Thirteen Steps Down

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Book: Read Thirteen Steps Down for Free Online
Authors: Ruth Rendell
Tags: Fiction, General, Suspense, Psychological, Thrillers, Mystery & Detective, Crime
especially about the lips and eyelids. For the
    first time in her life she wore lipstick, bright red, until her father asked
    her if she'd been kissing a fire engine.
    Dr. Reeves never came back.

    Chapter 4

    For the third time in a week, Mix sat in his car on Campden Hill Square
    with the windows shut and the engine running to keep the airconditioning on. It was a hot day and getting hotter every minute. He felt
    like a stalker and didn't much like it, partly because it reminded him of
    Javy. When he was twelve Javy had caught him looking through a pair of
    binoculars that belonged to his elder brother and beaten him for being a
    peeping Tom. Useless to say he hadn't been looking at the woman next
    door but at someone's new motorbike parked by the curb.
    Forget it, he said to himself, put it out of your mind. He always said
    that when he started thinking of his mother and Javy and life at home
    but he never really forgot it. Reading Christie's Victims would have passed
    the time while he waited, but he might get immersed in it and miss her.
    It must be half an hour he'd been there, waiting for her to come out,
    keeping his eyeon her front door or shifting it to the golden Jaguar
    parked on her drive. Of course he'd seen her on previous visits butit had
    always been with some man escorting her or she'dbeen dressed in one of
    those semitransparent shifts she liked so much, under a fur wrap or
    sequin-embroidered denim jacket,or else in skin-tight jeans and stilt
    heels that permitted only small mincing steps. On those occasions she
    got into the chauffeur-driven limo.
    It wouldn't be long before a traffic warden appeared and moved him on.
    Having a client in Campden Hill Square would have been a help but he
    didn't. Judging by the bronzed, taut muscled young men who called at
    several of these houses, the residents mostly had personal trainers. He
    was wondering if there was any point in staying, he had several calls to
    make before lunchtime, when a woman out walking a dog banged on the
    car window. She had a cigarette in her hand and the dog, not much
    bigger than a Beanie Baby, was wearing a redcollar with a diamante tag
    hanging from it. They were all richround here.
    "You know," she said in a voice like Colette Gilbert-Bamber's, "it's very
    wrong of you to sit there with your engine on like that. You're polluting
    the environment."
    "How about you with your smoke?" The combination of waiting about
    and her voice made him angry. "Why don't you get lost and take that toy
    on a lead with you?"
    She said something about how dared he and marched off , dropping
    ash. He was on the point of giving up when Nerissa came out of her front
    door and got into her own car. She wore a rose-pink sleeveles stop and
    white jeans, her hair tied on the top of her head with a pink silk ribbon.
    Mix thought she looked lovelier than ever, even in the big black shades
    that half covered her face. Casual suited her. But what kind of fashion
    didn't?
    To follow her was essential, even if it made him late for the appointment
    he had at twelve in Addison Road. He'd give the woman there a call and
    say he'd been held up. Nerissa drove into Notting Hill Gate and turned
    up toward the Portobello Road but avoided it and went on to Westbourne
    Grove. For once, there was very little traffic, nothing to separate his car
    from her car or hold them up. Roadworks at the top slowed them both
    and he saw her put her head out of the window in an attempt to see what
    was going on. But finally they were through the barriers and past the
    cones. More suddenly than he expected--she didn't signal--she swung
    the car into a meteredspace in a side street, dropped in her coins and
    ran up to a door with the number 13 Charing Terrace on it and
    "Shoshana's Spa and Health Club" in big chrome letters. By then, staring
    after her, he was holding up a stream of traffic. A chorus of hooting and
    yells of rage from other drivers at last forced him to move.
    He was ten minutes

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