The Silk Thief (14 page)

‘Still,’ Friday said.

‘I know.’

‘Did you hear that?’ Friday said to Harrie and Sarah. ‘Old Matilda’s died.’

Sarah wasn’t too bothered, Matilda had been a mad old bat, but Harrie was sad. Dysentery was an awful way to die. And Matilda had been the only other person she knew who could see Rachel.

Late August 1831, Liverpool, England

Malcolm Leary leant over the ship’s rail, hoicked and spat a gob into the swift and filthy tidal waters of the Mersey River. He was a sailor by trade, but on this voyage he’d be sitting on his arse watching some other poor gulpies do all the work — unless, that was, he got so bored he couldn’t stand it and pitched in, though that certainly wouldn’t be happening unless there was money on offer. Or, at the very least, rum.

He was glad to be under way. Once he made up his mind to do something he liked to get on with it, no mucking about. The ship was a barque, a little on the small side, but she was sound and he could feel from the way she rode the river’s undulations she would be fairly fleet. According to the first mate, she carried a half-cargo of quality printed and glazed cottons from several Lancashire manufactories, plus about sixty emigrants shoe-horned onto the steerage deck, their worldly possessions piled into the remainder of the hold.

Malcolm squinted into the wind at the diminishing view of Salthouse Dock, from which the ship had set sail, riding on the coat tails of the outgoing tide. He loved Liverpool: the noise and filth and industry of the city, the sleepless docks lining the Mersey for miles and miles, and the river itself, swarming with ships and boats, rising and falling twice a day, breathing in and out like England’s heartbeat. In an hour or so they’d be into the Irish Sea, then heading south towards the belligerent North Atlantic. He’d sailed the North Atlantic dozens of times himself, mostly on American and Canadian crossings, but also en route to Australia, though the latter not for some years. This would be his first antipodean voyage since before his older brother, Jonah, was transported in 1825.

At the thought of his brother — of his brothers — Malcolm spat again, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Jonah could be a reasonable cove, at least some of the time, but the other, the hell-cursed Bennett — Malcolm could barely even think his name without cringing. Thank Christ their father had died without ever knowing what he’d spawned. He’d been a cruel and manipulative old bastard, but no father deserved such a son.

Malcolm had chosen to take his chances at sea while his mother and father groomed his two brothers to one day take over the family’s network of criminal enterprises, which extended across Liverpool and beyond. It wasn’t the villainous nature of the family business he’d objected to — it had been the tyranny of his parents. His mother, Ansilla, came from a long line of powerful and successful crooks, and in marrying professional criminal Bartholomew Leary, she’d chosen a mate as greedy as she was. After their wedding she’d retained a tight grip on both the purse strings and the business, a grip that hadn’t loosened even after Bart’s death. While alive Bart had resented this, and worried that Ansilla, whom he believed favoured Malcolm’s four sisters over Malcolm, Jonah and Bennett, would leave the girls with a greater share of the family’s considerable fortune. In truth, Malcolm knew, she loved all her children; it was just that his sisters, irritatingly, were far more capable than the boys in the family, especially where money was concerned.

What Bart had done to safeguard the boys’ financial future had been extraordinary, and while on his deathbed in 1824, he’d revealed his stratagem to Malcolm and Jonah. Bennett had been gone from the family home for almost two years by then, Bart under the impression he’d simply run off to London on a whim, because no one had had the guts to tell him the truth, which had been that Bennett had been discovered in a profoundly compromising situation. Bart explained to his two remaining sons that in 1820 he’d stolen a large amount of gold bullion from a bank, then hidden it very carefully. Immediately after the robbery he’d commissioned the tattoos, which of course Malcolm and Jonah already knew about, as they each had one on their backs, and so did Bennett. Malcolm remembered getting his all too clearly. At the time he’d been a twenty-six-year-old sailor and already inked, but this one had really hurt because it had taken so bloody long. And he’d deeply resented it as yet another example of his father’s bullying. By the time he, Jonah and Bennett had all been tattooed, they’d realised they each carried a different section of the same map. But a map of what? Infuriatingly, however, at the time their father would only say that one day they would thank him.

As Bart lay coughing up blood and wheezing out his last breaths, he’d at last told Malcolm and Jonah that their tattooed maps revealed the hiding place of the stolen bullion, but that all three maps had to be consulted together. This was to stop one or another brother taking all the gold for himself. It was to be shared among the three of them, and not with their sisters, and certainly not with Ansilla, who knew nothing about the arrangement. None of the females in the family did.

Like hell they’d share it with bloody Bennett, Malcolm had thought at the time, though he hadn’t said it, wanting to spare his fatally ailing father. He’d caught Jonah’s eye and known he was thinking the same thing.

As soon as Bart was dead, he and Jonah had examined each other’s tattooed maps in minute detail, but their father had been right — having only two sections of the three wasn’t enough, and Malcolm and Jonah hadn’t the faintest idea where Bennett, with his third section, might be. Soon after, Jonah had been caught by the watch robbing a warehouse, and transported the following year.

Malcolm had retired from the sea in 1829, after episodes of dizziness and shortness of breath had sent him to a physician in the city of New York. This worthy had advised he was suffering from an imbalance of humours resulting in water on the heart and so, with no other trade, and having spent most of his earnings on grog, gambling and women, Malcolm had no option but to return to Liverpool and work for his mother, who was managing the family business extremely efficiently by herself. She was in perpetual mourning, however, for Jonah transported to New South Wales, and for Bennett, who for some twisted and unfathomable reason she continued to love, though not so much for her late husband, Malcolm noted. In fact, not at all.

She welcomed him home and gave him a job collecting debts: he was comfortable terrorising folk, and indeed had killed several men in brawls. He realised after a while, however, that his sisters were being paid far more for overseeing the crews that operated the city-wide rackets, and running the brothels, which brought in the bulk of the family’s wealth. When he’d complained, the deflating response he’d received from Ansilla — that he was actually getting paid what he was worth — had set him on this course for Australia, to find Jonah. His brother’s seven-year sentence would be over shortly and Malcolm planned to bring him back to Liverpool.

And it wasn’t just Jonah he intended to track down. A few months earlier, in a pub off Dock Road, he’d been holding forth about his search for his brothers (but not why he intended to find them — he wasn’t that stupid) and some cove had suggested that Bennett might also have been transported. Swattled at the time, Malcolm had dismissed the idea, but when he’d sobered up he’d decided it had merit. Bennett was as flash as the rest of the family, and God knew he had some disgusting perversions that were bound to get him thrown in gaol sooner or later. Why wouldn’t he end up on a transport to New South Wales? And the more he’d thought about it, the more convinced of the possibility he’d become. It would explain a lot — the family had heard nothing at all from Bennett since he’d left all those years earlier. Within a week, he was one hundred per cent sure Bennett had been transported.

Malcolm assumed he’d be able to locate Jonah through the proper convict authorities. Bennett, too, though he thought it highly likely he’d find his younger brother chained to the wall in the darkest, most rat-infested recesses of some dank New South Wales gaol. And if Bennett couldn’t, or wouldn’t, come back to England, then that was all right with Malcolm — they didn’t need all of him, just the skin off his back. He knew Jonah wouldn’t be averse to a bit of violence; Jonah loathed Bennett as much as he did himself.

He’d booked a cabin with money borrowed from one of his sisters, telling her he was off to America to find his fortune. She’d laughed at him, but lent it to him anyway — at eighteen per cent interest. They were all the same, the women in his family. He’d dared not ask his mother for a loan: she would have wanted to know what it was for, and he’d never been able to lie to her face. Not when it really mattered. He thought she might miss him, though, while he was away. She really did love her children, no matter what else you said about her. It’s just that she showed it in such backhanded ways.

Chapter Six

Mid-September 1831, Sydney Town

Nora Barrett hoisted baby Lewis higher onto her hip and knocked on the front door of Elizabeth Hislop’s Argyle Street establishment. She didn’t particularly approve of prostitution, but accepted it as inevitable, given human nature. The nature of men, that was. She didn’t entirely approve of Harrie’s friend Friday, either, partly because she drank far too much, but mostly because of her job. Surely the girl could learn to use a needle and thread to sew a couple of pieces of fabric together or something, rather than earn her money opening her legs for all and sundry? On the other hand, Friday was extremely attractive and Harrie said she made huge amounts doing what she did, so in a way Nora didn’t blame her. And she was, Nora had to admit, often kind and unfailingly loyal, if a bit rough around the edges, and Harrie adored her. Harrie adored Sarah Green as well, whom, no matter how hard she tried, Nora found very difficult to get to know. They were as thick as thieves, the three of them.

So why, then, were Friday and Sarah being so damned blind?

Nora heard heels clacking across floorboards inside, and the door was opened by a short, round woman in her fifties wearing an expensive wig and a beautifully made dress of very fine indigo worsted with black braid accents.

This must be the famous madam herself, Nora thought. For a moment she wished she’d worn one of her own better dresses, then chastised herself for her vanity; she was here about Harrie, not to show off. She wondered who had made the woman’s gown.

‘Good afternoon,’ she said. ‘I’d like to speak to Friday Woolfe, please. Is she at work today?’

‘May I enquire who’s calling?’

Cautious, Nora thought, and quite rightly so. I could be anyone. I could be the police in disguise with a rented baby. She stifled a tiny smile and hoisted Lewis again. ‘My name is Nora Barrett. Friday is a friend of Harrie Clarke’s, and I’m Harrie’s mistress. It’s Harrie I’d like to discuss with Friday.’

The woman in the doorway relaxed slightly. ‘I’m afraid Friday isn’t here today. I’m Friday’s mistress, Elizabeth Hislop. Very nice to meet you, Mrs Barrett. I’ve met Harrie. Lovely girl.’

‘She is.’

‘Would you like to come through?’ Elizabeth asked. ‘I can take you around to the hotel. Friday may be in her room there.’

Nora hesitated.

‘Unless you’d rather walk around to the Harrington Street entrance?’

Telling herself not to be so silly, Nora said, ‘Thank you, I’m obliged.’

Nora followed Elizabeth through the house, along the alleyway to the Siren’s Arms and up the hotel stairs to Friday’s room.

‘It’s her regular day off so she may have gone out,’ Elizabeth warned as she knocked.

But Friday was in. ‘Hello, Mrs Barrett,’ she said as she opened the door. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I’ve come to talk to you about Harrie.’

Friday was instantly on the alert. ‘Why? Is she all right? Sorry, come in.’

Nora said to Elizabeth, ‘Thank you for your help, Mrs Hislop.’

‘My pleasure, Mrs Barrett.’ Elizabeth lingered a moment, then retreated down the hall.

Friday closed the door. ‘What’s happened? Is Harrie all right?’

Eyeing the open bottle of gin on Friday’s nightstand, Nora put Lewis on the floor, where he immediately started crawling around, hampering himself by kneeling on his gown. Without waiting for an invitation Nora sat in the chair at Friday’s dressing table.

‘No, she isn’t all right,’ she said. ‘And I really thought you and Sarah would have noticed by now. You are supposed to be her best friends.’

Friday sat on the bed, slightly taken aback by Nora’s sharp-tongued opening salvo. ‘Well, she isn’t happy, we know that. Did she tell you about the business with James and his housegirl?’

Nora shook her head.

‘We heard, well, Harrie heard that James has been sleeping with her. I know that upset her badly.’

‘When was this?’ Nora stood to rescue Lewis, who’d hauled himself to his feet and was tottering along clinging to a chest of drawers.

‘About two months ago.’ Friday poured herself a drink. ‘Would you like some gin?’

‘No, thank you. So, July? Late July?’

Friday thought about it. ‘Something like that.’

‘That would fit.’ Nora plonked Lewis in the middle of the floor again. ‘Did you know that a week after that, she went out and got drunk?’

‘What? Harrie? She did not.’

‘She did so. I don’t know where she went or who she was with, but she came home in a complete state, drunk as you like and sprawling all over the stairs. Thank God she got up to bed without waking George. And she was as sick as a dog the next morning.’

‘She never said a word.’ Friday shook her head in amazement. ‘Mind you, after that last time with Matthew, maybe she was embarrassed. That’s twice now. I’d like to know who she went out with.’

‘Yes, so would I. Because she’s had her head in the po just about every morning since.’

Friday stared at her. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, you silly girl, that I think she might be expecting.’

‘Expecting? As in …?’