'I could take it for you.'

'I'm sure. But you're so busy. Didn't I read in the Herald about some illegal Kanakas escaping from the Stanley when she was wrecked in that cyclone? And what about that dreadful business with Nicole, Charley's girl? I daresay you'll be applying some intense policework to the murder investigation.'

My sarcasm pa.s.ses over his head and floats gently out to sea. He straightens his shoulders, managerially.

'All I need, really. Women of the night going off with the wrong man. Blacks on the rampage. And as if that isn't enough, ten Tanna Island Kanakas on the loose. Though I suspect by now they've all succ.u.mbed to the fever. Or snakebite. Or the Myalls.'

My attention hooks on the only interesting piece of information in his litany of complaint. 'Do you know who killed Nicole?'

He taps his nose conspiratorially. 'Not quite yet.'

'Sub-Inspector Brooke must have thoroughly briefed you, then?'

I do my best to sound impressed, even a little dazed, at how the wheels of justice can turn so swiftly. But he shakes his head, unwilling to give Jocelyn Brooke any credit.

'The bare bones only,' he says. 'No, it wasn't Brooke's detective work, but evidence found on the body. Don't press me for further information, young Mary. It's an ongoing police investigation and therefore hush-hush. Let's just say we're pursuing a strong lead.'

As though either of them could catch up with a strong lead even if it dawdled. If he'd just tell me what evidence they have, I could probably figure it out myself in my spare time. Distractedly, I push the hair back from my sweaty forehead.

'What's the matter with your hand?' he asks.

'Just a rash.' I close the angry palm and look up at him expectantly. He seems slow in his responses and a little unsteady on his feet. I wonder if he doesn't have a touch of sun fever. 'Captain Roberts, Inspector?'

'Oh, yes. Blackbird's in Townsville for repainting. I don't think he'll be putting out until well into the new year. But I imagine he could enlist some other vessel pa.s.sing through to pick up the missing item.'

'Yes, I expect so,' I say lightly. But it's not what I wanted to hear.

I know better than to send a telegram to Roberts. He made it clear that would be only for emergencies. But even so ... well into the new year! By then Bob will have almost certainly asked me to marry him. I need a lucky card, and I need it now. If Roberts decides on someone else for his signaller after I've said yes to Bob, I could finish my life as a sea-slug fisherman's wife, stuck on a vile little island with no prospects at all. And no way to move on.

But ... I do have a chance. I've told Roberts I can do it. He's all but said he'll trust me with the job. All but said ...

I need solid confirmation. And soon.

My palms are raging again. Nothing to do but scratch.

15.

There comes a time in any girl's life

when she needs a woman-to-woman talk.

From the secret diary of Mary Watson 16TH DECEMBER 1879.

It's nine at night. I'm not lying in wait for Laura; I've just slipped out the back door on my break to get some fresh air. I'm standing in the shadows when I see her tottering back into the light, having visited the privy. On the spur of the moment, I decide it's as good a time as any to ask her about Bob. She's as bright as a Christmas decoration, humming some carol to herself. She doesn't see me in my brown dress, lost in the garish colour of her own world. I wait until she reaches the halo of kerosene light near the door, then reach out for the sleeve on her low-cut red blouse. She jumps.

'Jesus Christ in a yak cart! Why yer sneakin' round like a murderer?' She pulls away.

I wrinkle my nose a little at her acrid perfume. 'I want to talk, Laura.'

'Well, I don't wanna talk, Mary Oxnam.'

She straightens herself. Readjusts her bosom. She wears a pretty pink ribbon around her neck; rouge, like two fat coins, painted on her cheeks. Her hair curls fetchingly around the contours of her face. A pretty face, I must admit. The same shape as mine, but finer-boned, so that the overall effect is one of fragile strength rather than belligerence. I can see why Bob would be drawn to her.

'Be careful out here in the dark,' I say. 'Take someone with you when you go to the privy. You don't want to end up like Nicole.'

'What kinda b.a.s.t.a.r.d ...' Her painted eyes spring a leak. 'I'm gunna blubber now and muck up me face.'

I offer her my handkerchief.

'She didn' do nuthin' to n.o.body, that girl. Sweet as the day is long.' She blows her nose noisily, then tries to hand the handkerchief back.

'Keep it.'

She nods once, gives a rough sniff, and pokes the crumpled material between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Then she remembers who she's talking to. 'What d'ya want from me, Mary Oxnam?'

'I want to ask you about Bob Watson.'

Fruit bats start up an ear-sc.r.a.ping click-screech in the dark trees above us.

'I ain't see'd him fer a year.'

'Yes, I know. Charley told me. But it's what happened when you did see him that interests me.'

She brings a finger up to her painted lips, taps the small indentation under her nose. 'Ya wanna know if he'll rough ya up, do ya? Well, what goes on between the sheets is between me client and me. Charley says not to tell or half the hoi polloi from up the Hill would be a laughin' stock.'

'This is different. Bob and I might be getting married.'

Inside, someone plays a piano accordion. The sound wheezes in and out. A man laughs, huge as the moon. The high tinkle of broken gla.s.s.

She smoothes down her hair, touches the ribbon around her neck. 'I can see yer stuck, ya silly b.i.t.c.h. In one way I feel sorry for ya, and in another I wish it was me in yer place. Go on, p.i.s.s yerself. It's a big joke, ain't it? Me and Bob. But he told me he loved me. Not many of 'em say that.'

'I daresay they don't.'

Now there's singing, drunken and off pitch, picking up the rough, pleated squeeze of the music. She searches for the slightest hint of a smirk on my face, then relaxes, seemingly satisfied it's not there.

'I guess he didn't mean it, though,' she continues. 'He didn't come back, did he? He woulda come back, wouldn't he? If it were true what he said?'

'Yes.'

'They're b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, ain't they, men? Or don't ya know that yet, Mary Oxnam?'

'Some of them are,' I say, thinking about Papa.

She shrugs, and the frills at her shoulders jiggle. 'You think you're all grown up, don'cha? But yer not. You don't understand why I'd let meself get hurt like that. When yer pa is handy with the switch, ya just get used to it.'

I can't let this pa.s.s. 'Why wouldn't you want to get your own back now you're older? Use the switch yourself?'

'That's what you'd do, ain't it?' Her eyes narrow. 'The difference twixt you and me is, I'm a proper woman. Nice and soft like.'

'Like what, Laura? A punching bag?' I can feel blood's slow pump in my head. This conversation is getting a bit too close for comfort.

The roll of her eyes is pitying. 'Ya gotta do what they want. The sooner ya get that idea in yer plain little head, the better.'

There's a long glance from my hair down to my boots, but she's not quite as caustic about the task as Nicole was. There's something else playing around her mouth. Not envy, surely?

'I gotta get on,' she says. 'Don't ya worry 'bout Bob. That's what us workin' girls is for - to get the rough stuff outta their system. I daresay he'll be different with you. You being untouched - like. A wife takes over where a mother leaves off. And a man wouldn't beat his old ma, now would he? If you're a good wife, you'll be all right.'

I don't mean to speak my next thought out loud, but the itching of my palms distracts me into mumbling, 'What if I'm not a good wife?'

There's a rustle in the bushes, probably a rat. We both move a little closer to the light near the open door.

She snorts, then shakes her head. 'Well then, ya silly cow, you'll deserve whatever comes to ya. I can't stay here yabbin' all night, I gotta go to work. I ain't one of them bleedin' telephonists makin' me money standin' up.'

The next day I'm almost past the butcher's on my morning walk when I see Heccy. He's headed for French Charley's, trotting briskly with a crate of empty bottles. He glances at me, and I know by the look on his face that there's been another murder.

'Wait up, Heccy! Who is it? Not Laura?'

A hot wind tousles his red hair. His eyes are watery. Over his shoulder, the bay seethes with miniature white c.o.c.ks...o...b...

'M-M-Marjorie,' he says.

Marjorie? I try to bring her face to mind. A chatty girl. Plump, agreeable. She had a blackened tooth in front that she touched up with Chinese white paint. She'd fan it dry, then spend the evening in a difficult juggling act: keeping her moist top lip in the snarl position away from it without appearing as though she would bite any man who came near her. She couldn't have been more than seventeen.

'She's been d-dead a week. They only j-just found her, in some reeds in the m-m-mangroves.'

'A week! Didn't Charley notice she was missing?'

'He thought she'd gone with one of the m-miners.'

That would make sense. Occasionally, for a price, Charley would allow a digger to take one of the girls to a prospectors' camp for a week. Provided she was returned in one piece.

'I suppose you're happy to hear it, are you?' I ask. 'One less sinner.'

A Chinaman carrying two buckets of coal on either side of a long pole shuffles his hips side to side as he pa.s.ses. His conical hat, held on by a string around his neck, has been blown off his head by the wind. It sits on his back like a pointed hunch.

'It's not m-my fault she was a wh.o.r.e.' Heccy's face is pale, his freckles stark in the sun. 'It's the L-Lord having the last word.'

I look down at his hands holding the crate. Big, powerful hands he hasn't yet grown into. Charley's told me something of his background. How he comes from a strict Methodist family. How his mother and father were killed in a house fire on the property they were caretaking at Ingham and, orphaned, Heccy's search for work brought him to Cooktown. French Charley's was the only employment on offer. I wonder how he copes with the constant a.s.sault on his morals, night in, night out. I remember the night he stopped me in the alley. How he seemed so much more powerful; the cabbage-tree hat pulled low over his face, the long coat. The remarkable absence of his stammer.

'You wouldn't have hurt those girls, would you, Heccy?'

'M-me? No!' His shock seems genuine enough.

'Was Marjorie strangled like Nicole?'

He nods, tightly. 'With that r-ribbon round her n-neck.'

My focus sharpens. All of Charley's girls wear satin ribbons in different colours.

'Is that what Nicole was strangled with too? Her ribbon?'

He nods again.

Carefully now. 'How would you know a thing like that?'

'Sub-Inspector B-Brooke's telling the story all over t-town.' He mumbles something else, which I can't hear clearly.

A shadow falls over us. It's a relief to have the sun gone. But there's a grey, sinewy centre in the cloud overhead; a muscle of rain cramping, getting ready to release its load.

'Where's Fitzgerald?' I ask. 'Does he know that Brooke is sabotaging the investigation?'

Heccy shifts the weight of the crate from one arm to the other. The bottles clatter and ping. 'He's g-gone bush again. After the b-b-blacks that killed that family.'

16.

An accident by any other name would smell as fishy.

From the secret diary of Mary Watson 19TH DECEMBER 1879.

The afternoon sun boils a seafood stench off Ah Ping's fish stall on the wharf. I still come here occasionally. It seems less suspicious than an abrupt absence after my regular a.s.signations with Dirty White Neckerchief. Today, a man in stained tan trousers held up by a frayed leather belt approaches me.

'Miss Oxnam?'

I turn briefly. The sun's in my face and I can't make out his features clearly. Just a dark, man-shaped shadow cut out of feverish sky.

'Yes,' I say. 'Would you excuse me just one minute?' I turn back to the Chinaman in his blue pyjamas and skullcap. The air from the stall is weighted with stagnant water, grease and incense. 'How much, Ah Ping? And don't say a shilling. I won't pay it for a couple of snapper.' I point at the glistening silver pile in his basket, each fish with pink-red gills like the underside of poisonous mushrooms.

'I sell for very good price, missy. One shilling, two fish.' His head is shaved in front, his face a shiny, blank slate.