‘They are merely stupid beyond belief,’ I finished. ‘Indeed. There’s one thing I may not have told you. Alasdair thinks he overheard the dognappers say something in a foreign language.’ He looked at me expectantly while I tried to disinter the indigestible fragment from a memory overfilled with recipes and constant crisis. ‘Ah yes. Something like vorteh nizaky. Does that ring any bells?’
He pursed his lips and picked up his notebook and biro. ‘If you would be so good as to say it again?’
I did so, and he scribbled something down. ‘Vorteh nizaky? I’ve got that down in standard phonetic script, so it doesn’t wander. It really doesn’t ring any bells. Hmm.’ He thought for a moment, then shook his head. ‘So, Corinna, what are your plans for the evening?’
‘A sleep first, I think. And then I’d like to join Sister Mary on the Soup Run.’
‘Is this a hunch?’
‘Indeed it is a hunch. I was going to see if I could get anything more out of Jordan King. But – who knows? I’m mostly looking out for news of Geordie, though anything else about our gangland wars – who knows? Maybe someone might let something slip about that too. I mean, yes, Daniel is the pro and I’m just the amateur, and he’s already been out and about asking questions. But …’
‘You feel that some of the downtrodden masses might be more inclined to open their hearts to a baker than a private investigator? I think so too. Sorry, who is Geordie? Remind me.’
‘Geordie is Alasdair’s missing dog.’
He nodded. ‘In that case, you might want to take Alasdair with you, if he’s up to it.’
I reached for my phone, texting Daniel as follows:
If you think it advisable, why not send me A? Am doing
Soup Run. He may want to join in?
There was no answer. I don’t ring Daniel when he’s on duty. He could be tailing someone in conditions of secrecy, or up to his armpits in venomous snakes. His phone would be on silent. Until he answered my text I would await developments.
Dion Monk nodded his approval. ‘It is possible that the Soup Run may provide further clues. I gather some of the dispossessed can be helpful, if they decide they want to be.’ He patted my hand. ‘You have coped magnificently thus far with this impenetrable series of mysteries and irruptions, Corinna. Well, I shall not take up any more of your valuable time. Do let me know how it all turns out.’
He rose and departed, and I stared into the depths of the parsley forest, trying to get my head around it all. What was I hoping for exactly? That the answer to one or more of our problems would leap out at me. It seemed a remote possibility. Then again, doing something positive was better than staying in my apartment trying to reason and theorise from insufficient data. Then my phone buzzed.
Excellent idea. I’ll bring him round at 8.
Whatever my Daniel was doing was clearly undercover of some sort. I wished I had him under the covers of my doona, but that could wait. I was already looking forward to my afternoon nap, but there was one thing I wanted to do first. Still dressed agreeably en boudoir, I made my way downstairs and out to Heard It Before.
The shop occupied a small sliver of Calico Alley which had hitherto been an op shop. Unsurprisingly, it had not prospered. I could not even remember who had been optimistic enough to open an op shop for second-hand clothes and oddments in the central business district. I opened the glass door and there behind her counter was Kate, surrounded by concert programs, amplifiers, turntables, MP3 players and CDs in cases. I believe I caught a glimpse of vinyl LPs, lurking in stacks under a bookcase. I pondered for a moment the improbable resurgence of vinyl records. Would cassette tapes be the next instalment of retro chic? I thought this wildly improbable. She grinned at me, her brown eyes flashing with welcome.
‘Corinna! Great to see you! Marie told me you might drop by.’ What I could see of her was encased in a neat white T-shirt bearing a strange musical staff in black letters over her breasts. I must have looked longer than was polite, because she grinned again. ‘Haven’t you ever seen an alto clef before?’
‘Is that what it is? It looks confusing. Is that middle C on the third stave?’
‘Well done! Yes, it is.’
‘I hope the souvlaki measured up?’
‘It was magnificent. We’re going there again.’ She waved her hand around the shop. ‘Can I interest you in something?’
‘Please. I want something for my beloved. Maybe a mix of something Irish?’
‘Are they Irish?’
I must have blinked, because Kate rushed to explain. ‘If they’re Irish, they may not want their own ancestral music, because it was probably hammered into them growing up and they might be all Celted out. Otherwise, sure.’
I blinked again, realising that the use of the third-person plural was intended to cover all possible genders for my aforementioned beloved. The idea that people could choose their own personal pronouns was still a little new to me, but I appreciated the general inclusiveness of the thought. ‘He’s Israeli. But he likes Clannad and the Corrs.’
‘Okay then. Is there a particular album he wants, do you think, or just something in that style?’
‘Something in that style would be lovely. Gift-wrapped?’
‘Of course. Is seventy-five dollars too much? We can give you a CD and a thumb drive, with a gift card and list of tracks.’
‘Are you going to write something specially for him? If so, that’s way too cheap.’
‘Well, not really. What’s his name?’
‘Daniel.’
‘What we’ll do with this is make Daniel a mix tape. We’ve done some multitrack Irish already, from traditional and completely non-copyright sources, so he can have them. We’ve also done some more-or-less Clannad/Corrs improvisations, and we’ll put them on too. And we’ll do one track especially for Daniel. What’s he like?’
I paused, momentarily at a loss. What could I tell these girls about my wonderful man?
She tilted her head. ‘Tall, short, funny, serious?’
‘Tall, dark and handsome. And dangerous, but only to bad guys.’
She thought about this. ‘Okay, that should be enough. When would you like it?’
‘Is Monday possible?’
‘Sure. We don’t have a party on tonight, so we’ll write something and record it after dinner.’
‘How wonderful. Thank you!’ I reached into my purse and disinterred a fifty, a twenty and a five. ‘And you must let me pay you in advance.’
Her small, perfect white teeth flashed for a moment. For a commission like this, she would always ask. ‘Tell all your friends.’
‘I will.’ I grasped the receipt and she smiled again.
I left the shop, intending to go home to sleep, but standing outside her shop was Meroe. She beckoned, looking rather like a prophet attempting to sell the Sibylline books to the King of the Romans, and I followed her into her shop. It smelt, as ever, of perfumes, incense, herbal teas and watchfulness. I stood for a long moment to admire the crystals (amethysts still seemed to be very popular), the dreamcatchers, the inspirational CDs and all the rest. I saw many boxed sets of tarot cards, which seemed to be making a comeback. Above them I noticed a placard inscribed in a sans-serif font which stated:
Please do not ask for Aleister Crowley’s tarot cards as a curse often offends.
I inhaled the odours of sandalwood and patchouli, and Meroe waited. She has a genius for it. She seems to live in a small, gently rippling pool of silence. Today she wore her usual black dress with a pale green shawl. She closed the door behind me and I waited. Then she laid her slender hand on my arm and sat me down in one of her antique wooden chairs. There was no one else in the shop.
‘Corinna, you are walking into peril, aren’t you?’ she said, her voice like small stones tumbling into a pond.
‘I fear that this may indeed be the case,’ I agreed.
She rummaged under the counter and brought out a tiny wooden suitcase with a brass handle on it, about the size
of the palm of my hand. ‘I think you should have this,’ she stated in her quiet, matter-of-fact voice. I noted a small label on it saying forty dollars.
Meroe never tells me things like this without good reason, so I paid up at once, and opened it. Inside was fine straw, and buried within was the most beautiful ring I had ever seen: wooden, with a glorious blue stone with what looked to be a petrified forest within.
‘This is the Ring of Otherworlds,’ she stated. ‘It will help you see when all the lights go out. Wear it until the danger is passed.’ She walked to the front door again and turned over the sign saying OPEN so it faced inwards. ‘I’m not expecting any more customers today. I want to read for you, if you’re agreeable?’
I nodded, and she brought out a small wooden table and put it in front of me, sat herself down in a chair opposite, and produced a small silk bundle. Unwrapped, this showed itself to be a deck of cards with blue-and-white-checked backs and intriguing designs on the obverse. ‘Have you ever had a reading before?’ she asked, putting her head on one side and shuffling the deck.
‘Once, as a student. I don’t think he was very good at it.’
She handed me the pack and I shuffled it too.
‘Cut the deck,’ she instructed, and I did so. The lower half she turned around the other way and resumed shuffling.
We did this three times each, then she fanned the cards, face down, across the wooden table. ‘I use the Rider deck. It is hallowed by tradition, and is also completely safe. In my hands, anyway. Unlike some decks, which aren’t.’ I glanced at the sign and she managed a thin-lipped smile. ‘Especially not that one. I had three enquiries for it this week. Crowley was a complete pervert. I will go a long way for my customers, but I won’t stock that. Now you need to pick a card. Take your time, and remember which way up it is. Upright or reversed are quite different.’
I probably imagined it, but one of the cards seemed to be saying: Pick me! I handed it to her and she placed it face down on the table.
‘The Star. Very well. You feel that you are at the mercy of forces far too cosmic for you, and it’s all too outré. Correct?’
‘That is an excellent summary of my life of late.’
She began to deal from the top of the pack until we had a double cross laid out. It certainly looked colourful enough. She touched the card at the extreme left. It showed eight staves slanting diagonally across a green and pleasant landscape.
‘The Eight of Wands. This is your immediate past. Same as the Star, really. Life is strange and out of control, and you have been doing your best to cope.’
I nodded. Then she touched the card in the centre of the cross, which showed an angel holding a lion’s mouth shut. It looked promising. Even the lion didn’t look too unhappy about it.
‘Strength means pretty much what you think, except that it’s spiritual strength rather than something that comes out of a jar of protein supplements and far too much pumping iron. You have powerful allies looking after you. Crossing you is the Seven of Wands. I like sevens. And these two are related.’
I looked as a man on top of a hill with a big staff was beating off six other staves.
‘You are in a struggle, and outnumbered. But you have the higher ground, and a stalwart protector.’
Next came a card with more coins on it than a Bollywood wedding. ‘It would appear that the next thing you attempt will be successful.’
Well, that sounded good.
Then the corners of her mouth turned down. ‘But these …’ She touched four cards, all of which showed people holding swords. ‘Three of these are bad. The Ten is what it looks like. This is peril of death, and I mean actual physical death.’
I stared at the prone figure. Ten swords protruded from his body. That looked about as unequivocal as anything I’d ever seen.
Meroe gave a slight cough and resumed. ‘The Page down here? I’m not sure. It may be you. But having swords above and below means there’s no way around this. You have to face what is coming. And what you will face is this here …’ She touched a card with a blindfolded woman holding two swords. ‘The Two reversed is unnatural passion. Are you in trouble with criminals?’
‘We’ve been broken into a lot, as you may have heard.’
Meroe leant forward, ran her hands down her front and frowned. ‘Yes, but there’s something worse here than just a break-in. It’s hidden, for the moment. The good news is this one: the Seven.’
I stared at it. Next to a fairground pavilion, a stealthy character had picked up a bundle of swords and appeared to be making off with them.
‘Someone is going to help you, unexpectedly. But covertly.’
‘I should expect surreptitiousness?’
‘Indeed you should.’
I liked the fact that the last card showed what looked like the Holy Grail. She nodded. ‘The ruling card here is the Three of Cups. This means you need to keep your emotional balance. The Ace down here reinforces that.’
She smiled again, closed her eyes and was silent for a long time. I looked at my watch. Three-thirty-eight! My afternoon nap was slipping away.
Suddenly she stared straight at me, her deep brown eyes narrowed. ‘Corinna, you’re going on a journey soon. For some reason I see a dog. Make sure you carry some doggie treats. And … do you have an amber bracelet?’
‘Yes, I have one. Should I wear that too?’
‘Yes, you should.’ She gripped the arms of her chair and muttered, ‘Do you know, these four cards here usually represent occurrences in the distant future. But there’s such an air of haste about all this that I don’t think so. Are you going out tonight?’
‘Yes, I’m going on the Soup Run. Is the danger there? I can always put it off.’
She shook her head. ‘Yes, that should be all right. Be bold, but careful. And do not go alone.’
‘I won’t. Anything else?’
She rose, and took my hand. ‘No. If you don’t seek it, it will come for you anyway. Be prepared.’
And so, with the Boy Scouts’ motto still ringing in my ears, I returned to my apartment and went to bed.
Philomela: I smell vengeance brewing. It has the sweetest of scents. I managed to play Jenny Plucks Pears on the recorder today. I still can’t speak, but I can play. My fingers remember!
CHAPTER NINETEEN
’Tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door;
but ’tis enough, ’twill serve.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, ROMEO AND JULIET, ACT 3, SCENE 1
Sleep is indeed a wondrous thing. I woke again in the late afternoon to find Horatio stretched out next to me on the bed. His eyes opened briefly and closed again. He stretched out his front paws, spreading out his vestigial fingers in an ecstasy of sybaritic comfort. I did the same. Life had been running far too fast for me to catch up, but my mutual catnap with Mr Horatio had been just what I needed.
As I prepared myself a light Caesar salad I reviewed what I had learnt. Our multiple mysteries were certainly beginning to crystallise. And while Meroe’s tarot reading had scared me, I was oddly comforted by her insistence that this crisis could not be dodged. As I already knew, the forces of the ungodly would come to me whether I wanted it or not. It was all very well for Wonder Woman to barge into the midst of foes and make everything right. This is the prerogative of goddesses, not humans. Sensible people don’t go looking for trouble. But if trouble were coming anyway, stepping out forewarned and forearmed to meet it didn’t seem so bad.
I was now convinced I knew where Geordie was. And we were going to rescue him. Why had the Kilmarnock crime gang taken him? I didn’t know that. And I didn’t much care. He had to be there. Because if he wasn’t, then he must surely be dead and I wasn’t prepared to countenance that. I was also convinced that our three break-ins were committed by two people. Jordan we knew about. But my ninja and the Professor’s Second Burglar had to be the same people. And they probably were the dognappers as well. Once I had reluctantly accepted Jordan King as a coincidence, t
he rest seemed to be connected. Was this reason, or intuition? A mixture of both. But there was nothing especially sinister about Jordan. He was a farcical footnote to a series of menacing crime scenes. The rest seemed to be all of a piece.
I sprinkled some munchies into Horatio’s dinner dish in case he felt peckish, and set one of my best metal bowls on the kitchen table. I laid out a circular wheel of cos lettuce in the bottom, sliced two hard-boiled eggs, sprinkled some leftover cooked bacon, added a few croutons, a liberal serving of mayonnaise and some ground salt and black pepper. And anchovies! I swear by them. Alas, some can only swear at them, it seems. Professor Monk says he loves the idea of furry fish, but the actuality is too much: a bit like trying to swallow an aquarium. A half-glass of chilled sauv blanc was duly poured, and I browsed my way through my dinner in contentment. Through a small gap beneath my heavy-duty sunshades golden sunlight peeped nervously. According to my resolutely analogue wall clock, it was a little after seven o’clock when I finished dinner. I washed up, dressed myself in comfortable summer trousers, a loose blouse and sensible flat shoes. My doorbell sounded and I pressed the intercom button. ‘Corinna? We’re early. I hope that’s all right.’
That was Daniel’s chocolate-smooth voice, gloriously welcome as always. I let him in, reflecting that even though he has his own key to my apartment he usually rings anyway. Just to make the point.
I opened my door and ushered them into the sitting room. ‘Drink?’ I offered.
‘A sauv blanc for me,’ Daniel responded. ‘Alasdair?’
The bereft squaddie shook his head. ‘No thanks,’ he murmured.
I waved Daniel towards the bottle and took a close look at Alasdair. He looked weary beyond words, but some colour had returned to his features. His eyes had stopped darting left and right, and he no longer gave the impression of a violin wound too tight for comfort. He looked calmer than I remembered. That would not be difficult. He was comfortably dressed in black jeans with holes in the knees (an old pair of Daniel’s, I noted) and a plain black T-shirt. Only his boots, and the air of hidden menace steaming gently off his stringy, muscular biceps and forearms spoke anything of the military. He looked up at me with something vaguely approaching hope in his pale sapphire eyes. He lifted his shoulders and sighed.
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