by Neil Cossins
“You’ve led me on quite a chase these last few days,” he said impassively.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she croaked, ignoring the pain and effort required to speak.
“Oh, I’m sure you do Kylie Faulkner, or would you prefer I called you Natalie Bassett?”
“Call me whatever you like. Doesn’t seem to matter now.”
“No, I guess not.”
“So are you going to get me an ambulance any time soon? I’m dying over here in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“You’re not going to die in any hurry, at least not from that gunshot wound. Your boyfriend was a lousy shot.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” she replied flatly.
“Well not anymore, but he was still a lousy shot.”
“I took a dive when he shot me,” she volunteered.
Nelson thought for a moment, smiled, genuinely this time, and shook his head. “Well that explains your injury, or lack thereof. You really do have nine lives don’t you?”
The blood flowing from Natalie’s wound began to slow and she started to feel a little stronger. Her normal colour returned to her face and she inched her back higher against the wall.
“What are you going to do with me?”
“We’ll get to that in a moment, after we’ve had a little talk.”
She coughed a little to clear her throat. “I’m listening.”
“Firstly, let me say I admire your handiwork. You came within an inch of pulling off a truly remarkable crime. I’m not quite sure how you finally worked out that Craig Thoms was involved in the car accident that killed your parents, but I can tell you that from what I know about the case, you were right, he was involved.”
The admission came as a gush of relief to her and tears involuntarily rolled down her cheeks. Someone else believed her. Someone else knew what Craig Thoms had done to her parents and to her. She wasn’t crazy. It hadn’t all been for nothing.
“I guess then you tracked him down and started screwing his best mate so you could get close to him. I love a woman with flexible morals.” If the insult bothered Natalie it didn’t show. “Then somehow you found yourself a hitman,” he said indicating to the dead body on the floor. “Maybe as part of your little stalking game you followed him one night and overheard him and Bruno Trulli planning a little revenge killing against Emilio Fogliani? Was that it?”
Natalie’s face registered a moment of surprise at the extent of Nelson’s knowledge before quickly covering it back up.
“Maybe,” replied Natalie non-commitally.
“I thought so. It makes sense. I’m not sure what it was revenge for, but I’m sure Fogliani deserved it. Anyway, in some perverse and bewildering attempt at getting justice, you decided you could piggyback on Torres’ plans, and set Thoms up for the murder. So you started screwing Torres as well and no doubt brought him around to your way of thinking.” Natalie sat quietly, absorbing his comments and reflecting little.
“You had Torres walk past Neros at exactly the right time. Then you sent Thoms out after him and he followed Torres to the crime scene. You knew you needed some hard evidence to stitch Thoms up so you got your hands on some of his gloves from the hospital and got Torres here to leave them at the crime scene after he’d done the deed. And as for the security video we found that showed Thoms bumbling into the crime scene, well, somehow you knew where the cameras were pointed and you told Torres how to avoid them. Maybe your other boyfriend Bryce had something to do with setting up the security system or something? Craig Thoms had said the person he followed had crawled along the ground at some stage. He didn’t realise why though.
“Bryce had nothing to do with this.”
“No, he doesn’t seem the type. He’s just another innocent victim here, like Thoms. I guess you thought you’d be smirking at him through prison bars for the rest of his life. But, and there’s always a but, unfortunately for you, I got on the trail of Kylie Faulkner and traced her to the Woollahra address. I must admit I got a little confused at finding Jen Nolan there. I naturally assumed that she was Kylie Faulkner. On your statement, you put your address down as here, but this is Bryce’s place isn’t it? The Woollhara apartment is yours and she’s just your roommate. Oh, by the way, did you know she’s dead?”
“Who?”
“Your little friend Jen. I guess Torres didn’t get around to mentioning that. He went to your apartment a couple of hours ago. I guess Jen was home alone and got caught in the cross fire. He made a bit of a mess of her too, probably because he thought she was holding out on him, but the truth was she didn’t know who Kylie was. She must have figured it out in the end though and given Torres this address, but by then it was too late.” Nelson watched her for a reaction and saw only a small shadow of guilt caress her face.
“The contents of this envelope tell me why Torres was trying to find you. You sold him out to the Foglianis. That was a nasty and nearly brilliant move, but apparently Torres here was a little more resourceful than expected because he killed the two men Fogliani sent after him. How am I doing so far Natalie?”
Despite the throbbing pain in her shoulder and her plans and life laying in tatters, she couldn’t help but give a small smirk.
“You’ve got one hell of an imagination.”
“I know,” replied Nelson smiling back. “But I bet there’s one question you’re just dying to ask me.”
“Oh? And what’s that?”
“With all the evidence that you laid out so beautifully for us against Thoms, how or why did I end up looking for Kylie Faulkner? Why didn’t I just lock up Thoms and throw away the key like all the other Detectives involved in the case wanted me to do?”
Natalie regarded him intently. It was the one burning question she had wanted to know the answer to since Jen Nolan told her of Nelson’s visit to their apartment. After all her meticulous planning, where had she gone wrong? Finding out seemed to be the only thing that mattered now that it was all over.
“Maybe it’s crossed my mind.”
“I’m sure it has,” Nelson replied almost laughing. He shifted his weight and made himself more comfortable on the unpadded wicker dining chair.
“I’ll tell you why, and this is really going to make you laugh. You see Thomsy and I are old friends. We go back a long way, a long long way. We even went to school together.” To Nelson’s amusement she didn’t laugh along with him, instead a bitter grimace ruined her lovely face. “I guess you didn’t come across that connection when you did your homework on him. I admit, it’s not something I’ve been advertising of late and fortunately he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut about it when he got arrested. No point in telling everyone and then getting me taken off the case because of a conflict of interest. I wouldn’t have been of much use to him then would I?”
“You’re lying,” she vehemently snapped at him.
“I’m afraid not. Maybe we’ve drifted apart a little over the years, you know this job doesn’t exactly allow for a full social calendar, but I still try and catch up with him every now and then. After he was taken into custody I paid him a quiet visit in the cells and asked him what had happened. He told me his story and swore on his life that he didn’t murder Fogliani. Now I admit that it took me a while to come around, the evidence against him was so strong, but eventually I came to believe him. You see, Craig is many things, he’s annoying, offensive and arrogant, but the one thing he is above all other things is honest, sometimes painfully and brutally honest, but honest nonetheless. It’s a rare trait these days. The unlucky part for you in all this is that if any other Detective had been assigned to the Fogliani case they probably wouldn’t have believed a word he said. They would have taken that beautiful evidence trail you and Torres laid out and slammed the case shut. But not me.”
Natalie continued to clutch her shoulder as she listened to Nelson. She was beginning to understand how Nelson had discovered her subterfuge. She wondered why God continued to think of such ingenious
ways of torturing and taunting her.
“Almost from the beginning I was working towards finding a way of getting him off. I thought about removing some of the evidence to weaken the case on him but decided against it. It would have been too risky. There were too many people sniffing all over this case from the start and they would have known it was me, so I decided to focus on finding the real killer and who had set him up. Looking back, I should have had vague suspicions about you from the start. I mean call me cynical, but when was the last time you saw a beautiful woman hanging onto the arm of an overweight and unattractive guy with no money? And you were the one who chose Craig’s mark for him. It had to be you. And yet for all your planning, here you are, sitting with a bullet hole in you and probably facing some pretty serious charges. It’s certainly going to be ironic if you end up in prison and Craig walks free,” said Nelson with an amused glint in his eye.
Natalie’s mind recoiled at the thought of going to prison. It was the exact antithesis of what she had been planning for the last three years and the thought of it sent a wave of nausea flooding over her.
“I don’t care what you do,” she hissed. “I’m going to tell the whole world that he killed my parents. It’s all I have left now. Someone will listen.”
Nelson smiled like a benign father and shook his head. “Well I hate to burst your bubble, but that’s not quite correct.”
“What do you mean? You said you knew he killed my parents!”
“I said I knew that he was involved. Let me tell you a little story, hopefully we have just enough time before the local cops arrive. This story is about two young men who went out one night to celebrate after one of them had graduated from the Police Academy. You see I’d been posted to Narooma straight from the Academy and Craig drove down from Sydney to see me. One thing led to another and by closing time at the local pub we’d had way too much to drink. I took the keys from him because I was trying to be responsible and I thought I was in better shape to drive than he was.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said halfheartedly, beginning to feel uneasy with the direction the conversation was taking.
Nelson continued as if he didn’t hear her. His mind reached back into memories which were still clear in his mind. “I was just a stupid kid filled with beer. Anyway, I came around a corner a bit fast and a bit wide and……and that’s where you and your parents come into the story. I didn’t see your car until it was right in front of me. There was nothing I could do.”
Natalie’s faced blanched at the admission and her world continued its downward spiral into the abyss. She had spent the last three years of her life hating Craig Thoms and plotting his downfall and the realisation that her energies may have been misdirected shattered her like a fragile wine glass.
“But I saw his face in my dreams, in my memories of the accident,” she said defensively, not wanting to believe.
“Maybe you did. Craig was in the car, but he was on the drivers’ side in the back seat of his 4WD. I was driving that night, Natalie. It was my fault, not his.” She searched his face, looking desperately for a trick, for a sign of a lie but saw none. He had no reason to lie seeing that he already held all the cards.
“But I saw him,” she said, her voice faltering. “He was laughing at us.”
“No,” responded Nelson firmly. “He was laughing because he’d just opened a can of beer and sprayed it all through the car. Sounds ridiculous now, but it was funny at the time I guess.”
Natalie looked inward and replayed the memories of the accident in her mind as she had done a thousand times before. She closed her eyes and willed herself painfully back into her parents’ car again. She looked up at the car that bore down on them and then for the first time, the full hazy veil seemed to lift from the scene and she saw Craig Thoms looking down at them laughing, or, laughing at something, from the back seat of the dual-cab 4WD, and there in the driver’s seat was another man, his face which had been turned towards Craig in the rear vision mirror slowly began turning toward her as they sped past each other in the night.
“I stopped the car and looked back to see where your car was but didn’t see anything at all. I assumed you’d just driven off, so I did the same. If I had known, I would have stopped.” Nelson’s normally calm, unlined face, creased with the memory and Natalie instinctively knew that every word he spoke was the truth. “Five minutes later I drove head long into a breathalyser team of my very own colleagues. Craig and I both knew that if I was caught, it would probably be the end of my very short career. Craig didn’t hesitate for a moment. As we slowed down to queue up for the breathalyser, he swapped places with me in the car and then I slid out the passenger side door into a ditch beside the road and from there made my way home. Fortunately for me it was a dark night and there were half a dozen cars in line waiting to be tested so no-one witnessed my escape. Craig was tested and found to be well over the limit and was charged with drink driving. He took the rap for me and lost his licence for six months, but he didn’t say a word to anyone about me being there. Later that morning I dragged myself in to work still nursing a sore head. I heard about the car accident and started to wonder. I drove to the scene on the pretext of offering assistance. I saw the skid marks on the road and realised what had happened.”
“Stop, please stop,” said Natalie quietly as tears continued to roll down her cheeks.
Nelson ignored her, wanting to get it all out once and for all.
“I stood by the road for ages trying to decide what to do. The other cops there thought I was feeling a bit squeamish because I was a new cop. In the end I just drove away. I phoned Craig and told him to change the tyres on his 4WD and dump the old ones where no-one would find them. Sure enough, a couple of officers paid him a visit two days later but they didn’t have any evidence without being able to match the tyres and Craig didn’t say anything. In time, it all blew over and I left Narooma as quickly as I could to put it behind me.” Nelson felt relief after his admission of guilt. He had never spoken of that moment to anyone but Craig Thoms before. “Natalie….Kylie, I know my apology is a bit late, about fifteen years too late, but I am sorry.”
Natalie’s emotions fluctuated wildly with Nelson’s revelations.
“You’re a murderer!”
“No, it wasn’t murder. I’ve seen murders. I just drove over the centre line on a road by a couple of feet, that’s all, and then fate took over,” Nelson justified. “Once it had happened there was absolutely nothing I could do to change anything. It was just a stupid accident.”
“You could have come forward and acted like a man.”
“Maybe I should have, but that wouldn’t have brought your parents back or given you a better life. The only thing that would have achieved would be to put an end to my career and possibly putting me in jail, and the thought of being a nineteen year old cop in jail didn’t sound too good, so I decided to protect myself and Craig. Self-preservation kicked in I guess.”
Nelson waited for Natalie to respond but she just stared at him, trying to process all he had said.
“I know I did the wrong thing but I’d like to think that over the last fifteen years I’ve done some good in my life and I’ve made a positive difference in a lot of people’s lives through my work. Would society have been better served by me spending five years in jail or me working my arse off to take cold blooded killers like Manuel Torres off the street?”
“I’m going to tell the fucking world that you killed my parents,” she hissed at him, spittle flying from her mouth in her enthusiasm for the idea.
“Are you? I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Nelson replied evenly.
“Why?”
“Because it happened fifteen years ago and you have no evidence. Trust me, I’m a cop and I’ve been through a few internal investigations in my time. It’s my word against yours and Craig will support me, not you. It will get messy for me, but I’ll survive. On top of that, if you stay, you’ll probably be charged with conspi
racy to commit murder among other things. That can carry a pretty hefty sentence. Admittedly the star witness is dead,” he said, again indicating Manuel Torres’ corpse on the floor beside him. “And you’re a smart girl who has probably covered your tracks pretty well, so maybe you’d come out of it ok, but then again, maybe not. It’s amazing what a team of Detectives can dig up on a person. We tend to look after our own. And finally there are the Foglianis to consider. No doubt they’d be interested to find out you were involved in Emilio’s murder. Maybe they’d come after you too.”
Natalie stared at him, weighing his words. She hated to admit they made sense and she had the feeling that she had been backed into the tightest of corners.
“Look Natalie, I can’t bring your parents back, but maybe, maybe if I let you walk away now it will go some small part of the way toward balancing the ledger between me and you. Maybe if you agree to disappear and never come back to New South Wales, I can leave Kylie Faulkner out of my reports and pretend I didn’t find you here. You could put all this shit behind you and start your life over again. It’s the best offer I can make you with the way things are.”
Natalie thought hard on his words and didn’t know what to do. She found it hard to accept that her three year crusade had come to such a pointless ending and that her parents’ killer would again walk free, unpunished, and yet she could fathom no other way out of her predicament other than a full scale retreat. She felt desperate, tired and drained of life and her shoulder throbbed incessantly, reverberating through her head.
“What about my shoulder?”
“I don’t know. You’re a resourceful girl, I’m sure you’ll think of something. Go and find a doctor to bat your eyelids at or something. It’s just a flesh wound so as long as it’s cleaned and stitched and you take a few antibiotics you should be alright.” Nelson cocked his head as he heard the sound of wailing sirens approaching. He surmised that the neighbour who he had almost shot earlier had placed a call to the police and told her story. “Now we don’t have much time so I’m going to turn my back for a few seconds and if you’re still here when I turn around then there’s nothing I can do for you and you’ll have to take your chances against me, the police and the Foglianis.” Nelson turned his back on her and pretended to gaze out the window to the night beyond. He wondered if she would make a move for Manuel Torres’ gun that lay on the floor only ten feet away from her and placed his hand within easy reach of his holstered weapon just in case. He watched her carefully in the reflection of the window as she got slowly to her feet. He saw her gaze shift and momentarily rest on the gun on the floor before she turned, grabbed a bag of belongings that she had been in the process of filling when Manuel Torres had arrived and disappeared out the door.