Razorhurst Read Online Free PDF Page A

clatter and ding the way Darcy did. He’d promised to teach her.
    Outside Darcy coughed, loud and sudden, and Dymphna flinched beside her.
    “That you, Darcy?” someone called. Kelpie couldn’t be sure if it was from the lane or next door.
    “What’s the barney, constable?” Darcy replied. The door shifted as he must have leaned forward.
    Dymphna stilled. Kelpie breathed even quieter.
    The gate creaked, so loud Kelpie wondered that the whole Darcy household didn’t wake.
    “Bit of bother at Mrs. Stone’s. You seen anyone about who shouldn’t be, Darce?”
    Kelpie thought of that poor bloke on the bed, who was now a ghost trying to make Dymphna see him. Bit more than a bother, wasn’t it?
That smell
. She’d heard some people wet themselves when they died. He’d done worse than that.
    “Almost everyone at Mrs. Stone’s shouldn’t be about,” Darcy said. Kelpie heard him take a drag on his cigarette. The copper snorted.
    “Seen any young women? Well dressed?”
    “Well dressed? Around here?”
    The copper laughed again. “This one’s known for hanging out with a rough crowd.”
    Darcy didn’t say anything.
    Kelpie wondered how they knew to look for Dymphna Campbell. Kelpie was going to get shot of her as soon as she could. Dymphna squeezed her hand, and Kelpie’s face felt hot. Dymphna was right-o. But Kelpie couldn’t afford to keep company with anyone the coppers was after.
    “Let us know if you hear anything.”
    “Will do, Boomer. Only you blokes so far,” Darcy said. “And those chooks and some screaming and breaking glass from the Kellers.”
    “All as it should be then?”
    Darcy gave a short laugh. The gate creaked again. “See ya later.”
    The copper shouted something back that Kelpie didn’t hear.
    “Too right!” Darcy called after him. “You owe me a drink, Boomer.”
    The door bowed in again. “Imagine they’ll keep searching,” Darcy said quietly in between drags. “Best you two stay put a while longer. Don’t move. I’ll be in when I finish this.”
    Dymphna made a little noise. “Does he want us to stop breathing?”
    “That’d help,” Darcy said.
    Kelpie tried not to worry about Darcy’s ma and his brothers and sisters and their lodger. The house was quiet, but with all that racket from the cops, they’d be up soon. Then what?
    “Don’t think you should stay here, Dymph,” the scarred-cheeked ghost said. “It’s not safe.”
    “You all right?” Dymphna whispered.
    Kelpie nodded.
    Darcy hissed at them to
shh
.
    Kelpie pulled her hand from Dymphna’s and slid to the floor, letting her muscles relax. Like Old Ma had taught her: sleep when you can, never be tense unless you have to be. Only led to grief and headaches.
    The kitchen ceiling was stained and bowed in as if a little more weight from above, and it’d come crashing down. It wouldn’t be the first. Before they’d torn down Frog Hollow, some of the houses had collapsed on their own.
All it took was breathing a little too heavy
, Old Ma had said.
    Kelpie kept her breath quiet and slow, watched it make condensation in the air as if she were smoking like Darcy.
    “Jimmy Palmer was a good bloke,” Dymphna said softly. “Kind. Probably why he didn’t last.”
    Kelpie had heard that name before. One of Glory’s standovers. Did Dymphna mean the ghost? He didn’t look kind. He looked big and ropeable.
    “Shh,” Darcy whispered. “Killing my cigarette now.”
    “I’m
still
a good bloke,” the ghost said. He waved his hand in front of Dymphna’s eyes. She didn’t even blink. “I’ll always be a good bloke.”
    But Kelpie could tell from the way he said it that Jimmy Palmer knew he was dead.
    The door shifted, and the back step creaked as Darcy stood. “There’s a fair few eyeballs out on the lane. Duck down, then move below the windows.”
    Kelpie slid right, Dymphna left.
    “Opening the door now. Slowly.”
    “Hey, young Neal,” Mrs. Keller shouted from next door. “What’s the barney?