Razorhurst (13 page)

KELPIE

Kelpie never went near that end of Foveaux. Too close to Central Station. Too close to more ghosts than Kelpie had ever seen in one place. She kept her eyes on the ground.

“Do what she says.” Palmer was glaring at her. “You’re going to get the both of youse caught.”

“We’re almost there,” Dymphna said, softening her voice. Coaxing her, Kelpie could tell, the way Miss Lee used to. “Once we’re on the train, we’ll be at my place in no time. Safer there.”

“No, it’s not,” Palmer said. “Tell her not to go back. Everyone will be looking for her there.”

Kelpie shook her head again and pulled in the opposite direction. She tried to think of some reason Dymphna would accept for not going near Central. “I don’t like trains. I don’t like Central.”

“We’ll get the tram then. You don’t have to go into the train station. Come on.” Dymphna grabbed both Kelpie’s arms and hauled her closer to Foveaux. “You said you were hungry, didn’t you? I’ve got loads of food. Bacon, eggs, bread, tomatoes, whatever you want.”

Kelpie tried to dig her feet in, but they slid along the footpath.

A man in a threadbare suit and a cap glanced at them.

“Stop it,” Dymphna hissed.

Miss Lee had never hissed at her.

Kelpie did not want to be noticed, but she didn’t want to go anywhere near Central either.

Dymphna dragged her down Foveaux past two young men who dipped their hats. Dymphna gave a quick smile and again hissed at Kelpie to stop drawing attention.

And there they were.

At the bottom of the hill on Elizabeth Street. Kelpie tried not to look, but she could feel them, an uncomfortable heat along all her nerve endings, tugging at her, making her look at the thousands of ghosts moving in and out of the entrance to Central Station. Some seemed to be floating above, some walked straight through it. There were far more dead than living. Miss Lee said it was because there used to be a cemetery under the trains. But Kelpie thought it was something worse. Something terrible had happened over there.

One or two ghosts was normal. Every street, every lane, every park, every house had its share. Even as many as a dozen in the same place. But Central, Central was a swirling grey mass of the dead. You couldn’t tell where one ghost ended and another began.

Palmer stared. “Jesus.”

Kelpie thought she was going to be sick. First dead Palmer and all that blood and that smell, and now this. She could
not
cross that street. Too many of them. One ghost sliding through her felt bad enough, but dozens? Hundreds? All of them talking at her at once? She could already hear the gentle roar of all those voices.

“Why are there so many?” Palmer asked. “What are they doing?”

Kelpie’s muscles tightened, ready to run, but Dymphna kept pulling her along with the steady stream of foot traffic towards more ghosts than had a right to be together.

“Can ghosts kill?” Palmer asked. “Other ghosts, I mean. I don’t fancy going over there.”

“Look, it’s not going to kill you to leave the Hills,” Dymphna said. Kelpie wished they’d both stop saying that word
kill
. It felt like they were inviting more killing. “It’s not ‘here be dragons’ on the other side of Elizabeth Street.”

Kelpie tried to slip her hand from Dymphna’s grip. The problem wasn’t dragons, it was ghosts. Knowing they couldn’t hurt her made no difference. They could do your head in. Much worse than a cut or broken bone.

Dymphna tugged harder.

Kelpie shook her head.

“That ain’t right,” Palmer said, staring at the swirling mass. “Tell her you don’t want to catch the tram there.”

“Not there,” Kelpie whispered. “Don’t want to catch the tram there.”

“Good girl,” Palmer said.

“She speaks! We’ll go up to the next tram stop then.” Dymphna turned her head. Kelpie thought she heard a siren. It was hard to tell over the din of the traffic. “Right, then,” Dymphna said, quickening her pace. “We’ll cross further up. That suit you better?”

“Yes.” Kelpie’s back prickled from all those ghosts behind her on the other side of the road.

They stayed on the Hills side of Elizabeth Street as a tram rattled by.

“We could have been on that one,” Dymphna muttered.

When they were far enough away from Central, Kelpie let
Dymphna pull her across the street. They dodged the motor-cars and people, and Kelpie dodged the few stray ghosts always in the middle of the road, dead from a motor-car or a tram, spending the rest of their existence with the things that killed them whistling through them every day.

Kelpie looked towards Central and wished she hadn’t. From this side there were even more of them, weaving so close together they looked like storm clouds.

They stood at the tram stop and waited for the next tram. There was only a grey-haired couple waiting with them.

“You’ll tell me what that was,” Palmer said, “when Dymph can’t hear you.”

Kelpie nodded her head slightly, though she didn’t really know.

A fancy motor-car slowed, and someone in the back rolled down the window.

“Dymphna, angel,” said a deep, oddly accented voice, “what are you doing on this side of town? Need a lift?”

The man’s hat kept his face in shadow, but Kelpie knew who it was from his voice alone. Everyone knew who he was. The arm that rested on the motor-car door had a large watch on it. It shone.

“No, thank you, Mr. Davidson.”

“You sure, darling? An angel like you is too refined for the tram.”

Dymphna laughed, shaking her head. “I’m not sure Glory would approve. You know I don’t like to get in trouble.”

The man laughed hard. “Weren’t you born in trouble, young Dymphna? Why, haven’t you heard? You’re the Angel of Death! Is there anything more troublesome than death? Do get in. I’ve got a present for you. You’ll like it.”

The man smiled. Kelpie thought he looked like a dragon. Someone moved behind Mr. Davidson, but the windows were too dark for her to make out who it was.

Dymphna shook her head and took a few steps further away. The motor-car rolled along beside her. “Terry, why don’t you give Dymphna here a hand getting into the car?”

The motor-car stopped, and the driver, a large man in a suit much shinier than Mr. Davidson’s, got out. He moved towards Dymphna, who increased her pace and pulled Kelpie closer to her. Several motor-car horns sounded.

“You should do what Mr. Davidson says, Miss Campbell,” the driver said.

“You should fucking run,” Palmer said. But he was looking at Kelpie.

“Oh, look,” Dymphna said, smiling brightly, “here’s our tram.” She twisted past the driver, holding Kelpie’s hand so tight it hurt, and dashed out onto the street. More horns sounded, someone yelled abuse, but Dymphna had pulled Kelpie up onto the back of the tram, where Dymphna paused to ask if she was all right, before waving to Mr. Davidson.

Kelpie wasn’t. She didn’t like the look of that Mr. Davidson. Or the sound of him. Or anything about him. It wasn’t safe with Dymphna.

Mr. Davidson

No one knew Mr. Davidson’s first name. Or where he came from. Or anything about him. Except for the little you could glean from looking at him. His accent was faintly foreign. But local too. Just more Point Piper than Millers Point.

He never got into fights. Not like Glory, who’d been known to go the biff more than once. With her own husband, even, and every one of her lovers. Mr. Davidson never raised his voice. The only sign he was angry was that he smiled more. Or so said one of his razor men. Long gone now. So who knew if that was true?

He didn’t have a wife or children. As far as anyone knew, with few exceptions, he lived like a monk. A monk with a taste for caviar and champagne—in small amounts. No one had ever seen Mr. Davidson drunk or even slightly tipsy.

He was unfailingly polite to everyone, and yet no one in his domain would defend him the way those in Glory’s defended her. No one trusted him. His hands were never dirty. He didn’t drink beer. He spent more time at the high end of town than the low. “Looking after his
legitimate
business interests,” Glory said, scoffing, “as if he has any of those. Or have smoke houses, sly grog shops, and two-up parlours gone and got respectable while I wasn’t looking?”

The one thing Mr. Davidson could not be accused of was running a brothel. The niceties of the law meant that men could not profit from women selling their bodies. But women could. Hence Glory’s rise to power. The cops couldn’t take away her money from running girls.

Still, running sly grog shops and nightclubs and gaming houses and peddling illicit drugs were also against the law, and yet Mr. Davidson saw that as no barrier to his involvement. The answer to the conundrum was easy: the cops raided the houses of ill repute far more often than the illegal casinos. All those shapely women dragged out onto the street in dishabille meant better newspaper coverage.

As it happened, much of Mr. Davidson’s profits from the low end of town supported his licit activities at the high end of town running legal nightclubs and restaurants and even clothing factories in Surry
Hills. Glory’s territory, yes. But she didn’t know he’d invested in the rag trade.
She
certainly hadn’t. A pub in Woolloomooloo and some flats in the Cross were all the legal real estate she’d managed thus far.

Mr. Davidson wasn’t like anyone else in their world. His ambitions were larger. The aim wasn’t merely to run all of Razorhurst—Davidson wanted the entire city, hell, the rest of the country too. He wanted onward and upward and an enormous bag of respectability.

He also wanted Dymphna Campbell.

KELPIE