Razorhurst (2 page)

Kelpie tried the back door, not putting it past Tommy to make her enter through a window when she didn’t have to.

Locked.

She stood on her toes to look through the window. The dirty curtain brushed across her nose. An empty bedroom. Narrow unmade bed in the corner. A pile of clothes on top of suitcases and a side table covered with old newspapers, an overfull ashtray, and empty bottles. One was filled with desiccated brown flowers. Kelpie wondered at a razor man having flowers, even dead ones, and then hauled herself over the sill.

Outside she could hear the
clip clop
of horse and cart, the clatter of a truck down Foveaux Street, further away raised voices. The house
creaked, settling in the wind. The place smelled damp and dank and dusty. She heard no movement inside the house.

Kelpie peered out the open door. The carpet along the corridor was so worn the floorboards peeked through. Near the front door empty hooks protruded from the wall. On an afternoon, they’d hold hats and coats. Behind her the back door’s bolt was thick and heavy.

As Kelpie crept along, a board groaned. She stilled. Listened hard.

Nothing.

Her skin tightened, as if her body heard something her ears didn’t. Kelpie could slip out the way she came. Go to Paddy’s Markets. There was sometimes fallen fruit and vegetables, provided she wasn’t run off before she could lay hands on any of it.

These apples were closer.

Kelpie went up on her toes, making herself lighter. She’d spent so long among ghosts she’d become almost as quiet.

Something smelled worse than damp. The closer she moved to the kitchen, the worse the smell grew.

The first door on her left was closed, but the second was open.

It wasn’t a kitchen. Tommy’d lied.

It was another bedroom.

A lady in a fancy blue suit with matching hat was leaning over a dead man on the bed. Her hands were shaking. She held a card. She handed it to Kelpie.

“Mr. Davidson did it,” she said. “See?”

Razorhurst

Nineteen twenty-eight had been a banner year for blood. Throughout the east of the city—Surry Hills, Darlinghurst, Woolloomooloo, Kings Cross, Paddington—blood flowed. Razors cut up faces, sliced off ears, opened up chests and bowels; went in through the eye, the ribs, the throat. They maimed, crippled, and killed.

Why razors?

Because they banned handguns at the beginning of the twenties, didn’t they? To keep them out of the hands of the Commies. To stop the much-promised revolution. The one that never came.

Not that banning guns made them go away, but it did mean if you was caught with one, they could arrest you without you even pulling the trigger. Catch you with a razor, and all you had to do was point to your none-too-smooth cheeks:
Was gunna give meself a shave first thing, wasn’t I, constable? A very close shave. That’s why it’s so sharp, see?

The razor men became artists of the blade. Where was the artistry in squeezing a trigger? In the rough outlines of a bullet wound? Nowhere. Not like the
L
you could carve on a man’s face.

You didn’t have to kill your enemies. Just let them know you’d been there and weren’t never going away. That scar lived on a mug’s face for the rest of his life. He would always be marked, broken, less than.

Or not.

The hardest razor men had the biggest scars.

Get cut up like that? And live? Now
there
was a man.

Angry Carbone, Snowy Fullerton, Razor Tom, Jimmy Palmer, Bluey Denham. Real men with real scars and real razors.

Proud inhabitants of Greater Razorhurst. Dubbed so by
Truth
, a newspaper that never lied, in the bloody year of 1928—when Frog Hollow had only just been torn down, Old Ma was barely dead, and Kelpie was being raised by ghosts. Dymphna Campbell was beginning her first year in her chosen profession, and those gang bosses, Gloriana Nelson and Mr. Davidson, were crawling to the top of the bloody remains of Razorhurst and brokering the peace that still held.

And could well hold for a while longer on this cold winter morning in 1932.

Or not …

KELPIE

Kelpie didn’t look at the card between her fingers. She could feel it there, but she was staring at the red splashes on the walls, on the mirror of the wardrobe, across the two paintings. At the blood sliding down in thin rivulets. Her nostrils flared at the smell from the dead man, and she wished she could close them.

She did not see or smell apples.

She had to run. This was trouble. This would bring police, Welfare.

Her feet would not move.

“That’s Mr. Davidson’s handwriting,” the woman said, as if handwriting mattered while a man lay dead. Newly dead.

Kelpie knew who Mr. Davidson was: the boss of all the crime in the Hills and beyond, him and Gloriana Nelson. She ruled where he didn’t and vice versa. They did not like each other.

The man’s face was all cut up, his throat slashed open. Kelpie saw something white in the midst of all the red. The bones of his neck?

Kelpie couldn’t help touching her own throat.

Blood had soaked into the top of his trousers, his jacket, his shirt, the pillows under his head, the sheets. There was blood across the ashtray and magazines and books and empty glass on the bedside table. On the coats hanging from the hooks on the wall. Blood dripped from the dead man’s shoes hanging over the edge of the not-big-enough bed.

Kelpie wondered how his blood had hit the wall behind him. She tried not to imagine his body spinning.

She’d seen dead bodies before. But not like this. She needed to get away. Fast.

Why wasn’t she moving?

“Davidson did this,” the woman said. Her voice caught on his name. “Do you understand? Look at the card.”

His eyes were as open as his throat, staring up at the ceiling as if that’s where his killer was. Kelpie looked up.

The ceiling sagged, the plaster rose in the centre mostly gone, damp brown stains spreading out from where the rose had been, but no killer. No blood either. The splashes didn’t reach that high.

One of his hands lay palm up on the bed, scored with deep cuts. The other hung over the edge.

“Can’t you read?” the woman asked. Her voice was as posh as her clothes.

Kelpie blushed and looked at the card. There was blood on it, and neat handwriting:

For you, Dymph

That was when Kelpie knew who the woman was: Dymphna Campbell. She was famous in the Hills. Most beautiful woman any of them had ever seen.

Kelpie had never seen her this close. She was prettier, shinier, cleaner than Kelpie had imagined. The cold didn’t seem to affect her: Dymphna’s eyes weren’t red or running. Her blue suit was matched by her hat, by the small bag jutting out of her pocket, by the shoes on her feet. The silver watch on her wrist sparkled in the moonlight spilling through the window. Her hair was almost the same colour.

Kelpie half disbelieved Dymphna Campbell was real.

She didn’t have a drop of blood on her.

There was blood everywhere.

“The card was on top of Jimmy. A warning for me.”

Kelpie could hear Dymphna breathing. Dymphna worked for Glory Nelson. But the card was from Mr. Davidson. This was worse than trouble.

“I thought he’d last longer,” Dymphna said, her voice shaky, looking down at the body, one hand covering her nose. “Now what? Shit.” She glanced at the card in Kelpie’s hand, breathed in, and straightened, stepping away from the bed. “Kelpie, isn’t it?” Dymphna asked, as if they’d been introduced on the street, as if there wasn’t a dead man in the room.

Kelpie nodded without meeting her eyes, surprised Dymphna knew her name. She lowered her head, saw drops of blood by her feet. Everyone in the Hills called Dymphna Campbell the Angel of Death. All her boyfriends died. Not one had been with her longer than a few months.

“Snowy told me,” Dymphna said. “I saw him give you peanuts.”

“My Snowy?” Kelpie asked. Why wasn’t she running?

“Snowy Fullerton.”

Snowy was one of Mr. Davidson’s men. Why would he be talking to Dymphna, Glory’s best girl? Their people were not friendly with one another.

A jarring thud made them both look away from the dead man.

“
Shit,
” Dymphna said, grabbing Kelpie’s hand and pulling her from the room. Kelpie’s feet finally cooperated.

The thumping came from the front door.

Dymphna dragged her along the corridor, dropping Kelpie’s hand to pull at the bolt on the back door. It didn’t budge. She pulled harder, her knuckles going white.

The banging grew louder.

“In here,” Kelpie whispered. She shut the bedroom door behind them as wood splintered at the front of the house. The room looked different from this angle. The dead flowers cast a shadow the shape of a twisted hand.

The house shook.

“Christ,” Dymphna breathed. “Sounds like they’ve ripped the door off. Not the cops. It can’t be the cops.”

Kelpie swallowed. Cops. Cops meant Welfare. She pulled Dymphna towards the window, scrambling onto the sill and over, silent as she could.

Behind her Dymphna hitched her skirt up and slung a leg over, ducking her head.

A ghost appeared beside her. A big bloke with a scar on his cheek. Kelpie didn’t startle. She’d expected there to be ghosts. Most houses had at least one.

“There’s worse things than cops, Dymphna love,” the ghost said. He tried to pat her shoulder. His hand went straight through. He stared at it. “Why does my skin look wrong?”

As if she’d heard, Dymphna whispered, “Though Davidson’s men are as bad as coppers.”

Kelpie didn’t think so. Mostly the hard men left her alone. Coppers though …

Dymphna dropped to the backyard, breaking a flowerpot.

They both froze, crouched low beneath the sill. Kelpie crept to the gap in the fence, hoping Dymphna realised the noise from inside drowned out their pot shattering.

“Dymphna,” the ghost began.

Kelpie slid through the gap into Belmore Lane.

Dymphna turned sideways, fit one leg through, sucked her belly in, and pushed with both hands. She didn’t shift. But the wood groaned.