Trick or Treat (3 page)

Then Daniel sighed, Horatio shifted to the marble bench nearest the heating vent and began an elaborate wash, and I sat up.

14

‘Well,’ I said.

‘Well indeed,’ he replied. ‘How have things been?’

‘Trade is down because of that thrice-damned hot bread shop,’ I said. ‘Oh, and we had a madman in the lane this morning.’

I told him about the handless wailer.

He shook his head. ‘I don’t recognise that one,’ he said. ‘Must have been a real madman. Poor creature. Not something you really needed at that hour, however.’

‘He was harmless.’ I shrugged. I wasn’t going to tell him about my moment of real fear because...well, I wasn’t going to tell him. For some reason. ‘Meroe was with me. The ambulance came and took him away.’

‘But he gave you a fright,’ he diagnosed. I am never going to get used to being so relentlessly understood. ‘Madness is scary,’ he added, hugging me.

‘You are right,’ I said, leaning my head against his shoulder. ‘It is.’

‘And it’s on the increase,’ he told me. ‘There must be something new out there in the clubs and pubs. The Soup Run picked up three nutters last night. Two were just out of it but one fought like a...well, madman. Dragons, he said. Eating his heart.’

‘One of the ambos mentioned it, too. Nasty.’

‘Very. I recall that we had a surge of insanity when ice arrived. Must be something like that.’

‘What’s ice?’

‘A new kind of ecstasy,’ he explained. My turn to sigh.

‘There seems to be nothing that an all-hating demon could do to humans which they aren’t already doing for themselves. Must be disheartening for the demon,’ I said.

‘CS Lewis,’ he said, incomprehensibly. Then he put me aside gently and stood up, placing his empty glass down on the bench. ‘Got to go. I picked up an old friend from the airport last night and need to get home to see how George is doing with the jet lag.’

‘Can I come too? Perhaps we could have an early dinner,’ I suggested. I had never seen Daniel’s apartment.

‘Why not?’ he said airily. ‘Come on then, Horatio, time for a nice afternoon nap.’

He lifted the cat, I lifted the esky, and we descended.

I didn’t bother with good clothes, as Daniel seemed to be in a hurry and I have unaccountably lost one of my good shoes. Horatio loves to leap upon open shoes, landing with both front paws inside, and then cat and shoe slide across the floor until stopped by Newton’s Third Law, usually collision with a wall. Therefore it was boots or... boots. I drew on jeans and a pullover patterned with red and green parrots and grabbed my backpack.

Ten minutes and an encounter with Carolus, Therese Webb’s regal King Charles spaniel, who was waiting for Therese in the atrium, later, and we were on our way. Daniel, it appeared, lived in Elizabeth Street. Down the market end, which is filled with dingy backpackers’ hostels, garages and dubious enterprises, and is redeemed by the Victoria Market and the Stork Hotel.

‘It’s not a very nice flat,’ he told me. ‘I really only needed a place to dump my things, set up all my electronic gear and to sleep occasionally, and it’s cheap and central. I don’t know what I am going to do when some developer takes over the Buildings and makes it into upmarket apartments at three times the rent.’

‘Always a problem,’ I agreed. I wasn’t ready to have anyone live with me and Horatio. It made sense for someone with a nocturnal profession to have his own place, especially since my hours were so unsocial and my rage, if roused from my rightful slumber, volcanic. I even threw a pillow at Horatio once when he woke me by tipping my bedside glass of water into my face. I missed but he didn’t speak to me for the whole day.

Elizabeth Street during the afternoon was a fascinating melange of languages and faces. The YMCA housed the respectable traveller, the student, and those paid for by their doting parents, and the hostels housed the rest. There were little shops selling tacky souvenirs like stuffed koalas, kangaroo paw bottle openers and snakeskin belts (erk) and more selling liquor and junk food. Daniel stopped before a dingy entryway and led me up three steps.

The Buildings was not so much dingy as grimy, and not so much grimy as dirty, with that ground-in, institutional dirt of a building which no one either cares about or is responsible for. It had not been repainted since its original coat of old stone in about 1930, and still had a sign stencilled on the inner wall which requested the patrons to refrain from spitting. It could have been a charming place if it was cleaned and decorated and loved, but I could tell it wasn’t going to be.

‘Stairs,’ said Daniel apologetically. ‘I don’t trust that lift.’

‘Stairs? Fine,’ I said, inspecting the iron-doored 1930s lift. ‘I like stairs.’

‘You won’t like these,’ he promised and he was, of course, right. Filthy and smelling strongly of urine and phenol, not a nice combination. But they were well built and safer than that lift. I wondered how my cleanly Daniel liked his surroundings. I asked.

‘It impresses the clients,’ he said with a wry grin.

‘Yes, indeed,’ I said, as we came out onto the landing and saw the familiar etched glass door with the name on it. Familiar from hundreds of black and white movies, usually starring Humphrey Bogart. ‘I see what you mean. Let me guess—can you see a neon sign saying Eat At Joe’s from your window?’

‘No, it’s a neon sign saying Garage, and there is no bottle of Old Grandad bourbon in the desk drawer. It’s a bottle of ouzo. Otherwise...’

He unlocked the door and it was, indeed, the perfect mean streets private eye’s office: the scarred desk, the unmatched visitors’ chairs, the uncurtained window with the blinking sign. Cleaner than one would have expected from the rest of this dump. The floor had been swept inside the millennium and the window glass was actually polished. The room smelt of Mr Sheen, coffee, generic Melbourne City and the crisps and Twisties always present where nerds congregate. The computer and electronics were not period, but the blonde entering by the other door certainly was.

She was tall and slim and willowy, with long, long legs. She was patting at her long golden hair with a blue towel. She was wearing the royal blue silk dressing gown I had given Daniel for his birthday. On her it looked devastatingly sexy. This could have been enhanced by the high heels. She turned and revealed a cleavage which would have made Sam Spade fall off his chair. She could have come straight off any Carter Brown cover. I looked at her. Then I looked at Daniel.

‘Hello, George,’ he said easily. ‘This is my friend Corinna.’

‘Nice to meet you,’ said the blonde, extending a languid hand. I took it. Warm and scented. Her nails were perfect, like little drops of blood.

‘George?’ I asked. My voice squeaked.

‘Georgiana,’ she explained in a flawless Sloane accent. ‘Sign that Daddy wanted a boy. Only thing Daddy gave me, actually. Georgiana Hope, in fact. Danny’s an old friend of mine.’

‘Oh,’ I said. I could not for the life of me think of anything else to add. Danny? Old friend?

‘I told you about George,’ Daniel reminded me. ‘She ran a catering company in England.’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘She taught me to make radish roses,’ he said, smiling, aware that something in this meeting was not going well. ‘Feel like an early dinner, George?’

‘Couldn’t eat a thing,’ declared the blonde.

‘You’ll be hungry later,’ warned Daniel. ‘And there’s not a lot to eat here.’

‘So I see. Tinned beans, dried noodles, bottled pasta sauce. I can see I shall have to do some shopping.’

‘Er . . . don’t do it on my account. Anyway, if you aren’t coming, I’ve got to go out. Corinna has to go to bed early.’

‘Very well, dear boy,’ she said, and enveloped him in a hug, kissing him on the neck. ‘Come back to me soon.’

Daniel did not answer and I didn’t know what to say. George was moving in on my lover, and she might have had a prior claim. I had to find out and did not know how to phrase the questions.

‘Stork Hotel,’ decided Daniel. ‘We need real food.’

‘All right,’ I concurred. We went out. On the staircase, I could still smell her perfume. I identified it. It was called Poison. How very suitable.

‘So, how long is George staying?’ I asked, as artlessly as I could.

‘Until she finds an apartment. She’s sold the London business and moved to Australia, got a business visa.’

Another reason to loathe the Minister for Immigration. Not that I needed one, as it happens. I tried to think of how to frame my next set of questions as we went down the mudcoloured staircase and finally achieved the street.

‘Nice little flat, if it was decorated,’ I said. ‘How many rooms do you have?’

‘A kitchen and a bathroom, the office, a lounge room and a bedroom. I’ve got a fire escape just like those New York tenements. And the rent is very cheap.’

So Georgie wasn’t necessarily sleeping in Daniel’s bed. With Daniel. Oddly enough, I wasn’t jealous, not that curdled green bilious feeling. But I did feel hurt, as though something precious had been lost, as though I was bleeding.

‘I suppose I should have at least washed and painted the walls,’ said Daniel self consciously. ‘But I almost never have visitors. Clients come because someone I know has sent them, and they don’t care about the office, just the results. Actually I was going to suggest that she ask if there was space in Insula.’

I paused to stare at him, the sort of stare that women have been giving men since eyesight was invented and the first man brought an uncleaned stegosaur and seventeen mates home for an impromptu dinner when his wife was nursing a baby and a cold and trying to finish a song for the women’s corroboree. A look that said, surely you can’t be serious? Oh, you are. Goddess have mercy.

‘There’s nothing available,’ I said flatly. ‘Is she starting a business here?’

‘Yes, she’s looking out for an established place to invest in.’

‘She might like Docklands,’ I said hopefully. ‘Lots of flats there, nice view of the river, plenty of restaurants, too.’

We were brought up short by the door of the Stork, which was, exceptionally, closed for redecoration.

‘Damn,’ I said.

‘Corinna, what’s wrong?’ asked Daniel, taking both my hands in his and swinging me round to face him. ‘You’re not yourself today.’

‘I don’t think I like your old friend,’ I said. Honesty in everything, Corinna.

‘You’re jealous?’ asked Daniel, with an edge of laughter in his voice. The amusement stifled any further revelation I might have made.

‘Don’t be ridiculous. Now, where are we going to eat? Or shall we buy some supplies and go back to Insula and have a picnic?’

‘Let’s wander back towards Insula and see what happens,’ he said. ‘If there’s an enticing cafe, we can eat there, otherwise the New York is on our way.’

That had my vote. Someone had finally noticed that lots of people were now living in the city and most of them had enough money to buy, as it might be, kalamata olives if they wanted olives, and Jindi camembert, saucisson sec if they wanted sausages, and organic tomatoes rather than those plastic supermarket ones. Thus the New York Deli was born. It stayed open almost all night and it sold all the best of the
delikat essen
one’s heart could desire. And when Daniel and I came in, the intervening cafes being uninviting, there was a display of German sausages which decided our dinner. Bratwurst. Weisswurst, my favourite.

‘Corinna, you look terrible! What’s the matter, this big hunk not treating you good?’

‘Just tired, Uncle Solly,’ I smiled. Uncle Solly looked like every Yiddish uncle anyone had ever described; rounded, dark-eyed, fluent, with fluffy white hair and a big white apron. He knew every customer by name after they had been into his shop more than once and most of the surrounding populace called him Uncle Solly. He had a throng of apparently willing nephews, nieces and cousins who kept the shop going during the day and Uncle Solly did the night shift. Someone had tried to hold him up once, and Uncle Solly had overwhelmed the thief with hospitality, so by the time the cops arrived the robber had handed over his knife and was drinking
caffee mit schlag
, nose deep in whipped cream. Then the attending police officers had some coffee too, and some ginger cake, and it ended with no charges being laid after all. It was a mistake, everyone makes mistakes...

I really loved Uncle Solly. When it was his turn for the Soup Run sandwiches, the homeless ate really well on his donated ingredients. As we were going to, I could tell.

‘Sausages!’ he exclaimed, looping them into a greaseproofwrapped bundle. ‘A good meal, if you also have maybe just a mouthful of my potato salad, look, mmm! Creamy! I won’t insult such a lady, such a baker, by asking if you got rye bread. But busy woman you are, maybe you like my already made green salad with this little sachet of the special Uncle Solly thousand island dressing like you never tasted.’

‘All of that,’ I said greedily. I hadn’t brought a bag so he put everything carefully into one of his white canvas bags.

‘And some coffee cake,’ said Daniel. ‘It’s just like my mother’s.’

‘Coffee cake as well,
bubelah
, you’re living large. And who was that blonde I saw you with yesterday? Blondes I don’t think you should be squiring round the street, people talk. What’s your Corinna, who is a good woman, going to think of you, eh?’

Daniel stared at Uncle Solly. Solly stared back. There was one of those masculine silences. I have no patience with them.

‘It’s all right, Uncle Solly, I know about her, I just met her. She’s an old friend.’

‘Friends he’s got,’ muttered Solly, ringing up the total and giving me change. ‘Bring the bag back next time you come,’ he told me. ‘And you,
bubelah
...’

He said something in a language I did not understand and conducted us out of the shop.

‘What did he say to you?’ I asked.

‘Nothing,’ said Daniel. ‘Just a proverb, a Yiddish proverb.’

‘Right,’ I said.

We got back to Insula and my apartment. Horatio woke from one of those little day-long naps which cats take and politely intimated that it was dinner time. Which it was. He accepted a ration of kitty dins while we grilled sausages. I found the French mustard and the rye bread. Daniel opened a bottle of Rhine style wine to accompany our German food.