A Tattooed Heart

by Deborah Challinor

  Was this Bella’s ghost, returned in a raging fury already to punish them for every nasty word they’d said behind her back and all the things they’d stolen from her?

  The apparition leapt from the windowsill, vaulted onto the bed and launched itself at Becky, landing on her back.

  Terror-stricken, Becky hurled herself against a bureau, screaming, ‘Get it off! Get it off!’

  But the blade, sharp as a cut-throat razor (Louisa saw that in fact it was a cut-throat razor), slid effortlessly across her throat and she fell to her knees, hands clamped to the wound and gurgling as a river of blood pumped down her front. Rolling gracefully off her back, Aria sprang to her bare feet.

  Friday tried groggily to rise but couldn’t. Then she was hauled upwards, the neckline of her dress tearing, and felt Louisa’s forearm tight around her neck and the barrel of Bella’s pistol jammed against her temple.

  ‘Drop that blade or I’ll shoot her!’ Louisa demanded, panic shrill in her voice.

  ‘You drop that pistol,’ Aria countered steadily.

  ‘I will, I’ll kill her!’

  Friday sagged, blinking furiously at the floor, trying to gather her wits, then threw her head back as violently as she could, hitting Louisa in the face, hard. Crying out, Louisa dropped the pistol, Friday tore herself out of her grasp, and Aria pounced.

  But Louisa dodged her, lunging for the door. Aria grabbed at her hair, snagging a handful and jerking her back with an audible crack so that Louisa’s feet shot out from under her and she landed on her backside. Casually, as though dispatching a pig, Aria leant over her and cut her throat as she had Becky’s. Louisa let out one final liquid sigh, flopped slowly forwards, then sideways, then lay still.

  At the base of the bureau, Becky lay in a pool of thick crimson blood, eyes wide, seeing nothing.

  Clutching her throbbing head, Friday stared in horror at it all — there was gore everywhere — then wrinkled her nose at the foul smell she’d only just noticed. Someone had shat themselves. ‘God almighty, Aria.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did you have to?’

  ‘Yes. They were going to kill you.’

  Friday touched Aria’s blood-soaked shift. ‘Is this yours, or theirs?’

  ‘I think mostly the dogs’. They are dead also.’

  Dabbing at the spot where the candlestick had connected, now a great swollen lump weeping watery blood, Friday felt very sorry for her poor, misused head. Suddenly dizzy, she sat on the chair beside the bed.

  Aria stared briefly down at Bella’s ravaged corpse. ‘She does not look like much now, does she?’ Then she busied herself ferreting through a drawer until she found a little engraved silver case containing Lucifers. ‘This is very pretty,’ she said admiringly, and lit a wall lamp. It had grown really quite dark in the room.

  Belatedly grasping the gravity of the situation, Friday said, ‘Christ, what are we going to do? What will we say about As she waved at Becky and Louisa, a question occurred to her. ‘How did you know I was here?’

  ‘I followed you. I have been outside the window for hours. You threw a piss-sodden sheet on me.’

  ‘That’s so rude of you. And typical!’

  ‘Not when you are doing a stupid thing. You were almost killed, Friday.’

  ‘But why follow me? God, can’t I have any privacy?’

  Aria parked her bloody hands on her ample hips, pulling the gore-streaked chemise tight over her shapely figure, and blew her tangled hair off her face with an impatient upwards breath. ‘Because I love you. I could not bear it if something happened to you. My life without you would be a life . . . without colour, without lustre and without spirit.’

  Friday felt her face redden. No one had ever said anything quite so lovely to her. ‘Well, I love you, too.’

  ‘Good. I am glad that is settled.’

  ‘Me, too,’ Friday said emphatically. She wanted to say a lot more as well, mostly about not wanting to end up dying sick, unloved and alone like Bella, but this was hardly the time nor the place. She gestured at all the mess. ‘Now, what about this lot? Could you hear what Bella was saying?’

  ‘Not much of it.’

  ‘She wanted to be buried as a woman, so that means there can’t be an undertaker if her secret’s to stay a secret. That was really important to her.’

  ‘What does it matter,’ Aria said scornfully, ‘now that she is dead?’

  ‘It just does, all right? It’s to do with her . . . dignity. You’re always on about that. Sort of like when your Uncle Whiro got pinched. It’d be the same as that.’

  ‘It would not.’

  ‘But you know what I mean. The shame, if someone found out she wasn’t a woman.’

  Aria grunted.

  Friday suddenly realised what might be troubling her. ‘Are you angry because Bella’s dead and now you can’t have your utu for her stealing Uncle Whiro?’

  Aria was silent for ages.

  ‘Aria?’

  ‘Quiet. I am thinking.’

  Friday let her gaze slip to the bodies of Becky and Louisa, lying in twin pools of congealing blood, already crawling with flies. What Aria had done here was a double murder, even if it had been in self-defence. Sort of. Christ, they were in trouble.

  Finally Aria said, ‘No, I am not angry. There is another way to claim utu.’

  Nervously, Friday asked, ‘How?’

  ‘I will stop her spirit from walking.’

  ‘Her ghost?’ Oh God: the business with Rachel had been bad enough.

  ‘I heard her say about sending the will to her mother. She must love her very much?’

  ‘Must do.’

  Aria said, ‘Then I will make sure Bella’s spirit can never visit the one she loves the most.’

  Friday stared at her: Jesus, what a nasty, vindictive thing to do. ‘How do you do that?’

  ‘Burn the corpse before it has received the appropriate burial rites.’ Aria raised her hand as Friday started to object. ‘Wait. Listen. I will have utu, Bella’s secret will be safe forever, and we can burn these two fat drudges at the same time to hide the fact that I have killed them. We will have to burn them anyway. Bella is too skinny to make flames hot enough to turn her bones to ashes and disguise what she was. It is a very good solution.’

  Friday felt sick. ‘But burning! It’s a bit brutal.’ As though cutting Louisa’s and Becky’s throats with a razor hadn’t been. ‘And won’t the neighbours see?’

  ‘So what? We will be gone by then.’

  Grimacing, Friday looked around the room, wondering where — or even how — to start.

  ‘We will need oil, of the sort used in lamps,’ Aria said. ‘There will be a supply. Go and look.’

  Friday did, and found a small barrel of whale oil in a cupboard beneath the stairs. When she returned to Bella’s room, Aria had hefted Louisa’s and Becky’s bodies onto the bed, their gaping necks still leaking slightly.

  She tipped Bella’s corpse onto its side, poured oil over the sheets, rolled her back, then doused her liberally.

  ‘Help me lift these two over her,’ she said to Friday.

  What a nightmare, Friday thought: condemned to eternity with Louisa Coutts and Becky Hoddle lying on top of you. While she took the feet, Aria grabbed the heads and together they lifted Louisa and Becky onto Bella. They weighed a ton.

  ‘We should put the dogs on also,’ Aria suggested. ‘It will look suspicious, dogs with their throats cut outside a house fire. But I will need help. They are heavy.’

  Friday nodded, thinking, Jesus, is this ever going to end? Outside, even though night had well and truly fallen, she could see the dogs lying as still as stone on the ground in puddles of black gore. A small battalion of rats scattered as they approached. She shook her head. How the hell had Aria managed to kill them without being mauled to death?

  ‘They’re still chained,’ she said.

  ‘Open the collars.’

  Again they took an end each, the dogs proving almost as weigh
ty as Becky and Louisa, dragged them to the window, their big, ugly heads bumping along the ground, hoisted them inside and dumped them on the bed. Friday went back over their path and kicked gravel over the dogs’ blood.

  Aria lit all three remaining wall lamps, emptied the last of the oil over the pile of human and canine firewood, and around the bed.

  ‘Are you ready?’

  Friday nodded, though she very much was not looking forward to seeing what would happen next. ‘Should we say something?’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I will,’ Aria said. ‘Good riddance.’

  But silently Friday wished Bella the peace she’d craved for so long. As for Becky and Louisa, they could go to hell. It would serve them right for being such crooked, two-faced bitches to everyone in Newgate.

  Aria lit a Lucifer and walked around the bed, touching it to cotton collars and cuffs, shawl fringes, the lace edging of Bella’s shift, and to hair. She did it again and again until the tiny flames caught, turned the whale oil to gas, and ignited. Within ten minutes flames were dancing across the bodies and the smell of burning hair and cooking meat filled the room. Friday covered her mouth and nose with her skirt, her gorge rising. Soon after that, with an almighty woof, flames leapt up and caught the velvet drapes hanging from the bed’s canopy, then spread to the wall, consuming the wallpaper and blackening the plaster and lath beneath. At that point, the fire in the bed began to burn with a truly hellish ferocity.

  They watched for a minute more, and then it got too hot.

  ‘Time to go,’ Aria said.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Elizabeth tapped page three of Tuesday’s edition of the Sydney Gazette. ‘You two wouldn’t know anything about this, would you?’

  ‘What?’ Friday replied, at the same time as Aria blinked and said, ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘Bella Shand’s house burning down last night, apparently with her and her servants inside. Though according to this, the police are finding it difficult to work out who was who, there’s so little left of the bodies.’

  Friday gasped. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really.’

  ‘Tragic,’ Aria said.

  Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed. ‘Well, where were you yesterday afternoon? I looked for you both and couldn’t find you.’

  ‘I was visiting,’ Friday said. ‘It was my day off.’

  ‘And I am sorry I was not here but I had business to attend to,’ Aria said. ‘A long-standing matter, but it has been resolved now.’

  Elizabeth glowered at them: they stared back, gazes unwavering. ‘It’s the talk of the town, you know.’

  ‘Already?’ Friday’s eyebrows went up.

  ‘Of course it is! Bella Shand was one of Sydney’s richest women and everyone wants to know who’ll inherit. Did she have children?’

  ‘How would I know?’

  ‘Well, I know you hated her guts, but you did spend nearly four months stuck on a ship with her. You must have found out something.’

  ‘I never heard mention of kids,’ Friday said. ‘Maybe she never met the right man.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. Nasty bitch. Mind you, Clarence Shand married her.’ Elizabeth tapped the paper again. ‘It says here the bodies are so badly disintegrated they’ll have to be buried in the same grave.’

  ‘Any mention of the circumstances being suspicious?’ Friday asked.

  ‘Should there be?’

  ‘Just wondering.’ If it had been her who’d killed Louisa and Becky, Friday thought, she might have told Elizabeth, but it wasn’t her place to tell Aria’s secrets.

  Elizabeth quoted, ‘At this juncture Senior Constable B Durrant of the Sydney Police opines that the fire, which destroyed much of the ground floor and half of the upper floor of the Cumberland Street house, may have started as the result of a spilt oil lamp, and that the inhabitants took refuge in the chamber in which their fire-ravaged bodies were discovered before being fatally overcome by toxic fumes.’

  ‘What about the funeral?’ Friday tried not to sound as worried as she felt.

  Elizabeth stared at her in horror. ‘Shit!’ She ran her finger down the lines of the newspaper report. ‘The remains will be interred this Friday at Devonshire Street cemetery. Due to the unusual circumstances, and the religious affiliations of two of the three deceased persons, the burials will take place in the Episcopal section of the cemetery. For funeral arrangements, please refer to the Public Notices. Oh, thank Christ for that!’ She tossed the paper onto her desk, the colour coming back to her face. ‘So, am I to assume you two have settled your differences?’

  Friday and Aria exchanged a glance and grinned. Aria said, ‘I will no longer be needing a separate room, thank you.’

  ‘And I’m getting a new tattoo to celebrate,’ Friday added.

  ‘Well, it’s about time. I was getting quite fed up with the pair of you moping about with long faces. A new tattoo where?’

  ‘Left leg. I was thinking about a crow, one of Harrie’s designs. Really stunning and dramatic. Well, you know her work. I was about to visit Leo just before Aria arrived, and then bloody Leary turned up again and all the rest of it. But actually, I might get something that stands for both of us. Sort of symbolic? Maybe I should go and see Harrie. I do fancy the idea of more birds. I mean, I’ve got the peacock and the phoenix already.’

  Elizabeth said, ‘Well, you know how the cullies like your tattoos. Will you still want your job, Aria? I’d be delighted to keep you on. You’ve been a Godsend.’

  ‘Yes, I would like to keep it, thank you.’

  Leaning back in her chair and settling her hands behind her head, Elizabeth said, ‘So, no more blackmail, Bella’s gone forever, you two’ve made up, young Matthew’s getting married. Life’s looking good, isn’t it? Honestly, what will we all have to worry about?’

  ‘Something will come along,’ Aria said.

  Elizabeth laughed. ‘That’s what I like about you, dear. You always have your shapely feet well and truly on the ground.’

  Jonah Leary had been stalking the Harrie girl and her wretched child for almost a month and hadn’t been able to get near them. Not a second passed when the kid didn’t have at least two people with her. It was impossible. He’d had his chance and those bloody women had stolen it from him, the bitches. He hadn’t even seriously hurt the big redhead because she was still trotting around as slutty as ever.

  But he wasn’t giving up. He’d sat in his poxy, rat-infested rented room on Kent Street drinking cheap rum and thought and thought, and realised there really was another way.

  Serafina Fortune.

  When she’d read his cards she’d seen something — more than she’d let on. He bloody well knew she had. She might, he’d suspected then and hoped now, even have seen where the gold was hidden.

  And if she had, he wouldn’t need to find the foul Bennett at all.

  Leo felt his cock stirring again.

  Serafina smiled into his chest. ‘What’s this, Mr Dundas? Not so knackered after all, then?’

  Apparently not, Leo thought, but I’ll pay for it tomorrow.

  ‘How fortunate,’ Serafina said, ‘because neither am I.’

  She rose up and nimbly straddled him, her unbound hair falling to her narrow waist, its rich treacle colour reflecting the warmth of the lamplight. As she leant down to him, she slid her long-nailed fingers through his grey chest hair then settled smooth lips on his, darting her tongue into his mouth. She was already deliciously slippery from their earlier sessions and he rubbed against her, feeling himself grow even harder. He did surprise himself sometimes. If he lifted her a little, perhaps he could pop himself inside her? Holding his breath in anticipation, he wriggled his hands beneath her buttocks and —

  ‘Ow!’ He clutched at his nipped ear.

  ‘We’re doing it my way this time,’ Serafina growled, showing her sharp little eyeteeth.

  Fine with him.

  She rolled off and settled hersel
f on hands and knees, turning her head to offer him the most invitingly lascivious smile. Leo’s cock gave a little bob of excitement.

  He positioned himself between her slim, spread thighs, and ran his hands over the Japanese-style tattoo adorning every inch of her skin from her neck to the backs of her knees. His work, on the flawless skin of his woman. Opening her with his fingers, he slid into her and she moaned quietly and pushed back onto him, hard: he thanked God they’d done it twice already, or he’d have exploded straight away.

  She sank to her elbows, spread her legs farther, and raised her bottom. Oh God, Leo thought, and dug his fingers into the soft flesh of her hips as he drove into her. She met him thrust for thrust, the muscles in her shapely back and buttocks flexing as he sweated and laboured over her. She wasn’t a noisy lover but he always knew when she was close, and she was close now. With a series of grunts she shoved back against him so forcefully he almost lost his balance. Grabbing her hair with one hand, he hung on until her spasms eased, then let go himself, erupting into her with such intensity it hurt.

  ‘Fuck me,’ he gasped, rolling away and collapsing.

  Serafina turned over, sat back against the headboard and fluffed out her hair. ‘I believe I just have. Shall I make you a cup of tea?’

  Just before Leo drifted off to sleep, his arm tucked around Serafina’s waist and his exhausted old cock snuggled against her lovely bottom, he caught himself wondering if he were getting too ancient for such feats of sexual endurance. That last time he really had thought his brains might explode out of his ears and now his legs felt like little piles of jelly. If her cottage caught fire, he’d just have to lie here and burn to a crisp because he didn’t have a hope in hell of getting up and running anywhere.

  Serafina, though; sometimes it seemed as though she had the capacity, and the desire, to go on all night, and he worried that one day he’d find his place in her bed taken by a younger man, some cove much closer to her own age. He’d asked her once — half a dozen times, to be honest — why she stayed with him when she could have her pick of younger men, and she’d never really given him a straight answer. But then, she rarely did give straight answers. The thing that mattered, he supposed, was that she did stay. But she still wouldn’t marry him.