Razorhurst (17 page)

“How’s he doing then?” the detective asked as he unbuttoned his overcoat and pulled out his notebook. “Your man? Looking after you? Keeping you safe from all the other fellas who’d love to have you?”

“Jimmy’s a good man.” He had been a man, that was certainly true, and good could mean many different things.

Ferguson made a note. Dymphna imagined the words
says victim was a good man
noted neatly on the page.

“Is he? When was the last time you saw him?”

“Last night,” Dymphna said, because that was certainly true. She didn’t think she needed to mention having seen his dead body or that his ghost was behind her. “Not that it’s any business of yours.”

“Oh, it’s my business all right, Angel. I’m sorry,
Dymphna
. It’s very much my business.”

Dymphna let her face show shock at the implication of his words. “He isn’t …?” she began before trailing off.

“He is. Dead as your last boyfriend. And the one before him and the one before him. How many’s it been now, Dymph? Seven? Eight?”

Dymphna let her eyes fill with tears and covered her mouth with her hands.

“Your man Jimmy Palmer was killed. Brutally.”

“I guess you could call a throat slashing brutal,” Jimmy said.

Dymphna looked down. The detective’s shoes must have been polished that morning. They gleamed. Unlike those of the constable.

“I hear you were over in the Hills today. Right where Palmer died, in fact. The Angel of—”

“Don’t call me that!”

Ferguson held up his hands. “Sorry, Dymph.”

“You heard wrong. I’ve been here all morning.”

“That’s funny. You weren’t here earlier when we came calling.”

“I was asleep. I’m a heavy sleeper. Just ask the doorman. He’ll tell you I was here.”

“Will he? Your doorman told us he didn’t think you’d come in last night.”

Well, that was a lie. Ray would never tell the cops anything. Dymphna didn’t bother to tell Inspector Ferguson so.

“Did you kill Jimmy, Dymph? We heard you were covered in blood.”

Dymphna was indignant. She had
not
been covered in blood. There was not a drop on her. But she couldn’t say that. Nor could she point out that she didn’t have the strength or reach to cut Jimmy’s throat. The detective hadn’t said how Jimmy had died other than brutally.

She let her eyes well up again. “I did not,” she said. Her lower lip trembled as if she were barely holding back tears. Jimmy made a sound of derision.

“Did someone else kill him for you?”

“No,” she said, letting that bare syllable be edged with her sad disdain.

“You’ll be needing a new fella, won’t you? In your world, it’s not safe to be without a strong bloke for long.”

Dymphna wiped at her eyes. “Why?” she asked. “Are you offering?” She let her lip tremble again. “Jimmy’s not even cold yet.”

Ferguson laughed. “I’m a married man, Dymphna. Not to mention that you’re a touch too young for me. Man of my age prefers a woman of his own vintage.”

Dymphna almost snorted. That was not something she had ever noticed.

“Can we come in?” Ferguson asked.

“Why would you want to interrupt me in my time of mourning?”

“So we can continue our friendly chat.”

“My man’s dead.” Dymphna finally let a tear roll down her cheek. “I don’t think I have the strength.”

“It will go better for you if you let us in.”

“Do I have to?”

Behind Ferguson the constable shook his head. He
was
one of Glory’s. She knew it. He tipped his head in the direction of the fire stairs that led out onto the back lane. Dymphna hoped it wasn’t a nervous twitch but him pointing her to the best escape route.

“It’s in your own interest, Dymph,” Ferguson said.

“Then, no, you can’t come in.”

The telephone rang. Loud and brassy, making the receiver rattle in its cradle. Dymphna felt her heart beat faster. The tremor returned to her left leg. That would be Glory.
She
should have called Glory. Not the other way around.

Ferguson was asking another question. Dymphna closed the door on his surprised face and the constable’s sly one. She drew the bolt and picked up the receiver.

“Hello?” she said, fearing the response.

“Glory wants to see you,” Lettie said.

Of all Glory’s girls, Lettie was Dymphna’s closest friend. She was who Dymphna turned to when she needed cheering up. And vice versa. Lettie had a terrible habit of falling in love with the wrong girl. Always a working girl more broke than she was. Her latest, Dazzle, was the worst of the lot.

“Did she ask you to call? Or are you warning me?”

“Glory asked,” Lettie said, and Dymphna didn’t know whether to be relieved or more frightened that Glory had made Lettie call her. Was she too angry too pick up the ’phone herself? Or was it not important enough for Glory to call her directly?

“She’s at Palmer Street.”

Dymphna bit back a laugh. Of course she was, on the day that Jimmy Palmer died.

“She’s not happy. I haven’t seen her this ropeable in ages. You there, Dymphna?”

Ropeable. That meant she knew, didn’t it? Or did it? Glory flew into rages most days. Dymphna had seen her throw a teapot because one of the girls brought her Earl Grey when she had asked for Darjeeling.

“I’m here, Lettie. Shouldn’t she be over on Lansdowne? The party’s today, isn’t it?”

“She’s letting Connie and Johnno be the bosses over there. Came here ’cause she said it was like a flock of galahs in heat. Apparently the butcher delivered the wrong sausages.”

Dymphna could hear the suppressed giggles in Lettie’s voice and smiled, imagining the scene. She and Lettie had always been able to have a laugh together at Glory’s expense.

“She wants to see you right now, and it’s not to talk about the party. It’s about Jimmy. Who killed him, Dymphna? It wasn’t you, was it?”

“Of course not! She doesn’t think that, does she?” Dymphna asked, almost hoping that she did think that because then Glory couldn’t possibly know what she and Jimmy had plotted, could she?

“Glory doesn’t know what to think, Dymphna. There’s that many rumours flying around. Some are saying the truce is broken and it’s war again.”

“Oh, no! Tell her I’m on my way. I’ll be there soonest.” Dymphna was feeling hopeful. Perhaps Glory didn’t know. Perhaps Mr. Davidson didn’t know either.

“She’s
really
not happy. She’s got people out looking for you.” Lettie lowered her voice. “She’s scaring us, Dymphna. She was so happy about the party, about being shot of Big Bill and it being in the papers. You know how she loves being in the papers.”

“Tell her I’m on my way, Lettie. Tell her I’m sorry.”

“I’ll tell her. But she’s not much for listening right now. She’s been like this all morning. She’s not herself. She was talking about cancelling the party, and you know how she’s been looking forward to it. I’m starting to wonder if she’ll even listen to you, and you’re her favourite.”

“Sounds bad.” It sounded very bad. Her hands started to shake again. It was not like Glory to stay in a rage for this long. Usually the storms came and went in a matter of minutes.

“It is. See you when you get here, which should be
soon
, Dymphna. Get here for us if you won’t do it for yourself. She’s that cranky, Dymphna. It’s no joke.”

“I will, Lettie. I’m sorry. Thanks.”

“Be careful. You promise?”

“I will. I’ll see you soon.”

“Bye then.”

The ’phone made a clicking sound, and Dymphna replaced the receiver.

She stumbled to her bedroom, started stripping off her clothes and changing into fresh ones. No time to wash. She stuffed her passports and money into her purse and grabbed her warmest winter
coat, the one with the ermine collar and cuffs, the one she had already lined with money as part of her and Jimmy’s contingency plan.

Glory could be this incandescently angry because her best man was dead. Three years it had been since Glory’d lost a lieutenant. She had been furious for days.

It was also conceivable Glory was enraged because she’d found out her best man and her best girl had been plotting against her.

King and Queen of Razorhurst. Dymphna had to laugh. Had they both gone mad? How had they believed for a second they could succeed?

The tremor was back in her hands.

“Get moving,” Jimmy said. “You stay here, you’re dead.”

Dymphna knew he was right.

Should she go to Inspector Ferguson, tell him Davidson had killed Jimmy? He was honest. An honest, nasty piece of work. But too many of the cops around him weren’t, too many of the courts. If she turned dingo, she was dead. If Davidson caught her, she might not be dead, but she’d want to be.

If Glory caught her, she had no idea what would happen. But dead was a possibility.

She had to be calm. If Glory knew, why hadn’t she sent someone after her? Why hadn’t Bluey Denham been waiting for her, razor in hand?

If she ran, where would she run to? Nowhere in the city was safe. But she’d never been anywhere else. Another city? Overseas?

If she ran, she was dead. If she stayed, she was dead.

Glory. Glory was her best hope.

Kelpie came dripping out of the bathroom, her disintegrating wet clothes clinging to her. Dymphna realised she’d been pacing. She stopped.

Kelpie reached out to awkwardly pat Dymphna’s hand. She must look demented. She breathed in deeply. She would not cry. She would go to Glory, and they would fix this. “Why do they all die?” she whispered.

Language Acquisition

Before Miss Lee, Kelpie had never thought about words or language. Words were how you communicated with people. When you
had
to. Kelpie could go days, weeks even, without using any. Often running away was all the communicating Kelpie needed.

She’d never heard of poetry until she met Miss Lee. Even though Old Ma used to ease her into sleep with lullabies often enough. According to Miss Lee, songs were poems set to music.

Miss Lee—and Neal Darcy—made Kelpie aware of the pleasure of words, made her want to start collecting them, whispering them to herself.
Squelch, wheeze, ooze
—all of which sounded like what they meant. Miss Lee said there was a word for that too:
onomatopoeia,
which sounded like an explosion of worms in your mouth.

There was even a book that was for finding words and discovering their meanings. The dictionary. Kelpie could open it on any page and find a treasure. There was a word for everything.
Disembark
—which Kelpie had thought meant removing a dog’s bark, but instead meant getting off a ship. One word instead of four!

Then there were all the words—loads of them—that meant more than one thing.
Dislocate
meant when your arm came out of your shoulder and hung there like a dead rat till someone pushed it back in. Stuart O’Sullivan had a lot to say about dislocated shoulders and how they hurt like hell. But
dislocate
also meant how a person could feel when they didn’t belong in a place. As if they were the arm hanging like a dead rat not connected to the body anymore. Like how Kelpie would feel if they ever caught her and put her in an orphanage and forced her to live anywhere but Surry Hills.

Kelpie loved the sound of the word
scarification
—which had been done to more than half the men in the Hills, much to Miss Lee’s disapproval—and
unctuous
—yet another word that sounded like what it was, as well as
smoodge
—which Miss Lee said wasn’t a real word, but Kelpie had heard it said, and even if she couldn’t find it in the dictionary, if people said it, then surely that meant it was a real word? Besides, Neal Darcy had used it in one of his stories. So it was also written down, and once it was written down, it would find its way into a dictionary. Kelpie was sure of it.

That was Kelpie’s first argument with Miss Lee about language. Kelpie was worried Miss Lee would be annoyed, but instead she was thrilled that Kelpie was
thinking about vocabulary and had an opinion of her own, even if it was a wrong opinion
.

“Smoodge,” Kelpie said, drawing the word out, “is a glorious word.”
Glorious
was one of Miss Lee’s favourites. “I shall smoodge my way back into your affections.”