The Stalk Club

by Neil Cossins

  “I don’t do drugs and I didn’t steal from Carmichael,” retorted Craig indignantly. It had been a long and exhausting day preceded by a sleepless night and he felt like he was running on empty. He took a deep breath and tried to muster his last reserves of calm. “I only borrowed a few things to use in the stalking. I was gonna return the stuff the next day but Carmichael noticed they were missing. Ask Bryce, he knew. He was a part of it as well. I took the blame cos’ I didn’t think there was any point in both of us getting sacked.”

  “You took the blame for it did you? That’s big of you.”

  “And Carmichael had it in for me anyway.”

  “Did he? Maybe that was because you were always hassling him for money to invest in the porn site you wanted to start up?”

  “Oh for fuck sake it wasn’t about porn,” snapped Craig, casting aside his short lived calm as his raw nerves were again raked by Robards. Martin Warnock placed a hand on Craig’s forearm to try and calm him and maybe get him to think first, for once, about what he said before committing it to the record for all time, but it had no effect.

  “I was going to sell security equipment on the internet. You know, like nanny cams, listening devices, GPS trackers and stuff like that. It’s all the rage these days. I was just looking for a partner with some contacts in the industry and a bit of cash to help with the start up costs, that’s all. You’re trying to twist everything that happened.”

  “And this is all just hearsay and conjecture,” piped up Warnock bravely.

  Robards ignored him. “Come on Craig. You’re among friends. Why don’t you stop playing games with us and tell us what really happened that night.” Robards waited theatrically for a response but got nothing but a sullen glare from Craig.

  “Alright then, let me again go over what we’ve got on you. We’ve got the bloodstained gloves with your fingerprints on them and we’ve got video of you, and the footprints which are a match with your boots, all of which places you at the scene of the crime at the time of the crime. We’ve got missing drugs at the hospital with everyone pointing the finger at you, we’ve got an ex-employer, a retired police Sergeant no-less, who says you were fired for stealing and who thinks you’re a scumbag. And to top it off, you’ve got a criminal record for a couple of assault charges and DUIs and there’s an unsolved vehicular double fatality that lists you as a prime suspect. Now am I making all this up? Am I twisting all this like you said, just to make you look bad, because if I’ve got it wrong somewhere I want you to tell me.”

  Craig made no effort to correct him and sat quietly pondering his future, which was looking bleaker by the minute. Robards continued his assault, his voice louder, booming around the small room, leaning forward so that their faces were separated by only a distance of fifty centimtres. “Now I’m no expert on human behaviour, but I reckon if we put all this in front of a jury, it’s not going to take them very long to find you guilty. So why don’t you just save everyone some time here, tell us what happened and tell us where the murder weapon is.” Robards slammed his hand down on the table for emphasis resulting in the pint sized Martin Warnock visibly jumping in his seat.

  “Detective, let me suggest that my client’s past issues have nothing to do with this case and would be inadmissible in court.”

  Robards turned toward him as if noting his presence for the first time. Warnock tried to bravely match Robards threatening glare but had to look away after a few seconds.

  Nelson took a deep breath and sighed.

  “Look, Mr Thoms, if you want us to help you, you need to give us something here. You don’t have to be a genius to understand that right now it’s not looking too good for you.”

  Craig looked at Nelson who met his eyes and stared back unemotionally.

  A strained look came across Craig’s face.

  “I didn’t do this. What else can I say? What do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to be straight with us right here and right now. You claim you were set up, well if that’s true then you must have some idea about who would do that and why. Who the hell would hate you this much to go to all this trouble?”

  Craig sat in silence for thirty seconds as he weighed his meager options. He knew he had enemies, everyone did, but by revealing them he would no doubt dig himself into a hole. Still, he judged that it probably wouldn’t be as deep as the hole he was already in, charged with murder and facing a likely twenty years in jail. He shook his head and wondered how his life had all gone so badly wrong and which god he had pissed off along the way. He felt he had been backed into the tightest of corners and the only person standing behind him was his skinny sexually agnostic solicitor, which did little to comfort him. He looked at Warnock for guidance and received a small nod of ascension. Warnock knew the case was going to hell and he was going along for the ride.

  “Ok,” Craig began. “I have taken drugs from the hospital.” Martin Warnock emitted a small groan as his case went from a seventy-five percent chance of being a loser to about ninety-five percent at the utterance of those seven words.

  “Tell us about it Craig,” said Nelson. “Tell us everything, for your own sake.”

  Craig Thoms met Nelson’s even stare. He began to tell them about the drugs he had taken and how he had on-sold them to a man named Harvey Petersham. He had met Harvey when he had also worked at the hospital as an orderly, before he had been later fired for stealing from patients. With his access cut off, Harvey had approached Craig and asked him to obtain the drugs for him. He admitted that the money on offer had been too good to say no to, so he had agreed. Harvey had provided him master keys for most of the drug lockers in the hospital and instructions on what drugs to focus on.

  “It was only ever going to be a temporary thing,” Craig offered in consolation. “Just until I got enough money together to start up the website. I was almost there too. I told Harvey that I was finished when I met him on Wednesday night.”

  “How did he take that?” asked Nelson.

  “He wasn’t happy. In fact he was off his nut. Harvey’s only a weed but he claimed his friends wouldn’t be happy with me cutting off their supply.”

  “I knew it. I fucking knew it.” Robards laughed out loud, slapping his knee with genuine exuberance, unable to contain his elation. “It all makes sense.”

  “Oh? And how’s that?” asked Craig, sneering and cocking his head to one side.

  “Well I don’t know why I need to explain it to you, but I will anyway. Firstly, you get this shit-brained idea about starting up the porn site or whatever you want to call it, but you need money. You try and hit up old Carmichael but he tells you to get stuffed, so you steal a bit of his equipment and probably flog it off to your friends on the side. Then you get caught and get sacked and start working at the hospital. You still need money so you start flogging drugs and medicines from the hospital and reselling them to this Petersham guy, but then you hit the jackpot. While you’re out stalking with your mates last Friday, you got lucky enough to follow some dealer to St Peters where you saw money change hands between the guy you were following and Emilio Fogliani. You waited until the coast was clear and then you waltzed up to the car and put three bullets into Fogliani and made off with the proceeds. Too freakin easy. It all makes perfect sense and we’ve got all the evidence we need to prove it.”

  “I didn’t do it,” Craig yelled back savagely. “There was no drug deal and I didn’t kill Fogliani.”

  Nelson studied his face looking for any sign that he was lying. “I’m being straight with you,” he said almost pleading, his lank oily brown hair falling across his face.

  “Ok Craig, let’s start at the beginning again. Try and remember anything you left out.”

  Craig Thoms told his story again, trying to squeeze every ounce of detail from his memory. He kept his eyes on Nelson and tried to believe that he was trying to help him. He needed to believe.

  ************

  “Oh come on,” yelled Robards, his anger and frustra
tion boiling over, his arms pointing to the heavens in search of divine help. “Most of the idiots we arrest claim they’ve been set up don’t they? It’s the standard fucking response to getting arrested. ‘Someone set me up. The cops planted the evidence’,” he mimicked in a sarcastic voice. “It’s always the same tune so why should Thoms play it any differently? It’s the best excuse in the world.” Robards’ small, deep-set blue eyes flashed fire as he challenged Nelson. “But what I don’t get is why you’re listening to him? I mean what is it about him that makes you believe, even for an instant, that he was set up? The evidence is so strong and it points straight at him.”

  The interview had ended five minutes earlier and when Robards returned to the interview room after escorting Craig and his solicitor back to his cell, his anger had fissured its way to the surface.

  “It’s not that I believe him,” answered Nelson evenly, trying to counter Robards with calmness and control. “I just want to be sure he’s guilty, and despite all the evidence, I’m still not convinced. There’s no GSR on his clothes or on the gloves. There’s no murder weapon, there is no motive apart from your assumption that it was a robbery and there is no real history of violence with this guy,” he said, ticking off his reasons on his fingers. “There are still major holes in this case and as I’ve said before I don’t want to get to court and have some smart arse lawyer pull our case to pieces because they looked harder at this than we did.”

  “It’s not going to happen. No-one is going to get him off because he’s guilty,” returned Robards emphatically as he stormed around the small room. “The evidence is all there. We found it.”

  “I know, but it’s not enough. I need to keep looking at it until I’m satisfied.”

  “And what about Crighton and VanMerle? What’re they going to make of this?”

  “I don’t care what they make of it,” snapped Nelson, feeling the last of his patience evaporate. “I’m going to keep looking at this case until I’m convinced that Craig Thoms did it or I prove that someone else did, and I don’t care what agendas anyone else has.” Nelson stood up and looked Robards squarely in the eyes, their faces only inches apart. “I’m the lead Detective on this case and what I say goes ok?”

  “This case is fast becoming a fucking joke,” snarled Robards. He stormed out of the room, slamming the door violently behind him. The vibrations stung Nelson’s body and pounded on his ear drums. It took all of his remaining self-control not to go after him and start something he would no doubt later regret. He sat back down at the table, feeling the heat and redness of the argument in his face and tried to relax his breathing. After five minutes he felt sufficiently calm to return his attention to the case. He reviewed the notes he had taken from the interview. Loose ends glared at him from every direction and plagued his thoughts. He sighed loudly, snapped close the case file and headed back to his desk.

  Chapter 31

  The traffic was light and Nelson made good time as he aggressively sliced through the traffic, albeit not as quickly as when he had first sped to the crime scene in the early morning hours of the previous day. He was yet to meet a traffic cop yet who wouldn’t let a fellow officer off, even though he’d tested their patience on several occasions.

  His slanging match with Robards came at the end of a long day and it was a signal to him that he needed to take a break from the case and from Robards. He was annoyed for having let Robards get to him and berated himself harshly for not staying calmer in the face of the Robards’ tirade. A dark mood descended on him like a heavy curtain and negative thoughts about the case and the people involved in it swam into his mind.

  He thought about Craig Thoms, who would be about to embark on his shuttle ride to Silverwater Prison and felt the weight of his life in his hands. He knew he would only let Craig Thoms go if he could convince himself of his guilt. Although the evidence was compelling, he was unable to do this and the thought of being the lead Detective in a case where an innocent man might be convicted of murder chewed him up like acid in his guts.

  He pulled his car into the driveway of his rented Brighton LeSands house. It was only a few hundred metres from the Bay. Unlike some of the McMansions that neighboured him, it was a plain looking, single level house and the rent which he split with his buddy and fellow officer Damian Polak, was very reasonable for the location. Polak worked at the Randwick Police Station and their differing shifts meant they often didn’t cross paths for a week. Polak had gone through the Academy with Nelson sixteen years ago and was one of the few people Nelson counted as a close friend.

  Nelson squeezed past his Cobra kit car replica that took prize position under the single carport and made his way inside the house. He checked the house in search of Polak but found it empty and quiet and remembered that he’d gone to a mate’s house to play cards. Nelson gave a moments thought to going to the cards night but decided against it as he knew he was verging on exhaustion and couldn’t take yet another late night. He threw off his work clothes and put on a pair of tracksuit pants and a t-shirt. He went to the lounge room and slumped into the couch. He wished there was someone else there, someone he could talk to about normal stuff to take his mind off things but there was no-one. There had been other housemates who had come and gone over time and there had been women in Nelson’s life who had also come and gone. He felt like calling one of them up for some much needed female company but decided against it. None of them had been able to overcome the callouts, the nightshifts and the baggage that came hand in hand with police work and none of the relationships had developed into anything sufficiently significant to compel Nelson to put their needs ahead of his work.

  He went to the kitchen, ignored the mess in the sink because he didn’t make it and reached for one of the litre bottles of Johnny Walker on the shelf above the stove. He poured himself a generous shot and added some coke zero. While he was working he liked to limit his drinking, in an effort to keep his mind sharp and engaged, but made an exception for himself on this night. He often made exceptions. He swallowed deeply and felt the familiar and welcome burn begin to seep through his body and the anxiousness begin to fade as it was searched out and neutralised by the drink.

  He refilled his glass and sat alone in the lounge room. Through the haze of the alcohol his mind returned to the case and he jotted some notes on a pad as he planned his next moves. He reasoned that if Craig was innocent then someone had gone to a lot of trouble to set him up and he needed to focus on finding out who that person was. If it was a setup then the killing of Emilio Fogliani was not a random or opportunistic act - like Robards wanted to believe - but was planned, and unseen links somehow connected Craig’s and Fogliani’s fates together.

  As he thought more deeply about the case, something about it began to nag and itch at his subconscious. The feeling that he was overlooking something teased his senses, but the more he tried to focus on it the more elusive it became. After trying for a while to force it into the sunlight, he ignored it and thought about other things, until through lack of attention, it finally revealed itself towards the end of his sixth drink. He knew then what his next move needed to be.

  Chapter 32

  Craig Thoms’ solicitor had informed him what his immediate future would be if his bail application was denied, so it was of no particular surprise when the Magistrate who heard his case and denied his bail application, ordered him to be remanded to the strangely named Metropolitan Remand and Reception Centre until his pre-trial hearing commenced. The MRRC is the maximum security section of the sprawling Silverwater Correctional Centre and has a reputation as being one of the toughest prisons in the state of New South Wales. It is home to mostly untried and unsentenced offenders who have been refused bail on serious charges and are waiting for the wheels of the justice system to slowly turn their way.

  At seven p.m. on the dot, two Corrective Services officers arrived at the Parramatta Police Station and signed for custody.

  “Time to go mate. Don’t give us any tro
uble now,” said the smaller of the two.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” Craig responded glumly.

  They shackled his hands and feet and led him out to the transport truck parked at the rear of the station. Martin Warnock had stayed with him since his second interview and as he was led away, promised he would do everything in his power to help him beat the charges, but his claim sounded hollow in Craig’s ears.

  Craig was the only prisoner being transported to Silverwater. The other detainees that had shared the cells with him and who had been denied bail on lesser charges, had already been transported to the medium security, and infinitely more desirable – if such a description could be used on a prison - Parramatta detention centre.

  Craig had tried to show no emotion during the time he spent in the cells and courtroom, but now as he found himself alone in the back of the transport and finally out of sight of the cold, hard eyes of the other prisoners and the police, he held his face in his hands and allowed his emotions to overwhelm him just for a little while.

  After a bone jarring twenty minute ride along the badly weathered and cracked Parramatta Road they arrived at the MRRC at Silverwater. Craig waited nervously while the transport slowly progressed through three sets of wire fences, each topped with rings of razor wire until they reached the inner compound.

  By the time the rear doors of the transport were jerked open he had fully regained his composure and vowed to himself to stay strong for as long as it took. He was led to a reception area, shackled to a sturdy, bolted down chair and told to wait – as if he had other options available to him. The Corrective Services officers left the room while Craig stared at the four white walls and waited. There were twenty chairs in the room, but again, he was the only prisoner.

  He sat impassively and took in the sounds and smells of the prison as they filtered down to him. He could hear the guards talking and laughing down the hallway, the occasional shriek and holler from the prisoners and could smell the evening meal being prepared in the kitchen.