Free Crooked by Camilla Nelson

Something like that – Reilly’s mob, they wouldn’t let it go. They’d come at you for something like that.’ She looked at him strangely. ‘I hope this isn’t Tommy putting ideas into your head?’
    â€˜Nah,’ said Johnny. ‘Nobody,’ he added, a few seconds later. ‘Just something I thought of.’

Gus took the stairs two at a time, each of them spit-marked and ground down like a soap dish. Several doors faced in on the third-storey landing, the fourth was inset with a pebbled-glass window and a sign that said ‘Sprogg, Gudgeon, Hunger & Gillespie – Solicitors’ in a semicircle of black letters.
    Gus knocked, heard a muffled answer, and stepped inside.
    The desk was set back in the dimness. Behind it a man sat over a large mound of paperwork, dressed in a jaunty brown pinstripe, a forgotten cigarette adding spirals of smoke to the clouds on the ceiling. His features were careless and thickened with alcohol.
    â€˜Mr Gillespie?’
    Charlie stubbed out his cigarette and stuck out his hand. ‘Charlie Gillespie,’ he said warmly. ‘How can I help you?’
    â€˜I’d like to ask you a couple of questions with respect to your client Raymond O’Connor.’
    Charlie waved at a chair. ‘I take it this is official?’
    Gus pulled his badge-wallet out of his jacket.
    â€˜That looks real enough, detective,’ said Charlie. He turned towards a clutter of green glass decanters bunched on a wood and glass tray at his elbow. ‘Did you say you were joining me?’
    â€˜No,’ said Gus. ‘O’Connor was your client?’
    â€˜Yes, that’s right.’ Charlie took a pull from his tumbler. ‘Then again, I’ve got a lot of clients, nearly all of them criminal.’
    â€˜I’m assuming you know something of the circumstances surrounding his death?’
    â€˜I know what I’ve read in the newspapers. O’Connor failed to turn up for his appointment on Monday. He was meant to hand over some cash to front, er, pay the QC who was representing him in a case down in Melbourne.’
    â€˜That kind of help doesn’t come cheap.’
    Charlie drew his eyebrows sharply together. ‘They hang them in Melbourne. It’s not the kind of thing a bloke’s liable to chance. Anyway, late that afternoon I read how the poor bugger had been shot.’
    â€˜Was he angry at McPherson?’
    â€˜I really wouldn’t know.’
    â€˜Was he anxious about money?’
    â€˜I’m not sure where you’re taking this, detective. He was a trifle hard up. He was only out of gaol for a brief period before the unfortunate, er, incident occurred.’
    â€˜The Melbourne matter?’
    â€˜Quite,’ said Charlie. Then he added, ‘Of course, my client said he didn’t do it.’
    Ignoring this, Gus pressed on. ‘Tell me, if the bloke was hard up, how was he funding this fancy defence?’
    â€˜Frankly, detective, I didn’t enquire. I think there was a girlfriend, Twiggy –’
    â€˜Twiggy Lonragen?’ said Gus, a little too fast. Gus remembered Twiggy from his days at Darlinghurst Station.
    Charlie gave a tight, artificial smile. He glanced at his watch. ‘Like I said, I really wouldn’t know. Now, if you’ll excuse me?’

    Gus wandered out into the evening filled with a sense of anxious disappointment. He had gone to see the lawyer expecting something, though he didn’t know what, not exactly. Sure enough, the bloke had looked a bit cagey, then so many lawyersdid, but whatever he was looking for he was nothing the wiser. He climbed into the unmarked and thought about Twiggy. He could go and see her, have a talk to the girl. He turned the ignition, gave a left-hand signal, swung into a side street, and threaded his way through the calcified alleyways known as the Doors.
    There weren’t any streetlights in the lower sections of