The Stalk Club

by Neil Cossins

  “Now tell me about last Friday night,” said Nelson.

  “What do you want to know?” Bryce replied, feeling more comfortable, and why not, he thought to himself, I have nothing to hide because I didn’t do anything.

  “Just run me through the night as it played out, from your point of view. Leave nothing out, no matter how unimportant you think it is.”

  Bryce began to recount everything that happened on that night, however he was fairly limited in what he could say about Craig’s stalk as he had left to follow his own mark before Craig did. When he finished his story, Nelson sat back in his chair tapping his pencil on his lips as he digested what he had been told. His gut instinct was telling him that Bryce was being truthful with him and yet he still asked him a number of leading questions in the hope of getting him to make a mistake or alter his story, however nothing changed. When he was satisfied that there were no holes in his story he led him back to the foyer and left him with a pen and a statutory declaration form to formally record his statement. Natalie had been waiting where they had left her and Nelson led her to the same interview room after signing her in. She sat quietly in her seat while Nelson sorted out his voice recorder, taking extra care not to erase Bryce’s file. He looked up at her and was momentarily lost in her cool green eyes but pulled away and forced himself to focus on the job at hand.

  “Alright Ms Bassett, thanks again for coming in.”

  “Please call me Natalie, Detective. Ms Bassett sounds like my mother,” she said smiling.

  “Alright Natalie. I’m going to ask you the same questions I just asked Bryce. I’d like to know what you know about Craig Thoms and then I want you to tell me your version of events from last Friday night.”

  Natalie began to tell him how she had met Bryce about six months previously and that they had soon become lovers. The thought briefly crossed Nelson’s mind that Bryce must be a tiger in the sack to catch and keep such a hottie, but he kept the thought to himself.

  Natalie told him she had become involved with his circle of friends, which included Craig Thoms, and had joined them in their regular stalking evenings. As with Bryce, she made no effort to hide her involvement in the game, and to the contrary, admitted that she was intoxicated by it. She told him that she enjoyed the thrill and excitement of following strangers to see who they were, where they were going and what she could find out about them. She told him about the events of the previous Friday as she remembered them. It had been her turn to randomly choose each mark for the group. When she mentioned Craig leaving to follow his mark, Nelson questioned her closely, pushing her for details and a description of the man she had sent Craig out to follow. Nelson had realised during Bryce’s interview that Natalie had been the only person apart from Craig to see the mystery mark who Craig claimed to be the real murderer of Emilio Fogliani. Therefore, Natalie’s memory and description of him was vital to Craig’s version of events if he had been telling the truth.

  She stared intently at the blank wall to her left, trying to recall the images of the man Craig had followed, but struggled to recall any distinguishing features.

  “I just don’t know. I’m trying, but he’s just a blur in my mind.”

  “What did he look like?” pushed Nelson a little harder, a little louder.

  ”I only saw him for a few seconds. He was just one face out of the hundreds walking past the bar that night.”

  ”Try harder, it’s important. What did he look like? How tall was he? What colour was his hair?” Nelson demanded, his voice rising in tone and with a hard edge to it.

  “Maybe medium height? Brown hair, yes I think short brown hair but I think he was wearing a baseball cap.”

  “Any emblems?”

  “No, he was too far away but I wouldn’t know one team from another anyway. I’m not really into sports.”

  “What about his clothes? Tell me about his appearance. How old did he look?”

  Natalie tried again to remember. “I’m not sure,” she started hesitantly. “He was probably wearing jeans and a jacket. Probably a brown leather jacket or maybe suede, I’m sorry Detective,” she said throwing her wide in a gesture of frustration. “I wish I could be of more help to Craig, but it all happened so quickly.

  “If he was so plain and unremarkable then why did you choose him to be followed out of all the people in the street?”

  “Good question. I guess I just felt he looked a little sneaky. He was moving a little quicker than everyone else and yet he was looking down. It’s all my fault that Craig’s in jail isn’t it?”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because if I hadn’t chosen that guy for Craig to follow then none of this would ever have happened.”

  “So you think Craig had nothing to do with this then?”

  “Of course not. Why would he?”

  “But you’ve only known him six months. How can you be so sure?”

  She thought for a moment at the question and Nelson thought he detected a shadow of doubt cross her face before it quickly resumed its normal countenance.

  “I’m sure.”

  Nelson continued to question her for another fifteen minutes but it added little to her recollection of events.

  “Ok. That’s enough for today I think. I need you to make a statement about what we talked about today and I’ll need your contact details in case I’ve got some more questions for you.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “And in the meantime, you need to keep trying to remember, because apart from Craig, you were the only person to see this guy. If you remember any more details, no matter how small, I want you to phone me immediately,” Nelson said sternly.

  “I will Detective.”

  “I’d also like you to work with one of our identification experts to try and develop a likeness of the man you saw. Will that be an inconvenience for you?”

  “I’ll do what I can to help.”

  Nelson ended the interview and led her back to the foyer where Bryce was waiting, sitting with his hands clasped between his thick thighs.

  “Oh, one more thing. You might be contacted by the media, asking about this case. I advise you to say nothing and to keep your heads low until this is sorted out. Don’t go giving any front page exclusives or you may end up facing charges yourself for hindering the investigation.”

  Chapter 27

  Nelson returned to HQ and found Robards at his desk. He gave him a brief rundown of the interviews he’d conducted with Bryce and Natalie before turning his attention to what Robards had been doing.

  “How’d you go with forensics?”

  Robards had expected the question. If he knew anything about Nelson, it was that he always followed through.

  “They didn’t find any GSR on the clothes taken from Thoms’ apartment, or on the latex gloves found near the scene of the crime.” Robards waited for Nelson to smirk or show some sign of superiority but he showed none. He just sat at his desk staring out the window.

  “As I said before though,” he continued, “it doesn’t prove anything. There could be any number of genuine reasons for finding no GSR on the gloves or the clothes.”

  “I know,” replied Nelson. “But one thing it doesn’t do, is strengthen the case against Thoms. If the test results had been positive, it would have gone a long way to discounting his claims.”

  “So where do we go from here?”

  “Well, whether Thoms pulled the trigger or not the game plan is still the same. We have to dig deeper and chase up all the loose ends and find out if there is more going on here than meets the eye. We need to discover if there is any credence to Thoms’ claims that he was setup.”

  Robards felt frustrated but tried to hide it. He had heard the ‘chase up the loose ends’ philosophy from Nelson a hundred times before. He knew Nelson lived by it, but it didn’t stop him from again suggesting an alternative.

  “I think we should lean on Thoms again,” he replied hopefully. “You might have your doubts about him b
eing the one, but if we keep at him I reckon I could crack him. I’m certain he knows more than he’s letting on.”

  “We can still do that. The prosecutors gave me an iron clad guarantee that he’s not going to get bail based on what we’ve already got on him. He’s not going anywhere. And if he is guilty, then I’d like to have more evidence to support that before we go back to him. If he has been setup though, then I want to know who did it and why. If this mystery shooter exists then I want to find him.”

  “You know, I still think it could be something as simple as a robbery. I mean Fogliani’s an old school hood and maybe Thoms stumbled onto him making some sort of deal or something and took advantage of it. Or maybe Thoms is a drug dealer and he didn’t feel like doing a deal with Fogliani so he just shot him and took the cash and the smack. God knows it’s happened plenty of times before.”

  “Yes it has and maybe you’re right, but we’ve still got to look at it from all angles.” Nelson got up and started to pace back and forth in the area between the desks. Robards watched him silently.

  “Ok,” started Nelson. “This afternoon I want you to finish up interviewing the other stalkers. They’re due in about half an hour at the Parramatta station,” he said after checking his watch. “Make sure you push them hard for details about Thoms’ personal life. If you’re right and he had the balls to pull the trigger on Fogliani then there must be some history to indicate that he’s capable of that. I didn’t get much from Bryce McKinlay or his girlfriend but maybe the others will be prepared to give up a little more on him. Push the angle that if they aren’t fully frank with us right here and now they could find themselves facing accessory to murder charges. It might be a bluff, but it will probably scare the shit out of them.”

  Robards smiled at the thought. He was skilled at using leverage points on suspects and witnesses and felt confident he would get every scrap of available information out of them.

  “I want you to keep looking at Thoms, but I also want you to profile the other stalk club members as well. Speak to their co-workers, previous employers, friends and ex-friends. Get Bovis to help you. I want to know everything about them including what they have for breakfast. If there’s anything out of the ordinary in their pasts I want to know about it. In particular I want to know if any of them have a link to Emilio Fogliani, no matter how tenuous or unlikely it is.” Robards took notes as quickly as Nelson spoke.

  “Got it.” The way Nelson was rattling tasks off for him made him wonder if he’d be working on this case for the next six months. Nelson kept pacing, his mind freewheeling, looking at the case from every angle. Those within view of him looked up briefly and went back to work. They were used to his habits, each to his own.

  “While you’re doing that I’m going to tackle the case from the other end by going and speaking to an old colleague in the Gangs Squad to see what information he has on Emilio Fogliani and his family. Maybe he knows what they get up to when they take their suits off. It seems strange that the Gangs Squad didn’t show any interest in this case. Normally they jump on anything that’s even remotely tainted with organised crime, but Crighton said they took a pass on this case and I want to know why. I’ll see you later.”

  Robards watched as Nelson grabbed a couple of pens and a fresh notebook and left in a whirlwind of energy. Robards was left sitting at his desk, pondering the case and his future. He wondered if the case would turn out to be the big success he initially hoped it might be when Nelson first told him about it. He tried to pinpoint his doubts but couldn’t. On the one hand, he agreed that the approach Nelson was taking was sensible enough and couldn’t really fault his logic, but on the other hand he couldn’t shake the vague feeling that he was missing something, or maybe that Nelson was holding something back.

  Having worked with Nelson before, he knew that Nelson liked to do things his way and he often did things on his own. Nelson always argued that it was just a matter of being able to cover more ground separately. But then there were also rumours that Nelson had occasionally crossed the line to secure a conviction. Although Robards had never seen any evidence of this during the six months he had worked with Nelson in Inspector VanMerle’s team, the mere thought of it made him uneasy. He knew of the stains on Nelson’s record and had no desire to have them replicated on his own.

  Robards sighed aloud and focussed his thoughts on the case at hand. Nelson had always taught him to trust his instincts and so he set his jaw and decided to concentrate on filling in the gaps that seemed to bother Nelson and prove once and for all that Craig Thoms was the shooter.

  During the course of the afternoon Grant McKinlay and Jennifer Nolan came to the Parramatta Police Station. Robards interviewed each of them and took their statements. As expected, they also confirmed Craig’s story about the stalking that night, but were unable to provide a description of the man he’d followed from Nero’s as they had both left before him to follow their own marks. According to their stories, each of them claimed to be nowhere near the murder scene at the time it happened. In short, they claimed they saw nothing. Robards could see no reason not to believe them, however as Nelson directed, he pushed them hard for information on Craig and reduced Jennifer Nolan to a torrent of tears, but even then there were no startling admissions.

  In the brief time he spent looking into each of their pasts that afternoon he found that none of the other stalkers had any criminal record, whereas Craig Thoms had been a regular transgressor of the law. Robards cast the other stalkers aside in his mind as suspects and with the aid of a willing Constable Bovis plunged deep into Craig’s history.

  Robards spoke to several people at the hospital where Craig worked and it made him smile. He spoke to his previous employer, John Carmichael at Carmichael’s Security and he started to laugh at his good fortune.

  Chapter 28

  Nelson booked out an unmarked white Commodore for the afternoon and drove to the Hurstville police station where a portion of the Gangs Squad was located. The Gangs Squad was established to target non-Middle Eastern gangs and organised criminal networks. The main crimes it investigated involved the possession and use of firearms, acts of extortion, intimidation, drug trafficking and motor vehicle rebirthing. Despite sitting alongside the Homicide squad in the organisational structure of the New South Wales Police Force they kept to themselves and Nelson had little to do with them in the past.

  It was just after two p.m. Sunday. Nelson had considered attending Craig Thoms’ bail hearing, but decided his time would be better spent chasing up leads instead of sitting in a courtroom watching a stream of human refuse plead their innocence to the Magistrate. The Gangs Squad was located on the secondfloor of the station behind locked security doors. He had phoned ahead before he left and was pleased to discover that Detective Senior Sergeant Raph Sanchez was on duty. Upon his arrival at Hurstville station, he phoned Sanchez from the front foyer and within a minute Sanchez arrived in the foyer. He was a tall man of medium build with a large hooked nose and pockmarked face. Sanchez had been Nelson’s supervisor about eight years previously when Nelson was a Constable working at the Randwick station. They had got along well and Nelson always admired Sanchez’s even handed management of the staff below him and considered him to be his best boss in the force so far.

  “How are you Raph?” Nelson said smiling, taking the outstretched hand and giving it a vigorous shake.

  “I’m good. How are you Nelson? It’s been a while.”

  “Yes it has. Too long.”

  “You look like you’re in good shape.”

  “Thanks, I wish I could say the same for you,” Nelson replied, gently poking the spare tyre that had begun to inflate around Sanchez’s midriff.

  Sanchez smiled good naturedly at the taunt. “How ’bout we grab a coffee from down the street? We can talk in private there.”

  They walked down the street toward Westfield, stopped at a café and took a seat away from the other patrons. Nelson ordered a couple of cappuccinos and they rem
inisced briefly about old times while they waited for them to arrive.

  “So have you come all this way to buy me a coffee or is there something else on your mind Nelson?”

  “You always were sharp,” replied Nelson jokingly. “Look, the reason I’m here is about the Fogliani murder. I’ve got the case.”

  “I know. And let me guess, you’re here to ask me why the Gangs Squad hasn’t come in and taken the case off your hands, or at least offered some assistance seeing that Emilio Fogliani is part of an alleged underworld family?”

  “Yeah something like that. I’ve already said you were sharp.”

  Sanchez smiled, sipped his cappuccino and wiped the froth from his lips.

  “You know I’m not sure I should be talking to you about this stuff Nelson. “If we were interested in the case we would’ve come in and taken it. It’s as simple as that. You know the drill.”

  “C’mon Raph. We’re all on the same side here. We’re playing for the same team. I just want to know if you’ve been looking at the Foglianis for anything. I’m not asking you to divulge anything you shouldn’t. If Emilio Fogliani is a cleanskin then that’s all you have to say. You can’t get in trouble for telling me he was clean can you?”

  Sanchez thought about it for a brief moment and then conceded the point. “Alright, because it’s you, I’ll tell you what you want to know. But this didn’t come from me ok?”

  Nelson instinctively reached for his pocket to take out his notebook but stopped and let his hand rest on the table. The conversation was off the record, or at least seemed to be because Nelson still has his digital voice recorder in his pocket which was set on voice activation mode and would record the conversation well enough for future reference.

  “In short, Emilio Fogliani is, or I should say was, pretty much retired. He was a nasty piece of work in his prime, but that was some time ago. Twenty years ago he and his brother had their hands in a lot of pies but they gave all that away apparently. There’s some anecdotal evidence that he’s still involved with the drug trade but we haven’t been able to turn anything up on it. These days his nephew Michael is the power and has steered the family into finance, although apparently he still uses Emilio to open a few doors occasionally.”