Trick or Treat (8 page)

‘Me, too?’ asked Jason, as I dried my hair. ‘I feel all crappy, seeing something like that.’

‘Full steam ahead, Mr Midshipman,’ I ordered.

I wondered if I was going to regret giving him Horn-blower to read. Jason had not really had a childhood and he was only passingly literate. I would have started with something simpler but he had lit upon Hornblower and was puzzling his way through it with manful determination. And who was I to discourage him? Enough people had already tried to discourage Jason without me putting my oar (sorry) in. He was getting a massive kick out of all this naval stuff and was showing a fine natural talent as a mimic.

‘Aye, aye, Captain,’ responded Jason.

The day came, calm and bright. Only homely noises could be heard; the twittering of Melbourne sparrows, the world’s most indestructible bird. The Mouse Police padding out for their morning fish. The paper boy hitting the door dead centre with his plastic wrapped missile. Kiko of the Japanese restaurant putting on Radio Nippon as she always did at six sharp. Nice, normal. Humdrum. Humdrum is soothing. The bread cooked, smelling superb. There was a sharp scent of fruit as Jason compounded his raspberry icing.

Ordinary. I
like
ordinary.

Too good to last. The baking proceeded with efficiency and dispatch, the loaves went into the oven flabby and came out shiny, the muffins smelt heavenly. The little cakes rose evenly and when Jason went out for breakfast I ate one with my next cup of coffee. The compounded fruit icing was sharp and almost sour, setting off the sweetness of the cake beautifully. The icing doesn’t last well, but then it usually doesn’t hang around for too long.

Time to open the shop. I had my hand on the shutters when someone spoke, far too close and directly behind me, and I jumped a mile. If I had been Horatio I would have sprung up into the curtains.

‘Miss Chapman? Are you Corinna Chapman?’

‘Part of her,’ I said, putting a hand to my breast to check that my heart was still inside. It was. I could tell from the way it was thumping. Two blue-clad ladies looked at me evenly.

‘Senior Constable Bray, Constable Vickery. Can we come in?’

‘Surely,’ I said, unlocking the shutters and letting them

6
1

slide up with a click. I unlocked the bakery door and allowed the officers to enter.

The speaker, SC Sharon Bray according to her nametag, was a small, stocky woman who looked as though she had survived an eventful childhood with three older brothers and was consequently not going to be frightened of anything, ever again. She was good-looking, with humorous brown eyes and cropped, curly brown hair. Constable Helen Vickery was thinner, paler and solemn. They both sniffed appreciatively as they became aware of the divine scent. Jason peeked out of the bakery and slid back into it like an eel into mud. Despite his present state of virtue, Jason did not like cops.

‘Well, what can I do for you on this cold morning?’ I asked. ‘Cup of coffee and a muffin?’

‘We’re asking about the girl in the alley,’ said Sharon Bray. ‘And coffee and a muffin would be very nice. It’s been quite a night. And it’s still not over.’

Kylie came in, dressed in a long strange garment appar
ently made of purple fishing net with feathers knitted into it. She widened her eyes at the sight of blue uniforms in the shop and hastened to supply coffee and two of the new jam-filled muffins. There was a pause as proper reverence was given to the pâtissière’s art, then the senior constable put down her cup and produced her notebook.

‘Tell me about it,’ she said, and I told her everything I had observed, including the odd scent of the girl’s skin. Sharon Bray made notes. Constable Vickery poked around the shop, picking things up and putting them down again in a manner calculated to drive the guilty into confession. And the innocently nervous into conniptions.

‘The ambos said this was the eleventh,’ I told my interrogator. ‘Is there something new on the street?’

‘Yep,’ she replied soberly. ‘Something very nasty. Trouble is, none of them have been able to tell us what they took. I’ve seen stuff that sends them mad, but with this stuff they stay mad. Tox screens are coming back with “unknown compound” in them.’

‘That’s bad,’ I said inadequately.

‘Have you seen anyone hanging around, perhaps dealing?’ she asked. ‘You’re here very early, aren’t you? Patrol says you start at four.’

‘So I do,’ I said. ‘But I haven’t seen anyone in the alley except the people who are usually in the alley—you know, the night people, security guards, cops, the paper boy, no strangers but the ones who collapse on my doorstep. I wonder...’

‘You wonder?’ she asked sharply.

‘I wonder why here?’ I reasoned it out. ‘I mean, this alley only leads into the arcade and the arcade is closed from about eleven until eight am. But there is a little linking back alley where the rubbish men come to collect. That leads around a dogleg into Schmutter Alley and out into Flinders Lane again. I wonder if the dealer is there?’

‘You can’t see into the link from here?’

‘No. Come into the bakery,’ I said, determined to show everything I had to the police in case they got ideas. They followed me. Jason dropped to his knees and pretended to be taking bread out of an oven.

‘This is my apprentice, Jason. Say hello to the nice ladies, Jason.’

He scrambled up and mumbled, ‘H’lo.’

Sharon Bray eyed him narrowly but didn’t say anything. I led them to the alley door. The Mouse Police woke up and blinked and Constable Vickery cooed at them and stroked their heads. They purred. I preceded Ms Bray out into Calico Alley.

‘See, the link’s right at the back, where the arcade stairs are. I can’t see into it from this angle. But the victims have come down the alley towards me, and there’s no other way they could have got into it.’

‘We’ll certainly take a look,’ said the senior constable, snapping her notebook shut. ‘Thanks, Miss Chapman. Come on, Constable. Say bye-bye to the puddy-tats.’

Constable Vickery blushed and followed and I watched the strong blue-clad figures move away toward Kiko’s. I hoped they found that dealer. He would know that he had been in a fight.

Excitement over, I went back into the bakery to soothe Jason’s shattered nerves and get on with the day’s work. There were people to feed, and it was up to us to feed them.

‘Cops!’ he was muttering. ‘In our kitchen!’

He sounded like a scruffy male version of Lady Macbeth:
Ah, woe, alas! What, in our house?

‘You’ve changed sides,’ I reminded him. ‘The police officers are now required to protect you, Jason dear, from people like the—’

‘Person I used to be,’ he finished.

‘Well, yes,’ I agreed lamely.

Kylie interrupted and saved my face. ‘Those jam cakes are fantastic,’ she told Jason. ‘Can I have another one?’

‘S’pose,’ he grunted, mollified.

‘Don’t forget the dozen muffins for the stock exchange.’ I told Kylie about the elegant young man. ‘Benson. Of course. I should have known the name, indeed. He’s a wunderkind. Supposed to have the stock exchange equivalent of perfect pitch. Makes millions in a day.’

I went back into the shop. Horatio had taken his place by the cash register and the first customers were already caressing the royal whiskers. Something about my statement worried me, but there was a rush of business and I forgot about it.

The morning continued in the usual way. The police did not return. I went out into the alley to empty the bin into the big skip—yes, all right, I was curious—and found that, as I had said, the little alley only linked Calico and Schmutter alleys and didn’t go anywhere else. Why anyone would want to hang about in this small, badly paved and malodorous place was beyond me. But addicts will be addicts and drugs will be drugs and I took my bin back with no further information. Except that I noticed, written on the wall in small, beautifully formed letters, the word ‘wassail’. Probably not important.

We sold more bread and Megan the courier came for the restaurant orders.

‘Cops all over,’ she remarked as we loaded the trays into her motorcycle rickshaw. ‘Had my licence checked four times.’

‘All in order, I trust?’

‘Of course, Corinna, this is my living. What are they doing? They wouldn’t tell me anything.’

‘Looking for a dealer whose drugs have sent eleven people off their rockers,’ I told her. ‘Should you be going to a club any time soon, I’d buy my pills somewhere else.’

Megan gave me a censorious look. ‘I don’t take drugs,’ she said. ‘I get high in perfectly legal ways. On chocolate, mostly. Especially Heavenly Pleasures Cafe Noir. That stuff could fuel rockets. Bye,’ she added, and sped off, driving more circumspectly than usual in view of the police presence. Which meant that she rounded the corner on both sets of wheels.

I was mildly worried about how Daniel was managing and took a moment off from the baking consultation over the spiced buns Meroe had requested to climb the stairs. But he was fast asleep and would, with any luck, remain so until I had time to ask him some questions.

We sold bread. It was a quiet day. I opened the mail. Nothing but the usual bills, an invitation to a book launch, a few people interested in my fiscal future offering me shares in various doomed enterprises and my copy of the accountancy newsletter which my professional body occasionally sends for the edification of us numbers people.

Article by that same Benson. Strange little bump in gold exploration. Bendigo. Someone had told me that there was a lot more gold in the ground in that area than had ever come out of it, but it was in deep veins in quartz and not worth winning. In fact, hadn’t someone discovered a really rich vein of ore and would have made a fortune except that the Bendigo people selfishly objected to him burrowing under their houses? Someone now thought that they could float a company on what they had found. The newsletter was noncommittal. Might be, might not. Wait and see what the Navarino Gold Company’s assay turned up. Sound advice. Navarino? I had heard the word before. Some sort of orange, perhaps?

I heard Daniel coming down the stairs and put the newsletter away. He looked better. The dark marks under his eyes had lightened. He was wearing his Shalom t-shirt and jeans.

‘Hello!’ I kissed him. ‘Lunch?’

‘Got to go,’ he replied. ‘Have to report to the client.’

‘About Old Spiro?’

‘Yes,’ he said uneasily.

‘Well, what about dinner?’

‘Not tonight,’ he said, shifting his gaze. ‘I have to—’

‘There you are, Danny,’ said a Sloane voice triumphantly. ‘You’re late.’

Standing in the doorway of my bakery was a vision in dark grey: bubble skirt, tights, tall shoes, cropped blazer, string tie enclosing creamy throat. Her long hair was folded into a perfect French pleat. She looked taller than I remembered and Kylie, beside her, seemed diminished and shabby. This did not make me like Georgiana Hope any better.

She reached out an immaculate hand and took Daniel by the arm. ‘You promised to show me Melbourne,’ she reminded him. The scent of Poison enveloped me, overruling the earthy smell of baking bread.

‘Oh,’ said Daniel. ‘Yes, I suppose so. Bye, Corinna.’

And he followed her out of the shop without a backward glance. Jason swore. Kylie, however, had clasped her hands to her nonexistent bosom in rapture.

‘Did you see her clothes?’ she breathed.

‘They were boring,’ said Jason. ‘Like a school uniform.’

‘What do you know about it?’ snarled Kylie.

‘I know you look better than that bitch,’ said Jason stoutly. ‘Behave better, too.’

Kylie gave Jason the sort of look one gets when announcing a large lottery win to the lucky contestant.

‘I never knew you looked at what I was wearing!’ she exclaimed.

‘Can’t help it, can I?’ asked Jason sensibly. ‘You’re right in front of me. You look like the girls in magazines. She looked like a schoolgirl. An
old
schoolgirl.’

I could have kissed him, but he doesn’t like emotional scenes. Kylie, who was immensely flattered, patted Jason on the cheek. There was a moment of silence.

‘Muffins,’ I said. ‘For the stock exchange wunderkind. You choose the muffins, Jason, will you? You pack them, Kylie, use the dark brown tissue paper and make them look pretty. Mr Benson’s PA is waiting.’

They got busy, and so did I. But I wasn’t happy. It was, after all, Thursday. I have never really got the hang of Thursdays, as Arthur Dent said. Daniel hadn’t seemed enthusiastic about going along with that ‘old schoolgirl’—I would love Jason forever for that description—so I dismissed the incident from my mind as far as such things can be dismissed, and left Kylie and Jason with the shop. Kylie was still examining Jason as though she had never seen him before. Jason was thinking about Meroe’s spiced cakes and ignoring her. That can be very attractive. Not, however, to me.

Nothing I could do about one rival, so it was time for me to have a look at the other. I went upstairs and donned polite daytime clothes, my jeans, a t-shirt and a fleecy jacket, and went forth, basket and purse in hand, to sample the wares of Best Fresh Bread. And I had found my other good shoe wedged under the dressing table, so that was a plus for the day.

On the way out through the lobby, I paused to watch Trudi and her kitten, the death-defying Lucifer, feeding the fish. That is, Trudi was feeding the fish with sweeps of her gardener’s gnarled hand, and Lucifer was fighting his harness, attempting to get free and convert the koi into entrees. He was perfectly capable of leaping in and taking the fight to the fish, so the harness was a wise precaution. The coloured fins rose up, eying the cat warily. They knew those clawed ginger paws. He had almost got them on several action-packed occasions.

‘Corinna!’ Trudi greeted me. She is stocky, sixty-five and Dutch, our gardener and maintenance worker, the only person whom the freight lift obeys. She is always dressed in blue. Blue cotton shirt and trousers for summer and blue woollen jumper and jeans for winter. And, of course, a boldly contrasting cat, who rides on her shoulder most of the time as though he has just eaten her parrot. ‘The scarlet tulips, they are out! Such beauty!’