Earthly Delights (4 page)

‘His name is Daniel and he’s on the Soup Run,’ I told her. ‘Do you know about the van?’

‘Surely. A friend of mine used to work on it—he was a nurse. So Daniel’s the heavy. Hmm. Looks like fate is taking an interest in your life at last, Corinna. And about time, I might add, though the ways of fate are inscrutable. I do wish they weren’t. I spend my whole life trying to make them more scrutable. With only a little success.’

‘Any peep into the future is bound to be a bit fraught,’ I sympathised, hardly at all.

‘I’ve been looking into the crystal ball,’ she said soberly, all
traces of a twinkle vanishing from those disconcerting black eyes. ‘This is the second overdose in a week. None fatal so far. But there will be another. Something horrible is happening in the city.’

I could have told her that. It’s a city. It stands to reason that something horrible is happening in it somewhere. I sipped in silence. Meroe was not waiting for me to respond. She was just sitting. She has a gift of stillness which is very attractive. If she hasn’t anything to say, she doesn’t say anything. She has no small talk, which for such a dedicated gossip is surprising. Like the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, she considers that a person who does not know the word on the street before it hits the street is just not trying.

I stroked Belladonna as Meroe sold a divining rod to a person who looked like a stockbroker and a bunch of note-cards to a heavily moussed teenager, giggling at her own effrontery and courage in going into a shop called the Sibyl’s Cave. Then two Goths wandered in to examine the heavy silver jewellery and I got up to go. More than three people in the shop and one needs permission to inhale.

I waved to Meroe and squeezed past a man in a black velvet suit with a ruffled shirt. He had long blond hair and amazing, almost black eyes.

‘I’m a vampire,’ he said politely. ‘My gift is death.’

‘That’s nice,’ I replied. It was going to be an odd day. I privately assumed that the vampire called himself Lestat or Armand and was clinically insane. But I got out unbitten and went back to Earthly Delights, spacious by comparison.

Kylie had been replaced by Gossamer. It was no use trying to describe either of them by mundane things like hair or eye colour. These could change overnight. At the moment Gossamer had greenish hair and bright green contacts. She
looked rather like Professor Dion’s nymph. A tree nymph. A dryad, that was it. This morning Kylie had had pink hair and her own eyes, which are blue. Or so I believe. The only way I could be sure about their identity was their navels, which were always on display. Kylie had a silver ring with a blue stone in it in hers, which is round and flat. Gossamer has a gold ring in hers, and it tends to have a lip on the upper rim. I checked. Gold and lip, Gossamer. Otherwise they really could be twins.

‘I got the books,’ she announced. ‘Some of them were in Greek! And Kylie’s gone for the shopping. Poor old Prof. Did you hear the goss? Another junkie’s OD’d in the lane.’

‘In the alley?’ I asked, feeling like Lady Macbeth. ‘Oh woe, alas, what, in my house? Twice?’ Gossamer scorned this comment.

‘As if! The lane, Flinders Lane. Outside the leather place. Ms Dread was real upset.’

I could not imagine this. Mistress Dread ran a select studio selling leather garments to the discerning customer and what she had seen in her shop should have insulated her against anything. She lived in 2B (Venus), opposite the girls. It was always a shock meeting Mistress Dread in plain clothes. She preferred quiet country casuals and expensive shoes. I had no idea if she was a man or a woman, biologically speaking, and it was none of my business. In her tweed skirt and brogues she looked like an English countrywoman out for a ramble—one looked for the Labrador and the green gumboots. When she was dressed in her leather corset and fishnets, fully six inches taller, she was terrifying. Even without the whip.

Calling her Ms Dread was either Gossamer’s attempt at sly humour or a sign of profound stupidity. I could never decide which.

‘Is the junkie dead?’

‘Dunno. They took him away in the ambulance. The cops have been round asking questions. They want to talk to you about the one this morning. Isn’t this exciting?’

I decided. Stupidity. But she is very young and I should not be judgmental. I was definitely an idiot when I was eighteen. I mean, I fell in love with a drummer in a garage rock band. A drummer, I ask you. It is always possible that Gossamer may grow a brain and, anyway, they do say that prolonged starvation lowers the IQ.

‘Did the policeman say when he was coming to see me?’

‘She’s here,’ said a voice from the door.

Oops. I turned around. A neat, uniformed, middle-aged woman was not smiling at me. I toyed with the idea of explaining that my speech patterns had been formed at an age when policewomen didn’t exist and then I decided not to. This was just business.

‘You want to talk to me? I’m Corinna Chapman. What can I do for you, officer?’

‘My name is Senior Constable White. I understand that you called an ambulance this morning to an overdose? Can you show me where it happened please, Ms Chapman?’

She laid an emphasis on the Ms which I did not miss.

‘This way.’ I waved at Gossamer to keep selling bread and led her out of the shop and into Calico Alley, where I unlocked the bakery doors.

‘Nice locks,’ she approved.

‘We need them. Come in, please. I opened the door at five am to let the cats out,’ I explained as the off-duty Heckle and Jekyll blinked up from their pile of flour sacks. I tried supplying them with those dinky kitty beds and they sniffed them politely before going straight back to the empty sacks. In winter they will accept a sheepskin to lie on. ‘Then Heckle
came back with a syringe in his paw. I went out to yell at whoever had left it there and found this girl collapsed on the hot air vent.’

I swallowed, remembering that slate-blue face. Senior Constable White motioned me to a chair and sat down on a stool. ‘That must have been a shock for you,’ she murmured conventionally.

‘Yes, it was. I called an ambulance and gave her CPR until the paramedics came. They gave her a shot of something and she came out of the Valley of the Shadow, screaming.’

‘Narcan,’ said the police officer, writing in her notebook.

‘Then the ambulance left. The Soup Run heavy, Daniel Cohen, came and calmed the girl. Then he calmed me. Then he left and I got on with the baking.’

‘Did Mr Cohen seem to know the girl?’

‘Yes, he called her Suze.’

‘And did you keep the syringe?’

‘Yes, as it happens, I did, it’s in a plastic bag in that drawer. I was going to take Heckle to the vet but when I rang him he said there aren’t any diseases a cat can catch from a dirty human needle so I should just watch and see if he was limping tomorrow and he isn’t even limping now,’ I said, aware that I was babbling.

Senior Constable White rose, walked over to Heckle and coolly took his paw. Even more surprisingly, Heckle let her and did not pull away or scratch. She had great authority. Then she came back, opened the drawer, and examined the needle through the clear plastic. Then she snapped the elastic band back over her notebook, took the plastic bag, and thanked me for my time.

‘No, wait,’ I said. ‘There was another OD outside Mistress Dread’s just now. What’s going on?’

To my surprise, she answered me.

‘One of two things. Either someone is supplying hot shots to drug addicts with the intention of killing them. Or someone has added an extra ingredient to their heroin—usually it is cut with glucose but someone may have decided that Ajax or Die, Rat, Die! gives it that extra kick—and is killing them by accident. At any rate, someone is killing them. Keep your doors locked, Ms Chapman. Thank you for your cooperation. If you will come down to St Kilda Road at your convenience, someone will take your statement.’

She gave me her card and walked away. I grabbed Heckle and hugged him. Being hugged occasionally is in his job description. I didn’t like this at all. Life had seemed so ordinary when I woke up.

The day was getting on and the lunchtime rush would be starting soon. I put Heckle back down with a handful of kitty treats to comfort him (and a handful of kitty treats for Jekyll in the interests of justice) and went back to the shop. I booked an order for ten loaves of seven seed bread, a speciality of mine, for the next day, and more rye bread for a German restaurant. Then the health bread freaks demanded more crumbly stuff, and the Greek restaurant asked for extra pasta douro for a banquet. I was going to have a busy morning. I decided to ditch the planned potato bread and make fresh herb rolls instead. Life is too short to peel potatoes, I agree, but bread made from real potatoes does taste better than the stuff baked with commercial potato flour. My customers pay me for the extra taste. I am what is known as a niche marketer. Which generally translates as ignored by all government departments unless they want (1) bread or (2) money.

And, for the shop, olive bread with all those plump, beautiful kalamata olives which Karen the caterer had given me. Turned out that the chairman of the board was allergic to olives
and she had bought the best. Poor woman was almost in tears. Ours is a disappointing profession sometimes. With a batch of muffins that would make up the shop’s supply for the day.

Herb rolls meant I had to send Goss to Meroe right away to get a collection of whatever fresh culinary herbs she had left before the witches bought out the shop. Meroe’s herbs come from an organic farm (probably by broomstick, I can’t imagine how she gets them into the city so fast otherwise) and they taste wonderful. The herbs have to be robust to survive baking.

I gave Goss her orders. ‘And make sure you say “kitchen herbs”,’ I said, forcing her to repeat it. It had never happened, but I didn’t want any of the other plants to wend their way into my bread. Entrancing as the idea of turning some customers into toads might be, I couldn’t imagine trying to explain it to a sceptical police officer like, for instance, Senior Constable White. L White, her label had said. Lynn? Louisa? Lepidoptera? She looked like a Lepidoptera.

A strangely forthcoming Senior Constable Lepidoptera White. She had told me a lot. Had she been giving me a message? Had she just been up all night? Had her mother taught her that a civil question deserves a civil answer? These were deep questions.

Meanwhile a line was forming of people anxious not to spend their lunch hour trying to buy lunch and I snapped out of my daze and into sell mode. The cash register rang cheerily, Horatio purred, and the money rolled in as the bread rolled out (sorry). I began to wonder whether I was going to have any bread to spare for the Soup Run when the door clicked closed and suddenly the place was empty. Two pm on the dot and only the poor office assistants and shopkeepers, who had drawn late lunch, were likely to come in now.

Goss returned, having lingered fondly outside Black
Flower Boutique, where her next dress lived until she could earn more money. Her Goth friend Carol Holland would make sure no one else bought it. It was a daring dark purple number with a peekaboo front to show her navel. I wondered again, what was this thing about navels? However you look at them, they are not aesthetic. Also, no one with my figure likes present fashions. One does not want one’s cardigans skimpy or one’s skirts short, and one definitely does not want to show one’s navel or any points adjacent. What happened to breasts? I like breasts. I’m fond of mine. Goss is as flat chested as a ten year old boy.

Goss thrust a big parcel of herbs into my arms. The scent was heavenly, the essence of green growing things. I identified thyme, parsley, basil, rosemary, coriander, tarragon and a stick of bay leaves with that dark oriental smell.

‘Yum,’ I remarked.

‘That lady cop was at Meroe’s,’ giggled Goss. ‘Going through the herbs. Meroe isn’t happy.’

‘I bet she isn’t,’ I agreed.

‘Especially since she called Meroe “Sibyl”,’ said Goss, stroking Horatio.

‘Oops.’ I was not the only person to be making linguistic mistakes today. Although, I admit, Basil Fawlty’s wife was called Sibyl, the original sibyls were powerful witches who spoke oracles. I hoped that Meroe might take it as a compliment but decided that she probably wouldn’t. I don’t know where Meroe came from, she’s never said, but it was a place where they really didn’t like the police.

With the world in the state it is that could be just about anywhere …

‘Did Ms White say what she was looking for in the herbs?’ I asked.

‘Mj,’ said Goss, going off into a fit of the giggles. Marijuana? In the Sibyl’s Cave? It was funny. Meroe is sternly against all drugs. Except, I suppose, flying ointment and essence of nightshade. She has been known to threaten smokers with eternal karmic backlash and doesn’t even approve of my gin and tonic when I finish work for the day. It dulls the chakras, apparently. I told her that I liked them dull. Senior Constable Lepidoptera White was doomed to disappointment, and probably a lecture on chakras as well.

‘Time to close up,’ I said, fastening the door and pulling the shutter across. Goss loaded the remaining bread into my sack while I put out the stuff I could resell at half price into its rack. That left me with a good load. I paid Goss and let her out the back way and sat down to total my cash register receipts, count and bundle the money, and make out the deposit slip for the bank. Then I put the cash float in the drawer, allowed Horatio to precede me into the bakery, and sighed. Another day past and I was pooped.

I walked down to the bank on the corner and deposited the takings, then I re-donned my trackies and began to clean the bakery. This involves a lot of scrubbing and I find it soothing. Big bakeries employ scullions, but I did it myself. Horatio always removes himself to the parlour when water sloshes across the floor, my last task. There. I wrung out a track suit leg and straightened my back. I had cleaned and dried all my cutlery and pots and mixers; I had tidied my own kitchen and washed my own dishes; the cat dishes were scrubbed, the cat litter was changed and the floor was scrubbed and it was me for a bath. I flung the tracksuit into the washer and set it going.