Razorhurst (16 page)

Before Jimmy, anyway.

Now she had to run away.

Kelpie was still gawking.

“You’ll sleep on the couch,” Dymphna told her, even though Kelpie almost certainly wouldn’t be sleeping there. This might well be the last time Dymphna ever stood here in her own home.

Kelpie smiled.

The contrast between Dymphna’s flat and the little girl was stark. Kelpie wasn’t dead nice. Even with her face and hands washed and some clean clothes, she looked like something the streets had spat up. But bringing her here was worth it. Dymphna’d finally found someone who was like her. Now all she had to do was make sure neither one of them was killed.

If she could get Kelpie into the bath, that would give her time she needed to ring up Glory.

“Strewth, woman!” Jimmy yelled. “What the fuck are you playing
at? Tell her, Kelpie. Does she even know it’s all gone bung? Christ on a crutch!”

Kelpie winced at Jimmy’s shouts, following Dymphna into the pink and white bathroom. Everything was curvy and modern and beautiful. The tiles shone; the taps gleamed. Dymphna turned the taps, running her fingers through the water invitingly. The steam rose. Kelpie stared.

Dymphna laughed. “You’ve never seen a bath with running water before?”

Kelpie shook her head. Dymphna didn’t doubt her. Half of Surry Hills didn’t have electricity yet. Almost all of it had outhouses. The Darcys didn’t have running water. Not in the house.

“Do you want to get in?”

“There’s no time for a fucking bath!” Jimmy screamed. His face was incandescently darker. Dymphna could imagine how red it would be if he wasn’t a ghost. Like he would explode with his rage.

Kelpie told Jimmy to shut up under her breath. Dymphna pretended she couldn’t hear over the sound of the water. She knew Jimmy was right. But if Kelpie was in the bath, it would give her time to line her coat with more money, her passports, to call Glory out of Kelpie’s range of hearing.

Kelpie took a step closer and looked from the bath filling with water to Dymphna. Dymphna wondered again why the girl had come with her. Why she asked no questions. Snowy had told her the little girl didn’t trust anyone.

“We can add bubbles.”

Dymphna took her precious bottle of bubble bath from the mirrored cupboard above the sink and poured two capfuls under the taps. Glory had given it to her last Christmas. Dymphna had never heard of such a thing. The bubbles sprang into life instantly. Kelpie didn’t smile, but her eyes widened and she shivered a little.

“If you get in, you’ll warm up.”

Kelpie kicked off Seamus Darcy’s shoes and carefully removed his socks.

“Let me take your coat?”

Kelpie turned so Dymphna could help her out of it and then Seamus’s clean shirt underneath. His trousers too. She hung them on the hook behind the door.

“Fucking madness,” Jimmy muttered.

Kelpie stood in her ratty clothing, eyeing the growing bubbles. Dymphna debated trying to get those off her, then decided they’d probably disintegrate on contact with the water. Kelpie stepped in, swishing her feet through the water and bubbles.

“It’s deep enough now that you could sit down.”

Kelpie looked at Dymphna and then at the water. She sat, hesitantly reaching out to touch the bubbles. Her wet clothes rippled around her in waves.

Which was when someone started pounding on Dymphna’s door. Had to be the coppers or some other muscle. The doorman wouldn’t let anyone else in. Not without asking her.

“You could have been out of here already!” Jimmy yelled. “You and the little one!”

Jimmy was right, but that didn’t make her love him for screaming it at her.

She was making mistakes, losing her nerve. She had to pull herself together.

She shut off the taps. Kelpie started to climb out of the bath.

Dymphna shook her head, pushed her gently back in, signalled her to be quiet, and closed the bathroom door.

She adjusted her hat, straightened the collar of her shirt, ran her hands along her skirt. If this was the end, she didn’t want to look shabby.

Gloriana Nelson

When rankled, Gloriana Nelson had a voice that could strip the bark from a fig tree. She had once told a high court judge to go fuck himself. The poor man reared back so shocked his white curly wig fell off, and the whole courtroom near exploded from laughing.

Glory paid a fifty-pound fine and spent ten days in His Majesty’s Finest for the privilege. When asked if it was worth it, she nodded grimly. “Insulted me, he did. Calling me a madam. I never.”

Gloriana Nelson
was
a madam. Even if she didn’t agree with the nomenclature. She was a lot of other things too. Besides her women there was the illegal grog, the gambling, and the drugs, mostly cocaine, but some opium as well.

Then there were her legitimate real estate holdings, which she held because of Mr. Davidson. He thought he could turn legit? Then she would do likewise. He was no better than her even if he did give himself airs.

People who got in her way had a habit of disappearing—into the harbour with shoes made of lead, it was whispered. Girls as young as thirteen; men as old as ninety. If you crossed Glory, you were gone.

But the same could be said for Mr. Davidson, and he didn’t have a good side.

When Glory wasn’t angry, her voice was gruff but somehow soothing. She could be charming. There were many in the Hills who wouldn’t hear a word against her.
A good sort
, they’d swear blind.
Wouldn’t hurt a fly
.

She told anyone who asked that she gave 20 percent of her income to charity. This was no lie. Or, rather, it was a decent stab at the percentage. Glory’s accounts were not what you would call regular. Certainly no tax man had ever had a look. She ran through accountants faster than standover men.

Chances were some years she gave away more like 30 percent and others more like 10 percent. “Tithing,” she called it. “Got to help the nuns and the little children and the blind. Imagine stumbling around in the dark all the time! And them poor boys come back from the war all broken and muddled. It ain’t right. I bin fortunate, ain’t I? I likes to do me bit.”

Every Christmas Glory put on her finest gown, usually bought special for the occasion in either red or green—never the both together because that would be common—she had her hair dyed fresh and done in nice big curls, and she and her husband, Big Bill, who always dressed up like Santa, stood on the balcony of her finest terrace in the Hills, the one on Lansdowne Street with the authentic ironwork brought in on the boats from New Orleans, and handed out Chrissie pressies to every kid in the Hills, and likely many from outside them too. When the presents ran out, they showered the remaining kids with lollies and handed their parents bottles of beer. Her kitchen churned out sausages wrapped in bread for every comer.

Glory and Big Bill always smiled their brightest, biggest smile for the photo that would go in the papers. Gloriana Nelson loved to throw a big party.

That was why she was having another one on that fine August day. What better excuse for festivities could there be than getting shot of her husband, Big Bill? And who did she most want by her side to celebrate?

Why, Dymphna Campbell—Glory’s best girl: her most popular and her biggest earner. Gloriana Nelson had no intention of ever letting her go. No matter how unlucky the poor girl was in love.

DYMPHNA

Dymphna put the door on the latch and opened it the full extent of the chain.

Inspector Larry Ferguson smiled and doffed his hat. He was a detective with the Criminal Investigation Branch. Around six foot, broad shouldered, and dressed in the same suit, overcoat, and hat that all the detectives wore. They were like a tribe, each instantly recognisable as what he was: a detective complete with notebook and gun. Ferguson, unlike at least one of the other detectives, was rumoured to be honest. Dymphna knew for certain he was not on either Glory’s or Mr. Davidson’s payroll.

She did not show her relief that he was neither Glory nor Mr. Davidson.

A little behind him stood a constable who, she was pretty sure,
was
on Glory’s payroll. Of all the coppers who could have come to the door, Ferguson and one of Glory’s boys were the least troublesome. Or so she hoped. Just because Ferguson wasn’t on a payroll didn’t mean he wouldn’t arrest her.

“Fuck,” Jimmy muttered behind her.

“An inspector coming to visit,” Dymphna said. “I’m honoured.”

“Had to send our finest to chat with the Angel of Death,” Ferguson said, holding his hat to his chest as if he truly did respect her.

“Don’t call me that.” She wished she could slap him and all the others who called her that. It wasn’t funny. It had never been funny.

“Sorry, Miss Campbell,” he said, pronouncing the honorific as if it had gone bad in his mouth. “But you know everyone calls you that.”

“Not to my face.”

“My apologies. So how are you, Dymph?” he asked, returning his hat to his head. It was clear that he felt half her name was more than she deserved.

“I’m well, thank you. Though I was even better before you showed up.”

Behind her Jimmy laughed.

“You been up to something, have you, Dymph? Funny how a guilty conscience will make a girl nervous around the law.”

“I’m not nervous,” Dymphna said, and she realised she wasn’t. Her hands had stopped trembling. Her chin was high. “It’s merely that I don’t like you.”

Inspector Ferguson seemed not to be mortified to hear it. “How’s that fella of yours?” he asked. “What’s his name? Jimmy something or other? Pritchard? Palmerton? Palmer? Palmer. That’s right. He’s a tough one, isn’t he? Huge too. Must be the tallest man in the city. Glory’s best man, I hear. Which makes him one of the most powerful men in the Hills too. Tall
and
powerful. Quite the combination. A one, two without even raising his fists. Lucky you, having him for your man.”

“Bastard’s lucky I’m not still alive,” Jimmy said. “Talking to you like that. He’d be deader than a maggot.”

Dymphna couldn’t help wondering about all the live maggots who would ruin Jimmy’s comparison.