Earthly Delights by Kerry Greenwood Page B

Mouse Police were bouncing up and down, eager to seek for prey, or possibly fish, so I dragged the bolt and undid the locks and they shot out into the alley.
    I followed slowly. The sun was rising, which was always a good thing, and a ray fell on my face. I looked around. No bodies on the vent. Kiko’s brother Ian was sweeping. The sound came clearly down the alley in that silence which precedes the roar of traffic. No paint on my wall. Just a quiet sunny morning. Just what an underslept baker needs.
    Then someone screamed. Not loudly, but it was a scream and I went around the corner of the alley at a sort of fast creep. I wasn’t going to rush into the middle of anything and if that was Jack the Ripper round there, there was a sporting chance he wouldn’t see me, busy with his latest victim as he would be, as I raced back inside, locked all the doors and called the police. I am not the stuff of which vigilantes are made, as you will have noticed.
    But there was no gore—at least, not yet. What I saw was a large man in a suit and sunglasses—at this hour!—preparing to cuff my floor-scrubbing scarecrow of the day before. Again, to judge by the way Jase, yes, that was the name, was cowering against the wall with his hand across his face.
    This I could handle. I retreated a little and then came around the corner yelling, ‘Heckle! Jekyll! Puss, puss, puss!’ and then stopped dead as I saw the threatening little tableau. A picture of innocence, I was. To add to the impression, Heckle came skidding up behind me in case I really meant it about the cat food. A gust of baking accompanied me.
    The big man released Jase, said something to him in a low voice, then marched into Flinders Lane. I let him go. When I was sure he had gone, I beckoned to Jase and he limped into Calico Alley, spitting out something white. It was a tooth. Oh dear.
    I let Jase sit down on the doorstep—after all it was clean, he had scrubbed it himself—and fed Heckle and Jekyll somekitty treats, since they had come promptly when I had called. Cats are not trainable by any method other than always—always, without fail—rewarding the behaviour you want. If there’s invariably a kitty treat in it for them, they will come when they are called, unless something really much more interesting is happening. Miss one reward and all that training goes the same way as a John Howard election promise about Medicare. They whuffed appreciatively as I drew some hot water, found a cloth and sat down to have a look at the poor boy’s face.
    He scooted away from me, whining, ‘I’m all right!’ but I ignored this as he clearly wasn’t. As honorary first-aid monitor at a tough girls school which went in for hockey like other people went in for hard drugs—ferociously, mindlessly—I was used to this sort of injury. I mopped off the blood and found that Jase had a cut lip and a missing tooth which must have been loose, because there was not a lot of bleeding at the empty socket. His mouth was already ballooning up.
    It isn’t like this in the movies, I know, but in the real world the victim of a beating looks like they have put a compressed air nozzle into their mouth and turned it on. They look ridiculous which, since they are always in considerable pain, seems unfair. There wasn’t a lot of Jase’s face and now it was going to be all lip.
    ‘I’ll get you some ice,’ I told him. ‘Then maybe a nice cup of coffee. I suppose you aren’t going to tell me what that was all about, are you?’
    He shook his head and winced. I checked and found a bump on the back of his skull. His hair was filthy. He probably had lice. Or not. Only a louse which liked slumming would live in that hair. I had an idea.
    When the bakery had been designed, someone had put ina small bathroom, just a toilet and a shower. I didn’t use it because I lived upstairs. I left Jase and went up to find a bottle of shower gel which was supposed to make me feel focused and which was still