'Number of vermin removed?' I asked, as he gathered up the dead mice from their designated place and bunged them in the bin. The Mouse Police were enthusiastic hunters, bless them. They were sitting at attention before a small scene of rodent ma.s.sacre, tails twitching in antic.i.p.ation of breakfast.

'Five mice, no rats, and a b.l.o.o.d.y big spider,' reported Jason. The lid of the bin clanged. I heard the rattle of dry cat food hitting the Mouse Police ration tins. 'Cat food supplied, sir!' He saluted, looking unbearably cute in white overalls and cap and shining morning face.

We were being naval this morning, it appeared. 'Carry on, Midshipman,' I said wearily, flipping open the order book. Jason took the Evil scissors and went to attack the flour sack.

It's just a whimsy. Everyone has heard the cry 'Where are the good scissors?' echoing through the house or school or workplace. Daniel, in a theological discussion we had drifted into one night, opined that if there were Good scissors there must be Evil scissors, this being a Manichean universe, and I had to agree. The Good scissors were used for cutting cloth and nothing else. The Evil scissors were used for opening sacks and snipping bacon rind and cutting out recipes from Good Weekend.

Orders were bearing up. I sell most of my bread to cafes and restaurants. I don't really need a shop. But I liked having one and I resented being outbid by a hot bread shop. Some of them are doubtless excellent, but my reports of Best Fresh had not been encouraging.

Machines on, rye bread on, I heard Jason ripping away at the top of the rye flour sack for the big order. I was just wondering how I could have used so much cream when he said, 'Captain?'

'Yes, Midshipman?'

'There's something c.r.a.ppy about this flour.'

I really must teach Jason some more descriptive words when we have a spare moment, I thought. I rose with a groan to inspect it. He was right. I buy rye flour in smallish paper sacks, as even in the heaviest bread it is an addition, not the main ingredient. Jason was right. The opened sack smelt mouldy and slightly acid, not the right scent at all. Rye ought to smell sour. I damped a small amount of it and the smell was marked, enough to make the Mouse Police sneeze, and the flour was greyish and slightly greasy, not the fine dry meal it should have been.

'Quite right, well spotted, that man. d.a.m.n. Where are we going to get another sack of rye flour at this hour of the morning?'

'We could go and ask Best Fresh,' he suggested, ducking out of cuffing range.

'Over my dead body.'

'Well, we can't use this stuff, Cap,' he told me. He was right. 'And we've only got enough rye to cover the standing orders,' he said, 'not the new one.' Right again. And I would hate to disappoint a new big order, which might then go over to a lesser baker. As it might be, just down the lane.

'Where did that sack come from, sailor?' I asked. Now that I looked at it, it wasn't the usual supplier. Their lettering was red, this was black.

'Just says "rye mixture",' read Jason.

I am going to need gla.s.ses soon and I am resisting firmly. It's not that I am getting short sighted, it's just that the rest of the world wants its print too small. 'Wait a tick. Aha,' said Jason triumphantly.

'Do you know what the penalties are for saying "aha!" to a superior officer?' I demanded.

'No s.h.i.t, Corinna, look,' he urged, dropping the naval affectations. He hoisted the sack onto the bench. 'It's not for us, anyway. It's for Best Fresh. The van must have mixed them up.'

'So they've got my sack of unrefined special organic rye flour,' I said. 'Expensive unrefined organic rye flour. And we've got...'

'Their c.r.a.p,' said Jason with admirable nicety. 'I'll just seal it up again and go over and get our flour.'

'Tell them there's something not right with it,' I said.

'After I get our rye flour back,' he replied. So young and so cynical.

He sticky-taped the sack, lifted it into his arms, and I opened the alley door. The Mouse Police rushed out and Jason followed, walking easily away in the darkness with his load. I went back into the bakery and put the coffee machine on. Today was not going to be a good day, I could tell.

But it improved when Jason came back with our flour, which had not even been opened.

'They were going to send it back,' he told me, engulfing three ham rolls and a couple of leftover m.u.f.fins with his can of c.o.ke. c.o.ke! At that hour! The boy has the digestion of an ostrich. 'They don't use neat flour. All their stuff comes in mixtures. Just upend it into the mixer and add water, yeast included. There was only this one guy Eddie there to mind the machines. Don't reckon he knows a thing about bread.' There was a pause as he chewed briefly and cut himself a doorstop of bread and cheese. 'He scammed me ten for bringing the sack, said he'd be in deep s.h.i.t if the boss came in at nine and found the rye mix not started.'

'And you told him the flour was iffy?'

Jason widened his eyes in an affectation of innocence which verged on the extreme. 'Yeah, Boss, I told him. Twice. I said, "Don't use that stuff, it's s.h.i.tty", and he said, "Thanks", and gave me the money and I came back.'

'Well, we can't do any more than that. We told him and he's in charge. If the boss doesn't come in until nine...' I said with a certain complacency, noting that it was now getting on for five thirty and we had better get cracking on the rye or we wouldn't make the new order. 'Nothing more that we can do. Is our rye all right?'

Jason had antic.i.p.ated me and produced a teaspoonful of the new flour. I sniffed and tasted. Perfect. Sour and silky.

'Then prime the mixers, Jason, we're making bread,' I announced.

'Aye, aye, sir,' he grinned around his last mouthful. 'Captain?'

'Yes, Midshipman?'

'Do I get to keep the ten?'

'You carried the flour,' I said, getting out of my chair. 'You keep the fee.'

'Aye, sir!' he said, and we sprang into action.

CHAPTER THREE.

Morning came. It was one of those Melbourne spring mornings which make everyone long to be somewhere else: in the country, by the sea, sitting on a suitable mountain. Sunrise was as pink and soft as Jason's raspberry icing, with delicate blues behind and above and streaks of pure gold which John Martin could have used for The Plains of Heaven. I stood in my lane gazing at the sky as the Mouse Police bounced back inside for a little snooze, smelling of tuna sc.r.a.ps and uninterested in aesthetics.

Calico Alley was empty. I could see all the way to the steps which lead up into the arcade. Yet someone was singing, quite near, a song about wa.s.sailing. The voice was a clear, honey-sweet tenor: 'G.o.d bless the master of this house and the mistress also/And all the little children that round the table go...'

I listened until it faded away. Someone walking along Schmutter Alley or Flinders Lane, perhaps, caught in one of those odd inner city soundscapes which make St Paul's whispering gallery so famous. Nice. Very nice. And my day was

30.

further improved by the scent of cooking rye bread and the appearance of my most glamorous neighbour, Mrs Dawson. She was wearing a rough silk leisure suit which was a sonnet in burnt umber and carrying her terracotta coloured jacket and the umbrella without which spring in Melbourne is a very soggy thing.

'Spring,' she observed with a smile.

'For the moment,' I agreed.

'I met our witch and a few friends in the Flagstaff Gardens,' she told me. 'Dancing in a ring.'

'Must be a solstice or a festival or something,' I replied. 'Er . . . clothed?'

'Completely,' she said.

This was a relief. Meroe was a solitary amongst witches, not belonging to any coven. If she was dancing with others it meant some occult celebration was in the offing and most Wicca ceremonies are carried out skyclad, which struck me as unwise in the Flagstaff Gardens at dawn, or indeed at any time.

'Rye bread,' said Mrs Dawson with as much greed as a refined lady should exhibit at dawn in an alley.

'I can only spare one loaf,' I said. 'I've got a special order. And it nearly didn't happen at all.'

While I was fetching and wrapping a loaf of the first batch of bread I told her about Jason's return of the odd flour.

'The thing which is now worrying me,' I confessed, 'is that I should have made sure the idiot in charge didn't use that rye mix. It was definitely off.'

'Not your responsibility,' said Mrs Dawson, deftly relieving me of guilt. 'Jason told the man that the flour wasn't good. And if their rye bread fails, my dear, that is not your fault either. Price for confession and absolution . . .?'

'One loaf of rye bread,' I agreed promptly, handing it over. 'Eat it in good health, as Uncle Solly says.'

'I do like that man,' Mrs Dawson observed. 'The reason I wanted your rye is that I bought some of his gravlax yesterday. Divine with sour cream and capers. Well, I have done my exercise and my detective story has to go back to the library today. I intend to make myself a few open sandwiches at about ten and eat them in the roof garden.'

'With Russian tea?'

'Of course,' she said. 'Do come and share it with me if you can get away,' she added, and walked on.

When Mrs Dawson drank Russian tea, she drank it from an elaborate silver samovar which Trudi wheeled up to the garden for her. It had tea gla.s.ses in silver holders and dispensed a delicate straw coloured beverage, drunk with lemon, which would entirely complement Uncle Solly's gravlax and my bread. It would be a very civilised morning tea. I would see how business went today.

Soup Run Donnie came sidling along just as she left. He had probably been watching for her departure from around a corner. Before the adamantine Sister Mary had reformed him, he had been a lookout man for many a burglary, and he just didn't feel comfortable standing brazenly visible, even in Calico Alley at this hour. I hauled out the sack of bread, heavier than usual, and he lifted it onto the trolley which everyone but Ma'ani used to transport food offerings from the charitable.

'Been a good night,' he said. 'Lots of customers.'

'Any madmen?'

'One,' he said, smiling nervously. 'But they took him away. Bye,' he added, and was gone.

Sunrise had gone, too, and I ducked back into the bakery to see how the chocolate m.u.f.fins were coming along. I had an order for a tray of princess cakes for a child's birthday. Bless the little darling, she insisted on my cakes, resisting the temptations of the very good patisseries in her area, who would have happily made her a cake in any shape whatsoever including-to judge from their window display-trains, planes, armoured personnel carriers, subatomic particles, geese with brooms and Barbie dolls. But it was princess patty cakes for Karina, and I had to concentrate while making them. They have to rise nicely and evenly or the whipped cream filling tips the pink icing top off. I started my seldom used cake mixer, which makes a loud clatter, so the love of my life had to shout to be heard over it.

'Can I help?' asked Daniel.

'By all means, separate those eggs for me,' I shouted back. Daniel came in, gorgeous in a pair of jeans and a white t-shirt emblazoned with a slogan in an unknown script. He began on the eggs. I watched him long enough to be confident that he wasn't going to spill yolk into my egg white, in which event it would never whip. He could break the eggs with one hand, I noticed, green with envy. So was Jason.

'Cool! Can I learn to do that?' he asked.

'Just practice,' said Daniel modestly. 'I squashed a lot of eggsh.e.l.l learning to do it. But I can show you how.'

'Don't practise on this mixture,' I instructed. 'Wait until we make challah again and it doesn't matter if some yolk gets spilled. Isn't it time for your breakfast?' Jason's appet.i.te is usually as good as an alarm clock. In which event either the clock was fast or Jason was ten minutes slow.

'Just waiting until I get the choccie m.u.f.fins out of the oven,' he answered, watching Daniel as he gripped an egg in his hand, squeezed, and spilled the white out of the half-sh.e.l.l, dropping the unbroken yolk into the second basin. Poetry in motion.

Jason dragged himself away from the spectacle to slide his m.u.f.fins out of their tins and lay them in reverent rows to cool, then shucked his cap and overalls and went off to renew the inner boy. Which took a fair bit of renewing. Due to a frightful childhood and a period of drug abuse, Jason had interrupted his adolescent growth spurt. Now that he was clean and employed and amused and had a nice bed to sleep in every night, he was growing at an alarming rate. His overalls were already snug and by next week would be too tight.

I compounded the princess cakes carefully, giving Daniel the job of beating the egg whites into peaks. When they were safely in the oven and we could hear again, I greeted him with a kiss.

'Good morning,' I said. 'What does your t-shirt say?'

'Shalom,' he replied.

'Oh, so that's Hebrew writing. Or was that just a greeting?'

'That, too,' he said, kissing me on the cheek. 'Sheer luxury,' he added. 'To kiss you whenever I like. And you like, of course. Shalom, susselah! There's a mixed language for a fine morning.'

'What does that mean?' I snuggled against the pacific t-shirt.

'Peace be unto the sweetie,' he grinned.

'And also with you,' I answered. 'What do you have to do today? We can drink Russian tea with Mrs Dawson at ten.'

'Begone, tempter. It's a hardworking world.' He kissed me again to comfort me for the hard work of it all. 'I might be able to drop back at about three, if the lady would honour me with the company of her so-distinguished cat and self?'

'Three it is,' I agreed, and he washed egg off his hands and sauntered away.

The bakery always seemed emptier without him. But soon it was augmented with a Jason, as replete as he ever is, which was not as replete as all that. He was carrying a large basket and laughing to himself.

'What's that? A midmorning snack? And what's funny?' I asked.

'From Mama Pandamus. For someone called Old Spiro. And they were having this Greek argument about this Old Spiro, Yai Yai yelling from the kitchen that he was a prost.i.tute- well, that's what she said-and Del yelling back that such things were a long time ago and far away and he was an old man on his own and Grandma coming right back at him that if Old Spiro was alone it served him right. I just grabbed the basket and went before they started throwing things. I might have missed a bit of the argument,' said Jason, lifting a corner of the white cloth which covered the basket. 'Mmm! Baklava.'

'No, you don't.' I removed the basket from my young omnivore's questing nose. 'It's for Old Spiro.'

'Yeah, I s'pose,' Jason unwillingly admitted.

'Leaving us with only one puzzle.'

'What?' asked Jason, clanging the main oven door open to remove the last of the rye and put in the pane di casa rolls.

'Who's Old Spiro?'

We looked at each other blankly.

'f.u.c.ked if I know,' he said.

'Me neither.'

I put the basket up on top of the clothes dryer, out of the way of any greedy cats or apprentices. 'We'll ask about it later,' I decided. 'Don't swear in the bakery, it's bad luck. I told you that.'

'Ouch,' said Jason, burning the back of his hand on the oven door. 'Okay, okay. I believe.'

Time to open the shop. I unlocked the outer door to reveal an awful lot of someone who said she was Goss. Today's hair was blonde and eyes blue, which I believe were the original colours. She was wearing about half a t-shirt in bright pink and approximately ten centimetres of pink skirt below a broad leather belt suitable for a brickie, bikie, or one of Mistress Dread's clients. I will never understand fashion. I refrained from comment.