moved to her, gently prised her hand away from her shoulder and inspected the wound. The bullet had missed bone and major blood vessels and only gashed the muscle and skin above her collarbone. He retrieved a tea towel from the nearby kitchen, folded it twice and placed it over the wound.
“Hold this as tight as you can bear.” She grimaced through the pain but held it firmly in place. Nelson stood up and paced around the room in deep thought. His face was unreadable. After a minute he seemed to finally come to a decision. He grabbed a chair from the dining table, reversed it and sat facing her.
“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
“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
