The Silk Thief (27 page)

Friday sneered. ‘What for? Just makes you take longer to get drunk.’

‘True.’ Molly took a long gulp from her bottle. ‘You working tomorrow?’

‘One till ten.’

‘Least you’ll get a lie in. I’m on at ten.’

‘Mrs H’ll bollocks you if you go to work mashed,’ Friday said.

‘Silly old bitch’ll bollocks me anyway.’

Thinking she was about to fall backwards off the bench, Friday made a wild grab at the table. ‘Shit! What for?’

‘Leading you astray. ’Parantly it’s
my
fault you drink too much.’

‘Arse.’

‘Zackly.’

A bleary-eyed woman sitting across the table leant in and said at the top of her fishwife’s voice, ‘Hey, you two are whores, aren’t yis?’

Molly and Friday stared at her.

‘’Cos if you are, and I find out my Bill’s been with either of yis, I’ll scratch your bloody eyes out, I will!’

‘Oh, I remember Bill,’ Molly said. She turned to Friday. ‘Isn’t he the cove who reckons his wife’s minge stinks like a boatload of fish swum up it and died, and that’s why he has to pay to shag us?’

‘That’s right,’ Friday replied. ‘That’s what he told me, anyway.’

‘You bloody pair of sluts!’ the woman screeched. ‘I hope yis both get the pox and
die
!’ And to the noisy delight of everyone else at the table, she grabbed a tankard of ale and threw it over Molly.

With her yellow-blonde hair plastered to her head, Molly shrieked, snatched up a pickle bowl and hurled it at the woman. Pickles went everywhere. The woman retaliated with a glass tumbler aimed at Friday, which missed and hit a man behind her.

Bloody excellent, Friday thought. She leapt to her feet, used the bench to step up onto the table, bent down and hauled the open-mouthed woman to her feet. The crowd roared. Friday dragged the woman along the table, knocking over tankards and bottles and tumblers, then upended her and tipped her onto the floor. A man whose hand Friday had stamped on grabbed her ankle and yanked, sending her crashing to the ground, but a second later she was up again, swinging wildly.

Cursing and wringing ale out of her hair, Molly slipped into the crowd.

Then Friday glimpsed Rowie Harris, lurking near the door. She let out a roar of rage and launched herself towards her, knocking folk in all directions, and managed to grab the back of Rowie’s skirt as she tried to dart outside. Hauling her back in and dragging her round by her hair, she ducked as Rowie threw a punch. The blow glanced off the top of her head and she hit back, connecting solidly with Rowie’s face. Rowie screeched and her fingernails became cat’s claws and their hands were caught in each other’s hair and they kicked and bit and Friday managed to bash Rowie’s head against the doorjamb with a very satisfying crunch. Then Friday started to choke as someone hauled her backwards by her jacket collar, and she tried to hit out as, to her absolute fury, Rowie stumbled outside and escaped. Friday staggered, bounced off someone else, and used the momentum to throw another punch.

At the other end of the room the publican had come out from behind the counter, having already sent someone to fetch the police. He was sick and tired of drunks smashing up his premises. Forcing his way through the crowd, he shouted in Friday’s face, ‘You’re banned! Get out!’

‘And you’re an arsehole!’ she shot back. ‘Get fucked!’

Reluctantly, the publican signalled his barman for help. Between them they could drag her to the door and throw her out, but while the serving counter was unattended God only knew how much he would lose in stolen alcohol.

Friday saw the barman coming — a cove with considerably more height and muscle than the publican — and turned to face him, teeth bared in a snarl, fists up. The crowd cheered her mettle, but also formed a solid wall barring her escape; they were thoroughly enjoying the spectacle, and didn’t want it to end. She let loose a punch but the publican blocked it and struck the side of her head with an open hand, and while she was blinking away stars, the barman twisted her arm up behind her back and marched her towards the door. The crowd booed heartily, while the publican raced back to the counter to salvage his stock.

Friday’s ear burnt and there was a terrible ringing noise in her head, and now she really was seeing double. Her arm hurt like hell and she was being shoved so violently her feet were barely touching the ground. Where was Molly? Shite, now the bloody police were here. Mrs H was going to kill her.

As a pair of constables hauled her down the steps, slippery now that the rain had started, she shouted over her shoulder, ‘Molly!
Molly!
’ A constable fumbled at her wrists with a set of manacles and she ducked her head and bit his hand.

But Molly was inside, knocking back a bottle of brandy she’d pinched from behind the counter. Friday would be all right. She’d probably be taken to the Harrington Street watch house, and let out tomorrow morning when she’d sobered up. Or not. Either way, she could look after herself.

Every morning after the brothel closed at one o’clock and the girls had gone, Elizabeth Hislop went around the house closing and locking the windows and doors. Last year someone had tried, unsuccessfully, fortunately, to break into the safe in her office, but she had noticed later that several items were missing from her desk: a lovely silver and ivory pen holder; the tiny silver mesh purse and smelling salts bottle that had fallen off her chatelaine; and a pink topaz, pearl and gold ring, which pinched, so she often took it off. She’d never discovered who’d been responsible, and hadn’t decided on a more suitable location for the safe, either, so security in the house was important. The safe held a lot of money overnight, not to mention the bulk of her personal jewellery and some rather sensitive papers.

She was checking the double locks on the front door, and flinching at the muted rolls of thunder accompanying the rainstorm moving east out to sea, when she heard the most hideous caterwauling out on Argyle Street. Peering through the peephole, to her alarm she spied what appeared to be a bundle of wet rags flopping about on the wet road. Good Christ, had some poor soul been knocked down by a carriage?

She opened the door, stepped out, locked the door again behind her and crossed the street. Raising her lantern, she peered down at the sobbing figure on the ground.

Except it wasn’t sobbing, it was laughing. And it was as full as a family po.

‘Molly Bates! Get up, you drunken tart!’

Molly stopped laughing. ‘Who’s that? Oh, ’s you, y’ol’ bitch.’

‘Where’s Friday?’ Elizabeth demanded, knowing full well Molly and Friday had gone out together earlier in the evening.

‘’S too hot,’ Molly said, and retched, though nothing came up. She pushed her sopping hair off her face and started cackling again.

Elizabeth gave her a sharp nudge with the toe of her boot. ‘Molly! Where is she? Where’s Friday?’

‘Dunno.’ Molly struggled into a sitting position. ‘Watch took her.’

Oh Christ, Elizabeth thought. ‘What for?’

‘Fightin’.’

‘Which watch house?’

‘Dunno.’

Elizabeth lost her temper. ‘This is
your
fault, Molly Bates.’

Molly waved a dismissive hand and collapsed onto one elbow. ‘Ah, fuck off. ’Tis not.’

‘It is. I’ve had a bloody
gutsful
of you, you sneaky little bitch. I
knew
you’d get her in the shit.’

‘Get fucked.’

‘That’s it! You’re fired. Go on, piss off. You can come back and clear out your room tomorrow.’

The expression on Molly’s face went from drunkenly amused to sly. ‘Ya can’t fire me. I’ll tell the Sup … Supertend of Convicts what you’re doin’. I know a lot about you, y’know. More’n you think.’

Elizabeth itched to plant her boot into the side of Molly’s stupid head. ‘Do your best! See how you get on!’

‘Ah, fuck off.’ Molly heaved herself to her knees, then, after much arm-flailing, to her feet. ‘’S too hot. Goin’ for a swim.’

‘I hope you drown! And your language is atrocious!’

Seething with impotent anger, Elizabeth watched Molly, muttering to herself, weave off down Argyle Street towards the harbour. Poisonous, foul-mouthed she-devil. Then she went inside, sat in her office and poured herself a whisky. If Friday and Molly had been drinking locally, and they probably had, Friday would have been taken to either the Cumberland Street watch house, or the one on Harrington Street, just around the corner. She would go there soon, regardless of the late hour, and see if she could bribe the policeman on duty to release her. Not that it would do Friday any harm to spend a night in the coop — it fact it might even scare her enough to make reconsider her dreadful drinking habits. Elizabeth sighed. No, it wouldn’t. She’d been telling Friday to cut down for ages, and it hadn’t made a jot of difference. And Friday was well used to gaol cells — a night in one more wasn’t likely to make much of an impression.

She was extremely fond of Friday. She reminded her so much of her own daughter, Amy, whom she’d borne in 1794 at the age of fifteen. Amy had been an inebriate just like Friday, and also like her father, Gilbert. Amy had started drinking young, stealing alcohol from the parlour of the brothel Elizabeth had operated near Covent Garden, and by the time Elizabeth had realised Amy was afflicted with the same curse as her father, it was too late. Gil had been useless, of course, drunk himself, or away at sea for years at a time.

She and Amy had fallen out and at sixteen Amy had gone to live with an awful man who’d beaten her senseless, but supplied her with as much gin as she could drink. By then Elizabeth couldn’t help her at all, having been arrested and gaoled in 1811 for brothel-keeping. One night Amy had fought back, stabbed her lover and killed him. She was arrested, tried for murder in 1812, found guilty and hanged outside Newgate Gaol. Elizabeth had been inconsolable. Two weeks after that, utterly undone by grief, she’d been transported to New South Wales, never suspecting she’d one day commit a crime very similar to Amy’s.

When she’d taken Friday on, sight unseen, as an assigned housegirl for the Siren’s Arms, she’d had no idea she would find in her a living echo of the daughter she’d lost nearly twenty years earlier. They were very similar, Friday and Amy — both wild and headstrong, and both dedicated drunks. Elizabeth had hoped that this time she might succeed in saving someone she cared for very much from her own self-destructive behaviour. But, so far, she hadn’t exactly excelled in her goal.

She sipped her whisky thoughtfully as she forced herself to calm down, then looked at the watch on her chatelaine. Twenty minutes to two. Not many folk would be out and about now. She thought a few moments longer, then opened the safe and transferred twenty pounds into a coin purse and put it in a pocket on the inside of her skirt. Reaching for a black and grey Thibet shawl, she draped it over her head and around her shoulders. It was a little unnecessary on such a muggy night, but the colour against her deep charcoal-grey dress was just right. She would merge into the darkness perfectly.

Outside the wind was still brisk, though the rain had stopped, and the half-moon flickered between scudding black storm clouds. It took her less than five minutes to walk to the bottom of Argyle Street then south along George towards King’s Wharf. She was taking a small gamble regarding where Molly might have chosen to swim, if in fact she’d got that far, but she thought she was probably on the money. Campbell’s Wharf was privately owned and locked at night, as were the wharves at the naval dockyard. She wouldn’t have gone to any of the small harbour beaches — they were rocky and littered with rubbish. That only left King’s Wharf accessible and within staggering distance.

She saw few others abroad; two of those were sprawled motionless on the ground, and the remainder were locked in violent embrace in shadowed corners. The shore, though, was by no means quiet. A faint racket drifted from the Black Rat Hotel nearby, and the creak of rigging and slap of the sea against the hulls of ships at anchor were clearly audible.

Minutes later, as she stepped onto the planks of King’s Wharf, Elizabeth saw she’d been right. At the far end, near a ladder that descended into the sea, lay a small heap — of clothing, perhaps? Tuneless and disjointed singing drifted up to her on the wind. She picked up a discarded boathook and walked slowly out to the end of the wharf, her boot heels ringing hollowly on the planks. The singing stopped.

‘Who’s there?’

Elizabeth remained silent. She stirred the clothing with her foot: a skirt, stockings and a pair of boots. The silly bitch had gone in in her shift and bodice. Something rolled out of the skirt, glinting in the moonlight as it rattled across a plank. Picking it up, Elizabeth saw that it was a ring, with a pale stone surrounded by small pearls. Thieving cow. She put it in her pocket, leant over the edge of the wharf, and looked down. A pale face floating in the black water stared up at her.

Molly made a splashing dash for the ladder. Just as her hands gripped the rungs, Elizabeth reached down with the boathook, snagged the neck of the girl’s bodice, and, leaning all her weight into it, thrust her out and under. Molly struggled briefly, her head thrashing from side to side beneath the water. Her straining hands, fingers outstretched, punctured the surface, but, too drunk to fight hard enough to save herself, she soon stopped. It was very quiet, and very easy.

Crouching now and looking out across the cove, Elizabeth kept her under for another ten or so minutes, just to make sure. There were about a dozen ships at harbour, each one with a single lamp alight on its main mast. They made a pretty sight, rolling on the long, low swell like giant fireflies. Eventually she gave the boathook a twist to tear the barb free, and watched as Molly’s body floated face down, arms and legs wide, the yellow hair, grey in the moonlight, spread out around the head like seaweed.

Straightening up, her knees cracking like pistol shots, Elizabeth put the boathook back where she’d found it, wiped her hands on her skirt, and walked away.

Nothing happened when she hammered on the Harrington Street watch-house door, so she did it again. Finally there were footsteps inside, and a yawning policeman in shirtsleeves opened it.