He’d go to the front counter, sign his name and ‘be on the piss’ before midday.

After all, his wife Debra was waiting outside in the car.

But this was not going to be any ordinary day for the 32-year-old.

November 26 was the day Neddy — a greedy small time thief — would come face-to-face for the first time with an ambitious detective called Roger Rogerson.

It would be the start of the most famous and destructive police informant relationship in Australian history.

Sydney would feel the effects of the meeting for decades — including a trail of bodies, the flooding of the city with heroin and a series of armed robberies.

Three weeks before Rogerson and Smith had met two men had attempted to rob the payroll from a vehicle as it arrived at the Fielders Bakery at Granville in western Sydney.

Lurking not far from the drop off point was Neddy.

He was behind the wheel of a stolen car, while his mate, a well known crook by the name of Bobby Chapman, got out of the car with a hood over his head and a weapon in hand.

As he approached the driver stalled the car and Chapman fired two shots – narrowly missing the guards in the vehicle.

Before he could get his hands on the money the guard had restarted the car and sped off with Chapman firing aimlessly in its wake.

The pair quickly ditched the hot car and got into a second vehicle driven by Chapman’s new wife Gail.

Things seemed quiet for the next couple of weeks but police investigating an earlier robbery and disappearance of a well-known armed robber, Robert McKinnon, eventually interviewed Chapman, his wife and also Smith.

As they dug deeper, police started to become aware of the trio’s involvement in the failed Granville robbery.

Enter Rogerson, dragging Chapman and his wife into the CIB (Criminal Investigation Branch) for questioning.

Rogerson took Chapman while two others interviewed his wife, and eventually Smith’s name popped up as the “wheel man’’.

That’s when it was decided to nab Neddy when he reported to police the following week.

“From what I remember Smith walked to the counter where there were some uniform officers and then Roger walked up to him, took him into an interview room and informed Smith he was being arrested for the armed robbery,’’ retired Chief Superintendent Brian Harding, who was at the station that day and a member of the Armed Holdup Squad, said.

“Smith said something about his wife waiting outside and another detective was sent out to talk to her.’’

A shoplifter of some renown, and a convicted rapist, Smith had escalated to armed robbery after joining up with his old mate Chapman.

Chapman was already known as a hardened crim specialising in bank robberies.

He would come to an inglorious end two decades later when he was found shot in the stomach, wrapped in a white doona with a plastic bag over his head.

That first meeting between Rogerson and Smith has been immortalised as one of a violent confrontation.

Folklore suggests Rogerson, armed with a shotgun, slammed Neddy to the floor and pointed the gun at his head.

“It was nothing like that,’’ Harding said.

“Really it was a pretty unspectacular arrest.’’

After Smith was apprehended at Rockdale police station he was taken to police headquarters — known as the “Old Hat Factory’’ — in the city.

According to Harding there appeared to be little rapport between the two.

It was cop vs. crook and it went according to script.

There was no telephone book smacked around the head like, as depicted in 1995 TV series Blue Murder.

The interview was more like two boxers moving around the ring in the opening round without throwing a punch.

The cops didn’t care Smith hadn’t confessed.

By now they had found a gun at Neddy’s Alexandria home, had an informant in Chapman’s wife and the guards were ready to testify that the physical descriptions matched Chapman and Smith.

Yet Smith refused to buckle and was charged. He was locked up after being denied bail.

It was from that day that Smith claims his association with police corruption flourished, leading to a 10 year crime spree.

Neddy claimed he was told if he paid the cops $2000 he would get bail.

A further $20,000 would “make the matter to go away.’’

Smith said he was visited in jail by a law clerk called Brian Alexander, who would act as the go between the cops and himself.

Everything went according to plan and the career crim got bail. Eventually the charges were dismissed.

Neddy later claimed he killed Alexander by tying him to a stove and throwing him into Sydney Harbour.

Where and how the Smith-Rogerson relationship developed from that first meeting no one can be exactly sure.

Harding and others suspect Smith contacted Rogerson from jail after being charged.

While Neddy walked, Chapman ended up being sentenced to more than 10 years for another robbery committed while on bail and he pleaded guilty to robbery charges on the Fielders job — but not the shooting with intent to kill charges.

It now seemed pretty clear to those in the know that both Smith and Chapman had become “close’’ to Rogerson, with Smith openly visiting Roger in the CIB offices to chat.

The audacity and arrogance of Rogerson was soon to come to the fore during the Chapman case when he had to give evidence in the trail.

In the witness box, Rogerson’s testimony was staggering.

When questioned about Chapman shooting at the payroll guards Rogerson stunned prosecutor Alan Saunders by saying he had since been informed an armed robber named Robert McKinnon did the shooting.

This was despite police investigating the disappearance and probable murder of McKinnon before the robbery.

A furious Saunders had no option but to get the charges dropped. Rogerson somehow came out of the whole debacle unscathed.

In fact, he now had two well connected crims in his debt — one on the inside and the other out on the streets.

By 1978, Smith had moved from robbery to the burgeoning heroin trade.

His main supplier was Warren Fellows and another career criminal currently before the courts who can’t be named for legal reasons.

Smith was making millions, but things went south when Fellows, Newtown footballer Paul Hayward, Smith’s brother-in-law and a hairdresser named Sinclair were arrested over a drug importation.

The dismantling of the international drug ring was kicked off with information passed on by Supt Harding, a fact which enraged Smith and led to decades of hatred between the two.

At one point Smith was involved in a serious plot to have the detective killed. It was serious enough that Harding’s family was put in a protection program.

Despite Rogerson’s number one informant attempting to have him killed, Harding still believes in those early years Rogerson was a good and honest cop.

“In the 70s when I knew him he was fearless and a good detective. Roger was a leader and quite charismatic, always first to the bar and could spin a good tale,’’ the softly spoken Harding said.

He could never understand how Rogerson got hooked up with Neddy.

“What has to be realised is that Smith was an internal (prison) informant as well as an external informant. An absolute beast of a human being. I think I once described him as ‘evil incarnate’. I did my awful best to get him his just rewards, as it turned out he got that without any input from me,’’ Harding said.

In 1981 Rogerson was transferred out of the armed hold up squad and sent to Darlinghurst detectives where things really started to heat up — particularly after the shooting of Warren Lanfranchi.