Thirteen Steps Down Read Free Page B

one of her
    sexy looks as she opened the door, a look that wasn't in the least
    necessary as both knew why she had sent for him and what he had come
    for. For his part, he put up a show of formality, smiling as he marched in
    with his case of tools and saying it was upstairs if he remembered
    rightly.
    "Of course you remember rightly," Colette said, giggling.
    More stairs, but these were wide and shallow and anywaythere was only
    one flight to go up. "How's Miss Nash these days?"
    He'd known she wouldn't like that and she didn't. "I'm sure she's fine. I
    haven't seen her for a couple of weeks."
    It was at the Gilbert-Bambers' that he had first met Nerissa Nash.
    "Encountered" might be the better word. Until he saw her he had thought
    Colette beautiful, her slenderness and her long blond hair and her full
    lips, even though she'd told him about the collagen implants. The
    difference between them, he had thought, was that between the
    Hollywood star and the prettiest girl in the office.
    Colette preceded him into the bedroom. "What she called her gym was
    really a dressing room that opened out of it next to the bathroom, and
    had been originally designed for the master of the house.
    "He'd knock on her door when he wanted a bonk," Colette had
    explained. "They were all bonkers in those days. Isn't that funny it's the
    same word?"
    The room was now furnished with a treadmill, a step machine, a
    stationary bicycle, and an elliptical cross-trainer. There was a rack of
    weights, a rolled-up yoga mat, a turquoise colored inflatable ball, and a
    fridge that had never seen the like of Boot Camp but held only sparkling
    spring water. Mix could see at once why the treadmill wouldn't start.
    Colette was no fool and was probably well aware of the reason herself.
    The machine had a safety device in the form of a key that slotted into a
    keyhole and a string attached to it with a clip on the other end. You were
    supposed to fasten it to your clothes while you used it so that if you fell
    over the key would be pulled out and the motor stop running. Mix held
    up the key.
    "You didn't put it in."
    "As the actress said to the bishop."
    He thought this rejoinder extremely old hat. He'd heard his stepfather
    say it a good twenty years ago. "It won't start unless the key's in," he said
    in a toneless voice, intended to show her he didn't think her witty. Still,
    he should complain. He'd get his fifty-pound call-out fee for just coming
    here.
    He inserted the key, started the machine, ran it up, and to delay things
    a little--why should she have it all her own way?--applied some oil
    underneath the pedals. Colette switched it off herself and led him back
    into the bedroom. He sometimes wondered what would happen if the
    Honourable Hugo Gilbert-Bamber came back unexpectedly, but he could
    always nip back into his clothes and crouch down among the machines
    with screwdriver and oi1 can.

    Mix intended to be famous. The only possible life anyone could wish for
    these days, it seemed to him, was a celebrity's. To be stopped in the
    street and asked for your autograph, to be forced to travel incognito, to
    see your picture in the papers, to be in demand by journalists for
    interviews, to have fans speculateabout your sex life, to be quoted in
    gossip columns. To wear shades when you didn't want to be recognized,
    to betransported in a limo with tinted windows. To have your own PR
    person and maybe get Max Clifford to represent you.
    It would be best to be famous for something you did that people liked or
    because they admired you, like he did Nerissa Nash, But fame deriving
    from some great crime was enviable in a way. "What would it feel like to
    be the man the polices muggle out of a courthouse with a coat over his
    head because if they saw him the crowd would tear him to pieces?
    Assassination secured your fame forever. Only think of the killer of John
    Lennon, or of President Kennedy, or Princip, who shot the Austrian
    Archduke and started the First