was, his age and where he lived. He also explained what crime he was being questioned about. Robards was good at interviewing. His mind was quick and agile and if there was any confusion or mistake made by the suspect he would pick it up instantly and turn it against him. He was planning on using his favourite interviewing technique on Craig, which was to get him to repeatedly lie to questions that Robards already knew the answer to and then throw it all back in his face, backed up with irrefutable evidence. Often this resulted in the suspect panicking at being caught out and becoming easy pickings.
“Craig can you tell me where were you at around ten p.m. last Friday night?”
“I was at home.” During his six hours of incarceration he had given a lot of thought to his predicament and decided not to unnecessarily drag any of his friends into his problems by providing any information to the police about their Friday night activities.
“All night?”
“All night.” Craig responded.
“Can anyone verify this?”
“Unfortunately I was alone.”
“Were you anywhere near St Peters at ten p.m. Friday night?”
“Saint who?”
“St Peters.”
“No, like I said, I was at home all night. Don’t you hear too good?”
“Have you been to St Peters in recent time, say in the last week or so?”
“No.”
“Look Detectives,” interrupted Warnock with all the authority he could muster, hoping his voice didn’t sound too squeaky. “With all due respect, if you have any evidence, please present it and stop wasting my client’s time.” Warnock was beginning to enjoy himself. This was a high profile investigation and he was a part of it, crossing swords with the big boys from the Homicide Squad. He had only defended in two homicide cases and although he was zero from two, he was hoping to improve on that statistic. He had already jotted down some notes on what he was going to say to the media who were hopefully encamped outside the station, waiting to hear from him. He casually looked down at his attire and mentally reprimanded himself for not having worn his blue cotton shirt with matching blue striped bowtie. Blue was definitely his best colour.
Nelson watched on as Robards proceeded with the questioning. He knew there were many ways to get a suspect to confess to a crime they did or didn’t commit and that only the strongest minded people could resist a drawn out, exhaustive interrogation that could go on for days. In some interrogations he had been a part of with his old partner mad Mick Neale, Nelson had almost been prepared to confess to the crime himself if it meant that it would bring the interrogation to an end. Neale had seemingly limitless energy and would brow beat and intimidate a suspect over and over again, exhausting them until they just gave up and signed on the dotted line. Most members of the Homicide Squad thought the bear sized, bald headed, Neale was mad – thus the nickname - and Nelson wouldn’t have argued with them, but there was method to his madness. Although he was somewhat eccentric, he was persistent, thorough and diligent to an almost obsessive level in his approach to every case. And over the time they spent working together, his ways rubbed off a little onto Nelson. Nelson regarded Neale as the best cop he had ever worked with. He was generous with his time and made the effort to instruct Nelson at every turn. He found gaps in Nelson’s approaches and filled them with suggestions or guidance. Unfortunately Neale’s obsession with the job came at the expense of his personal life and he ended up taking the early retirement option eighteen months previously, worn out by twenty-five years in the job. He had been a powerfully built athlete in his youth but by the end, carried an enormous gut, tipped the scales at one hundred and thirty-five kilograms and had a blood pressure reading that gave his doctor heart palpitations.
Nelson decided that as Crighton was seeking a quick result he didn’t want to drag the interrogation out for days and would play it as straight as he could with Craig and his weedy solicitor.
“Mr Thoms, we do have a case against you. We wouldn’t have arrested you if we didn’t,” Nelson said quietly, almost apologetically. He reached into a large yellow envelope and laid photos from the crime scene neatly on the table facing Craig and his solicitor.
“You want to know what we’ve got against you? Well here it is. We’ve got a pair of latex gloves found near the scene of the crime. These gloves had the blood of the deceased, Emilio Fogliani, on them.”
“So what?” replied Craig.
“On the inside of the gloves we extracted a set of fingerprints. These fingerprints were run through our NAFIS database and came up as a match to yours. You’ve been in a bit of trouble in the past.”
Craig looked at him as if he was speaking another language, maybe Danish. He didn’t understand how the gloves, his gloves could exist at the crime scene.
“And,” added a now smiling Robards as he closed the trap with a snap, “we’ve got a plaster cast of a footprint in the mud which looks like it’s a perfect match to those fancy hiking boots we found in your apartment. And, last but by no means least, we have video footage of you at the scene of the crime, at the time of the crime, taken from the security cameras at a warehouse next to where you murdered Emilio Fogliani. So much for your watching TV alibi hey?”
Robards smiled triumphantly, starting to really enjoy himself as he slid the black and white images of Craig in the photos across the desk. Craig craned his neck down to the photos, not wanting to touch them, not wanting to believe they were real. He had to admit though, they were a pretty good likeness of him, an unmistakable likeness. Martin Warnock had gone quiet and still as if he’d been frozen in his seat. All of a sudden he wasn’t so excited at being a part of this. He was now reconsidering his media strategy and wondering if there was a rear exit from the Police station.
“As you can see, video technology is pretty good these days, even at night-time,” Robards continued. “So good in fact that we think we’ve even been able to match the clothes you were wearing in the photo to some that we took from your apartment. We’ve sent them off to forensics to run a few tests on.”
Craig wiped the photos off the table in disgust with a broad sweep of his arm. “This is all bullshit. I had nothing to do with this.”
“Then how do you explain the evidence?” asked Robards mildly.
“You’re just making this shit up.”
“I’m afraid we’re not Mr Thoms,” said Nelson. “Look, you may not believe this, but right now I’m your best friend in the world. I see the evidence in front of me and it doesn’t look good. But I’m prepared to listen to whatever you’ve got to say. So if you didn’t do this, then you tell me exactly what went down out there and don’t leave anything out, no matter how small.”
Craig searched Nelson’s face. He wasn’t sure who he could trust right now but he soon realised that he had no choice. He looked to his solicitor who pursed his already thin lips. From his past experience where he had lost cases, he had developed a reliable gut feel for when he was on a loser and those same feeling began to assail him now.
“Craig, it’s up to you how much you want to say at this stage however I strongly recommend that you say nothing until we have had the opportunity to discuss these developments in private.”
“It’s ok Martin. I didn’t do this so I’ll tell them what happened and take my chances” he said dejectedly.
Craig Thoms began to tell his story. He told them about the stalking game. He told them about how it began innocently enough, with he and his co-worker Bryce wanting to field test the equipment they were selling at their employer Carmichael’s Security, but then grew into a regular stalking competition between a handful of friends. The Detectives and his solicitor listened in silence and let him speak. He told them that on Friday night they were playing their stalking game and he followed his mark by train to St Peters and then on foot through Sydney Park and into an industrial area. He told them that the guy he had been following simply walked up to a car parked in the laneway and shot the guy in it three times and then immediately ran away.
Robards had been listening intently but now smiled derisively. “That’s a nice story. But if it’s true then why didn’t we pick up any video footage of this other guy? All we got was you. And why did the gloves have your fingerprints in them, instead of this mystery shooter?”
Craig’s face was blank, “I have no idea. But you gotta believe me, everything I just told you was the absolute truth.”
Martin Warnock was now completely convinced that he was on a one way street to being zero and three from the homicide cases he’d defended. He was sincerely wishing that Craig had taken his advice and remained silent
