Razorhurst (4 page)

Much harder than not looking at him was not asking him what had happened. How did Mr. Davidson know they were going to kill him and take over Razorhurst? Who else knew?

How did he get to Jimmy first? Was Mr. Davidson going to kill her too? Did Gloriana know? If Glory knew that Dymphna and Jimmy had been planning to take over from her, then Dymphna was twice dead and would end her days haunting the bottom of the harbour.

Between Mr. Davidson, Glory, and the coppers, Dymphna couldn’t see a way out.

But at least her blood was still inside her, not like Jimmy Palmer. Walking in on him like that … she wasn’t going to forget it any time soon. So much blood. Almost as much as …

Dymphna gulped.

If she’d arrived a little earlier, would she be dead too? Had she missed death a second time?

How had Mr. Davidson found out about their plans? There was no one to tell him. Jimmy and Dymphna had kept it all to themselves. But he would not have had Jimmy killed without knowing for sure. For more than three years now, Gloriana and Mr. Davidson had respected the truce. Each sticking to their own slice of Razorhurst. None of their men going after each other except when it was personal. It would take something big for Mr. Davidson to break the truce. Something as big as a plot to kill him.

But then why had Mr. Davidson left that card? Identical to the cards on all those flowers he’d sent her?

For you, Dymph

Dymphna had almost dropped her bundle reading those words. But perhaps she was reading it wrong. Perhaps it was exactly like the other cards he’d sent her with their messages of
Be mine
and
You are in my thoughts
and
I want you
. Yet another attempt to woo her. Only this time with blood.

Perhaps it was Mr. Davidson announcing he was getting rid of his competition; clearing the path so she’d be his.

Like hell that was going to happen.

Perhaps the card meant Davidson
didn’t
know about her and Jimmy’s scheming.

If Davidson didn’t know, perhaps Glory didn’t know either.

Perhaps …

The young man took another drag on his cigarette, still staring at her. She hadn’t lost him. She had to make sure, too, she did not lose herself.

The yelling in the lane was louder. She thought she recognised Boomer’s voice. He was almost as big as Jimmy and one of the few coppers not in Davidson’s or Glory’s pockets.

Dymphna did not want to go back to gaol.

“Coppers,” the young man said, quietly. “What’d you do?”

Dymphna shook her head. “Nothing,” she whispered.

He took another drag, let the smoke curl slowly out of his mouth. “Sounds like something.”

“It was what we saw.”

He nodded. But she couldn’t tell if it was in agreement or if he was merely acknowledging that she’d answered his question.

All he had to do was call out.

Dymphna was no longer sure he was looking at her with admiration. It was more like he was considering. She would not let herself panic.

If the coppers did grab her, well, gaol was better than being dead.

Not that coppers meant gaol for sure. Plenty of those cops were Davidson’s or Glory’s. They owned a few judges too.

Jimmy Palmer was dead.

She hadn’t been with Jimmy because of his looks or his personality. He was tall and strong, and almost everyone in Razorhurst was afraid of him. He was smart too, and ambitious, and knew everyone who mattered in their world. That’s how he’d become Glory’s right-hand man.

Dymphna had been sure he would keep her safe. Thought him not being an underling meant he’d last longer. She’d been right. He had lasted longer than her other men. By a matter of weeks.

Now Jimmy’s blood was everywhere and her own soon to follow.

Beside her Kelpie shifted against the fence, causing a faint creak in the timber. Dymphna told herself no one would have heard it over the hullabaloo behind them.

“Kelpie?” the boy said softly, as if he had only just noticed she was there. He raised an eyebrow. Kelpie shrugged, smart enough to be quiet.

Dymphna had to focus on getting out of this mess, getting
them
out of this mess.

She almost laughed that now, in the midst of this disaster, she had finally spoken to Kelpie, the girl who saw ghosts same as her, the girl she’d planned to rescue someday—and had found by accident over Jimmy’s dead body.

Jesus wept
.

She still had hold of the girl, but her grip had slipped to the girl’s hand, as if Kelpie were a littlie and Dymphna her mum. She would be happy to mother her. Kelpie needed it.

But Jimmy Palmer was dead. Which meant Dymphna had no protection until she lined up her next man, who would not be Mr. Davidson. There would be no next man if Glory knew what she and Jimmy had been planning. If Dymphna was merely waiting to be a twice-murdered chromo.

Dymphna wanted to hold her head in her hands and weep. To ask Jimmy what he knew. Even though once you let a ghost know you could see it, it started to eat away at you. Even though it would give her away to Kelpie too soon. Even though that young man might hear her, the coppers too.

Instead she watched the young man smoke his cigarette. The smoke curled up in wisps past his curly dark hair, clear as day in the full moon’s light. She smiled a little wider. He could
not
give them away.

Kelpie shook off Dymphna’s hand and stood with her back pressed to the fence. Dymphna breathed in sharply. But it was all right. Unlike Dymphna the girl was shorter than the fence. Dymphna took hold of the girl’s ankle. Gently. She didn’t want to hurt her.

“They’re coming for you,” the ghost on the lane screamed. “You’re doomed, Kelpie, doomed!”

Bloody ghosts. Dymphna was going to have to teach Kelpie to be a lot less friendly. Mind you, the girl had wandered into Mrs. Stone’s as if it were a gingerbread house and not full of standovers and gangsters and dead men. She didn’t seem to know how dangerous
anything
was.

The young man ran the glowing tip of his cigarette gently against the step’s edge, and the ash floated gently onto the garden.

“Please,” Kelpie whispered. “Please don’t give us away.”

Dymphna doubted he’d heard. Kelpie repeated her plea.

Dymphna smiled again. Surely he wouldn’t call out? But what if the coppers started searching each yard? They were done if …

She could not let herself think through all the dead ends.

A brown and yellow bundle of fur jumped over the fence, streaking across the yard and over the next fence. Dymphna choked back a scream as the cat flashed past. Chickens squawked loudly in the next yard. Almost as loud as the cops.

Dymphna’s heart beat too fast. She had to calm herself. Focus. Smile, she told herself. Win him over.

“Please,” Dymphna whispered, trusting to the strength of her charm.

Stories of Kelpie’s Parents

Old Ma had the misfortune of owning a building in Frog Hollow. Built when the frogs that gave the Hollow its name were still there. When the water that ran through it was clean.

Back then there wasn’t more than a few homes in the Hollow, and none of them built to last. You don’t build on swampy, sandy land hoping for permanency. But the people were mostly decent, even if they was poor. Didn’t last long: the Hollow turned bad before the Great War. Before the men came slinking home missing legs and arms, eyes, their minds.

Old Ma had taken some of them in. At least they was honest. Mostly. Times were always bad down there, even before all them banks closed and the jobs dried up so’s the only blokes working were the ones with the quickest hands and the sharpest razors and the meanest faces, and the women could only earn their keep turning chromo, flat on their backs.

But no regular jobs. Not in Frog Hollow.

If you weren’t sick before you lived there, you were soon after you moved in. Everyone turned pale and concave chested. Everyone’s coughs rattled through their bodies, looking for escape.

You didn’t go there unless you were wicked or there was nowhere else.

Nothing reached down into Frog Hollow, not even sunshine. Bordered on two sides by sheer cliffs not even the wiliest monkey could climb, and the poorer it got, the more houses they built, one on top of the other.

No running water and no night-soil men to come and take the shit away.

Kelpie had known Old Ma before she became a colourless ghost, when her cheeks were mottled red, her legs a ropey mess of blue and red veins, and Kelpie could feel her warmth and smell milk and flour and tobacco when Old Ma drew her into her arms.

Old Ma wasn’t Kelpie’s real ma, but she told Kelpie stories about her parents. About how she’d been there when Kelpie’s real ma died bringing her into the world. How her pa died a few scant hours later.

Other times she said that Kelpie’s ma had died alone. Or that
it was her pa who brought the wee babe to Old Ma and was still watching over her when he could. One time she said she’d found Kelpie in a bucket on her doorstep.

Kelpie hated variations in the tale, insisting that Old Ma stick to one, correcting her when she changed any details. The story they stuck to went like this:

Grief was what killed your pa
, Old Ma would say,
though they was sickly getting off the boat, leaning in on each other, unsteady-like, coughing all the time. As if they was still on the water. Skin too yellow, too dry
.

But they were always looking at each other, smiling. Must’ve seen something good there. He never raised his hand to her. Nor her to him. No yelling neither. They were decent people. Even though they never paid for more than that first week. And them staying on another two
.

Or was it three?

No, Old Ma
, Kelpie would say.
It was two!

Old Ma didn’t like to rent her rooms for free. But times being as tough as they were and no jobs that weren’t dodgy, she’d had to get used to it. She didn’t like to throw people out on the street. There were enough evictions without her adding to their number. She’d only toss you if you stole from her or got mean when you was drunk. Kelpie’s parents didn’t do neither.

That was all the staying they did. Three weeks in Old Ma’s falling-down, broken home in Frog Hollow, and then dead and gone.

Or—

No or
, Kelpie said.
Tell it the proper way
.

If her parents were ghosts, it wasn’t in Frog Hollow. Kelpie wondered if they’d flown back over the seas to haunt the island they came from. But Old Ma was from the old country, and when she died, she had haunted right there in the Hollow.

Old Ma said Kelpie’s parents died before they named her. Old Ma had called her Petal. But everyone in the Hollow called her Kelpie, which you’d think was after the water spirit because her parents were Irish, but no, it was after the dog. They said she was a wild pup.

KELPIE