Devil's Food (4 page)

‘No deal,’ I told him, handing over the last cheese roll to its predetermined fate. ‘Your Constables Kane and Reagan are gone. My mum is staying.’

‘Fair enough,’ he conceded, and we closed the shop.

Jason blended his pumpkin soup with a grating of nutmeg and it went into the big fridge. Soup is always better the day after it is made. He started mopping the bakery and I saw Goss out, locked the shop, and went upstairs to my own apartment, escorted by Horatio, who was not impressed with the excitements of the day. He is a cat of rigid values and requires harmony in his surroundings. Scenes ruffle his whiskers.

In pursuit of which I made a firm decision to leave seeing Starshine to the evening. Then I wallowed in a very foamy lush bath, dressed in my lovely blue robe made out of double quilted polar fleece, loaded the drinks into my esky, lifted Horatio, and ascended to the roof garden. This is a small piece of paradise on top of our building. It is tended by Trudi, who is Dutch. She also makes sure that the elevator works, that there are functioning globes in all the lights, that no one gets in without a key and that the garden does not send too many tendrils down the stairs in its attempts to take over the whole building. She was outside in the cold wind, planting tulips which had been in her fridge for six weeks. They would reward this care with brilliant blooms in spring, she said.

With her was a small orange cat, digging industriously. Horatio rose to his paws to greet Lucifer, Cat Most Likely To Be Found In Trouble. Until Trudi had given him an outlet for his boundless energy, Meroe and I had feared for Lucifer’s stock of lives, which had been going down rapidly. Now he works off his energy accompanying Trudi on her rounds and occasionally engaging in a brisk exchange of views with Mrs Pemberthy’s rotten little doggie, Traddles. So far the score is Lucifer sixteen, Traddles nil. When Lucifer gets bigger he will be able to beat Traddles with a brick tied to his collar. I look forward to the day.

Having greeted Horatio, Lucifer went on with his digging. Trudi sat back on her heels. The wind had whipped her cheeks pink above her blue jumper and pummelled her short white hair into punk spikes. I offered her a drink.

‘I’m nearly finished,’ she said, trying to find a clean bit of arm to wipe her forehead on. ‘You go into the temple.’

The temple is probably the only glass-walled all-weather marble-columned Temple of Ceres, complete with statue of the mother goddess bearing a sheaf of corn, in the world. It is warm because the architect set pipes in the floor to circulate waste heat from the building, as in a Roman hypocaust. The builder may have been a tad eccentric, but he built very solidly. Thus the temple is a splendid place to sit and drink a well earned gin and tonic whatever the weather outside.

I sipped my drink and closed my eyes. It had been an awful day but, for me, it was now over. The shop was shut, the day’s trading safely banked by Goss and the doors secured. The Mouse Police were on patrol, or more likely reposing on their flour sacks until night came and the vermin crept out from their holes. Horatio perched on the arm of my marble chair, watching the wind tear at the branches of Trudi’s linden tree. He likes winter. He loves warmth; any sort, he is not fussy, from air blowers to the full blown actual flames in a fireplace. To this he sits so close that last year he melted his whiskers on one side and had to allow a metre’s clearance on the left until they grew again. I like winter too. People buy more bread than in summer, because somehow they instinctively know they need more food to keep warm. It is not pleasant to make bread when it is hot outside, because the bakery air conditioners can only do so much, and the temperature only goes down from ‘inferno’ to ‘possible to survive’. Winter is the season for baking.

Trudi cradled her last bulb in her hand, whispered to it, socketed it gently into the ground, covered it and tamped it down. Then she stood, stretched her back, and led Lucifer into the temple, pausing to wipe his paws with a duster as she scraped her own boots. Lucifer was attached to a harness, but seemed to have adapted to it. He clawed his way onto Trudi’s shoulder and sat there as smugly as if he had just eaten the parrot.

‘Ah!’ she said. ‘Warm in here!’ I passed her the bottle. Trudi doesn’t like foreign materials in her gin. She took a strengthening gulp.

‘How does your garden grow?’ I asked.

‘Good, good. Settled down, snuggled,’ she said. ‘Now until spring nothing much, which is good, my bones get old. Then we fight the snails for the tulips. I win,’ she said.

I believed her. She was perfectly capable of sitting up all night and shooting the invading snails with a BB gun. What had happened to BB guns? They were probably prohibited weapons too, I thought sourly. Those two cops had not improved my day.

‘Horatio enjoys this weather,’ I said idly.

‘He likes the heat. Maybe he remembers Africa. Luce, he likes any weather, eh, Luce?’ Lucifer flicked an ear and ran his hard little head under Trudi’s chin. ‘We go and fix the plumbing in Arachne next,’ she promised him. Lucifer gave a brief purr. As long as it was dangerous and preferably wet, he would love it.

‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘She was dyeing in the bath,’ Trudi explained.

‘What?’ I was startled.

‘Dyeing. Cloth. Too much fluff. Clogged the drain.’

‘Oh, right, dyeing. I see. What do you make of Ms Webb, Trudi?’

‘What Meroe said. I can’t remember the word. She’s a nice woman, kind. Likes to make things for people. Likes to teach. But she trips, drops things, breaks things. She hits table corners with her hip. If a plate is next to the edge, it falls. Meroe said …’ ‘She’s a klutz,’ said a dark brown voice. My very own Daniel, putting in a word. Trudi nodded briskly.

‘Klutz, that was it. So many words. Come on, Luce, we go find the unclogger,’ said Trudi. She smiled at Daniel and departed, Lucifer clinging tight to her shoulder with his ears forward.

‘Have a drink,’ I said, emerging from a comforting embrace. Daniel smelt of spices and his own scent, infinitely dear and infinitely comforting. ‘I will a tale unfold which will make Horatio’s whiskers spit sparks. But first, how are you?’

‘Fine. Underslept. But I got the thief and the girl who was accused has been exonerated. It was a manager, I might have known. Unreliable, the middle class in middle age.’

‘Thank you very much,’ I said, pouring gin.

‘Ketschele,’ he chuckled, ‘you’re too young to be middle aged and far too independent to be middle class. But you’re worried. What’s been happening? In such a short time, too! I only saw you at seven.’

‘A lot can happen between seven and three,’ I said. I took a deep breath and told him all of it. He frowned over the names of the officers who had arrested Jason.

‘They’re known for harassing the street kids,’ he told me. ‘Jason was lucky that you stood up for him so fiercely.’

‘Luck didn’t enter into it,’ I said. ‘Everything I said was perfectly true.’

‘That ought to have rarity value,’ he commented. ‘And your mother — mothers are a problem.’

‘You said it,’ I agreed. ‘Where is yours?’

‘In Israel.’

‘Lucky you.’ I was feeling mistreated by fate.

‘You know what the real problem is, don’t you, ketschele? She’s come here for your help. You’ll have to give it or — to put it bluntly — she won’t go home.’

‘Oh, Daniel.’ I put down the glass and leaned into his embrace. ‘Surely …’ He held me gently as I worked it out. He was, of course, right. ‘So what do we do?’ I asked bleakly.

‘We have another drink,’ he said, kissing me. ‘Then we go and find Sunlight.’

The man who was not yet a murderer went into the room and closed the door against the hated voice. He put both hands over his ears to shut it out.

CHAPTER THREE

It looked like I was going to have to interview Starshine. Well, nothing to be gained by putting it off any longer. I wasn’t going to take Daniel with me — why expose him to insult? But he insisted.

‘I’m going to have to do a lot of this investigation,’ he told me gravely. ‘You’ve got a business to run. Bread to bake. Therefore I need to have the news straight from the shoulder.’

‘It isn’t her shoulder I’m worried about,’ I said. ‘It’s her tongue.’

‘She isn’t my mother,’ he replied. ‘I don’t mind what she says about me.’

‘But you won’t like what she says about me,’ I said. Even the frightful James, who had exploited me rotten in our far too long marriage, had taken offence at some of the things of which my biological parent had accused me.

Daniel sighed. ‘Come along,’ he said. ‘Perhaps she won’t be so poisonous if she is worried about her missing husband.’

‘You’re such an optimist,’ I said. But I gathered up my possessions and Horatio and went down to my apartment, put on a respectable pair of trousers and a hand-knitted jumper which had been too big for Meroe. Daniel had a notebook and pen and a small tape recorder. We ascended, unspeaking, to confront Starshine in her mourning.

I hadn’t got to know Therese Webb, really. All I knew about her was that she made tweed, liked hard crusted bread and preferred chocolate muffins to any other. And that she was polite to shop assistants but noticed when Kylie gave her the wrong change, something she is prone to do after a hard night on the sauce or periods of prolonged starvation. When she answered the door of Arachne, which had a large frieze depicting the Goddess Juno turning the young woman into a spider, she looked motherly and cheerful.

‘Corinna! Come in! I’ve just persuaded Jacqui to eat some lunch. I’m sure she’ll be all the better for telling you about what’s worrying her,’ she said. I doubted it.

I was ushered inside, Daniel following. The layout of all the apartments was identical. I knew that at the end of the narrow hall was the parlour. There sat Starshine like a heap of old garments, but before her on the polished wooden table were a cup and a plate, and the plate had not only crumbs but apple cores. This meant that she had eaten fruit which had not fallen helpless from the tree and eaten bread which might even have been mine. With yeast in it. And — did I detect the scent of cheese? Any sign that the rigid boundaries were breaking down was welcome. Inside the strictures of her code, Starshine was as armoured as a fifteenth-century knight. And as helpless, if she fell off her steed.

Daniel sat down at the table as Starshine took a breath and directed her gaze at me. It was almost as diamond-hard as it had been in her prime. But the face around it seemed to have fallen away. Long creases almost hid her mouth and eyes. Her hair was still long but it was streaked with grey and white strands and hadn’t been combed in a while. Her fingernails were filthy and she smelt unwashed.

‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Let’s talk about Sunlight, and where he might have gone. This is Daniel Cohen. He’s a private detective. He’s going to help me.’

‘Why would he help
you
?’ grated Star, the emphasis on ‘you’ meaning ‘such a valueless thing as you’.

‘Because he loves me,’ I told her. That set her back on her metaphorical heels and I hurried along before she could recover and start telling Daniel why he really couldn’t love someone like me.

‘When did he leave, Star?’

‘Time,’ she said, making a broad gesture, ‘is immaterial.’

‘No it isn’t, Jacqui,’ put in Therese Webb. ‘You can manage it. You must have some method of telling what day it is, or what phase of the moon it is,’ she added. ‘You were always so interested in the moon.’

‘Third day past full.’ Star knew her phases all right. I could check with Meroe.

‘Where is the moon now?’ asked Daniel gently.

‘Two days past full,’ Star answered.

‘He’s been gone nearly a month and you only started looking for him now?’

I observed: ‘But you were so close!’

‘Once,’ she said gloomily. ‘Once we were as close as the fruit and its stone. But since I went to the crone he has been restless. He does not desire female flesh beyond its climacteric. He yearns after young women. There are none in the collective who would accept him.’

There couldn’t have been many women in the collective under fifty, anyway. Not many young women wanted to abandon
Australian Idol
and Long Island Iced Teas and hot pink hi-top sneakers in favour of dead vegetable stew, undiluted weather and mud. If you couldn’t take a mobile phone and an iPod to it, I’m sure that Kylie and Goss wouldn’t go. I swallowed. The thought of my own biological parent searching the city for young women was strangely unappetising. On the other hand his chances of success had to be very limited. The last time I had seen Sunlight he was growing bald, growing grey, a bit stooped, with two missing teeth. Not attractive at all.

‘So you believe that he came to the city to seek for … er …’ Daniel searched for a word.

‘Yes, young man, I believe that “er” is what he was after,’ said Star, giving Daniel her full attention for the first time. ‘So you are Corinna’s lover?’

‘I have that honour,’ said Daniel.

‘And I suppose that you too are a carrion eater, a drinker of corpse broth, inflated with yeast and poisoned with alcohol, salt and sugar?’ she asked in a rising tone.