The Silk Thief (50 page)

‘I wonder where they’ve come from?’ Sarah said.

‘Who cares? Where the fuck’s Becky?’ Friday was on edge because it was now a quarter past six and no one had appeared to collect the money.

‘I bet it’s Louisa.’

‘I’d have thought Becky’d be more trustworthy, from Bella’s point of view. She’s meaner.’

‘Louisa’s bigger.’

‘That’s true. It’d better not be Rowie again,’ Friday said. ‘I’ll kill her.’

They sat there fanning at sluggish flies for another five minutes until, finally, Louisa
and
Becky appeared in the back doorway of the inn, followed, alarmingly and very unexpectedly, by Bella herself.

Friday and Sarah stood as the trio approached. Bella, as usual, was splendidly attired in a high-necked, claret-coloured taffeta dress and a black, wide-brimmed hat. She must be roasting under all that, Friday thought, and the colour against her white skin made her look like death. She was using her cane, and her arms below the puffed upper sleeves of her dress were as thin as ever. As usual her face was plastered with paint, her eyes dark and her cheeks heavily rouged. In comparison, Louisa and Becky wore hardly any cosmetics at all, and Friday noted with satisfaction that Louisa was getting really quite fat.

Friday stepped forwards and demanded, ‘Where’s Rowie Harris?’

Bella smiled widely but unpleasantly. ‘Gone.’

‘Gone where?’

‘How should I know?’

‘Did you kill her?’ Not that Friday cared if she had.

‘Me?’ Bella looked shocked. ‘I’m a businesswoman, not a murderer.’

Friday snorted. ‘My arse. Where is she?’

Bella shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea. She’d served her purpose, she wanted to go, and I let her.’

‘She had a ticket of leave,’ Friday said. ‘She can’t move out of the district.’

But after their fight in the Fortune of War, perhaps Rowie really had left town. She doubted it, though. More likely she was rotting at the bottom of some cesspit. Either way, Friday was satisfied. Gone was gone.

Bella rapped her cane smartly against a barrel. ‘Enough. I’m not here to talk about Rowie Harris. You owe me money.’

‘We don’t
owe
you anything,’ Sarah snapped.

As if in a pantomime, they all froze as a man staggered past, listing due to the weight of his travelling case. Risking letting go of the handle with one hand, he politely raised his hat. Sarah, Louisa and Becky nodded in reply, but Friday and Bella glared at him. Disconcerted, he hurried through the doorway into the inn.

‘You do, if you value your lives,’ Bella said.

‘When is this going to end?’ Sarah demanded.

‘Never!’

‘Why the hell not?’ Sarah took a step forwards. ‘What have we ever done to you?’

‘Ask her!’ Bella burst out, pointing a beringed and bony finger at Friday.

‘Me?’ Friday was astounded. ‘Why me?’

Bella’s mouth was set in a grim slash of red lip rouge and she’d squeezed her eyes shut. After a moment she opened them, took a deliberately deep breath in and then out through her nose as though calming herself, and said, ‘Becky. The money.’

Becky stuck out her hand. Sarah withdrew the bag containing the two hundred and fifty pounds and dumped it on her palm. Becky dropped it.

‘For God’s sake, you clumsy cull, pick it up!’ Bella ordered, whacking Becky’s skirts with her cane.

Louisa snatched up the bag and shoved it under her jacket.

Bella said, ‘Do say hello to your mad little friend from me, won’t you?’ then turned and led the way back inside the inn.

‘Bitch!’ Friday shouted after them.

Bella responded by lifting her cane and, without looking back, jabbing it violently into the air.

Friday stomped back to the Siren’s Arms, swearing and muttering and elbowing folk off the footway. By the time she slammed the door to her room, she was in such a rage half the windows on the top floor rattled in their frames. She rummaged in a drawer for a bottle of gin, knocked back a gargantuan swig, then kicked off her boots and lay on her bed, seething and imagining hideously drawn-out and painful deaths for Bella.
Her
fault? Why was it
her
fault Bella was persecuting them?

When a furious knock came at the door she barked, ‘What!’

Elizabeth swept in. ‘Was that you making all that noise?’

‘Might’ve been.’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Well, it’s obviously not nothing, is it?’ Elizabeth said, her hands parked on her hips. ‘I heard your door slam all the way downstairs in the kitchen. What’s happened?’

Friday took another drink and snapped, ‘We’ve just handed over yet another bloody lot of blackmail money, that’s what.’

Sitting on the end of the bed with a rustle of taffeta, Elizabeth said, ‘You can’t keep doing this.’

‘Oh, why not? We’ve been having such good fun.’

Elizabeth slapped Friday’s bare foot. ‘That’s enough of that. I’m only trying to help. Why won’t you tell me who it is? There’ll be something I can do.’

‘There isn’t.’

‘Tell me anyway. You’ll feel better for it.’

Friday stared at the manufacturer’s initials embossed on her gin bottle for almost a minute. Then she said, ‘She says it’s
my
fault she’s blackmailing us.’

‘Who says that?’

Friday went on, ‘Sarah asked her what we’d done to deserve it, and she said to ask
me
. But
I
didn’t do anything bad to her. Well, not till after she started in on us, I didn’t.’

‘Friday — bad to who?’

‘To Bella bloody Shand!’

Elizabeth looked horrified. ‘My God, Bella Shand’s blackmailing you?’

Friday nodded. ‘Yes, the whoremongering old bitch.’

‘But … why?’

It would be such a relief to tell her. Friday was so very tired of keeping secrets. And she knew Mrs H wouldn’t tell anyone else. She couldn’t — Friday knew where
her
secret was buried.

‘If I tell you,’ she said, ‘you have to promise not to mention a word of it to a single soul. Not even Sarah and Harrie. If they find out, they’ll kill me.’

‘Oh, Harrie wouldn’t, surely!’ Elizabeth said.

Friday noted she wasn’t shocked at the idea of Sarah killing someone for revealing a secret, and nearly smiled. ‘I don’t mean they’ll
actually
kill me. They’ll want to, though.’

‘Christ almighty, Friday, what on earth did you do?’

Her heart thumping now that she was so close to confessing, she took a deep breath and said, ‘It wasn’t just me, it was the three of us. That cove found beaten to death in Phillip Street the year before last? In May? No, April. Gabriel Keegan? Well, me and Sarah and Harrie did that. We killed him.’

As Elizabeth gaped at her, Friday wondered whether she might have been smarter to say she’d killed Keegan by herself, and left Harrie and Sarah out of it. But it was too late now.

‘Can I ask why?’

‘He was Charlotte’s father. He was the one who beat the shit out of Rachel on the ship and made her pregnant. If he hadn’t, she wouldn’t have died in the Factory giving birth. It wasn’t right. He had to pay for what he’d done.’ There was no point telling Mrs H what had really killed Rachel — that would only complicate things.

‘How did Bella find out?’

‘Don’t know. She must have seen us. Or maybe Amos Furniss did. He was working for her by then.’

‘Oh, Friday,’ Elizabeth said.

‘She’d’ve been delighted. I can just see her face. She hated us on the ship. Me, especially. And, no, I
don’t
know why.’

‘And presumably she’s been threatening to tell the police about the murder if you don’t pay her?’

Friday nodded.

‘Because you’d most certainly hang for that.’

‘Yes, we do know that. Bloody Rowie was working for her, too, you know.’

‘Rowie Harris?’ Elizabeth was aghast. ‘Working for Bella Shand?’

‘Yes, while she was here. I’m sure she was spying on me.’

‘I got that bloody little tart a job with James Downey!’

‘
And
she told Harrie she’d been lifting her leg for James. So Harrie went out and got drunk and —’

‘Threw herself at the first handsome young cove she saw,’ Elizabeth said. ‘And look what happened. What a tragedy that was.
Had
she been shagging the doctor? Rowie, I mean?’

‘I doubt it. James is such a boring old fart. And he wouldn’t have wanted to ruin his chances with Harrie.’

‘I’ve a good mind to tell Rowie Harris exactly what I think of her,’ Elizabeth said. ‘And she won’t enjoy it, I can assure you.’

‘Good luck finding her. She’s disappeared.’

‘Since when?’

‘The end of July? I think Bella might have done away with her.’

Elizabeth’s arched brows rose. ‘Really? You think so? So she’s a murderess as well?’

‘I’m pretty sure she’s killed at least one person I know of, and ordered the death of another, if she didn’t do it herself. And that’s not counting Rowie.’

Elizabeth brushed a loose thread off her skirt. ‘Well, we’re hardly any better, are we?’

‘Not really. Are you bothered?’

‘I killed in self-defence,’ Elizabeth said.

‘I didn’t. I did it for revenge. But I thought it was justified. No, I’m not particularly bothered, and Sarah gives even less of a shit. She can be pretty hard-hearted, Sarah.’

‘I’m sure.’

‘Harrie’s bothered, though,’ Friday said. ‘I think the guilt of it’s partly what made her go insane.’

‘The business with the abortion can’t have helped.’

‘No, it didn’t. And she’s still eaten up with guilt, even though me and Sarah’ve told her a thousand times Keegan deserved what he got from us.’

‘He did deserve it.’

‘I know. Poor Rachel was so young, and while she
was
quite cunning in some ways she really didn’t have a hope in hell against him. Filthy, arrogant, violent
bastard
.’

‘Your Rachel wasn’t the only one, you know.’

‘The only one what?’

‘The only young girl to fall foul of him.’

Friday frowned. What was Mrs H talking about? She hadn’t even met Keegan. ‘What do you mean?’

‘If I’d known about this, about what you’ve just told me, I could have told you ages ago. You know Nellie McShera, who has the brothel down by the Customs House?’

‘I do. Her girls are all jack-whores and barrack hacks.’

‘That’s true. She also offers, or should I say used to offer, very young girls, around the age of eleven or twelve.’

‘Really? What a bitch.’ Friday was disgusted.

Elizabeth made a disparaging face. ‘Yes, well. The year before last, in January I think it was, so that would have been before your poor friend died, he beat one of Nellie’s younger girls so badly she never recovered.’

‘He
killed
her?’

‘Nigh on knocked her brains out.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Nellie called a quiet meeting of brothel owners. She never said outright that he’d killed one of her girls, just that he was a rum cove with heavy fists and we might want to think twice before letting him into our houses. A couple of the other madams said he was known to them and he’d already done a bit of damage. But Nellie told me later that’s what he’d done, that he’d killed her girl. Can’t say any of us were too upset when he turned up dead. So, you see, he did deserve it.’

Friday was thinking about the time frame. ‘Bella Shand wasn’t at that meeting, was she?’

‘I don’t think she’d opened her establishment by then. She doesn’t come to our meetings anyway. Not all the madams do.’ Elizabeth reached for Friday’s gin, then put the bottle back on the nightstand, evidently thinking better of it. ‘You’re going to have to do something, love. You can’t keep paying her forever.’

‘Don’t you think we’ve thought about it?’

‘I’m sure you have. She’ll bleed you dry. I don’t personally know her but some of the other madams do, and they say she’s evil.’

‘She is. She’s a bloody witch,’ Friday said. ‘I’d kill
her
if I could get away with it.’

Sarah and Friday were keeping something from her: Harrie knew they were. But she was frightened to ask them what, in case it was a bad thing. She couldn’t tolerate anything else bad. She was teetering on the edge as it was. Pretending she was getting well was so exhausting — even more exhausting than actually being sick. The night before she’d dreamt of Keegan again. He’d chased her down the streets of London, his face all smashed and crooked, shouting something she couldn’t understand. She’d run and run, looking for a place to hide, but everywhere had been too small — she hadn’t been able to squeeze herself in. So she’d had to keep on running and he’d kept coming, shouting his incomprehensible words, gradually getting closer and closer …

She must have been making noises of her own because James had woken her, shaking her gently and saying her name. Then he’d cuddled her and told her not to worry because everything would be all right, but it wouldn’t. She knew it wouldn’t. And this morning at breakfast Rachel had been sitting at the table and she hadn’t said a single word; she’d just watched Charlotte throw her bread and egg everywhere and the terrible look of longing on her face had broken Harrie’s heart. Unable to bear it she’d closed her eyes, and when she’d opened them again, Rachel had gone.

It was quiet now. Daisy had gone out to get a few things for supper and James wouldn’t be home from the surgery for a couple of hours at least. In the morning Harrie had taken Charlotte to visit Nora and the Barrett children, and in the afternoon she’d worked on some new flash for Leo. She missed going to the tattoo shop three times a week, but James was a lot happier with the new arrangement. Charlotte was sitting on the carpet playing with a doll Friday had bought for her. It had a head of varnished papier mâché with beautifully painted eyes, lips, cheeks and hair, a body of stuffed kid leather and carved wooden limbs, and wore a tiny, exquisitely made evening gown of silk. At the moment, Charlotte was holding it by one foot and inspecting its miniature cotton drawers.

Harrie, in an armchair before the hearth, was folding washing. The next time she glanced up, Rachel was sitting in the chair opposite, watching Charlotte.