Razorhurst (44 page)

He could only write sad stories of broken people when he set them in the Hills.

He tried not to. His stories there were either of honest people who could barely make ends meet, even if they had a job, or of criminals in flash suits with shiny cars and hard-faced women, who were better looking than any of them deserved. He tried to give the first group happy endings and the second misery.

But Surry Hills didn’t lend itself to happy endings for anyone.

Besides, when he wrote about those hard men, he started to understand them as well as he understood the honest men. They were every bit as desperate, as filled with longing for the elusive happy ending. They loved and sorrowed as strongly as anybody else.

His stories about them always ended with that flash suit shot full of holes or cut to ribbons. With the dead man’s family wailing, every bit as shattered as they would be by the death of an honest man. Death was death and love was love, no matter who was suffering it.

In Surry Hills
—Sorrow Hills
as so many of the older folks called it—one often led to the other. The two could not be separated: love and death; death and love.

In Neal’s love stories, one of the lovers ran away, or lost all his or her money, or went to gaol, or became so sick there was no hope, or died, or killed the other, or both lovers were killed by a jealous husband.

Neal wanted to write his and Dymphna Campbell’s love story. The one with the happy ending. He wouldn’t call her Kitty
Macintosh this time—how had he ever thought that name was right for her?—and he wouldn’t let her be killed at the end.

There would be a cottage out bush, surrounded by flowers, and her and him, and death a million miles away.

DYMPHNA

Dymphna had spent most of her life living with terror. She had long since learned to hide her fear. Besides, this man did not scare her as much as her father had. No one could. At that moment, her impatience was stronger than her fear. She wanted to hear him out and then get away.

Davidson only had Snowy, that Terry person, and his driver, who was yet to come into the house.

Snowy returned carrying a tray of sandwiches, neatly cut in halves, which he placed beside the gas lamp on the table. He sat on the remaining empty chair.

“You wouldn’t suspect it to look at him, but Snowy is quite an adept cook,” Mr. Davidson said. “He’s been looking out for himself for many years now. A man alone needs to know how to prepare food as much as any woman does. Isn’t that so, Snowy?”

Snowy agreed that it was.

Kelpie slipped off the couch and picked up half a sandwich. She slid back onto the couch and took a bite. Dymphna wished she could do the same. The sandwiches were fat with ham and cheese and lots of butter. From the expression on Kelpie’s face, they were delicious.

Neal made no move towards the food either. Good. Neither one of them could afford to relax around this man. They could eat later.

Kelpie slipped forward to take more.

Mr. Davidson smiled. “Take as many as you want, little one. You sure you wouldn’t like some, Dymphna? It has been rather a long day, hasn’t it? You must be quite worn out and hungry.”

“Thank you, no,” Dymphna said. “I’d rather we discuss why I am here.”

“Ah,” Mr. Davidson said. “Would you like a drink? I can offer you whisky, wine, sherry. Even beer if you would prefer. Though surely you are too much of a lady for ale or lager.”

Dymphna declined. She wasn’t going to be in his debt even for something as trivial as a mug of ale.

“Straight to the business at hand then?”

“Yes.”

“I wish you could tell her to turn on the charm, Kelpie,” Jimmy
said. “Davidson won’t like her being curt. She’d be better off trying to manage him.”

“You may leave us,” Mr. Davidson said to Neal and Kelpie.

Kelpie didn’t move. Neither did Neal.

“Would you rather I insist?” His hand slid into the pocket where Jimmy said his gun rested. “Snowy, could you escort them outside?”

“If they leave, I won’t discuss anything with you,” Dymphna said.

“I think you are forgetting where you are.”

Dymphna almost laughed. “You want something from me. If you take them away, you won’t get it. I won’t believe they’re safe unless they’re in front of me.”

“What if they’re not safe even in front of you?” Mr. Davidson smiled. “Snowy, kill the boy.”

“Jesus,” Neal said, standing up.

Snowy stood too, but he did not move towards Neal Darcy.

Dymphna rose. Somehow she managed to keep her voice even, to sound calm. “Then it hardly makes any difference that they’re here, does it? If you hurt Neal or Kelpie, you’ll get nothing from me.”

“I can take it from you.”

Which was when she knew he was bluffing. “If that’s true, then why speak to me at all? Why didn’t you snatch me from the street this morning? Why didn’t you have Big Bill kill me? If you can take what you want, then take it.”

“You have a point.” Mr. Davidson smiled. His teeth were too white and too even. “Sit down, everyone.”

Dymphna did not sit. “What do you want, Mr. Davidson?”

“I’d like you to sit. We can discuss this calmly. Are you sure you wouldn’t like some wine?”

Dymphna sat down. “Quite sure.”

Neal did not. “Let’s go, Dymphna, Kelpie. We don’t have listen to a madman.” He looked like he was ready to kill Mr. Davidson. Like he didn’t realise that Davidson was the one with a gun. With the men.

Out of Mr. Davidson’s line of vision, Snowy shook his head. Dymphna willed Neal to listen.

“You will sit, boy.” The gun was now in Mr. Davidson’s hand. “Or you will regret it.”

Neal sat, but his face had darkened. A vein stood out above his left temple.

“I think it would behove us all to be calm, don’t you, Dymphna?”

Dymphna nodded. It was about the only thing they agreed on. She needed Neal to keep his head. Kelpie too.

Mr. Davidson rested his right hand, holding the gun, on his knee. “You asked what I want, Dymphna Campbell? I want you.”

He said it as if it were a great revelation. Jimmy Palmer laughed. “Show me a man who doesn’t. Well, other than Snowy.”

“That’s flattering, Mr. Davidson, but I work for Gloriana Nelson. She pays me well and has always taken good care of me. I hear you don’t even pay for a doctor for your girls. Why would I work for you?”

“If that’s true, then why were you and the late Mr. Jimmy Palmer plotting to take over from her? And from myself, I might add. You wanted Razorhurst.”

“That was all Jimmy’s doing,” Dymphna lied. Well, that answered that question. He had known. She itched to ask him how.

Jimmy laughed. “It was the both of us. Together. Though she started the ball rolling.”

Dymphna would have loved to correct Jimmy. He’d made the suggestion first. But it didn’t matter. They’d been equally enthusiastic about the plan.

“I was happy the way things were,” Dymphna said. “But Jimmy—”

“Is dead. I am not. Gloriana Nelson and myself—we’re still here, still in control. Though her position is more precarious than it was. Who knows, she may already be deceased. There was rather a lot of gunfire behind us, wasn’t there? But even if she has survived …” He waved a hand in the air. “Jimmy Palmer was a good lieutenant. She doesn’t have anyone else as smart and as strong as him. Her husband’s gone. All that’s left is Glory and some not-very-clever muscle. Easy pickings. So thank you for that.”

“She’s stronger than you think. She has me. I’m every bit as smart as Jimmy was. She’d have to be dead before—”

“She may well be. If not today, some day soon. If I were you, I would not wager on her living longer.”

“Are you saying you’re going to kill her?”

“I suspect I won’t have to. She’s a lone woman now. Vulnerable. There’s an ocean of standovers out there, and far too many of them are as ambitious and greedy as your Jimmy Palmer.”

“Wasn’t greedy,” Jimmy muttered.

“I won’t work for you.” Dymphna said.

“I didn’t say I wanted you to work for me. I said I want you to be mine.”

She failed to see the difference. Except that it was safer having many different customers. If you only had one and you failed to please him, well, she’d seen what happened to girls like that. It didn’t matter how beautifully decorated the home they were kept in was, because it wasn’t theirs. When it was over, they were out on the street. Whether that happened to them at sixteen or sixty.

“Yours?” she asked him, trying and probably failing to keep her contempt out of her voice. “I’m not a thing, Mr. Davidson. I’m a person.”

“I’m offering to marry you.”

Dymphna stared at him, suppressing laughter. Mr. Davidson
was
mad. He seemed unaware of how insane his proposition was.

No one said anything.

“I would make you my wife. Everything I have, you would have: houses, cars, horses, jewellery. Razorhurst. You’d rule it. And beyond. Like you wanted. But from a safe distance.”

Dymphna couldn’t help noticing that he didn’t mention guns, or razors, or illicit grog, or drugs, or chromos. Would all those be hers too? Surely he was joking?

“You would be one of the richest women in the country. I would lift you out of Razorhurst and into the finest circles of society.” Mr. Davidson wasn’t smiling. There was no hint of irony in his words. He
had
lost his mind. How did he think their marriage would work?

“I would take you all over the world. You’ve never been overseas, have you? There’s so much to see. So much to experience. You would love it.”

Dymphna put up her hand. He had to stop. This was ridiculous. “I’m a chromo, Mr. Davidson. A whore.”

“You
were
a whore.”

“Am a whore.”

“You’re too good to be a whore.”

“No, you’re wrong, Mr. Davidson. I’m exactly the right amount of good. I have a talent for what I do. I’m a talented whore. It’s not because I’m beautiful. Or because I’m young. It’s because I know how to please a man. Any man. That’s why I’m the most expensive chromo in the entire city. Probably the entire country. There’s not a man I’ve taken on who hasn’t been satisfied. It’s my gift.”

That and death
, she thought.

“Shut up!”

Beside her Kelpie tensed. Dymphna fought to keep her own shock
from showing. Everyone knew that Mr. Davidson never yelled. Never lost his temper. Yet here he was, his face red and the veins on his forehead and neck visible.

“Don’t push him, Dymph,” Jimmy said.

But Dymphna couldn’t let Davidson see how scared she was. “Those fine society men,” she said, as if she was unaware that Davidson was furious and had a gun in his hand, “I’ve fucked more than half of them.
Those
are the circles you want to impress? How can you with a whore like me on your arm? They would laugh at you.”

“Snowy, I said to kill the boy.”

Snowy did not move.

Mr. Davidson turned and shot Neal in the chest in one motion.

Someone screamed. Dymphna didn’t think it was her. She was on her feet. Neal convulsed. Blood poured out of his mouth. She took a step towards him. He was still alive. She needed to keep the rest of his blood inside him.

Mr. Davidson shot Neal once more and then pointed his gun at Dymphna’s stomach.

“You’re not a whore.”

“I am a whore,” she said softly, as if he might see reason. Neal stopped moving. His eyes were open. “I like being a whore.” She returned Davidson’s stare. Surely he could not pull the trigger, standing so close, looking into her eyes. Not if he wanted her as much as he said he did.

He lifted the gun higher, aiming at her heart.

“Killing me won’t change who I am, Mr. Davidson, and it won’t make me yours.”

Kelpie lunged at him.

Mr. Davidson fired.

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