All the usual disclaimers, Ben, Ray and associates are not mine, no matter how badly I want them This story is set in the consulate, so Thatcher is in it, but I don't think anyone should get too upset, she doesn't seduce Ben or anything.

Nik
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Setsubun

Ray Vecchio pulled up in front of the Canadian consulate, barely aware of the red-serged figure standing in front of the building. Turnbull, who seemed determined to martyr himself at the inspector's hands, had probably done one of the many things bound to get him on sentry duty; at least Benny was doing less time as a doorstop since his arriva...

"Oni wa soto!"

Ray ducked instinctively at the hoarse shout, as small white pellets showered over him. More bewildered than angry, he turned to the red figure and saw that it wasn't Turnbull after all, and if the unknown Mountie was on sentry duty, the Dragon Lady's standards were dropping. The Mountie was waving his arms quite frantically as he yelled and leapt up and down.

"You want to get a grip here?" the detective demanded, incredulous, but the Mountie didn't answer, merely repeating the yell and prancing off down the block.

Bemused, Ray made his way into the consulate, treading on more white pellets as he did. He picked one up, vaguely curious; it looked like a dried bean. It struck him that perhaps the inspector was away, but then Fraser would be in charge and he was less likely than she to tolerate haphazard littering of public buildings.

He hurried up the stairs, puzzling at the strange happenings at the consulate, and found both Inspector Thatcher and Fraser at Ovitz' desk, looking rather harried. The inspector was on the phone, while it looked as though Fraser was trying to remove the cover from Ovitz' computer. The secretary himself was nowhere in sight.

"Hey, Benny. What's going on?"

"Oh, hello, Ray. I'm afraid I'm not ready to go yet, sorry."

"Yeah, well, that actually wasn't a rhetorical question. Who the heck is the guy outside?"

Fraser visibly winced, and even as she maintained a pleasant phone voice, the inspector glowered. "That would be Constable Suzuki," Fraser told him, his characteristically mild voice slightly strained. "He transferred from Fort MacNeill yesterday."

"And he'll be transferring back tomorrow if I have anything to say about it," Thatcher hissed with her hand over the phone.

Ray stared blankly at her, wondering how bad Suzuki had to be to rile the woman who could withstand the combined efforts of Turnbull and Cooper. Fraser made a triumphant exclamation, and he turned to see that the Mountie had finally removed the computer cover. "Benny, what are you doing?"

"Well, you see..." Fraser set the cover to one side, peering into the computer. "Ovitz' computer seems to have broken down, and the inspector thought..."

"What, that you could fix it? Your grandmother had a book on computer maintenance and repair in that magical library of hers?"

Fraser, as usual, took the question at face value. "It would be of little avail if she had, Ray. The rate of evolution of computers dictates that any book I read as a child..."

"Enough." Ray held up his hands in surrender. "So what are you doing?"

"The inspector..." Fraser stopped to carefully draw out one of the circuit boards, studying it intently. "You're right, ma'am, the beans seem to have dislodged some of the chips."

The inspector merely rolled her eyes, still talking on the phone, but Ray was not willing to blithely accept that explanation. He picked up the computer cover and waved it at his friend. "Benny, look at this. It has slots maybe an eighth of an inch wide. No beans are getting in there."

"I realise that it seems unlikely, but that's what appears to have happened." To demonstrate his point, he reached inside the computer and pulled out a bean, handing it to the detective. Ray took it tentatively, checking the computer himself, then leaned back against the desk, crossing his arms.

"Okay. Even for you Mounties, this is weird. Do you mind letting me in on what's going on?"

The inspector hung up the phone and smiled insincerely at Fraser. "Be my guest, Constable," she told him with sprightly generosity, and buried herself in a report to hide her seething.

The constable pulled one of his 'very well' expressions, and turned to the detective. "You see, Ray, Constable Suzuki is of Japanese extraction, and he is carrying out a traditional ceremony tied in with the eve of spring."

"A Japanese tradition, huh?" Ray looked at the Mountie curiously. "Benny, if I asked you a question about, oh, I don't know, lesser-known Zoroastrian religious practices, you'd be able to answer it, wouldn't you?"

Fraser blinked thoughtfully. "I don't know, Ray. What did you want to know? Although I don't claim to have a full understanding of the culture, my grandmother did..."

"Enough about your grandmother already." Ray waved his friend quiet, and pulled another white lump out from among the circuit boards of Ovitz's hapless computer. "What's with the beans?"

"Well, on Setsubun, the eve of spring, according to the old Japanese calendar - which, incidentally, makes it the 2nd or 3rd of February by ours, depending on where..."

"Constable," the inspector warned him with a tight smile. "Please don't get side-tracked. I'm having a bad enough day already."

"Sorry, sir. Well, you see, Ray, on Setsubun, the Japanese chase the spirits out of the house, with the command 'oni wa soto', and welcome in good luck by calling 'fuku wa uchi'. Constable Suzuki is in fact cleansing the consulate."

"And boy are we grateful."

"We're not getting to any beans yet, Benny," Ray reminded Fraser, trying not to laugh at the inspector.

"The beans are all part of it, Ray. Although the particulars of the ceremony vary from region to region, they are all based on the casting of daizu, dried soy beans, to chase out the demons."

"Dried soy beans, huh? They really work? Makes you wonder why the CPD makes us use bullets."

"There's no need to be facetious, Ray. I imagine that there's some sort of... symbolic aspect to..."

"Yes, soy beans symbolise weapons in so very many cultures," Thatcher observed with heavy sarcasm. "Never underestimate the stopping power of a well-aimed dried bean, Detective."

Ray looked away to hide a smile, and leaned to speak softly to Fraser. "Give me a hand here, Benny. I can never tell - is she in a bad mood or a normal mood?"

"The inspector is in caffeine withdrawal," Fraser explained, managing to convey sympathy for the woman irritably crossing out large chunks of his latest report. She heard him, and surprised Ray by making a sound suspiciously like a whimper.

He stared at her, but she kept her head down, pretending to be engrossed in correcting non-existent spelling mistakes. "So you've given up coffee, huh?"

"Wash your mouth out with soap, detective," she snapped at him, and muttered a low-voiced curse as she dropped her pen. She went fishing under the desk for it, and came up instead with a handful of soy beans.

"So. You're in a rotten mood because you're in caffeine withdrawal, but you haven't given up coffee. This may be a leap, I know, but why don't you have some coffee?"

"There's no coffee out here," she told him tersely. "The only decent coffee is in my office. The coffee out here has beans floating in it. While I understand that soy milk is often used as a substitute for cow's milk, I don't think dried soy beans have much of a yield."

"Why can't you get the coffee in your office?" Ray asked the obvious question when it appeared that Fraser wasn't going to.

"Mr Ovitz is in there," Fraser explained for her, his voice low and cautionary. "So we can't get it."

"So get him to open the door." What was wrong with the Mounties today?

"He can't. It's locked from the outside."

The detective paused a moment, wondering if perhaps he'd missed something very obvious. Slowly and clearly, he asked, "Why have you locked Ovitz in the inspector's office?"

"Actually, the inspector did it..."

Ray thought he was going to shoot someone, soon. "Fraser!"

Thatcher looked up from her report, trying her best to stay calm and controlled. "Ovitz claims that in order practise his particular religion, he needs to disembowel Constable Suzuki and wind his intestines three times around a tree."

Ray looked at Benny. "Zoroastrian?"

"Druidic, I believe."

"You know, you shoulda let him, Inspector."

"I don't need any more paperwork, thank you."

"What about Turnbull? Can't he get you some?"

"He's taking Constable Cooper to Emergency," Fraser explained, adding, unnecessarily in Ray's view, "Constable Suzuki accidentally pelted him in the eye with a daizu."

Ray shook his head in frank disbelief, raising his voice to be heard over the shouts that were coming up the stairs. "Inspector, I'm surprised you haven't been your usual charmingly autocratic self and just ordered him to stop."

"She can't do that, Ray," Fraser told him before the inspector could take umbrage at his phrasing. "That would be denying Constable Suzuki his right to religious expression."

"Fuku wa uchi!"

Inspector Thatcher did not so much as bat an eyelid as beans scattered across the table. She swept them off the report, righted an upset coffee mug - fortunately empty - and smiled at her deputy. "Explain to me again why that's a bad thing, Fraser."

Ray watched Constable Suzuki dance down the hall, shouting and strewing beans throughout the consulate. "Religious expression is a nice concept, but he injured one of your men."

"Yes, and I have spoken to him about that, and warned him that if he throws any more beans at people, he will be disciplined." The inspector sighed, peering wistfully into the empty coffee mug. "I don't suppose you'd be willing sacrifice your personal safety for the good of the consulate, and throw yourself into the line of fire? Fraser insists that it's unethical."

"But Suzuki's already thrown beans at me," Ray told her. She turned to him, almost desperately hopeful, the report forgotten.

"He did?"

"Yeah. Right outside the consulate. He could've damaged the paint on the Riv!"

The inspector's expression was now one of unholy glee. "He'll have to be reprimanded," she said, managing to maintain the appropriate level of severity and sobriety in her voice. Ray caught the look in her eyes.

"Sentry duty?"

"Sentry duty," she confirmed.

Almost casually, Ray reached for some beans, testing their weight in the palm of his hand. "Inspector, he has done the wrong thing, but I do feel that we should respect his beliefs regardless. I'd like to continue the ceremony on his behalf."

For the first time that day, Inspector Thatcher smiled sincerely, and it had her deputy worried. "I'd like to help."

Fraser ventured to step between her and the pile of beans on the desk. "Ma'am? Ray? I don't think you really want to do this..."

"Oh, you're so wrong there, Benny," the detective assured his friend, happily fishing the remainder of pellets from Ovitz' computer.

"No, I mean it wouldn't be right..."

"Come on, Benny. The guy's made everyone miserable." He gave the Mountie an encouraging pat on the shoulder. "Indulge in some very human vengeance."

"There's a Chinese proverb about revenge..."

"Very good, Constable," the inspector interrupted him, "but this is a Japanese tradition."

Fraser, troubled, looked at them both; Ray, who, in the tradition of all American boys, probably grew up dreaming of pitching for a professional baseball team, and Inspector Thatcher, whose impressive throwing ability had helped them defeat armed criminals. Constable Suzuki on sentry duty would be a stationary target, with no idea of what he was in for.

And then he thought of Ovitz, whose computer lay stripped and useless on the desk, who was locked in the inspector's office even now. He remembered Diefenbaker's horrified yelp as a bean hit him, stinging his nose. Cooper had almost managed to last an entire day without crying, only to be injured in a bean shower, and his emotional stability had almost certainly degenerated again as a result. He considered the plight of the inspector, who, bereff of coffee, was left trying to control a consulate gone mad. And Fraser's attention turned to his own carefully-written report, the black print of which was no longer visible under the red pen of the inspector's withdrawal- and stress-induced editing frenzy.

He sighed, and turned back to Ray and the inspector. "There are more beans in Suzuki's desk."

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Nik Heiser

Nicola Heiser died on 24th October 1997, and is greatly missed by her friends and fans of her writing.