“Things are moving fast on this one.”
“That’s why they’ve put the A team on it.”
“Who? Like the movie?”
“No. Like the series. Never mind.”
While Nelson proceeded to give Robards a rundown of his meeting with Crighton and his earlier meeting with Martinez a waitress came to take their order. She was tall and thin with faded blonde hair and had rings of flame tattooed around each wrist. Nelson’s memory recalled her almost instantly and he remembered that he’d arresting her for drug possession on two occasions when he worked as a Constable at the Cabramatta Police station during a tumultuous ten month stint. He glanced at her arms and noticed they appeared clean of track marks but decided to order just an apple and banana on the off chance that her memory was as good as his and she was in a mood to play games. The food was brought out in quick time and Nelson suffered through his fruit as he watched Robards hoe into an enormous serving of scrambled eggs, bacon, toast and coffee.
Ok let’s get to work,” said Nelson without waiting for Robards to finish. “First things first. How far did you get with whatsername last night? What was her name, Agnes?”
Robards laughed with an innocent shrug of his broad shoulders.
“Let’s just say the old Robards charm worked a charm on Agnes, eventually, but your phone call put an end to all that.”
“Oh, sorry about that. Bad timing I guess. How was she?”
Robards smiled. He was the kiss and tell type. “She was great fun. It’s often the quiet ones who surprise you the most.”
“Lucky you,” replied Nelson dryly, beginning to feel sorry he’d asked. “Ok, on to more serious things. What’s the story with the video?”
“It’s all good. I’ve got security video from six of the warehouses closest to the crime scene. I’ve dropped it off with Mike at the lab and he said he’d pass it on to the video techs.”
“Good work.”
“It may take a while to analyse though. There’s over three hundred hours of it in total. There were cameras pointing every which way.”
“Hopefully something will turn up.”
“What else have you got in mind for today? Are we going to pay the family a visit?”
“Yep. We need to hear what they have to say even though I doubt they’ll be particularly helpful.”
“They take care of their own.”
“Probably, or maybe they’ll surprise us and give us something about what the old man was up to last night.”
”Maybe, I won’t hold my breath though,” replied Robards shoving another large forkful of food into his mouth.
“But first thing after breakfast I want to head back out to the crime scene. I want to try and get a feel for what happened out there last night.”
Chapter 16
Craig jumped off his sofa and grabbed him mobile off his kitchen bench. He was tempted to let it ring out but the ring sounded insistent to him even though he knew that was absurd. He checked the screen and was glad to see it was Bryce.
“Brycey baby. What are you up to?”
“Not much. Have you seen the news?”
“No,” replied Craig drowsily. “I just got outta bed ten minutes ago.”
“But it’s ten-thirty!”
“Is it? I couldn’t sleep so I took a couple of pills to help me out. God I feel like crap now though. What news?”
“It was Fogliani. Emilio Fogliani.”
“Who? What? What are you on about?” he said shaking his head in an attempt to clear out the fog.
“That thing you saw in St Peters last night.” Bryce said, his voice was insistent and with an edge to it. “It was Emilio Fogliani. You know, the underworld guy.”
Craig’s mind finally started to process the information. His blue eyes stared unseeing at the wall.
“Oh shit. I’m not liking this at all. I think I should disappear for a while.”
“What? Why? Why would you do that? You didn’t do anything wrong? You were telling the truth last night weren’t you?” asked Bryce, with a slight note of accusation seeping subconsciously into his tone.
“Of course I was. It went down just as I said.” Craig snapped defensively. “Do you think I’d lie about something like this?”
“No, of course not. Sorry. Well then you don’t have anything to worry about do you?”
“I’m not so sure, I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
“Just relax. I’m sure they’ll get the guy who did it and that’ll be the end of it. As you said last night, this has nothing to do with us.”
Chapter 17
A pale, weak, winter sun hung low in the northern sky as Robards and Nelson arrived back at the crime scene. It provided just enough warmth to slowly dry the dew off the grass in the adjoining park but little more than that. Nothing was warm.
On the drive to St Peters, Robards had set up a meeting with Michael Fogliani. The appointment was for midday at his office in the city so the two Detectives had almost an hour to kill.
A single Constable from the Newtown Local Area Command stoically continued to guard the crime scene - which was now just an empty, blocked off driveway - much to the consternation of those who needed to use it to access the rear of the warehouse.
The media scrum had arrived in force from eight a.m. onwards. They got their footage of their journalists standing in front of the vacant crime scene, interviewed a few of the local workers, were frustrated by the stonewalling of the stoic Constable and had mostly moved on to the next story. Now just a mere handful of the most persistent remained, hoping for an unlikely scoop on further developments. Although it was Saturday, most of the warehouses and depots seemed to be a hive of activity. A few workers on their breaks stood by watching and thinking how poorly the investigation compared to the shows they watched on the TV.
Nelson always returned to a crime scene at least once. It was what he did. He had lost count of the number of times he had learned something new about a case from revisiting the crime scene on his second or third visit. He liked to get a feel for it, to take the time to soak it in and search for the details that he may have missed first time around.
“Alright Pete, you be Emilio Fogliani and I’ll be the killer.”
“Why do I always have to be the victim?” Robards knew better than to argue but he did anyway. Nelson always got to be the murderer. He was good at it too. He had an almost uncanny ability to put himself in other people’s shoes and get a feel for what they were doing and thinking at the time of the crime.
“Ok, so I’m thinking that Fogliani either came out here to meet someone or was planning a robbery or something. You wouldn’t come out here on your own in the middle of the night just to sit in your car and think about life,” started Nelson. “What do they store in the warehouse?” he said, nodding toward the closest building.
“The guy I spoke to said it’s basically just a depot to house imported gardening supplies.”
“Seems an unlikely target then, unless he had a big backyard or unless they were importing drugs at the same time or something. That’s been done before.”
“Maybe. Seems legit though.”
“I wonder if the Foglianis lease or own any floor space around here.”
“Good question. We can ask them later.”
