto the house and got up the stairs and into his flat without one of them seeing and hearing him. The police had only been gone ten minutes and Tom less than that. Olive set her foot on the bottom step of the tiled flight and began to climb. It wasthe bravest thing she had ever done.

She would have crawled up the last five stairs if she hadn'tbeen afraid Queenie would come up with the coffee and see her. As it was, she stopped at the top, hung on to the newel postand looked for the source of the sounds. To the right, then tot he left. Olive screamed.

What is it? What's happened? "

She ignored Queenie's voice but she didn't scream again. The sound refused to come. Trembling, she stared at the man with Christie's face. It was quite a lot like the photograph onthe spines of those books. He was coming toward her, holdingout both hands. She would die, she would have a heart attack and die.

" Please, do not fear. "

He spoke with a strong foreign accent. Not a bit like Christie would have, thought Olive. She closed her eyes, opened them again and said in a whisper, " Who are you? " She cleared herthroat and her voice came out more loudly and clearly. " Who are you? "

" I am called Omar. Omar Ahmed. I am from Iraq. "

" The war's over, " said Olive. " Were you in the war? "

He shook his head. She noticed now that his eyes were of a velvety blackness never seen in Anglo‑ Saxons and his hairblack, though peppered with gray. Don't they all have mustaches? she asked herself, and coincidentally he said, " I shaved my beard so not to look like Middle Eastern man. "

" Are you an asylum seeker? "

He nodded, then shook his head. " I like to be when I come, but I do it wrong, I do no register, so now I am illegal immigrant. I want to go home now, now 1 can and will be safe, I goback to Basra. "

I don't know about " safe, " she thought. " Have you been living here? " She didn't wait for an answer but said, " Come down and have some coffee with my friend and me. "

She ignored Queenie's voice but she didn't scream again. The sound refused to come. Trembling, she stared at the man Queenie was shocked when she was first told, and feared he might be dangerous. But she listened to his story. He had come into England clinging on to one of the carriages of the Eurostar, jumping off it at Folkestone. From the first he was certain that everything he was doing was illegal. That was why he had failed to register as an asylum seeker until the time for so doing was up and it was too late. He hitched a lift to London on a lorry from Prague driven by a Czech. These two were almost unable to communicate, the Czech man having no English and of course no Arabic and Omar having no other languages but his own and a certain amount of English.

In London he slept on the street and begged by day. He watched houses, seeking those that were empty or those with just one solitary owner‑ occupier, preferably someone old oro ut a lot. He found St. Blaise House and Gwendolen and when the weather grew so cold that he thought he must die if he spent another night on the street, he looked for a way in.

Here Queenie asked why he had come, why he hadn't stayed at home. " When he said the name Saddam Hussein and spoke of his wife and children who had disappeared, she nodded, put out her hand to touch his, and asked no more.

" I climb across the roofs, " he said. " It was easy. I get through a window and that too is easy. "

" When was this? "

" Oh, a long time. February, March, maybe. It was cold. "

He had begged by day for money to buy food. Once, in Notting Hill Gate, he saw " the man who live here" and thought it was all up with him but the man had seemed more frightened than he was. He was always afraid of him on the occasions they inevitably met, Omar didn't know why. He would have told him everything and asked for help, only the man was so frightened of him. The only living creature he had ever had much contact with since coming to London from Folkestone was a cat who lived in the house and who took a fancy to him and slept on his bed, probably because of the fish and meat leftovers he gave it. In the cellar he found an old record player and some records. These he had played softly because without music he felt he couldn't exist.

One night, not long ago, he had heard a bumping sound and when he came out had seen the man dragging something wrapped in a sheet up the stairs. If it had been in Basra he would have thought it a dead body but not here, not in England.

Queenie gave a little scream but Olive said, " You must tell the police what you heard and saw. You must tell them when we all go to them and you ask them how you can go home to Iraq. " " When Omar looked nervous, she said, " They'll be glad to get you home. Once it's safe they'll help you to get home. I promise. " I hope you like it when you get there, she said under her breath.