Trick or Treat (17 page)

‘What is Barnabas doing that Meroe so objects to?’ I asked.

‘Treasure,’ said Celeste. ‘He has a plan.’

‘I see,’ said Daniel, gravely.

‘And he did produce some sort of artefact on Williamstown beach the other night,’ said Selene.

‘Which was then immediately reclaimed by the Dark,’ said the redheaded witch. ‘Not to blurt out Craft secrets to the uninitiated, but you are friends of Meroe’s. We don’t like the whole thing, and if it wasn’t for having promised to help, we’d be off home. We can always come in for the ceremonies.’

‘You see, it’s the young ones. They want concrete results from witchcraft. They don’t realise that the changes a witch makes are in the universe of her self, not the outer universe. They have been watching
Charmed
and
Buffy
and
Angel
and they want to produce their own demons, preferably really sexy ones. Even the most powerful witches never conjured demons like those girls from
Charmed
.’

‘I remember when my shop assistants took up Wicca— Meroe wanted to travel to America to find and assassinate all the scriptwriters,’ I said, laughing.

‘Luckily, they forgot about it fast,’ said Daniel. ‘They were driving Meroe up the wall.’

‘These will abandon it as well,’ sighed Selene. ‘Maybe one or two have the makings. Not more than that. But Barnabas is

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so charming and jolly and so convincing, and for a lot of them he is the perfect father figure.’

‘They need a perfect mother figure,’ objected Celeste. ‘No one has come forward since Eugenia died. That’s almost a year. We call her name in the ceremonies this Samhain. Who will replace her? Urania is not mocked, nor left without an avatar.’

‘Well, if she isn’t left without an avatar, then she won’t be,’ argued her friend logically. ‘Someone will come forward.’

‘We heard that Barnabas is into poisons,’ said Daniel, less adroitly than usual. The seamless, sleepy voices of the elder witches were making him drowsy. And in any case, as he said himself, his timing had been off ever since Georgiana had arrived in our lives.

‘Poisons?’ Selene sat up. ‘No!’

‘I can’t think where you heard that,’ said Celeste.

‘Perhaps I heard wrong,’ Daniel confessed. ‘It’s been a bad day. A man threw himself off the roof next to us, thinking he could fly.’

‘How terrible! Is that what brought Meroe here?’

‘Perhaps,’ I answered. ‘Who can tell with Meroe?’

‘Indeed. Really, you must have a glass of the plum tonic and a small working for cleansing. Death is so sticky,’ she said, laying out a knife and a pot of cooking salt. ‘The contamination hangs around for ages. Especially with a suicide. Such an unfortunate frame of mind...’

We sat as she sprinkled us with salt and drew around our right hands with the knife, and then she and her fellow witch sang a sad, antiphonal song, consisting of the names of the Goddess. Urania, they sang, Artemis and Hecate, Kali and Leucothea. White Queen Sedna of the Snows, Mother Carey with her blizzards and her seabirds, Aphrodite the Stranger scented with roses, the Night Hag and stately Venus, Hebe and Isis, Nepthys, and Egyptian Nut who was, uniquely, the sky goddess, not the earth. And finally the song wound down to the oldest one, the first Goddess, Gaia, who was the earth, wide hipped, big bellied, the womb of the human race, the nurturing breast of all humans, the opulent and voracious beginning of all things female.

It was very effective, beautiful and strange, and when it was over and the salt had been scattered, we felt better. We heard Meroe calling us in the corridor and bade our witches thanks and farewell. We descended into the lobby to wait for Meroe to complete one final blistering opinion on Barnabas’s moral character.

‘They were lovely women,’ I said to Daniel.

He took my hand. ‘Yes, they were.’

‘And that was a very nice threnody,’ I added.

‘It was, indeed,’ he said.

‘Do you believe them about Barnabas?’ I asked Daniel as we emerged onto cool, forested Parkville Street, rustling with possums having a day off from mugging commuters for their leftover lunchtime fruit.

‘Not a word,’ he affirmed.

‘Nor me,’ I said.

Meroe still wasn’t talking, so we went to my own apartment and I decided to do a little light housework—cooking and mending—while Daniel read aloud. I had only just rediscov
ered the absolute delight of being read to by someone who liked the book and was fluent and easy, and I was awarded an instant understanding of how those Victorian ladies had uncomplainingly crocheted their way through four thousand metres of eyelet lace in a lifetime. The hands move of their own volition while the ears are ravished, though in their case it was probably by Dr Johnson or Sir Walter Scott, while Daniel was reading Winnie the Pooh.

‘“There’s a thing called Twicetimes,” he said. “Christopher Robin tried to teach it to me, but it didn’t,” he said.

‘“Didn’t what?” asked Rabbit.

‘“It just didn’t,” said Pooh sadly.’

Oh, I knew exactly what he meant. None of this soul cake affair made any sense. Well, it did, but the nastiest kind of sense. Why sell lysergic acid so strong that it sent its users instantly insane? Economically, it was silly. The stuff must cost

14
3

something to synthesise. Why, then, not dilute it to the usual dose and stockpile a lot of it for future demand? Presumably it didn’t go off. I knotted the last stitch in a tear I was repairing and bit off the thread. Daniel chuckled.

‘Hmm?’ I asked.

‘I was just thinking how Georgie would see this scene,’ he said, now a little warily, even though Georgie was agreed to be a safe subject. ‘The perfect Victorian paterfamilias, reading improving literature to the Little Woman. George always said that Jews longed for the good old days of the patriarchy.’

‘And do they?’ I asked idly.

‘No,’ he said, very decidedly. ‘For a start, if you’re the patriarch, it’s always your fault. No matter what happens, you get blamed.’

‘Then again, you have all those wives and concubines,’ I reminded him, rolling up his shirt for later washing and taking up my blue spring jacket, which I had put away clean but buttonless last spring. I had some beautiful ceramic cat buttons to put on it.

‘Never did them any good,’ murmured Daniel. ‘The wives just fought with each other over whose son was going to succeed. More people, less company. Did you ever read the Kipling story about King Solomon?’

I was touched and delighted that we had read the same books as children.

‘“The Butterfly That Stamped”? Of course. We might read the
Just So Stories
after we finish
The House at Pooh Corner
. Go on about the disadvantages of patriarchy.’

‘Then there’s God. You have to have a special relationship with God if you’re the patriarch, or how else are you going to produce water from the rock?’

145

‘And what’s your relationship with God, then?’ I had always wondered.

‘Distantly polite,’ said Daniel. ‘So, George may keep her patriarchy, you can secure your buttons, and I will continue on reading.’

And he did. The afternoon wore on, the massed cats slept, the buttonless became buttoned and the torn was patched. We were just wondering about a little dinner when Jones and Miller announced themselves and stomped up the stairs. I put away the mending and put on the kettle again.

They were, if anything, more grimy. And grim. But they accepted tea and packet biscuits and Daniel engaged them in light banter about what you could catch grubbing about in alleys in this man’s city in these degenerate times.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said, having read some very interest
ing detective stories set in the twenties. ‘You probably aren’t going to get syphilis.’

‘Don’t count on it,’ growled Jones. ‘Got a favour, ma’am,’ he said to me.

‘Yes,’ I said, considerably astonished.

‘Wouldn’t ask a cleanskin civilian but you’re Daniel’s lady,’ said Miller.

‘Yes,’ I agreed.

‘We went down to that Best Fresh place to check out the cake situation,’ said Jones. He was worried, but he was also amused in some not-very-nice way. ‘Asked the bloke if he had any cakes to spare so forensics could check ’em out. He was just about to hand over a big bag when some idiot told him about the stiff, and he went right up the wall.’

‘And he’s still there,’ added Miller.

‘And what do you expect Corinna to do about that?’ asked Daniel, quite reasonably.

‘Talk to him,’ said Jones. ‘She’s a baker. He says only a baker can understand and she’s the nearest baker.’

‘All right,’ I responded, before Daniel could argue me out of it. ‘But I’ve never met the man. Best Fresh has only been open for two weeks.’

‘Two weeks, eh? About the same time as the nutcases surfaced,’ observed Jones. ‘Finish your tea, Dusty. We’re going to go talk to the bread man.’

‘Oh, by the way, there’s a couple of uniforms to see you, too,’ Miller informed me as we went down to the atrium. There I found the redoubtable Ms Bray and her cat-loving offsider, notebooks open and pens poised.

‘Back again,’ Ms Bray said cheerfully. ‘More trouble.’

‘Oh, good,’ murmured Daniel.

‘What are you doing with my interview subject, Mr Jones?’ she asked my escort.

‘Gotta go talk to the bread shop man before we end up with a hostage drama and get on the news,’ said Jones. ‘You know how the boss hates it when we get on the news for being brave and vigilant and that. Might as well come too,’ he decided. ‘More nice girls around, the less aggro.’

‘And that’s never been true,’ said Miller.

But we all conducted ourselves with great propriety as we went down the lane to Best Fresh. The body was gone but the checked blue and white ‘crime scene do not cross’ tape remained in Calico Alley, and it offended me.

I was not the only person taking offence in Flinders Lane that late Sunday afternoon. Best Fresh’s front door was shut and someone had dragged a long bench and a couple of bread trays across it. A barricade. A scared-witless youth, Eddie, had stuffed himself under the bench and was staring out through the glass like a goldfish watching a cat. Behind him I heard a

147

roaring, and complicated noises suggestive of... things being broken.

‘Have you noticed that everyone is yelling at us today?’ Daniel slid a hand under my elbow. ‘How are we going to talk to this baker if he’s inside and we’re outside? And if you are thinking of sending an unarmed Corinna into a crime scene alone, you can think again, Jonesy me old mate.’

‘Nah, we’re using modern and technological methods,’ said Jones, producing a mobile. ‘Viz, this little machine. The boffins call it a tel-e-phone. It’s the latest thing.’

I held it to my ear. Someone was yelling into it so loudly that I could not even make out the words. Jones’s laboured irony did not amuse me.

‘Hello?’ I said into the phone. ‘Who’s there?’

‘Who are you?’ came a booming voice.

‘I’m Corinna Chapman from Earthly Delights,’ I said in my English teacher voice. It is so useful.

‘You’re a baker,’ he said, the volume dropping from ‘landing 747’ decibels to ‘close pass by a news helicopter’.

‘That’s me. You want to talk to a baker? Here I am. Only I can’t get in to talk to you because of all those fallen shelves, and you might let your assistant out. He looks a bit frayed.’

‘No!’ The voice bellowed out of coherence again. I took the phone away from my mistreated ear.

‘This isn’t going to work,’ I told Jones.

‘Keep talking when he gives you a chance,’ instructed Ms Bray. ‘That’s what they always say about hostage-takers. They want to talk to someone who understands. You just convince him that you understand.’

‘Oh, simple,’ I said.

She gave me her dimpled smile. ‘Go on, then,’ she encouraged.

I listened again. The bellow had died away. ‘You’re a baker,’ I began.

‘Yes!’ boomed the giant.

‘Where did you train? I worked in a little Italian bakery in Carlton.’

‘In Tassie,’ he said, still loudly. ‘In Hobart. Made good bread, we did.’

‘Not a chain, then?’

‘Just a little bakery. Only did a hundred or so. Still had an old bread oven from convict days. You know, with that curved roof?’

‘And you light a fire under it. Kiln bread’s good bread,’ I went on, not sure where the conversation was heading. But if we were going to discuss bread, I could probably talk until whole herds of cows came home. ‘Did you test the temperature with butcher’s paper?’

‘Three seconds to turn brown,’ said the baker promptly.

‘Two for pasta douro, and spray with water in five minutes.’ I chanted the baker’s litany, forgotten in this age of thermostats. ‘I don’t know your name, though you know mine.’

‘Wyatt,’ said the baker. ‘Vincent. You make pasta douro?’

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘I brought a mother of bread with me from the Italian kitchen.’

‘I don’t,’ boomed Vincent Wyatt sadly, like a mourning apatosaurus. ‘They won’t let me. It’s all pre-made mixes and franchise quality. Quality!’

‘I know,’ I sympathised.

‘And now they’re saying that someone is dealing drugs from my shop...’

‘I know,’ I said again. ‘They’d be saying it about me if my shop wasn’t closed for the weekend. Come along, Mr Wyatt, we’ve got a lot to talk—’

149

‘But they’ll close me down!’ he wailed. ‘I’ll lose everything!’

‘And making a scene isn’t going to help,’ I said firmly. ‘Come on, I’ve struck a deal with the police, we leave now and no more will be said. I’ve got a recipe for—’

‘I got to think about this,’ said Mr Wyatt, and the phone went dead. I stared at it for a moment.

‘Sorry,’ I said to Jones. ‘I don’t seem to have helped at all.’

‘You were great!’ said Daniel, hugging me. ‘You almost had him. Real life doesn’t work out like TV, you know, three minutes of plot, an ad break, five minutes of development, an ad break, and then a resolution with a trailer for next week. He’s talking to you. And you gave him something to think about. We’ll just sit down on this seat provided by the munificent council and wait for a while.’