Crooked (25 page)

Charlie drew his car into the kerb and stood on the footpath, swinging his gaze over the iron-barred windows. He nodded at the duty sergeant as he entered the building, following him down a tangle of corridors littered with fag ends and burned matchsticks. He sat down on a chair of washable plastic upholstery and waited. Hearing only the clatter of typewriters, the boots of the duty sergeant moving sullenly off and, dimly, the distant anguished burr of the city beyond the window.

Until a noise like a shot charge shattered everything into silence.

Charlie clambered to his feet and ran down the hall in the direction of the sound. He burst through the door to the Gents washroom, his eyes swinging wildly over the scene.

Gus Finlay lay blasted back against the white-tiled wall, his spectacles disentangled from one ear and cocked off to one side. Tanner was standing under a ganglia of downpipes at the foot of the corpse, a gun slipping out of his grasp, clattering to the shiny tiled floor. He looked down as if in painful curiosity at the hand that had fired the revolver, and saw the hand tremble, as if it wasn't any part of him. His upper lip inflated as he attempted to bring himself under control. His mouth worked. He said, ‘He knocked himself. He didn't have to do it.'

Looking back, it would always seem to Charlie that he had never had a choice, that he could never be other than what he was, do other than what he did. Standing there, among the steel splashbacks and glimmering metal basins, with endlessly repeating wall mirrors pressing the carnage against him from every direction, he felt only a deep and sudden tiredness well up inside. He levelled his eyes, held his voice steady, and said, ‘No, I guess not.'

F
EBRUARY
1968

Premier Bob Askin was standing on the seventh floor of the Premier's wing of the state office block, staring at the fast-rising city beyond the window – his face darkening with a look that caused Allan to glance up with a worrying frown.

‘There's that unfortunate incident of the young copper who knocked himself,' he said, attempting to draw Askin back into the room and the conversation they were having. ‘Looks like he got himself in with a very bad lot, and didn't know how to get out.'

‘Only takes a few bad apples,' said Askin, turning back to his desk with the abstracted air of somebody having their chain of thought broken.

Allan pressed on. ‘Pity. I knew his father once. Passed away suddenly after the war. A good thing it was too. I wouldn't have wanted him going through something like this.'

‘Quite right.'

‘I reckon it would've killed him.' Allan tapped at his chest with a stubby finger. ‘Dicky heart. Luckily for us, there was this lawyer chap there. It seems he was going to represent the lad when he was brought up on charges. I guess when the moment came it was too much for the boy. The lawyer bloke witnessed the whole thing. Name of Gillespie,' he added, by way of further explanation.

‘Charlie Gillespie?' said Askin, genuinely surprised. ‘Well, you've got nothing to worry about. Charlie's a good sort of bloke. Won't mess you about. I'm thinking about running him on our side come the election.'

Allan digested this detail, and moved on. ‘This crime thing that the Labor mob have been stirring up in the papers –'

‘They got down in the gutter in their wrecker's role –'

‘Well, I reckon you showed them,' said Allan, but Askin wasn't paying attention.

‘I'll fight them all over again if I've got to.'

‘I still reckon you showed them,' Allan insisted. ‘They're wallowing in the gutter, and they'll never climb out.'

Askin glanced up, eyes expanding slightly as if he was seeing Allan for the very first time. Encouraged, Allan ventured his toe over the edge of an abyss. ‘There's a few other things I've been wanting to talk to you about. First up, I guess you've got to understand that the force has long been in the business of managing soft crime. Mind you, these aren't actual crimes I'm talking about. They're social offences, betting and whatnot. Offences that, in the interests of good police work and a pragmatic approach to the taxpayer dollar, it's long been our business to tolerate. Giving the go-ahead to certain approved groups, in exchange for a certain amount of order and various, um … other benefits that flow on through the system.'

‘The people don't want a clean police force. They want results.'

Allan began to relax. ‘I guess I should add that there's lots of people … respectable people, who would feel very well disposed to the granting of such concessions, and willing to show their appreciation in a more organised fashion than has been done in the past. They're small-business folk, really …'

Allan didn't say another word. He didn't see the need. But he kept his eyes on Askin's face. It seemed to be drifting away from him and the conversation they were having, as if he wasn't
listening anymore, but was waiting for something – an answer, perhaps, out there, in the glitter and flash of the burgeoning metropolis beneath the window.

Many people helped me with research for this book. Thanks to everybody at the Mitchell Library, the Australian Archives, the State Coroner's Office and the archives of the NSW Police, also to Peter Doyle and my uncle, Frank Costigan. With special thanks to John Dale and Margaret Simons, without whose help this book would never have been finished. Thanks also to Larissa Edwards and everybody at Random House, especially my wonder-editor, Chris Kunz.

A number of news articles, headlines and sub-heads from the period appear in the text. I would particularly like to acknowledge the following:

 

‘The Big Wipeout'
Sunday Mirror
, 4 June, 1967, p19

‘Vengeance in the Streets'
Daily Mirror
, Editorial, 26 June, 1967, p. 2

Ron Saw, ‘MLA, Girls, Big Money'
Daily Mirror
, July 12, 1967, p. 1

Oliver Hogue, ‘Top Gun – The Man Behind Sydney's Murder Incorporated,'
Daily Mirror
, September 11, 1968, p. 1

‘I'm Not Mr Big,' by a Special Reporter,
Telegraph
, September 12, 1968, p. 1

‘Askin Wins,'
Sunday Mirror
, February 25, 1968, p. 1

‘$250 Reward for Joe,' unattributed newspaper clipping found in Murder File 1967/27 in the archives of the NSW Police.

Of the pieces that were published without a byline, it is likely that many written by the chief crime reporter of the
Daily Mirror
, the late ‘Bondi' Bill Jenkings.

If any of the copyright owners would come forward I would be happy to negotiate with them.

Many books helped me in the writing of this one. I would particularly like to acknowledge David Hickie's
The Prince and the Premier
and Al McCoy's
Drug Traffic
, which remain the most authoritative accounts of the period.

Lastly, this book draws heavily on the history of the Askin era, but it is also a work of fiction. This means I have changed names, dates, facts, used dodgy sources, made things up, and otherwise left out anything that got in the way of the story.