Trick or Treat (28 page)

‘Artist?’ I objected.

He shrugged. ‘Whatever. The actor chose a shoulder and tried to bite through the skin, and couldn’t. The poor subject was shaking with pain, and still all there was to show was a huge bruise. I was watching this. With complete disbelief, I might add. And I thought about it. You’d either have to nip up a fold of skin and use a pre-sharpened tooth, or try for a soft part, and the lobe of the ear is probably the most accessible soft part. Of course if you miscalculate you might bite it off.’

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‘Erk,’ I commented. ‘Too much information, as Kylie would say.’

‘Quite.’

‘Where shall we go first?’ I pulled my seatbelt down to fasten it.

‘My Greek is in Footscray. Janelle in Carlton is closest,’ he said. Timbo started the car.

‘Aren’t you sick of driving us around, Timbo?’ I asked, feeling a little conscience stricken.

‘I’m never tired of driving, Corinna,’ he replied. ‘I could drive all day and all night. Nothing to do when I’m not driving but watch TV. You can get real sick of watching TV real fast. And Mum says I clutter up the house.’

‘Don’t you go out or anything?’ I asked.

‘I go to the Grand Prix every year,’ he replied. ‘And to Phillip Island. And out to Sandown. And Daniel got me a job once a week teaching defensive driving to kids. That’s fun.’

Since there was no one I would rather have had in charge of an out-of-control car than Timbo, who had a deep spiritual connection with all engines, I just murmured an agreement.

Janelle’s address was not actually in Carlton but in Parkville, the same block of flats we had come to with Meroe.

‘Are you getting a bad feeling about this?’ asked Daniel.

‘Meaning that there is a connection now between Vin Wyatt’s ergot and Barnabas and his treasure hunt?’

‘Yes, something like that.’

‘Could be a coincidence. They happen a lot in the real world. I’m always noticing them.’

‘You’re just sorry for Janelle.’

‘That, too.’

We rang, but there was no one at home. I didn’t want to leave Mr Wyatt’s note in case Janelle was no longer with the witches, or perhaps (though that would be stretching coincidence to Fortean proportions) had never been aware of them at all, being lent the flat by some academic acquaintance. Janelle didn’t seem to be the sort of girl to have academic acquaintances.

Daniel rang the bell for the apartment of the witches we had met on our first visit and we were answered. The security door didn’t open, but after a while Celeste came out to us.

‘Janelle? Mousy, droopy girl? They’re at the tattoo place this afternoon.’

‘Who are?’ I asked.

‘The girls,’ she said. ‘The younger ones.’

‘Barnabas’s acolytes?’

Celeste pursed her lips. ‘You could call them that. And the boys, Cypress and Cedar. Hang on, someone said Janelle wasn’t coming back here, she was off to Bendigo, was it, to see her sisters? Have to ring her later, they ought to be back after five. Blessed part.’

We thanked her and went on to our next appointment.

Abbotsford had been gentrified but retained its working class feel. You could buy sourdough at the local shop, but it also stocked sliced white bread in its plastic wrapper. The Ramsgate family lived in a small brick house which had not been renovated. We rang the doorbell and were admitted by a worried woman in the very last pinny in captivity. It had improbable blue roses on it. They matched her rinse and perm. She had to be fifty and an old fifty at that.

‘Eddie? He’s real upset,’ she said. ‘Thinks he’s lost his job, thinks it’s all his fault. Come in,’ she invited, and we were conducted into a cosy dark lounge room where a vacant youth was eating crisps and staring at a car race of some sort on the TV. The high performance engines went whizzing round with

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a noise like a Scooby Doo monster-sized mosquito. At any moment I expected someone to pull off a mask and say, ‘Professor Jones! So it was you!’ ‘Yes, and I would have got away with it, if it wasn’t for you meddling kids!’

‘Eddie?’ said his mother. ‘People from your boss to see you.’

Eddie looked up. He was the same pimply and gormless youth that I recalled, with an added gloom which had settled around him like fog.

‘What does Mr Wyatt say?’ he demanded. ‘That I’m sacked?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Here’s a note.’

I gave it to him and he unfolded it, but his eyes just seemed to skim over the surface.

‘Hasn’t got his glasses,’ said his mother. She took the piece of paper from him and read it aloud. ‘“Dear Eddie, don’t worry, if it looks like I can’t open again I will find you something else. Vincent Wyatt.” Well, that’s nice,’ she said in a tone of rising indignation. ‘Gets my boy involved in a poisoning, and all he can say is he’ll find him another job! When Eddie’s been getting up at four every morning! Do you know what that’s like?’ she demanded of me.

‘Believe me when I tell you that I know,’ I said in return. ‘Don’t be too hard on Mr Wyatt, he’s in big trouble himself.’

‘Deserves it, carrying on with that young girl,’ snarled Mrs Ramsgate.

My mind boggled. What would a young woman like Janelle see in a red-faced older man like Vin Wyatt? But then what, I supposed, did her mother see in all those brutes to whom she kept attaching herself? The ways of the heart are inscrutable, as the Professor would say. Or possibly the ways of the wallet, of course.

‘Really?’ asked Daniel.

Eddie took another crisp. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘P’raps. But he’s all right, Vin is. That was nice of him. To think of me. Yeah, Mum, I know what you’re gonna say, but no one else wanted to give me a job. Paid all right too, more than Jobsearch. Tell him, thanks.’

‘Why couldn’t you answer your phone?’ asked Daniel.

‘They cut it off,’ said Eddie solemnly.

‘Who did?’

‘The government. They only let you keep a phone for three months. I have to get another one soon. Only now they want Mum to sign for me.’

‘Oh, right,’ said Daniel, who apparently understood this. ‘And what are you doing with yourself?’

‘Gotta go down Centrelink tomorrow.’

‘And he’s been out every night with his rotten friends,’ snarled Mrs Ramsgate.

‘Mum,’ protested Eddie.

‘Wasting his money!’

‘They pay for me,’ whined Eddie.

‘Well, nice to meet you.’ I didn’t want to stay for the argument.

Mrs Ramsgate conducted us to the door, apologising. ‘Sorry, it was kind of you to bring the note,’ she said. ‘He’s a good boy really, my Eddie, he just gets into bad company. Goodbye,’ she said, and I waited until we were en route to Footscray and the elderly Greek on our list before I asked: ‘The government takes your phone away?’

‘He signs up for a free mobile phone and a contract, and then he doesn’t pay for the calls, so they cut him off,’ said Daniel. ‘The kids can run through two or three companies before someone gets wise and cuts off their credit. Now they

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ask him to get a guarantor. His mum, in fact. And she’s bright enough not to sign. A chatty kid can find himself with a bill for thousands of dollars if he can’t SMS.’

‘And Eddie can’t SMS?’ I asked.

‘No, ketschele, he can’t text because he can’t read,’ said Daniel. ‘He shows no signs of having ever owned spectacles. It’s a common excuse.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Listen, we left consideration of Barnabas where it lay because we got distracted. Shouldn’t we be investigating him further? He had the ephod, after all.’

‘We’re seeing the Lone Gunmen tonight,’ said Daniel. ‘They’ve got some more information.’

‘Right.’

We tootled off to Footscray, in the scent of mystery and chicken Twisties, and I wondered what it would be like not to understand the multiple essential signals of the world: not to be able to read or write. I couldn’t remember not being able to read. It would be like trying to travel in a world without maps.

The elderly Greek lived in what, at school, we always unkindly called a wog palace: a two storey brick building with white stone pilasters, and, in this case, lions regardant supporting shields on the gateposts. Such houses usually had a vegetable garden in front, as did this one: tomatoes, chilis, zucchini, basil and peppers. They all looked extremely healthy. As a concession to Western taste someone had planted two daisy bushes on either side of the gate. The name on the letter-box was Nikopoulos.

‘I’m here to see Uncle Yanni,’ Daniel told the gaggle of children who fountained out the front door when he rang the bell. They all raced back into the house, yelling, ‘Uncle Yanni! There’s a lady!’ and we were ushered inside by a middle-aged woman, presumably Kyria Nikopoulos, who resembled Mrs Pappas so closely that I had to look hard to distinguish between them. This lady had brown hair and was wiping her hands on a blue checked tea towel.

‘Hello,’ said Daniel. ‘I’m Daniel. Saba sent me.’

‘He’s in the garden,’ she told us. ‘Come through.’

She was not overly welcoming, especially for a Greek. She seemed wary. The children picked this up and stopped dancing around us, falling back into a defensive huddle with the smallest and the boom box in the middle.

‘I haven’t come to cause him any trouble,’ said Daniel gently.

Mrs Nikopoulos’s face darkened and she wrung the dishcloth between strong hands. ‘He’s always brought trouble,’ she said bitterly. ‘Ever since he was born. He broke my mother’s heart with his criminal ways. But come along,’ she said. ‘Maybe he can make up for some of his sins before the devil comes to claim him.’ This sounded very promising.

The house was cool but the garden bright. An old man was sitting under a grapevine, smoking a Papadimistrou and drinking what smelt like either expensive oven cleaner or cheap homemade wine. He looked up and smiled at me.

Oh, my. All he needed was a bandana and a cutlass to join the crew of Captain Jack Sparrow’s latest ship without need for interview. He was bald, brown, skinny and charismatic, with a thick gold ring on one finger and gold rings in his ears. Someone had tattooed a full rigged ship on his chest. The blue was faded under a scribble of pale chest hair but I could still see all the details. He waved at us to sit down in a couple of unravelling cane chairs and said to the woman, ‘Ouzo, coffee, Lydia! Have you no manners?’ She sniffed and bridled but whisked herself back into the house.

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He looked at the children and grinned. ‘Later,’ he promised. ‘Later, there will be ice cream.’ They vanished like little mice. This was a man with power.

‘Are all those children yours?’ asked Daniel.

‘Some of them. I live here with my brother-in-law. He’s an accountant.’ He dragged out the word with infinite scorn. So the harassed Lydia was his sister, not his wife. He caught me thinking this and gave me a flash of teeth.

‘My last wife died ten years ago. They wear out too fast, women. Well.
Shalom
, Christ killer.’

‘
Yassus
, Pirate,’ returned Daniel, stretching his legs. ‘Nice place you’ve got here. Vines bearing well?’

‘Too dry this year,’ said the pirate. ‘Good for olives, though. How are things in the spy business?’

Daniel did not look at me. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘And how are things in the treasure business?’

‘Dead,’ said Yanni Nikopoulos. ‘Saba sent you to hear the story,’ he said. ‘How much?’

‘The good of your soul,’ said Daniel evenly. They stared at each other as Lydia clashed things in the kitchen. A standard female way of expressing dissent or requesting assistance, depending on the context. I almost got up to join her, but did not want to miss a word of the story.

‘Might be worth it,’ mused Yanni, stubbing out the cigarette on the concrete. ‘Who’s your beautiful woman? I never saw you with a woman in tow before.’

‘Corinna,’ said Daniel. ‘This is Kyrie Yanni Nikopoulos, a well known and respected buccaneer.’

‘Delighted,’ I said, giving him my hand. He kissed it. His grip was firm and his lips, strangely enough, soft.

‘You hang on to her or I’ll take her away from you,’ Yanni threatened.

‘No, not this one,’ said Daniel. I smiled at him and Yanni gave me back my hand, laying it in my lap with a pat.

‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘Not this one.
Mazel tov
,
adelphos
. A good woman is above rubies.’

‘But rubies are also useful,’ hinted Daniel.

Lydia came into the garden with a tray on which reposed ouzo, water, coffee, and a little plate of those Greek doughnuts which are dipped in syrup. We sipped and munched and I tried not to drip onto my nice shirt, and did not succeed. Yanni watched me with a grin.

‘A good woman is one who enjoys her food,’ he said. ‘The generous type. I always liked them generous. All right. You want to know about Inousires Nisia, eh?’

‘I do,’ said Daniel. ‘With special regard to secrets and treasure.’

‘Ah,’ said Yanni. ‘That was a bad year, a bad year for me, the year that Kalamata fell down.’

‘1986,’ I said.

‘So it was. I came here with my parents, a long time ago, I am an Australian, but my distant family, they were in trouble, and I went to rescue them.’

I heard a loud ‘Ha!’ of disbelief from the kitchen, where his sister was listening through the window. ‘You tell the truth,’ she warned. ‘You old devil. Lies are no use to you where you’re going!’

‘All right, there was maybe a little profit to be made by the right man,’ responded Yanni. ‘My son had got into a little business with a fishing combine. They fished for all sorts of things, you understand? Around and about in the Bay of Messinia.’

‘Antiquities?’ asked Daniel. ‘Lot of wrecks down there.’

‘And no one is allowed to scuba dive,’ said the old man. How old was he? He could have been forty or seventy.

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‘Eh . . .’ he said, allowing the syllable to draw out and opening both hands. ‘Well, anyway, at the foot of Messinia are the Inousis islands, Sapientza and Schiza. Little rubbish islands, no water even for goats, no fish, only rocks and birds. Useless. But perhaps useful if a man knew the right place.’