Trick or Treat (30 page)

‘Along with Chrysoula’s mother’s Venetian chain?’ I quibbled.

‘Well, yes, maybe.’

‘Or maybe not...’

‘And if the whole of the treasure is here, where is it, who brought it, and why?’

‘And other questions,’ I sighed. ‘Anything more about Barnabas?’

‘Yes, here...’ Daniel scrabbled through his notes. ‘The missing three years are accounted for—he was in the army. He was married too, or did we know that? Oh, yes, we did. Two children, long deserted. His wife filed for divorce and had no trouble losing him. She never remarried. Always a bad sign.’

‘Maybe. Why did he leave the army?’

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‘Discharged honourably. Weak heart. Overweight. Flat feet. Short sighted. God knows how they let him in in the first place. He is not my idea of a soldier.’

‘No,’ I agreed. ‘Where was he stationed?’

‘Germany,’ said Daniel.

‘Aha,’ I said, rather as a ploy to see if something occurred to me. Nothing did.

‘Well, yes, he might have met Mertens there,’ said Daniel. ‘But whatever Mertens told him or didn’t tell him about the wreck of the
Pandora
, she wasn’t there... oh, yes, she would have been. Mertens died in 1976 and the earthquake wasn’t until 1986. Does that help?’

‘Not really. Even if Mertens told Barnabas where the
Pandora
was, and she was still there in 1976, she was gone by 1986, and even that pirate Yanni’s partner only found her by chance. And only Petros, I hope you realise, knows where
Pandora
is now. Assuming he took careful notes of his position while he was being buffeted about in freezing water and hauled in blue with cold.’

‘Yes, assuming that. We have to lay hands on Petros,’ said Daniel. ‘And we don’t know where he comes from, or where he might be.’

‘Other than that, we’re laughing. His father was an Albanian, Yanni said. What’s the most common Albanian surname?’

‘No idea,’ said Daniel promptly. ‘But I can find out. Let’s look at Barnabas again. Does he know where the treasure is?’

‘Could be,’ I answered. ‘Could also be that he didn’t know anything about it, and the ephod either came to his hand by chance or was summoned by his treasure ritual. If Luna, there is silver, he said. And there was, before you and your balaclava’d friends pinched it.’

‘And you believe in magic,’ scoffed Daniel gently.

‘You stay around Meroe for too long, you believe against your will,’ I told him. ‘Remember Kepler’s hand?’

‘Yes,’ said Daniel. ‘Yes, that was certainly... unusual. Magical.’

Intellectual honesty is the rarest thing in the world, and my darling Daniel has it. Daniel did not want to believe in anything supernatural, but he had seen Meroe heal Kepler with his own eyes, and he had always believed them, so he did not try to lie or evade. I adored him, completely and suddenly. A blush mounted my breast and made my cheeks flush red. He leaned over and kissed me.

‘I love you too,’ he said.

‘Barnabas as a dupe I can believe,’ I said, when I had got some breath back. ‘Barnabas as a magician is harder to believe, but I can do it. Barnabas as a crook is easy. All possibles.’

‘So,’ said Daniel. He set me gently aside and got up. ‘I had better go and check out my flat,’ he said. ‘Get some searches going on my own computers.’

‘Report to Saba,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘He will want to know what we have found out.’

‘Give him my best wishes,’ I said. I stretched. I was pooped. An hour’s nap had just informed me how tired I really was, what with excitement and pirates and car journeys and puzzles.

‘Why don’t you have an early night,’ he suggested. ‘I’ll be back before you know it. And I’ll bring breakfast.’

‘If you see Georgie, tell her I haven’t come to my senses,’ I said to him, and waited until the door shut before I shucked my clothes, bathed my weary bones, and took myself and the

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cats off for a nice long nap. I had had an exciting day, but now it was over.

I woke knowing that there was more research to do. It was four am and it couldn’t be done until the government offices opened so I turned over and went back to sleep, Horatio aiding me in this by lying very close and breathing in my ear. This might have been why I dreamed of lions and goddesses and woke abruptly when someone dropped a cup and said, ‘Damn!’

Fortunately it was Daniel. I am not good at mornings and if a burglar dropped in at seven am on a non-working day I could easily just offer him tea and go back to sleep. This might even prove to be a good strategy, of course. It would certainly unbalance the burglar.

But it was coffee and good croissants and cherry jam which awaited me in the complete silence which makes my morning experience golden. Daniel slipped into the bathroom for a shower and a change of clothes; he had certainly not gone to bed. I hoped his flat was free of Georgianas. On the table in front of me was a strange little electronic sort of plug thing. I asked the shaggy wet Daniel who emerged about it.

‘It’s a bug,’ he said. ‘It was on my phone. I am about to check yours as soon as I can get that Heckle to give me back my towel.’

‘Give the nice man the towel, Heckle,’ I said to the cat, who had been dragged bodily out of the bathroom, all claws entangled in it. He then decided that he didn’t want the lousy towel anyway and where was the breakfast which was his right under section 34 of the Domestic Animals Treaty 1876?

I laid out food in bowls for everyone and went back to my croissant. Peace reigned once more.

‘The animals are getting bored.’ Daniel scrubbed at his wet hair with the retrieved towel.

‘True, and they can go back to the bakery now,’ I realised out loud. I opened the locked door onto my own stairs and both Heckle and Jekyll bolted their breakfast and collided in a furry scrum as they galloped for the magic portal.

‘There’s a mouse down there with my name on it, says prominent local hunter,’ I mused.

‘Rat,’ said Daniel, listening to clanging and growling. Something tipped over with a crash.

‘Rat, hell, that sounds like a full scale hippopotamus. Heckle? What’s going on down there?’

Horatio raised an eyebrow, looking interested. I went to the head of the stairs, but all I could locate was Heckle’s fluffed-out tail. I descended and saw what he had bailed up against a mixer.

‘Daniel?’ I said quietly.

‘Corinna?’

‘There’s a snake in my kitchen.’

‘So there is,’ he said.

‘I hate snakes,’ I said, frozen to the spot. It wasn’t a very big snake, but then it didn’t have to be. It had dropped flat and was weaving to and fro, hissing like a kettle. It was patterned in a diamond design of grey and taupe and might have been beautiful if I had been in any state to appreciate it.

‘What do we do?’ I asked through numb lips.

‘We do nothing to interrupt Heckle’s concentration,’ he told me.

Do nothing, fine, I could do that. I might never move again. I could see that Heckle had all the snake’s attention, and I could also see Jekyll sneaking up on it from the side. This was a bit much to ask of the poor moggies. Tough back alley

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fighters as they were, they might have had to outface dobermans and cranky brushtail possums and cars and (in the case of Jekyll) a street sweeping machine but snakes were surely above the odds. But they seemed to know what they were doing...

With a fast, very violent stroke, Jekyll knocked the snake aside as it struck at Heckle. Heckle leapt on its back and bit down on its neck. I heard a crack.

It wriggled for while, but it was dead. The two fighters batted at the corpse for a few minutes, but lost interest and wandered off to seek for their more usual prey. I unfroze slowly.

‘Did you ever read
The Case of the Speckled Band
?’ asked Daniel.

‘Came between me and sleep for six months.’

‘Right. I’ll just go and collect the body. Poor snake.’

‘Poor snake?’ I gasped.

‘Yes. It didn’t get here on its own ribs, you know. Someone must have brought it here. Someone who doesn’t like you,’ added Daniel.

‘Ribs?’ I was bewildered. It was too early in the morning for this sort of thing. I called the cats and rewarded them with extra good green French cat treats,
pour le minou charmant
. They gobbled them down, a little puzzled by my largesse. As far as they were concerned, they had finally managed to get that sneaky thing which had been annoying them, possibly for days. Goddess alone knew how long the snake had been there.

And when Daniel showed me the body, laid out on the dustpan, I was sorry, too, in a way. It had been a lithe, muscular creature with a right to live and very pretty eyes, and now it was belt material.

‘Scales on the letterbox opening in the door,’ he told me.

‘Someone slipped it in from outside in Calico Alley. It’s a tiger

snake. They get cross.’

‘Do you think there was only one?’

‘Heckle and Jekyll would know if there was another,’ he assured me, which was correct. ‘I’ll just put it in a bag and we’ll show it to the nice policewoman. This is a murder attempt, Corinna, or at least malicious mischief.’

‘Oh, come now . . .’ I temporised. Then I considered how I felt about snakes. ‘All right. God, I went down this morning to feed the mother of bread...There’s some plastic zip-lock bags in the drawer. What’s this?’

‘Your warning,’ guessed Daniel as I picked up a sheet of paper from the floor.

‘How do you know? Have you read it?’

‘I don’t need to,’ he told me, sacking the snake. ‘No one would send a snake through the letterbox and not a warning.’

‘Right. It says “leave us alone bitch”. Not very imaginative and short on information. Leave who alone? There are so many contenders.’

‘Anything on the back?’

‘Just a couple of smears.’ I sniffed. ‘Smells vaguely eucalyptussy. An athlete, perhaps, or someone with a really bad cold. Damn it,’ I said to Daniel, ‘I’m going to make some bread. Just for Insula. Just because I can. And because whoever sent this poor doomed reptile doesn’t want me to.’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘I’ll join you when I’ve made a few phone calls.’

I put on the smallest mixer and began to make my special favourite bread, seven seeds. This requires the baker to sit and pour seeds through her fingers to ensure a perfect mix. It is a picky, finicky job, just perfect for the aftermath of a shock. This was what I was made for, I thought, measuring poppy

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seed and fennel and caraway and coriander and cracked wheat. I am a baker. Not an investigator. Not an accountant anymore. Just someone with a feeling for yeast and silence.

Squeaks announced that the rats had seen our little holiday as a chance to recolonise. They were now being evicted. Also heading for a dreadful doom, for everyone else in the alley used poison. But there were a lot of dreadful dooms around and the mixer was throbbing, the dough waiting, and I thrust all philosophy aside and began to make bread. Then I was hit with a revelation.

I knew what I had to do to make some sense out of the Salonika treasure problem. If I was right, the scheme was so clever that it took my breath away. Someone with serious commercial sense had devised it. I could not see Barnabas as a businessman. Really not. A guru, yes, a con man, yes, a bad influence, certainly. But a capitalist? He didn’t have the right kind of mind. Who, amongst the cast, did? I thought idly about people as I added the oats and the rye berries. There was a lovely scent of warm meadows from my sacks. Scottish meadows, I thought, purple heavens with larks, fields of raffish barley running down to the salmon river. When I made olive bread I thought of cerulean Greek skies and white churches and olive trees with their roots in the sea. Bread is as romantic as I get.

Then it was time to leave everything to rise. I took up the phone and rang Jason. He arrived quickly. I noticed that his hands were ornamented with a lot of bandaids.

‘Carpentry went well, then?’ I asked.

‘Got it together in the end,’ he replied ruefully. ‘Bloody thing! I reckon Mrs Dawson’s right, the instructions were in Hindi. Though the Prof reckoned it was Chaldean. But I’m not going to tackle another one of those things any time soon, since I got away with all my fingers. What’s up? We trading again?’

‘Special order,’ I told him. ‘I want you to do a few trays of your absolutely best muffins.’

‘Sure,’ he said affably. He changed into his best overalls, and lit the oven.

I went off an hour later, leaving him to mind the bread. I needed information and I knew just where to get it. On the doorstep I encountered Kylie and Gossamer. They were dressed for the street, meaning they had on several garments, however skimpy. They looked tired.

‘Corinna! Jason said it was all right about the bakery!’ they exclaimed.

I hefted my box. ‘Yes, everything’s fine now,’ I said, suppressing all news about snakes and treasure.

‘We can come back next week,’ Kylie informed me.

‘Because our bit of the soap is finished,’ added Goss.

‘But they’ve got us on their list now and the casting director said he’d call us again.’

‘Wonderful!’ I congratulated them.

‘When we put on a little weight,’ said Kylie. ‘Is Jason cooking muffins?’

I laughed as I went down Flinders Lane. It was going to be an interesting day.

I obtained my information and walked back, past Best Fresh, which was still festooned with quarantine tape, thinking. Tonight was Hallowe’en, All Hallow’s Eve, Soaling Night, and Jason was, on Meroe’s orders, making soul cakes which would be free of any ingredients except spice, sugar, dried fruit, flour and yeast. Tonight we ought to be able to clear up the mystery of the Salonika treasure. I just needed a few more bits of information, and I was reasonably sure that between them the witches and Daniel could provide them.

The bakery was redolent with spices. Jason was just breaking open a soul cake and examining the crumb.

‘Pretty good,’ he said critically, handing me half.