Free The Secret Fate of Mary Watson by Judy Johnson

among the Chinamen. Then the hospital. Then an unmarked grave.’
    ‘Stop fighting or I’ll put you both in a hessian bag and throw you in the river, like the squawling cats you are,’ Charley says, without turning.
    ‘I’d rather have my own bag,’ I say coolly. ‘I might catch something, otherwise.’
    Nicole sticks her tongue out of the side of her mouth. She looks remarkably like a cud-chewing cow. I tell her so.
    Charley intervenes again. ‘Nicole, go and open the front door. Mary, start playing the piano. It is what I pay you for.’
    Nicole flounces away, buoyed by the many petticoats she’ll take off later in the night for some drunken prospector at the rate of one handful of gold dust apiece.
    ‘I said I want to talk to you,’ I remind Charley.
    ‘And I say go to work. Come to see me on your break.’
    ‘Louise. Out of the way!’ Charley holds both hands palm up in exasperation. Louise, the resident carpet snake, is unruffled. Leisurely she flows, like a patterned river, between his legs, thencurls into a fat Cumberland sausage in her favourite spot just under the trough’s drainhole where the slow drips of alcohol ping off her skin.
    ‘I know why you introduced me to Bob Watson,’ I say.
    This works. Heccy looks up, startled. Charley exhales noisily through his nose.
    ‘Come to my office.’ He takes off his apron and folds it neatly.
     
    He closes the door behind us. There’s a rich, mahogany silence, at odds with the chaos outside. The phantoms of fine cigars and snifters of cognac have made soft, expensive connections with the rosewood table. He opens his polished case and pulls out a cigar. He takes the key from around his neck, bends over and unlocks the drawer that holds his float of bribery money, paid to customs officers on duty when one of Charley’s special deliveries turns up on the dock. He extracts a gadget that looks like a walnut crusher. Nips the end of his cigar and reaches for his matches. He neglects to lock the drawer again, and I infer he’s distracted.
    ‘This could wait,’ he says.
    ‘I don’t think it can wait, Charley.’
    The sky’s bucket upturns on the roof and I have to bide my time for a few seconds until the first deafening gush becomes an ordinary deluge.
    ‘I’ve heard you, when I clean up the tables at night, talking with your cronies in here. Knight, that underling of the customs sub-collector; Douglas from the telegraph office. And Müller, butcher and under-the-counter trader par excellence . It’s not the price of sausages you’re discussing.’
    ‘What exactly have you heard, chérie ?’
    ‘Nothing specific.’
    His eyes relax back in their hammocks of fat.
    ‘It’s difficult to make out every word through the symphony of moans and bedsprings coming from upstairs. Tell me, do the girls get paid more for melodrama?’
    He taps his nose. ‘Every man likes to feel he is a stallion.’
    ‘More ass than stallion if you ask me.’
    ‘But no one does ask you. You are, how you say, left on the shelf?’
    ‘Spare me your sparrow pecks.’
    ‘Stop wasting my time. Say what you must.’
    ‘I’ve heard you speculate about the prices of gold and opium. Passing steamers. Drops in the ocean in kerosene tins in the middle of the night. Knight’s an important man to consult on matters of avoiding import and export duty, isn’t he? And what does Douglas bring to the party? Did I hear something about telegraphic codes? A Playfair cipher? I imagine you think you have it all covered: sea, air and ground?’
    ‘You have no shame,’ he tells me. ‘Listening at keyholes. You insult not only Charley Boule, but the protector of our lawful oceans and the guardian of our vital communication channels.’
    ‘What’s Müller?’ I ask. ‘The feeder of our hungry bellies? Overacting, Charley.’ I tap my own nose. ‘There’s no one eavesdropping on this conversation.’
    He lowers his outrage a couple of notches, but keeps a firm hold on his paranoia. ‘How