Devil's Food (25 page)

‘It’s all of a piece with his philosophy,’ mused Meroe. ‘They are totems, and he is asking them to cast aside their totems. To throw away possessions as well as despise the flesh. There were a lot of ancient Christian saints who talked about the body like that. All those desert fathers, starving together.’

‘And all those female saints who existed on holy communion and air,’ I said bitterly. They had always annoyed me most when I had been forced to admire them at Sunday school. I couldn’t see anything holy about anorexia, which was a form of suicide, and wasn’t that forbidden?

‘He seems to have tapped into one of the more unfortunate veins of spirituality,’ commented Meroe. ‘But it explains his appeal. Join him and get thin. That’s sold a lot of books and potions and gym memberships. Made a lot of fortunes.’

‘And not only thin,’ put in Jon, ‘but virtuous.’

‘People,’ said Mrs Dawson, eating her little quiche with a snap of white teeth, ‘really are most peculiar.’

‘I think I can help you get in to see the reverend father,’ said Jon.

‘How?’

‘I can make you an acting unpaid freelance journalist for our newsletter,
Life and Times
,’ he said. ‘I’ll make you a card. Such people always want publicity. You can try interviewing the reverend father — what is his name?’

‘I can’t see it here,’ I said, turning over the leaflet. ‘Lord, he’s charging $2000 for that seminar! Oh yes, here’s his name. Hungerford, that’s him. How very apt.’

‘Are you sure you want to go back there again?’ asked Meroe.

I thought about it as I watched Horatio enter the room with the elegance of Beau Brummel in a new blue coat and an especially inventive stock. He greeted the company politely and chose his lap. The lot fell on Mrs Dawson, who appeared sensible of the honour and provided him with a dab of cream cheese. He licked it complacently off his whiskers.

‘Yes,’ I decided. ‘I do. As much as I don’t know what I am going to do with my father when I find him, that is not a good place for him to be. Somewhere else must be better. Thank you, Jon, I’ll come and pick the card up tomorrow.’

‘And have you got any further with those poisonous herbs?’ asked the Professor.

‘We found out where the girls got the ones that made them sick,’ said Daniel. ‘They may well be the same leaves that kid smuggled in. We’re still on the track of the sellers. I’ve got a few people watching. We should find something soon.’

‘Good,’ said Mrs Dawson, setting Horatio politely aside and getting to her feet. ‘Thank you very much for your hospitality, my dears. I shall be going now. Coming, Dion?’ she asked, and the Professor joined her, gallantly offering his arm. Jon decided to go out, to avoid bothering Kepler. Daniel and Meroe cleaned up and after about an hour I shut the door on all of them.

Which was rather a relief. I put myself to bed in my own bed, and I slept like a baby.

The murderer prepared his tools. His knives were as sharp as sunlight. He was only hampered by the incised wound which the snapping elastic band had made around his right wrist. It was deep enough to expose the tendons and hampered his grip. But it did not hurt anymore. Nothing hurt.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I must have dreamt of baking because when I woke I knew I was in the mood to make rolls — onion, bacon, poppy seed, garlic, herb. With this in mind I took my coffee and toast downstairs and met Jason, bidding him start slicing as soon as the usual array of dough was in preparation. The daylight came in a flurry of activity as we rolled, glazed, fried, cooled, blended, mixed and scattered.

In a few hours we had as beautiful a collection of savoury rolls as any baker has ever laid out on trays and Jason was so tired that he just mixed ordinary sultana and spice, chocolate and jam muffins for the shop. Not that they weren’t superb.

I let the Mouse Police out into the cold alley. They scampered off, tails high. I leaned at the door for a moment, saturated in delicious scents, and the smell flowed out into the darkness. A passing security guard sniffed, swallowed and stopped in his tracks.

‘Onion rolls,’ he breathed. ‘My grandda used to make onion rolls.’

‘Have one on me,’ I said, and gave him the hot roll. He flicked one finger to his cap in a salute.

‘Your good deed for the day,’ he said. ‘Thanks, Miss.’

Well, nice to start the day with a good deed. Who knew how many bad ones might follow?

Jason was so filthy from all that chopping and slicing that he had taken a shower. He was re-clad in a baker’s overall and was now eying the rolls with undisguised lust. Hard work made Jason hungry. Then again, so did breathing.

‘One of each,’ I warned. ‘You don’t want to spoil your breakfast.’

He grinned at me. The Mouse Police skidded back and flung themselves in abandoned attitudes on their flour sacks to sleep out the winter. A bicycle whirred towards us. I fielded the flung paper and went upstairs to make myself more coffee while my apprentice took care of the rest of the bread.

What a luxury. I spread out the paper and toasted some more sourdough. There was a scrape left in the bottom of the jar of cherry jam. The coffee was good. And the news was no worse than usual — misery, pain, betrayal, mass murder, that sort of thing. And well, well, the Discarnates had taken out an ad. It hit me in the face afresh.

‘FAT? HATE IT? SO DOES GOD.’ They had a nerve. Someone ought to tell the far-too-well-named Father Hungerford where to get off. I toyed with the wording of a reply: HYPOCRITICAL? HATE IT? SO DOES CORINNA. But it didn’t have the same punch. And I wasn’t so secure in my virtue that I was about to make decisions for God.

I went back to the bakery to allow Jason to go and engulf a Del Pandamus breakfast. Megan came for the deliveries and we stacked them all into her rickshaw. She demanded and got a bonus in the form of a bacon roll. The day dawned.

And the morning went on as usual, which was soothing. Lots of my favourite people dropped in. Jenny P for the tomato rolls and gorgeous Ika for the chocolate muffins. Frank Mattea, a mathematician with a non-Euclidian moustache, buying iced queen cakes for Gemma, his beautiful daughter. Cat-loving Karina threw herself on Horatio as Peter and Vanessa bickered amicably and bought onion rolls. The only time I ever saw their discussion grow grave was when Pete suggested that John Howard had a heart and I had to remind Vanessa that the sourdough batard was banned as a weapon under the Geneva Convention. Horatio usually will not tolerate familiarity, but sees Karina as some form of relative. He even allowed her to kiss him. Joy Finnes tied Raz, her elderly border collie cross, to the doorknob and purchased crusty bread. Raz is too old and amiable to unsettle Horatio. Mary Mou bought a bacon roll and came back for another. Tristina bought sourdough. Amanda bought muffins. Leila Kaunitz brought me a Bosch figurine, the odd creature in the egg. All the regulars. I liked having regulars.

I retained some rolls because the scent was dragging in the famished hordes by the nose and they were bounding off the racks. Our soup was a strong chicken broth, with vegetables and pearl barley, and it seemed that half of the workforce had woken up undernourished and chilled this cold morning. My savoury rolls were a perfect accompaniment to the soup. By one, the last drop and crumb had gone.

Kylie had drunk her cup of soup and eaten a cheese roll, her choice. I had, of course, truthfully informed her that there was no fat in my soup, as I had gone to considerable trouble to skim it off. Kylie was actually wearing a jumper which covered all of her — a skimpy, fluffy jumper which appeared to be knitted from cat fur, but a jumper. Perhaps my girls were growing sense, after all. Stranger things had been known. If only in the Fortean Times.

And then it was closing time. Daniel came in as I was putting the shutters up and kissed me on the back of the neck.

‘Lunch?’ I asked.

‘Nice,’ he said. ‘You have been baking up a storm.’

‘Jason’s staying for a while to mind the soup,’ I told him. ‘At double rates,’ I added, at which his mutinous frown cleared. ‘And since all he has to do is mind the pots to make sure that they don’t boil over, then strain the stock before placing it in the fridge, it will be a nice quiet afternoon for him. He can experiment with new muffins or improve his reading skills with the recipe collection.’

‘Sweet,’ said Jason, entirely reconciled to an afternoon’s pot watching. ‘I reckon I can get those date ones right. They’re too heavy so far. Maybe I ought to mince the dates …’

We left him, a happy young man.

I was just about to allow my sweet Daniel to lead me to higher and happier regions when I remembered something I hadn’t done. And I had spoken about it to Del Pandamus only yesterday. Damn.

‘Daniel,’ I said, resisting his pull on my hand, ‘we forgot about the Lone Gunmen.’

‘So we did,’ he said, unenthusiastically.

I took a good look at him. Unshaven and a touch haggard, though on him it looked good. It must be nice to have the sort of face on which adversity just brings out your cheekbones. I thought of a new plan.

‘So I will go see the nerds while you go up to the apartment, have a shower and a shave, and pop yourself into my bed for a nap. I’ll join you as soon as I can. Shouldn’t take a moment,’ I said airily.

Daniel went where he was bidden and I skipped down the steps to the street, not having a mind to waste any more Daniel time on Nerds Inc than I had to.

On the steps I encountered Meroe, who was holding a limp bouquet of dead leaves. Seldom had I seen such depressed veg. Not since the last time I had tried to grow anything, in fact.

‘Just going to see if the Lone Gunmen are all right,’ I explained. ‘Del said their shop was shut. I hope you aren’t going to eat those,’ I added.

Meroe was wearing a bright green wrap patterned with golden wheat and it billowed around her so that she looked like an offended Ceres, denying agriculture to men until she got her daughter back.

‘I have been comparing the two herbal potions, the ones sold in that club and the ones smuggled in the monster pots,’ she said.

‘And?’ I hung on to the ends of her wrap as it tried to carry my witch away.

‘They are the same,’ she said. ‘Whoever smuggled that mixture in is using some if not all of it to make the weight loss tea which nearly killed Kylie and Gossamer. And no one can tell me who it is,’ she said.

‘No?’

‘I have tried all the herbalists I know,’ she said. ‘No one has heard of such a thing, though two of them have encountered the results. Overdoses, both of them, and one ended up in intensive care.’

‘Stands to reason it isn’t a real herbalist,’ I said. ‘No real herbalist would put those different leaves together. It’s an amateur with her grandma’s old recipe. You said so yourself.’

‘So I did,’ agreed Meroe, looking more like the goddess after her interview with Zeus. ‘I shall pray for guidance,’ she said, swathing herself in her wheat sheaves, and went into Insula.

I continued down the steps and along to Nerds Inc, which I found open. Not for business, perhaps, because the closed sign was still on the door and dust was filtering down on the stock. But open for deliveries. Boxes of abstruse games in decorated containers were being handed down from a truck to Taz and Rat. I was pleased to see that they looked no sicker than usual. Their t-shirts bore no more than the normal freight of chili sauce and their complexions were nerd vibrant, ie, a pale shade of ivory, almost ecru. A colour which would have been nice in silk.

‘Gentlemen,’ I greeted them. They turned on me the faces of complete wholehearted horror that nerds turn on any woman. Had I been Sog Succoth from The Depths I would have got a more enthusiastic welcome.

‘Hi, Corinna,’ said Taz.

‘Buying up big?’ I asked as the delivery man lowered another carton of games. ‘You remembered to put that BAS statement in, then?’

‘Oh yeah, you can do it online,’ Rat told me, barely visible over the box lid.

‘Del said that your shop was shut so I came to see if you were all right,’ I said.

‘We just shut for a couple of days,’ explained Taz. ‘We took a holiday. Test out the new stuff.’ He dragged up a lesson in polite behaviour which his mother must have gone to some effort to impress on the growing nerd mind (probably by removing the fuse from the household electricity supply and refusing to give it back until he listened): ‘Thanks for asking, Corinna,’ he said.

So that was that, just nerds being nerds, and I had a Daniel awaiting me in my apartment. No need to stay here in the cold street any longer. I bade the Lone Gunmen remember to eat some vitamins occasionally and left them. Now for lunch.

I reported the nerds’ healthy condition to Del, bought some of his beef lasagna, and got in out of the cold as fast as any Le Carré spy.

When I arrived in Hebe Daniel was asleep. I sat down to do some minor accounting tasks and drink a glass of gin and tonic. Horatio walked to the door and indicated his willingness to ascend to the garden, but it was too cold and I was tired. He paused there for a moment, then seemed to agree with me, reassuming his place in the small of Daniel’s back and curling up, head on paws. Outside Insula the city went on its way, hooting and shouting and seething with life. In here the little scratch of my pen on the paper could be clearly detected. I could almost hear Daniel’s heart beating.