Trick or Treat (21 page)

‘Yes.’

‘The strange thing is that it was found in the sea off Williamstown,’ he said.

‘That isn’t just strange, that’s totally impossible.’

Daniel raised both hands. ‘No shit! Kid fell in while feeding the black swans, his father hauled him out and disturbed the bottom of the backwater, and there was the necklace. Being a responsible citizen he took it to the police station.’

‘Where someone saw it who just happened to have read Max Mertens’ private extortion ledger?’ I asked, allowing my extreme scepticism to tint my tone.

‘For the moment, that’s our story and we are sticking to it.’

‘All right. I can believe six impossible things before breakfast if bribed with an enormous meal. And might this have something to do with the ephod that Barnabas palmed and which the forces of darkness immediately stole?’

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‘It might,’ said Daniel.

‘Because I bet that a synagogue with such expensive jewellery identifies it in some permanent way,’ I went on. ‘Even lowly drinking establishments put things like “This pool table stolen from Yackandandah pub” on their property.’

‘Indeed,’ said Daniel.

‘So the ephod would have “This belongs to such and such a place” on the back, wouldn’t it?’

‘You may be right,’ he answered.

‘So we go talk to Barnabas?’ I asked.

‘That is what we do eventually,’ he said. ‘First we go and talk to someone who can tell us all about Barnabas.’

‘How did you cut your hand?’ I asked.

‘I tripped over,’ he said.

‘Those wet seaweedy rocks can be very slippery,’ I sympathised.

‘So I believe.’

We left it at that. I was aware of walking very delicately on the edge of a vast pit of secrets.

We went down the street and past the tennis club, which resounded to the Rolling Stones, and Daniel knocked at a little door in a large door, a set-up which always fascinated me. It opened and we were admitted, bent double in Daniel’s case. I felt smug. I was just the right height for a workshop which looked like a heritage museum and smelt like rope and tar and heated metal and wood, very much of wood. Someone was hammering in a calm, measured way which could have been going on for hours. I loved it instantly.

‘Daniel,’ said the boatbuilder. He was a muscular man with the slightly strained smile of one who depends on unreliable things like boaties and the sea, and the crow’s-feet of one who stares into distances against a bright light. He had on a blue sports shirt which a devoted wife must have bought

for him.

‘Greg,’ said Daniel, ‘I need your advice.’

‘Come into the yard, the boys are just at the tricky bit,’ he said.

The boatyard contained nothing but timber boats. They sat down fatly in the water, like ducks, or were hauled out and perched on their keels to have things done to their undersides. I was fascinated.

‘If I wanted to sail a boat from Greece to here and sneak in without attracting attention, what sort of boat would I be looking for?’ asked Daniel.

‘Well, you’re going to need at least a forty footer,’ said Greg, never taking his eyes off the operation on the scarred, stripped hulk before him. ‘An engine of at least eighty horsepower. And sails, of course.’

‘Why of course?’ I asked, tripping over a cable.

‘Because engines don’t operate without diesel and it has a habit of running out in the middle of the ocean, where there are few filling stations,’ he replied. That made sense.

‘How many crew?’

‘Three, perhaps. Could do it with two at a pinch.’

‘And getting into the harbour?’

‘You’re supposed to radio customs and tell them you’re coming,’ he said.

‘But if you didn’t?’

‘No use going to a yacht club, they gossip more than golf clubs. But if you knew someone at a service and repair yard, say mine or my neighbour’s, you could just come in and slip the boat. If anyone came asking questions, mind you, there’d be trouble.’

‘Your neighbour, I can’t help noticing, has a forty foot boat

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up on the slip. It is painted a bright Greek blue, has eyes painted at the bow, and sails, and an engine of perhaps, say, eighty horsepower?’

‘Could be,’ said Greg.

‘And it’s called
Navarino
,’ I said. ‘So kind of you to show us your yard, Greg.’

We bid our farewells and picked our way out. The man with the hammer was still hammering. I suspected that he might be hammering until the next generation of boatbuilders took over.

‘Why hurry us out?’ asked Daniel.

‘That’s the boat,’ I said.

‘How do you know?’

‘Well, apart from the fact that it has eyes like a Greek boat and otherwise fits the admirable Greg’s description like a glove, there’s the name.’

‘
Navarino
? Isn’t that an orange?’

‘That’s what the Western world called the Bay of Messinia.’

‘Oh, cheeky,’ he replied. ‘To celebrate, I think we should have an ice cream.’

I had an exquisite orange and lemon gelato. Daniel had chocolate, with chocolate on top. Navarino. A cheeky boy indeed.

Timbo returned with a sack of leftovers to tide him over the next half-hour. Daniel directed him to drive to a supermarket where he bought Twisties, Cheez-Os, various flavoured crisps, pretzels, tequila, Mexican beer, beef jerky and, in one large bag, corn chips, grated cheese, Tex’s Extremely Lethal Total Fire Ban Salsa, a pot of sour cream and a bowl of avocado dip. That, to me, spelt nachos.

And nachos, to me, spelt nerd. Which is a bit rich, considering that the original dish was undoubtedly invented by some of the toughest people in the world and eaten in scorching mouthfuls from movable establishments which put the ‘chuck’ into the noun ‘chuck wagon’. Nachos were meant to be eaten by chili heads and whiffled through those Zapata moustaches by rawhide men who ran steers in deserts. The spices themselves were probably banned under the arms limitations treaties of a dozen nations. But nerds and geeks and dormice people who only came out of their electronic caves when someone tripped over a cord, thus plunging their world into darkness and themselves into traumatic symplegia, had taken to Tex-Mex food. Odd, but there we were.

It was three in the afternoon. I tried not to think of my poor bakery, unloved, alone, deserted, gutted, waiting for the quarantine people to denounce its proprietor as a poisoner and threat to public health. I suspected that Daniel was taking me along with him to get my mind off my grief, and that was kind of him, so I tried to concentrate. It was still a pretty day, and where did I get off mourning my lost business when people like Chrysoula mourned their lost families? Wouldn’t Mr Justice Joshua be pleased to find that the family which had sheltered him as a baby remembered him fondly? And that nice woman would no longer be poor, which would suit her and her girl, Cassandra.

‘Nerds ahoy,’ said Daniel, as Timbo loaded three green bags full of junk goodies into the boot.

‘They will think they have died and gone to heaven,’ I commented.

‘If they haven’t done as I asked,’ he replied, handing a spare bag of chicken Twisties to Timbo, ‘they will wish they had just died.’

We drove back to the city in silence.

Insula was quiet but Nerds Inc’s door was open. Ever since

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they started making a packet out of research their shop hours have become increasingly erratic. Basically, they open the shop when they feel like it, and the assorted gamers who constitute their clientele appear to have coped with this. I must find out how.

Timbo unloaded the bags of food, gave me a Timbo grin, and went away. The shop was small and stuffed with games, all in bright red packets with exploding trains on the front. Or planes. Though there was one with a lurching mummy, and a lot with demons. I was examining a game which claimed to allow me to pit the might of Caesar’s legions against the invading Nazis, and reflected that the trouble with that was Caesar (Julius) was dead when three nerds peeped out from behind machines and squeaked at the sight of me.

Taz, Rat and Gully. Clean enough, except for the whiff of chili sauce and old cheese, because someone’s mum comes and takes their clothes for washing every week. Also, they employ a cleaner, a vigorous woman who takes no nonsense about ‘don’t move that!’ but knows enough not to unplug anything. They were unsightly. The waists thickening, the hair washed with soap, their reddened little peepers like startled white mice, the track shoes which had never seen a track. They blinked nervously at me.

‘Lunch,’ Daniel declared, opening the bags. ‘Lead me to your microwave.’

‘Daniel,’ they said in a relieved chorus. So this wasn’t the Invasion of the Woman. They would have coped better with the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The Lone Gunmen could not, under any circumstances, be called sexy. Or possibly even sexed. ‘This way.’

The kitchen was clean. Unused, even. The microwave was large and expensive. Daniel assembled the nachos and I laid out the array of snacks and drinks. My dearest person waited until the heartbreaking scent of cooking cheese, beans and volcanic salsa was wafting through the apartment before he told them: ‘Barnabas research, then lunch.’

There was a famished whimper from Taz, and Gully ran into the other room, returning with a pile of printouts.

‘I could have emailed all this to you,’ he said reproachfully.

‘I’m not staying at my flat for a while,’ said Daniel, picking up and nibbling a cheese Twistie. ‘Talk me through it.’

‘I’ve got all the links here,’ said Gully. ‘He was born Francis John Markham in Richmond, England. Bit of a scandal about it because his father was a Catholic priest. He’s fifty-three years old, an Aries,’ said Gully, handing over the papers and receiving a bottle of beer and a packet of crisps in return. He offered me one. I ate it. It tasted like salty stainless steel. Ball-bearing flavour, perhaps?

‘Went to school in Richmond and then Cambridge. Married Jane Esperance. Two children. Dumped them and went to Israel,’ said Taz, full of cupboard zeal. ‘Jerusalem. There he got something called Jerusalem Syndrome and was casevac’d home with a nervous breakdown. Then we lose him for a while until he turns up on the electoral roll in Brisbane.’

Taz dried up and Daniel gave him beer and Cheez-Os. I decided to keep my questions, such as what on earth was Jerusalem Syndrome, until I could ask them in an atmosphere less full of chili.

‘Then he set up a website and called himself Barnabas and said he was king of the witches,’ offered Rat, his thin plait of hair caught between his teeth. ‘The witches didn’t like that and shut him down until he stopped calling himself a king.’

‘He wouldn’t have liked that,’ I said.

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‘No, he didn’t, but they outnumbered him, and they’re witches, right?’ quavered Rat. ‘So he got onto LJ and bitched about it but his website doesn’t say he’s king anymore.’

‘What’s LJ?’ I asked.

They all gave me that look. Actually it’s more of a Look. It says, I cannot believe you just said that. It says, your ignorance is unsurpassed. It says, what’s the weather like on Venus, anyway?

I refused to cringe and Taz answered through a mouthful of beer.

‘LiveJournal,’ he enunciated very clearly, as to an idiot or a child. ‘People write them, like, what are they called? In little bits. What happens to them every day.’

He appealed to Gully, who shook his head.

‘Diaries?’ I hazarded.

‘Diaries. Online. Every day or so. There are a lot of people who have friends and they all write together on LiveJournal.’

‘I see.’ I really didn’t find the concept too difficult. ‘Do you?’

They snickered, sounding like that dastardly dog on
Wacky Races
.

Rat answered for them all: ‘Us? We’re bloggers. But a lot of mundanes use LiveJournal. It’s not hard to use.’

‘So can anyone just come along and read whatever you have to say?’ I asked. This seemed like insanity to me. The essence of a journal, surely, is its secrecy, a space where you can say anything you like without anyone else knowing about it. I had suffered the humiliations of the damned when that rotten bitch Leanne had read parts of my very own private diary aloud at school. Even now the memory can make me squirm, and I had revenged myself on her by setting fire to her hair ribbon. The idea of baring the soul to an unsympathetic universe was alarming.

‘No, there’s always a locked part which only friends can access. But the rest of the journal is open to anyone on LJ. We got an LJ persona, just so we can lurk and maybe pick up a flame or so when it’s burning,’ explained Gully, hardly at all.

‘What’s your persona’s name?’ asked Daniel.

‘We’re Londo,’ said Taz, ‘otherwise we’d be trolled.’

Who says we all speak the same language? I had understood every word in that sentence and I was no wiser or better informed.

‘No, don’t tell me,’ I said. ‘Daniel can translate later. Did you get all the things he asked you for?’

‘All of it,’ said Taz. ‘Except three years where he doesn’t seem to have been anywhere. As though the dude dropped off the edge of the world. We’re working on it,’ he said, salivating. ‘Daniel, please?’

‘Nachos,’ said Daniel, and opened the oven door.

I got out of the way just in time.

‘So, how did you do it?’ asked Daniel, despite my frantic warning signal. Never ask a nerd how they did something unless you are a fellow geek or have been implanted with the new geek–human universal translator
^TM
(also works on all alien languages of the Western Spiral Arm this side of Barnard’s Star). ‘Did you hide your tracks?’

‘Of course,’ said Taz. ‘You know that it’s very hard to spoof an ISP, even if you use a different number.’

‘Though you can do it,’ put in Rat. ‘Depends if his computer is on.’

‘Or if you don’t get a TCP reset,’ responded Gully.

‘Yes, granted,’ said Daniel. ‘So what did you do?’

‘Used an anonymiser,’ said Taz.

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‘Ah,’ said Daniel.