Earthly Delights (17 page)

Fortunately, it was Daniel. Even more fortunately, I didn’t stab him.

He was standing on the balcony and the wind blew his coat open, like wings. Street light and shadow made his face a mask. In the darkness, there was the glint of eyes. For a moment I could hear the rustling of a dark angel’s wings. I felt like Glory in
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
—‘Did anyone order an apocalypse?’

Ah, oh, but he was attractive. I now knew how iron filings felt when a magnet came past. Drawn. Dragged. But I was presently angry, as an alternative to being terrified.

‘What are you doing there?’ I yelled. ‘You almost scared me to death!’

‘Put down the knife,’ he said. He sounded surprised at my reaction. ‘I am often in the dark. I belong to the night. I didn’t want to ring the bell in case you were asleep, and I wondered if your madman could reach your apartment via the balcony. And he could.’ He stepped back a pace and half turned, both hands on the rail. ‘But I shall leave, if I am not welcome.’

‘No,’ I said. Vampires can only come in if they are invited, I thought. Well, I was going to invite this one. ‘But first show me how you got up.’

I stood next to him and looked down to the lane.

‘Easy,’ he said. ‘There’s the downpipe, and then a little traverse across to the balcony with at least two good handholds. Thereafter just up and over.’

‘How can I stop him? Barbed wire? Plant cactus?’

He chuckled. ‘I don’t think you need go as far as barbed wire. Just a good coating of Vaseline on the rail, and the only thing you’ll hear is the scream as he falls off. Then you can call the police in perfect safety. Good evening, Corinna.’

‘Good evening,’ I replied, still a bit bemused. ‘Do come in. I was just about to go to bed. I have to get up and bake in the morning.’

‘I know. I’m sorry that I startled you.’

‘Yeah, me too.’

I was not feeling gracious. Nothing makes one feel sillier than overcoming terror to find that instead of confronting a murderer you are about to stick the breadknife into a future lover. Not that I did this a lot.

‘Put it this way,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t it have been worse if I had been a real murderer? And you were brave. I bet you didn’t know you were brave before.’

‘I was terrified,’ I mumbled, sitting down and drawing Horatio into a hug.

‘But you armed yourself and opened the window,’ he reminded me.

‘That was better than sitting here being terrified,’ I said, not thinking that I deserved a lot of credit. Horatio does not like unsolicited hugs and he removed himself pointedly to the other end of the sofa. Daniel sat down and provided a substitute so I hugged him instead. He smelt of the outside, of cold and dark. An unsettling, exciting scent.

He held me for a while and I began to lose my adrenaline-fuelled edginess.

‘That was such a silly thing to do,’ he said to himself. ‘I can’t imagine why I did it. How else are you likely to react? I’m a fool,’ he said. ‘Forgive me?’

‘Of course,’ I said.

‘I have found out something interesting,’ he said.

‘And so have I,’ I told him. ‘You remember that friend of James’s who moved into the apartment? He’s lost a daughter. A runaway. Cherie Holliday. If I get a picture of her, can you show it around?’

‘Possibly. What is the situation? I have known fathers desperate to find children for many reasons, and some of them are not good reasons.’

‘Because they abused them and want to keep it secret? Yes, I worked that one out. In this case, Cherie tried to tell her father about her uncle abusing her and he didn’t believe her. Now he does. And the bastard is in jail. I’ve interrupted Holliday in the process of drinking himself to death. Finding his daughter might save his life.’

‘In that case there is no harm in showing a picture,’ said Daniel. He seemed a little distracted. I could hear his heart. It had a very slow, reassuring throb. ‘How long has she been away?’

‘Three years.’

‘Not so good,’ he said. ‘He might not want her back. The street is very hard on girls.’

‘This one looked pretty strong minded,’ I said. ‘And I got the impression he’d want her back, whatever state she was in. Meroe and I are going to unpack all his belongings tomorrow and then we can get the Lone Gunmen to do a flyer. What have you found out?’

‘There are three main contenders for the hot shots,’ he said. ‘The Triad of Retribution, recently arrived and very
unpleasant. The John Smith family. And a strange character called Lestat. The street people have seen him around. Dresses like a Goth. He’s been seen speaking to all the victims, a day or so before they died. They’re scared of him. The street is very superstitious. They’ve probably not read Anne Rice’s
Interview With A Vampire
, where the name comes from, but they know a baddie when they see one. He dresses entirely in eighteenth century clothes. He has long blond hair.’

‘I think I saw him in Meroe’s shop,’ I said. ‘I’ll ask her. He might be a regular.’

‘Good. If he is killing the junkies I can’t imagine why.’

‘Fun?’ I asked. My adrenaline had drained away and I felt very tired.

‘Possibly. We need to find him and have a talk. We have no chance whatever of finding anything out about the Triad. The police know about them and so does the Chinese community. They probably won’t last any longer than the other Triad invasions.’

‘There have been others?’

‘Oh yes, over the years. They swagger in, full of confidence, and then somehow one doesn’t hear anything about them until they are picked up, usually at the airport, by an alert customs officer who just thought that they might have a look in their baggage, and lo and behold! They are carrying heroin and will spend the next twenty years in jail. Haven’t you ever wondered about that alert customs officer? Does he, in fact, have a mobile phone and an attentive ear for anonymous calls in a Chinese accent?’

‘That’s clever.’

‘And absolutely bloodless. They don’t want to attract official attention. But it discourages the Triad. And everyone is happy again until the next one comes barging in,
demanding to be cut in on the action. That’s happening at present and an arrest is expected shortly, I have no doubt.’

‘So if it is them handing out overproof drugs, we can’t catch them.’

‘No, and we shouldn’t try. They have a short way with interlopers.’

‘What about the John Smith family?’

‘They run most of the heroin in Melbourne,’ he said. ‘They’re a criminal family—every one of them is involved in crime. For two generations so far and I hear that their youngest son has just reached the children’s court. They are not nice people,’ he said. I had a feeling that this was an understatement of titanic proportions, like the claim that the coalition of armies which invaded Iraq was a ‘modest force’.

‘Do you know any of them?’

‘In passing, yes, and I can’t say that I want to further the acquaintance. But what I wanted to talk to you about, ketschele, was the victims. We have to find a pattern, if there is a pattern. I have a list of them here, with everything the police know about them.’

‘And you got that from …?’ I asked, waking myself up enough to sit up and switch on a standing lamp.

‘A friend,’ he said. ‘So far there have been four deaths and three near deaths. The first one was Collins. Nineteen, came from Frankston, away from home for two days. Heavy heroin user. Second, Hughes. Eighteen. From Abbotsford. Overdosed in the Treasury, away from home for two years, worked as a labourer when he could. Heavy user. Had booked himself in for a detox. Survived and is in detox now. Third, Suze, who overdosed in your alley and gave me the pleasure of your acquaintance. Real name MacDonald. Seventeen. From Toorak. Also survived and went straight back out and scored
again. She’s on her way out, poor Suze. Fourth, Venetti. Found dead at the station—’

‘Stop,’ I said. ‘I need to put all this in a table. Then we ought to be able to see a pattern. If there is a pattern.’

I turned on the computer and called up a spreadsheet and entered the data he had given me. When I had finished it looked like this:

Daniel looked at me over the printout. ‘You have a gift for organisation,’ he said. ‘There is one pattern which leaps out instantly.’

‘He skips a day,’ I said. ‘He, she or they skip a day, I mean. I wonder what they were doing on the 21st, 24th and 27th?’

‘Indeed. Not much connection between the victims, though. Not on the face of this.’

‘Well, it must be something other than where they came from. They are all pretty young. I reckon this creep or creeps might hang around the stations, though.’

‘Possibly because the victims do too.’

‘We need to talk to the survivors,’ I said.

‘I will try to find Suze tonight. She might talk to me if I can pay for her time. I must leave you now, ketschele. Keep
the window locked and grease that balcony rail, and do you know, I think I’m falling in love with you. How do you feel about that? I mean, hypothetically?’

‘Hypothetically? Very positive,’ I said.

‘Good,’ said Daniel. He kissed me on the throat, and left. And I went firmly to bed. But instead of visions of sugarplums, visions of victims danced in my head and it was quite a relief when the alarm clock went berserk and I realised that it was four am and instead of being dead of a heroin overdose at the age of sixteen, I got to eat breakfast, drink coffee, and do the baking. Horatio must have thought the same, for he wolfed down his breakfast with unusual appetite and even accompanied me downstairs for the rat count and breakfast with the Mouse Police.

It was to the happy whoofling of feeding cats that I started my dough hooks and whistled while I worked.

When I opened the door there was Jase. Relatively clear eyed if dirty as to clothes. ‘Help you with the baking for a shower?’ he asked. He whipped inside very smartly and I wondered if the Blues Brothers man was after him again.

‘You aren’t getting anywhere near my bread with those fingernails,’ I said firmly. ‘I’ll lend you a gown again. Scrub those hands,’ I yelled after him as he retrieved his towel and gown from the dryer where I had left them and dived into the shower. Puffs of steam and the scent of ginger shower gel inspired me to make gingerbread muffins this morning. And a good if fiddly job for those clean hands was called ‘cutting up the crystallised ginger’, after which he would need another shower. But we had endless hot water and Jase wouldn’t shrink if he had two showers in one day.

By the time he came out I had done the dry muffin mix. Jase put his clothes in the washer and started it. He showed me
his hands, front and back. They were scrubbed almost raw. Then he tied his gown around him tightly, rolled back his sleeves to the elbow, and began chopping up crystallised ginger. He was neat and was doing a good job so I went back to my dough.

‘That’s rye bread,’ he observed. ‘It smells different from that crumbly stuff.’

‘Yes, it’s the yeast. This crumbly stuff is health bread and it doesn’t have any.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because the customer wants bread without any salt, sugar, gluten, oil, yeast or taste, and the customer is always right.’

‘Yuk,’ he commented. ‘Must be mad. As if! When they could get the good stuff!’

‘They’re paying for it, so I’ll bake it,’ I said. ‘You’ve worked in a kitchen before.’

‘What gave me away?’ He looked panicked.

‘The way you hold the knife. Professional. It’s all right, Jase. I’m not prying. It was just a comment.’

He relaxed enough to go back to the chopping. ‘I was a kitchen hand, and that’s what kitchen hands do, they chop. Vegetables, salad, potatoes, anything. Did food technology at school. Wanted to be a chef. But I like baking better. It’s a kind of magic.’

This was the longest speech I had ever heard Jase utter. He realised it too and shut up like a clam. This did not bother me as I have a preference for silence in the morning. Jase finished the ginger, washed his hands again, then helped me unload sacks of flour into the hoppers. The Mouse Police slept on the empty ones but I didn’t need cat hair in the full ones.

‘Would you like some breakfast?’ I offered.

‘What y’ got?’ he asked, having returned to his customary taciturnity.

‘I could go so far as a cup of coffee and a gingerbread muffin.’

‘Coupla rolls?’ he asked. ‘With cheese?’

I left him in the bakery while I got the coffee and some cheese. He tore into the rolls as though he was starving. Still had all his top teeth, I saw. The Mouse Police scented cheese and came to his feet and he almost snarled at them. Nature red in tooth and claw, I thought, and I didn’t even like that on the Discovery Channel.