A Tattooed Heart

by Deborah Challinor

  ‘No, he didn’t, smarty-pants, but I’ll tell you what he did do. When she was all alone in the orphanage, he married me so we could adopt her, bring her home and make her safe.’

  ‘Did you want to marry him?’

  ‘Yes, I did. Very much.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘That was after he rescued me from the lunatic asylum and nursed me back to health, but before he paid God knows how much to have you and Sophie and Anna brought out from England because he knew it would make me happy.’

  Nothing from Robbie this time.

  ‘He’s a good man, Robbie. Give him a chance. He’s giving you plenty of them.’

  Again, he wouldn’t meet her eye. ‘Why do you want to meet at Sarah’s and not here?’

  ‘Because Leary’s watching us, isn’t he?’

  It was quite crowded around Sarah’s dining table just after eight o’clock that night. Sarah, Adam, Harrie (with a sleepy, grumbling Charlotte on her knee), James, Friday, Aria and Leo took the chairs, while Walter, Robbie and Clifford sat on the floor. Clifford was delighted to be back in Sarah and Adam’s house, if a little confused, and ran around happily sniffing out all her favourite corners.

  ‘Can you tell us exactly what he said, lad?’ Leo asked.

  ‘Can’t remember it word for word,’ Robbie said from the floor, ‘but basically he offered me twenty quid to leave Charlotte at the gate on Sunday at five o’clock, and he’d pick her up.’

  ‘Makes her sound like a bag of dirty washing,’ Friday remarked.

  ‘And you agreed?’ Leo asked.

  ‘I said I’d think about it.’

  Sarah asked Harrie, ‘Why do you think he’s been watching you?’

  ‘Well, apparently he knew Robbie’s name, didn’t he, Robbie? And that he hasn’t exactly been getting on with James.’

  In the lamplight everyone saw Robbie redden.

  Harrie added, ‘So I think he’s been watching and talking to the neighbours.’

  ‘Sounds like Leary’s style,’ Leo said.

  ‘It is kidnap he was hoping to perpetrate, you know,’ James said. ‘The kidnap of my daughter. That’s a hanging offence. Though in my view that would be too good for the . . . swine,’ he finished lamely, good manners getting the better of him. ‘Perhaps we really should go to —’

  ‘No police,’ Harrie, Friday and Sarah said in unison.

  Friday poured more gin into her tea. ‘What an idiot, but. Did he think none of you’d notice her out by the gate all by herself like a little tiny hedgewhore touting for business? If he’s been watching the house, he’d know she’s hardly ever out of your sight.’

  ‘No,’ Robbie said. ‘I think he meant I should play with her in the garden or something, and at five just hand her over when he turned up.’

  ‘And he’d give you the twenty quid then?’ Leo said.

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘That’s a hell of a lot of money,’ Adam commented. ‘Must have been tempting.’

  Robbie gave him a fairly filthy look. ‘Not when it comes to family.’

  ‘You’re a good boy, you know, Robbie,’ James said. ‘I can see a lot of Harrie in you.’

  Robbie went red again, but for a different reason this time.

  Adam banged the palm of his hand on the table, giving Friday such a fright she spilt her tea. ‘So, what are we going to do?’ he demanded. ‘Ambush the bastard when he turns up on Sunday?’

  ‘I’m not leaving her sitting out there like bait!’ Harrie exclaimed. ‘To hell with that!’

  ‘You’ll be lucky,’ Leo muttered. ‘Jonah Leary’s as slippery as a greased pig and canny as a fox. He won’t just waltz up. He’ll have a good look first and if anything looks awry, he won’t show himself. He won’t assume Robbie’s not talked.’

  ‘If he thought Robbie might talk, why did he approach him in the first place?’ Aria said. ‘Would that not just be showing his hand unnecessarily? He has lost the element of surprise now. We know he is here.’

  ‘If he is that cunning,’ James said, ‘perhaps he’s gambled on us all getting together somewhere other than our house to discuss the matter, and he’s gone there now hoping to find Charlotte.’

  They all stared at one another across the table, the lamplight rendering pale faces even more pallid.

  ‘Oh God,’ Harrie breathed, clutching Charlotte so tightly the little girl began to grizzle, ‘I’m so glad I brought her with us.’

  ‘Who is at your place?’ Leo asked.

  James replied, ‘Sophie and Anna, and Daisy and Elsa, and Matthew, of course. They’ll be all right with Matthew.’

  ‘Unless he’s gone out to visit Lucy,’ Harrie said. ‘He was dying to tell her about his cottage.’

  ‘Shit,’ Friday swore. ‘We’ll go.’ She shoved back her chair, half rose, then crashed to the floor.

  Clifford burst into excited barking while Walter and Robbie stifled giggles behind their hands. No one else laughed.

  ‘You’re swattled,’ Leo remarked.

  ‘I’m not.’ Friday picked herself up. ‘I stood on my hem.’

  Leo stood. ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘Do you not believe I can look out for her?’ Aria asked. ‘Or deal with this Leary worm if we encounter him?’

  ‘Aye, lass, I’m sure you can do both. But I’ve a bone to pick with Jonah Leary. So, if you don’t mind?’

  Aria gave a queenly nod of consent.

  ‘Be careful!’ Harrie called as the door shut behind them.

  ‘Bloody Friday,’ Sarah muttered.

  Adam said, ‘If Leary’s as smart as Leo and James think, he might not turn up on Sunday, but on the off-chance he does, Robbie should have Charlotte at the gate, waiting.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Harrie, but it’s the only way to draw him out. She’ll be all right. She’ll be safe with Robbie.’

  ‘But what if Leary snatches her!’

  ‘He won’t,’ Robbie said, moving from the floor to sit at the table. ‘I won’t let him get that close.’

  ‘And we’ll have nabbed him by then,’ Adam said.

  ‘Who’s we?’ Harrie demanded.

  ‘All of us. We’ll . . . I don’t know, hide somewhere.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous! There’s nowhere to hide on Hunter Street!’

  ‘Well, if there’s nowhere for us to hide, there’s nowhere for him to hide either,’ Sarah said.

  ‘No! I can’t allow it. I won’t!’

  James scooted his chair across to Harrie’s, making a horrendous noise on the floorboards, and pulled her to him. ‘My dearest, please, don’t fret. It will be all right. She won’t come to any harm, I promise. But you do agree we have to do something to put an end to this business. Don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but how? How will we end it?’

  And that was the very essence of the matter, wasn’t it? How were they going to make sure that Jonah Leary never threatened Charlotte ever again?

  Chapter Ten

  ‘Fuck!’ Friday went down again. Scrambling to her knees and peering at her scraped palms in the moonlight, she swore on, cursing George Street’s potholes, its gradient, and any stones bigger than a pebble.

  ‘Will you be quiet?’ Leo growled.

  ‘It’s this bloody road. Getting worse by the day.’

  ‘We’re not falling over. But then we haven’t guzzled half a pint of gin. Aren’t you supposed to be laying off it?’

  ‘Ah, shut up.’ Friday’s right hand — her strongest whip hand — was bleeding quite heavily. She licked it. Lucky she was too mashed to feel anything.

  ‘Shut up yourself.’

  ‘No, you shut up.’

  ‘You shut up, if you want me to start your new tattoo on Thursday.’

  ‘Maybe I don’t. Maybe I’ll go somewhere else. You’re not the only tattooer in Sydney, you know.’

  ‘I’m the only good one. And it’s “tattooist”, you fool, not “tattooer”.’

  ‘Stop it,’ Aria demand
ed, spinning around and glaring. ‘I am sick of listening to both of you. You,’ she said, pointing at Friday, ‘have drunk too much again. And you —’ Leo this time ‘— are legging her on.’

  ‘“Egging”,’ Leo said. ‘It’s “egging” her on.’

  They turned into Hunter Street. ‘And yes, you are right,’ Aria went on, ‘she is not supposed to be drinking alcohol. She has promised to stop but she has not.’

  ‘I’ve cut down, but,’ Friday insisted.

  A couple passed and Leo politely raised his hat, muttering, ‘Doesn’t look like it.’

  They walked in silence until they reached Harrie and James’s house. The drapes were drawn in several rooms but in those in which the windows remained uncovered, waxy yellow light shone both upstairs and downstairs. Nothing seemed amiss.

  ‘What is the time?’ Aria asked.

  Leo checked his watch. ‘Can’t quite see. A quarter past nine?’

  They crossed the street and walked up the carriageway towards the silent house. James’s horses — two now for the carriage and one for riding — snorted and stamped quietly in their stables.

  As they passed the carriage house, a tall figure materialised suddenly out of the shadows, barring their way and growling, ‘Who goes there?’

  Friday leapt a foot into the air. ‘Shit!’

  Isaac Longbone lowered his pitchfork. ‘Beg pardon, Miss Friday.’ Touching the peak of his tatty old cap, he added, ‘Miss Aria, Mr Dundas.’

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Friday demanded. ‘You bloody near scared the shit outta me.’

  ‘Beg pardon,’ Isaac said again. ‘Someone were sneaking round out here not long ago. Thought he were back.’

  ‘Around the house? Did you get a good look at him?’ Leo asked.

  ‘Not me. I just saw the arse of him when he run off. I b’lieve Mr Matthew saw him better.’

  ‘Isaac? Is that you?’ Matthew himself appeared out of the dark.

  ‘’Tis. Mr Dundas and Miss Friday and Miss Aria are here.’

  ‘What a relief. I thought it was that fellow again,’ Matthew said.

  Leo asked, ‘Did you see his face?’

  ‘More or less. Anna and Sophie and I were playing draughts in the parlour — I’ve been teaching them, you know — and Anna said she thought she heard someone out on the verandah, the front one, I mean, so I came out and had a look and was just in time to see someone whipping round the side of the house. So I went round the other way and pretty well banged into the bugger just outside the kitchen. Then he shot off and I heard Isaac shouting round by the carriage house, but by the time I got there, he’d disappeared.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘Well, it was dark and he had his hat pulled down, but I’d say his hair was black, and he was fairly scruffy-looking. You know, unshaven. And he had quite a prominent nose. A bit taller than me, I suppose.’

  Leo nodded. ‘Sounds like him all right.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Jonah Leary.’

  ‘The fellow who gave Harrie all that trouble last year? Oh. Oh.’

  ‘Oh’s right,’ Friday said. ‘He’s offered Robbie twenty quid to hand Charlotte over to him on Sunday.’

  ‘What?’ Matthew was aghast. ‘Robbie wouldn’t do that. Would he?’

  ‘’Course not. He told Harrie straight away.’

  ‘So what was Leary doing here tonight?’

  ‘We think looking for Charlotte,’ Aria said.

  Matthew looked confused. ‘But . . .’

  ‘Long story,’ Friday said. ‘Let’s go inside. I need a drink.’ Her hand was starting to sting now and she was sure that nothing but more alcohol would make it stop.

  The back door was locked.

  ‘That’s funny,’ Matthew said, digging out his key to let them all in.

  In the parlour they found Sophie and Anna crouching behind a sofa, each gripping a brass candlestick for protection, their big eyes staring up out of the shadows.

  ‘Oh, you poor little things,’ Matthew said, yanking the sofa away from the wall so they could crawl out. ‘It’s all right. Out you come.’

  Sophie said, ‘We thought he’d come back. We were going to bash his head in if he got in here.’

  ‘What brave girls,’ Aria said, nodding. ‘I am very impressed.’

  Helping herself to James’s brandy (while ignoring Aria’s and Leo’s pointed scowls), Friday asked, ‘Where’re Daisy and Elsa?’

  Anna said, ‘We said they should go and lock all the doors and windows.’

  Friday took an almighty swig of brandy. ‘You poor wee sausages. You’ve been looking after yourselves for a long time, haven’t you?’ she said, then burst into tears.

  Everyone stared at her, nonplussed.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said after a minute, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. ‘Don’t know why that happened.’

  She did, actually, but she’d never be able to put it into words. They reminded her so much of her younger self — always on edge, always looking over her shoulder, always having to be ready to defend herself. It was such an exhausting way to live. It made you old before your time.

  Aria gave her a quick hug and a handkerchief.

  Leo had just finished explaining what they’d assumed to be Leary’s ploy that evening, when James, Harrie, Charlotte, Robbie, Walter and Clifford arrived.

  ‘Isaac said the damn fellow was here,’ James said as he threw his hat onto an armchair. ‘Is everyone all right?’

  ‘The girls got a bit of a fright,’ Matthew replied, ‘but yes, we’re all fine. He ran off.’

  ‘Do you think he was trying to break in?’

  ‘Who knows? He didn’t get the chance. I’m just glad I was in. And Isaac, of course. He was marvellous.’

  ‘I’m glad you were here, too, Matthew,’ Harrie said, giving him a big kiss, which made him blush. ‘Thank you. I thought you might have gone to visit Lucy to tell her about the cottage.’

  ‘No. I . . . no, not tonight.’

  James said, not unkindly, ‘Lose your nerve, did you?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Never mind. Always tomorrow. Well, we’ve decided we’re going to need everyone’s help on Sunday, though I still think we should bring the police in.’ Shouted down by at least four people, he raised his hands in resigned agreement. ‘All right, all right. Then this is what we’re going to do.’

  And he told them.

  Friday crouched practically in the middle of a big bush in the front garden of someone’s property, not quite opposite Harrie and James’s house. She was horrendously hung over and had been all day, and wished she were anywhere else but where she was. The weather was unseasonably — and unfairly — warm for mid-September, and sweat trickled down her sides and back like armies of ants. Or maybe there were armies of ants tramping around under her clothes.

  She’d been in the bush for probably only three-quarters of an hour, waiting for Leary to show his ugly face, but it felt like at least three, and all she could think about was how sick she felt. A vomit wasn’t far away, surely. Aria had made her eat before they’d come out, nagging her all the while about how irresponsible she was to have got so swattled last night, but that’d made no difference to how roughly the bread and cheese had gone down. And now it was about to come back up; she could feel it, jammed just under her ribs, waiting to fly out at any moment. Which meant she’d have to sit next to it till either Leary did turn up and try to steal Charlotte, in which case she’d need to run down the street and tackle him, or he wouldn’t and she’d be forced to squat here in it for God knew how long, till James decided to call the whole thing off.

  It was ridiculous. Leary wasn’t going to turn up. No self-respecting kidnapper would take a kid in broad daylight, then stroll casually down the road with it screaming its head off. If she knew Leary, and admittedly she didn’t, he’d’ve planned to take Charlotte on Friday night, except Matthew and Isaac had scared him off.

  On the other hand,
he might be stupider than everyone was giving him credit for, which was why they were all hiding in various places around Hunter Street, waiting. And maybe he was that stupid, because he hadn’t known Charlotte wasn’t at home on Friday night, had he?

  She shifted uncomfortably — a particularly sharp branch was poking into the small of her back. Suddenly her mouth filled with spit, her stomach clenched and she let out a sharp, crackling burp: oh God, here it comes. She turned her head, branches scratching her face, and tried to lean over, but she was trapped. Trapped in a cage of sticks and twigs and about to be covered in spew! If she kicked the bucket in here, she might never be found. When the bush eventually died and they chopped it down they’d find her skeleton, branches growing through her ribs and poking out of her eye sockets, nothing left to show who she’d been except maybe the faded tatters of her dress, her pocket watch and her gold earrings, just like Gil Hislop.

  She burped rancidly again but the urge to vomit gradually subsided and her insides settled back into place. Christ. She didn’t know what was worse — needing to spew, or not being able to. What was the time? Surely it must be nearly five o’clock? She pressed down a branch, giving herself a view of the street. Empty. No, here came someone. With difficulty she manoeuvred herself off her backside onto her knees, in the process letting out a silent but reeking fart beneath her skirts. Vindictively she thought, that’ll get rid of the ants down my back. Then her guts rumbled ominously. Oh, for fuck’s sake.

  The cove on the street wasn’t Leary. She tried to see if she could spot any of the others. She hoped not, because if she could, Leary would, too. Isaac was up in his little room over the carriage house, with an unimpeded view of Harrie and James’s front yard and the gate, James was waiting in the front hall of the house peering through the leadlights, and Harrie was a dithering mess upstairs. Sarah, Adam, Leo and Walter were concealed in various places along the street in both directions — not that there were many places to hide, as most property-owners had industriously cleared their sections, but there were trees and bushes, and a few piles of lumber and what have you lying about — while Aria had made herself invisible farther down where Hunter intersected with Bligh and then Castlereagh streets, and Matthew, who’d drawn the short straw, was no doubt holding his nose on the corner of Pitt Street, not far from the Tank Stream.