read about it in the newspaper and was curious to find out how it might be linked to his past. Nelson explained that he was chasing down a possible connection between the case and a car accident near Batemans Bay fifteen years ago that Soward had worked on.
He showed Soward a printout of a story from a newspaper from 1997, which he had pulled off the internet the previous evening. It described an accident where a car had run off the road and plunged into the Clyde River at Nelligen, about ten minutes drive west of Batemans Bay. Both parents had died, but a teenage daughter had miraculously escaped a similar fate. Soward nodded and grunted in recollection as he read the article.
“You remember it,” said Nelson.
Soward looked up at Nelson and now he looked all of his sixty-four years of age as small tight lines circled his opaque eyes and his brow furrowed into deep valleys.
“Yes I do. I always hated car accidents you know. It was the worst part of the job. People who haven’t seen one up close have no idea what they’re like.”
“Do you know what happened to the girl?”
Soward laughed ironically.
“Kylie Faulkner was her name. I remember her.”
“Do you remember what happened to her?” repeated Nelson hopefully.
“Some. After losing her parents and spending a couple of weeks in hospital with a few broken bones, she was bundled off to her only living relatives, an aunt and her boyfriend who lived up at Cooma. The aunt was paid by the family trust to take her in.”
“Your memory is still good after all these years,” said Nelson, impressed by the old man’s recall of events.
“Maybe, but some things are hard to forget. Part of being a copper I guess. We were never able to identify the other car involved in the accident. I mean I couldn’t give her back her parents, but I was hoping we could find out who was responsible. We never did.” Soward’s voice grew thick with emotion as he spoke. “Or should I say we were never able to prove anything.”
“You had your suspicions? Suspects?”
“Yeah, but nothing ever came of it. We only had the skidmarks as hard evidence. There were no witnesses, and at the time the girl barely remembered anything of the accident, probably because of her head injury. We questioned several people about it but the trail went cold.”
“I know how that feels.”
“Yeah I’ll say.”
Nelson noted that the number of patrons in the club had continued to grow. Soward’s five minute break had turned into fifteen, but he didn’t seem to care. It was just a job to keep him occupied in his retirement and add a little extra cash to his pension.
“Just a couple more questions Sarge if you don’t mind. When I was looking at the case summary on the database I noticed you’d placed a file note which was dated only two years ago, thirteen years after the accident. What was that about?”
“Yeah, it was only a few months before I retired. A woman walked into the station asking for me. I didn’t recognise her all grown up, but blow me down if it wasn’t the same girl from the accident, Kylie Faulkner, all grown up. She’d turned out real nice too let me tell you. Anyway she spoke to me about her parents’ car crash. She wanted me to re-open the investigation.”
“Why? Did she know who was responsible?”
“No, I don’t think she did. From what I remember, she said she’d been having dreams about the accident and she remembered more about it, but she didn’t have anything substantial to go on. I told her that unless she had something real good for us then I wasn’t interested in reopening such an old case. We just didn’t have the resources for that sorta stuff. And at the time of the accident we’d spent a lot of time and energy investigating the case. We couldn’t nail anyone for it then, so I doubted we could do any better after all that time.”
“Did she mention any names? Did she mention the name Craig Thoms?” said Nelson, trying his best to contain the flutter that was growing in his stomach.
Soward thought for a while as he rubbed his chin.
“No, I don’t think she named anyone. As I said, I don’t think she had anything substantial to go on. I do seem to vaguely remember that name though. He may have been one of the suspects. It’ll be in the file.”
Nelson stared thoughtfully out the window and briefly watched the bowls matches being played out on the flat green rinks outside.
“How did she take it? I mean, what was her reaction to you not wanting to reopen the case?”
“She wasn’t happy of course. She bent my ear about natural justice for a while but eventually gave up and left. I think she gave herself a headache or something. That was the last time I saw her. At the time I remember wondering if she had a kangaroo loose in the top paddock if you know what I mean. Anyway, I didn’t think there was much to it. As you probably understand we get plenty of requests to re-open old cold cases, but I slipped a note into the case file just in case. You never can tell when these things’ll come up again. You visiting me here and now is a testament to that. So does that help with the case you are working on at all?”
Nelson sat back in his chair contemplating Soward’s words.
“I’m not sure, but it’s something I’m going to find out.”
Chapter 35
After his visit with Soward, Nelson felt re-energised. His drive back up the coast was at a much faster pace than the drive down had been and his Cobra growled angrily along the highway and ate the kilometres up. He turned his phone on and within seconds it was beeping furiously, indicating the presence of several messages. He put in a call to Robards who was at Headquarters.
“Where the hell have you been? Inspector VanMerle has been looking for you and he’s about to shit out a kidney,” said a clearly agitated Robards.
Nelson almost drove off the road from laughing.
“Well it’s lucky that he’s got two of them then. Look, I’ve just been chasing something up. I’ll tell you all about it when I get back. How’d you go tracking down Harvey Petersham?”
“Good. Great in fact. I found him, but I don’t think he had anything to do with this. He’s got an ironclad alibi for last Friday night. Actually for most of last week he was up at Newcastle, plus he’s small time and as dumb as dogshit. There’s no way he has the brain power to set Thoms up, if that’s what you were thinking.”
“Ok. Anything else to report?”
“Yeah, VanMerle says he wants you to wrap up the Fogliani case because he’s got something else he wants us to look at.”
“What? We’ve only been on it two days. Jeezus. Just tell him I’m still tying up some loose ends and I’ll be in soon to talk to him.”
“Gee thanks for letting me do the dirty work. I’m sure that will go down real well.”
Nelson ignored his partner’s protestations. He felt a moment of guilt about putting Robards in the firing line but it soon passed. He decided to continue to chase down his lead while it was hot, or at least lukewarm.
“Look I need you to do something urgently for me. It’s important Pete. I want you to dig up everything you can find on a woman named Kylie Faulkner. She’s about thirty to thirty-two years of age and initially lived in Canberra. Her parents were killed in a car accident in June of 1997 and then she moved to Cooma to live with an aunt. See if you can track down a current address.”
“What’s she got to do with anything?” replied Robards sullenly, yet showing a flicker of interest in Nelson’s request.
“Don’t worry about that right now, just get the address and I’ll fill you in. Just trust me ok?”
“Whatever you say boss.”
Within half an hour Robards phoned Nelson back. He told Nelson that tracking down a current address for Kylie Faulkner hadn’t been easy. She had no criminal history, hadn’t lodged a tax return in three years and didn’t appear on any current databases that the New South Wales Police Force had access to. Robards had managed to speak to her aunt in Cooma who Kylie had been warded to in her youth, but her aunt said she hadn’t seen or heard from her since the day she left twelve or so years previously. Fortunately Robards had a contact in the Roads
