The Stalk Club (15 page)

Kylie desperately wanted to call her aunt’s bluff and
take her chances in the belief that things couldn’t get any worse for her, but
fear of the unknown held her back.  She also contemplated running away, but
apart from a life on the street there was nowhere to run to.  She considered
going to the police but argued reasonably that if her own aunt didn’t believe her
then they might not either.  And so she decided to stay, not from choice but
from a perceived lack of options.

After that she never mentioned Lester’s nocturnal visits
to anyone.  Lester took Maggie’s defence of him as a sign of consent and
continued his monthly visitation rights, becoming more confident and acting out
all of his sexual fantasies with the fifteen year old Kylie.

In time, Kylie learned to become numb to his visits and
an uneasy and unholy truce of sorts was arrived at.  He did what he wanted with
her and did it quickly, inflicting as little discomfort as possible.  And in
return she didn’t fight him and didn’t complain.  On one occasion as he
penetrated her from behind she had seen him in the mirror which sat in the
corner of her room.  The look of primal atavistic joy on his face scared and
disgusted her and from then on she would close her eyes, pretend she was somewhere
else and wait for it to pass.  

She thought about her parents often to keep their memory
alive in her heart and mind, and in an effort to honour them, vowed to survive
and triumph over her current circumstance.  

She locked herself away in her room as often as she could
and concentrated on her secondary school studies.  In the process she became a
better student than she had ever been at the private school she had attended in
her previous life in Canberra.  She found casual employment at a local outlet
of a fast food chain and welcomed as many shifts as she could get which kept
her away from the small house several nights a week and weekends.  She saved
her money and even stole a little from the register to supplement her hourly
wage and planned for the day when she would have enough to make good her escape
and start a new life. 

Her big break came just a month before she was due to
finish her secondary studies.  While cleaning the house she came across a
letter from a Canberra based solicitor.  The official looking letterhead seemed
out of place amongst Maggie’s other papers and piqued her interest.  As she
read she came to understand something of the financial arrangement that had
brought her to live at her aunt’s house, an arrangement that had never been
explained to her.  Something snapped in her head and a cold rage swelled inside
her as she realised the irony of her situation.  She laughed aloud savagely in
the empty house as she realised that her dead parent’s money was being paid to
the people who had made her life into a living hell.  She thought of Lester
drinking and gambling away the money, her parents’ money, and then coming home
and molesting her in anyway that he saw fit.  She thought of her aunt who had
provided her with basic clothing, food and shelter but had never bothered to
extend her an ounce of kindness or belief.   Kylie had known nothing of her
parents’ assets at the time of their deaths and to that day had wrongly assumed
they left little behind.  From the moment she read the letter however, she realised
some options were open to her.  Her plans for escape began to accelerate and
she smiled grimly to herself as she made them. 

Although
it had been a relatively quiet night on the streets of Parramatta and surrounding
areas for a Saturday night, the puking drunks, the banging cell doors and the
yelling and screaming of the drug induced ensured that Craig Thoms didn’t get a
moments rest, let alone a moments sleep.  He shared his five metre by five metre
concrete floored cell with up to eight others depending on the comings and
goings in the night and the noise was a constant and irritating companion.  He
sat in a corner and tried to get as comfortable as possible while he waited.

After
six hours of incarceration, at eight a.m. on Sunday morning, Detective Nelson
arrived, signed for custody of one Craig Thoms and escorted him to an interview
room on the first floor of the station.  The interview room was minimalist to
say the least and consisted of only one table, bolted to the floor, and four lightweight
plastic chairs.  Behind the obligatory one way mirror made of near half inch
thick glass, was a viewing room that contained a video camera on a tripod which
was also connected to two microphones located in the ceiling of the interview
room.

“Just
wait in here please Mr Thoms.  I’ll go and ask your Legal Counsel to join us. 
Won’t be long.” 

When
Craig had initially been brought to the Parramatta police station he had been
provided with a copy of the Yellow Pages to find himself legal representation. 
He had phoned a small firm of solicitors who had in the past successfully
defended him against an assault charge.  Although he wasn’t sure if the
solicitor who had handled his case in the past was suitably qualified to defend
him against a charge of murder he was the only person he could think of at the
time.  He had been relieved and grateful when the solicitor, Martin Warnock,
arrived at his cell at seven a.m. and seemed confident of helping him navigate his
way out of the hole he was now in, or at least that was the plan.

Martin
Warnock was around five feet six inches tall and barely nudged the scales past fifty
kilograms.  He had a penchant for wearing bowties and despite being forty-eight
and still living with his mother, was still unsure of his sexuality.  He had
worked for the law firm Venter and Coward for ten years and while he only had a
moderate success rate with his cases and brought very little new business into
the firm, he remained upbeat about his chances of one day becoming a partner in
the firm.  He considered that the Fogliani murder was opportunity knocking.

Initially,
he had been lividly angry at being woken up so early on a Sunday morning to
come down to the drab, brown brick, Parramatta Police Station, but when he
learned the details of the case his ears pricked up at the enticing thought of
being involved in the Emilio Fogliani murder case.  It had already received a
lot of airplay on television and radio news the previous day and had featured
prominently in the newspapers.  Journalists had been crawling over each other
to get exclusives and eagerly pushed the angle that it might turn out to be yet
another underworld gang war.  Warnock was glad to get a foothold in the case
before one of Sydney’s many high profile celebrity solicitors inevitably waded
in to offer their services pro bono and get their face on the evening news.

Warnock
had spoken briefly to his client through the bars of the holding cell but was
only able to elicit the barest of details as to why he had been arrested.  He
guessed correctly that he would learn a lot more about how strong the case was against
his client during his first formal interview.

Detective
Nelson double checked that the recording equipment was working and entered the
interview room with Robards trailing behind.  A Detective Sergeant from the Parramatta
station named Braxton, had been roped in
to monitor the interview and the equipment from the viewing room.

Detective
Robards commenced the interview by getting Craig to confirm a number of details
about who he 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.