Trick or Treat Part 13

'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 gla.s.s 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.

'h.e.l.lo?' 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 pa.s.s 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 a.s.sistant 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 Ta.s.sie,' 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.'

'Yeah,' affirmed Jones.

'Meanwhile,' said Ms Bray, 'there's been a development.'

'Another one?'

'The reports have started to come in from the people who were tested last week. The mad ones,' she elaborated.

I hadn't forgotten them. 'Yes?'

'Forensics are cross,' she told me. 'The agent, whatever it is, eluded them. Metabolised too quickly to be found, but had major central nervous system effects. Eventually they found traces of LSD.'

'I thought as much,' I said. We hadn't told Ms Bray anything about Barnabas, witches, or ordeal poisons, and we probably should have.

'Far beyond any usual dose,' said Ms Bray.

'I worked that out myself,' I said. 'And it seems strange.'

'They had crumbs and fruit by-products in their stomachs,' she said.

'Yes.' I saw what was coming.

'So we feel that-'

The mobile phone rang. Jones pressed the receive b.u.t.ton and handed it over. It wasn't one of those phones which took pictures or I might have tried to send poor Vincent Wyatt a picture of us, sitting on the iron bench in the lane.

'It's me,' said the apatosaurus.

'And it's me, Corinna, here,' I a.s.sured him.

'I can't see any way out,' he said.

'Just come and open the door,' I said. 'It's easy. I'm here.'

'I reckon it must have been that worthless little gum-chewing shoppie Eddie,' he said in a low roar. 'He must've done it. Ruined me by selling drugs.'

'You don't know that,' I urged. That Eddie was earning his weekly wage. I could see his frantic eyes through the window. Terrified eyes, clutching hands. I lost patience abruptly.

'Vincent!' I raised my voice. 'Stop this right now! If it's your a.s.sistant, then the cops will arrest him and make him sorry he was born. Now I can't sit out here all day, I've got to go to bed early, I've got baking to do in the morning! You come and open this door. I've got bread to make!'

Silence descended and the phone was cut off again.

'Oops,' I said meekly.

'Possibly not oops,' said Daniel.

Jones rubbed his chin. 'But possibly. Give it another ten and then, if he still won't come out and be nice, we'll have to lay on a negotiator and call out the Sons of G.o.d.'

'Sons of G.o.d?'

'Special Operations Group,' Ms Bray told me. 'Otherwise known as Soggies. Snipers. 007s. Licensed to kill.'

'He doesn't seem to be armed,' I said feebly.

'No, but we don't know whether he's armed or not,' said 151.

Jones, 'which is why I'd rather wait. Besides, this sort of thing means overtime and the boss hates authorising overtime.'

I was fascinated by this privileged insight into secret police methods. I was also feeling sorry for Vincent. And his shoppie, the wretched Eddie. And for me. I had been plunged without any preparation or training into this and I was sure that I was about to make a fatal mistake.

Ms Bray captured my attention again. '. . . so at least you won't have to get up early tomorrow,' she finished. I had missed the start of her discourse.

'What?'

'Because of the search,' she told me again. 'Just a hint, get those Mouse Police out of the bakery before they arrive.'

'They can stay upstairs,' I affirmed. Not open on Monday? My world was shuddering on its axis. I suddenly knew exactly how Vincent Wyatt felt because I felt the same.

Not waiting for a phone call, I went to the barricaded front door of Best Fresh and knocked on it. There was a startled silence inside.

'Come along, Mr Wyatt,' I said. 'Open the door and come with me. We're in trouble, and bakers must stick together. That's the way, Eddie, you push those racks aside.'

Eddie did as he was bid. There was a piercing scream of metal on metal, then the barricade was gone. Eddie had pressed himself so flat against the window that he seemed to be glued there. Gradually, he sidled along to the door and unlocked it with a subdued clunk.

'Nice,' I heard Jones say.

'There we are. Come on out, Eddie,' I encouraged. Poor Eddie slipped out through the opening door and flung himself into the arms of the attendant police. Then I did something which no hostage negotiator ought to do in a million years of careful negotiations. I heard Daniel behind me protest but it was too late. I shoved aside the remains of the bread racks and went into Best Fresh.

It was no longer the shop it had been. The snazzy plastic chairs had been thrown-one by one, it seemed-into a corner, where some of them had smashed. The blinds hung askew on their rails. Bread racks, rolls, loaves and a whole sack of some sort of pre-mix littered the floor. And in the corner was Mr Wyatt, huddled close, his hands together and caught between his knees, a picture of misery.

For a moment I didn't know what to do, but clearly this could not go on. Vincent Wyatt was big, with thinning blond hair and a high complexion. He was tending to fat as a lot of bakers do, and was presumably strong enough to take me on in any sort of physical contest. But I did not want to see him running the risk of being shot. People had died enough. Calico Alley was turning into a war zone and I was sick of it.

I crossed the room, kicking loaves out of the way, sank down on my knees in front of him and grabbed his knotted hands.

'Come on,' I said, 'let's get you out of here.'

'Corinna?' The big face was bleared with tears.

'Vincent?'

'Yair,' he agreed. I pulled and he came up out of his crouch. I retained my grip on his hands but he didn't seem to notice. 'Made a h.e.l.l of a mess,' he grunted as we crunched and waded through the a.s.sorted spilt produce.

'Certainly have,' I agreed. 'But it can be cleaned up. Come on. Cup of tea and you'll feel slightly better. Perhaps.'

'It's a scandal,' he muttered.

I kept towing. I brought him to the door and gave him a shrewd shove just as he baulked, and then we were out into the 153.

G.o.ddess's good air and the fight totally went out of Mr Wyatt. He sank down onto the iron bench next to Daniel and started to cry.

'Where did you learn that?' asked Daniel, fascinated.

'Loading unimpressed horses into floats,' I replied.

'Really?' he asked. 'I never saw you as an outdoor girl.'

'I'm not. I had no choice. It was the sort of school I went to, Daniel dear. I had to find an acceptable sport or play hockey and I do not like blood. So I played tennis very badly and they let me take riding. Grandpa Chapman paid for it, bless him. I liked riding,' I remembered. 'Mainly because it's the poor horse who gets all the exercise. You?'

'I can stick on, if nothing surprising happens,' he said, smiling. 'We shall take some equestrian exercise, ma'am, together.'