“Oh, hi,” she said, opening the door to the two detectives from Jill’s apartment yesterday.
“Hi, Beth,” said the woman. Beth had forgotten their names, but the female detective picked up on it and re-introduced them. “I’m Detective Baxter, this is Detective Anderson. But you can call us Meg and Flynn.”
Beth nodded and shook Meg’s hand. Flynn was carrying an archive box that looked heavy. He walked into the house and introduced himself to Louis, asking where to put the box.
“Just here is fine,” said Louis, clearing a space on the table. “What is it?”
Flynn looked awkwardly at his partner, who took over.
“It’s the paperwork you asked us to find for you, Beth,” she said. Beth was grateful for her tact in not mentioning the encounter at Jill’s yesterday. After they’d found her and helped her pull herself back together, she’d insisted they just drop her off at home without coming inside. She didn’t want Louis to know how stupid she’d been, walking over to Jill’s place like that.
“Jill’s ancestry notes?”
“That’s right. They were in a cupboard in the bedroom, up on a top shelf. Looked like she hadn’t accessed the box for a while.”
“Oh,” said Beth, running her finger through the dust on the lid of the box. “She’s been talking about it recently. I know she was working on creating a big family tree for us all to put up on display somewhere. That must have been on her computer.”
Beth put the lid to one side and started flicking through the paperwork. There were birth certificates, death certificates, even marriage certificates for Fisher family members going back many years. There were printouts from the internet, photocopied pages of old books, brochures, and even a map of Rookwood cemetery. There was so much information in this box, but it was such a jumbled mess that Beth worried she’d never be able to make sense of it all. She put the lid back on the box and plonked down in a chair before remembering her manners.
“Can we get you something? Coffee? Louis, put the coffee machine on,” she said, without waiting for a response. “We were just about to have one, anyway,” she explained.
Flynn went over to watch Louis fire up the beast of a coffee machine he’d insisted on buying last year.
“If I’m going to work from home, I want good coffee,” he’d reasoned at the time. “You’ve got that place in your building, but there’s nowhere I can go around here. I have to make it myself.”
Beth had been dubious at first, thinking it was a waste of money, but it didn’t take long for her to come around after experiencing the benefits of it on the weekends.
She moved the box to the floor. “Is this everything you found?”
“Yes,” answered Meg. “We had a good look around, there was nothing else that looked related. What are you going to do with it?”
It was a good question. Yesterday Beth had been full of ambition to finish the project for her sister, but now this mess of documents was the last thing she wanted to look at. It would bring back too many memories of Jill, her excitement about the project, the lunches they shared as she talked Beth’s ear off about this ancestor or that one. Beth used to endure those lunches, having little interest in what people did two hundred years ago, preferring to live in the now and talk about their own lives, their own careers. Sure, she was proud of the history of their family and the company they created from nothing, but she didn’t need to know the who’s and the when’s of it all. So often she tried to encourage Jill to advance her career, to step up within the family business, but Jill wasn’t interested. She was good at her job, but to her it was just a job. She left at the end of each day and went back in time, back to the early settlers — the Fishers that helped build Sydney and bring the world closer, one ship at a time.
“I don’t know,” Beth said. “I want to get it done for her, but I’m not sure I can face it.” She ran her hand over the lid of the box. Could she bring herself to go through it?
“There are people who do this kind of thing for a living, you know,” said Flynn, taking a seat at the table as Louis brought over a tray with four glasses of silky, smooth-looking coffee.
“Like who?”
“Historians, researchers. I don’t know exactly, but my aunt was working on our family history and she came across a couple of them in the library. It’s a popular thing to do, tracing your ancestry, and whenever there’s a trend there’s always people looking to cash in on it. I imagine they do it for people who want to know where they came from, but don’t want to do the legwork themselves.”
Beth gave the idea some thought. It would solve the problem of doing the work herself. Not that she was afraid of getting into a big project, of course. She did that all the time for Fisher & Co. It was just that this was Jill’s project, and taking it over herself seemed wrong somehow. Going through that box felt like she was intruding on her sister’s space, taking over something that was special to Jill. But would hiring a stranger to do the same thing be any less intrusive?
“I’ll have to think about it,” she finally said. “But thanks for the information. I never would have known there were people who do that.”
“No problem,” said Flynn.
The detectives stayed for the rest of the morning, helping Beth and Louis with some routine chores, entertaining the kids, and providing a welcome relief from the clouds circling Beth’s mind. They asked some questions about Jill, and although Beth realised they were trying to get to know the family and how Jill had fitted in, she didn’t mind their soft interrogation methods. Meg was easy to talk to, and Flynn was kind to the children. And if she was honest, it felt good to talk about Jill with the whole family present. Emily and Jacob didn’t know their aunt had been murdered, and Beth wanted to keep that fact from them for as long as possible. The detectives seemed to understand, and their questions were more about who Jill was, what she was like as a person. It was good to hear the kids answer those questions. Louis, too. It was sad though, to think that Beth was learning more about her sister’s relationships with her family members after her death than she did when Jill was alive.
8
It was lunch time on Friday before Baxter and Anderson showed their faces in the squad room, and Cooper was starting to get restless. He wanted a briefing before he and Quinn went over to the Foundation where Jill Fisher was supposed to have started work next week.
“What time do you call this?” he asked as they took seats in the meeting room they’d set up for the investigation.
“You told us to stick close to Beth Fisher,” answered Meg. “We’ve been ‘round at their place all morning. You’re welcome.”
“Yeah, all right then. What did you learn?”
“She’s all over the place, Coop,” said Meg. “I think we can rule her out as a suspect. We went back to Jill’s apartment yesterday afternoon like you asked, and found a box of documents in the wardrobe. Old birth and death certificates, stuff like that. It was the ancestry stuff Beth wanted, so we took it over to her this morning.”
“What did she make of it?”
“Like I said, she’s all over the place. Yesterday she was pretty keen to get it, wanted to finish what her sister had started, that sort of thing. Today, though, she didn’t want anything to do with it. I think it might be in the too hard basket, which is understandable.”
“Do we have any reason to believe this ancestry thing has anything to do with Jill’s death?”
“I can’t see it. The box was up on the top shelf of the wardrobe, hadn’t been touched for a while. Whoever did this wasn’t looking for it. If they were, they didn’t look very hard. And anyway, I don’t see how tracing your family tree could get you killed. Doesn’t make much sense.”
Cooper made a note before moving on. “What else did you find out?”
“I had a chat with Beth’s husband, Louis,” said Anderson. “He’s an architect, recently started running a business from home after taking time off to do the house husband thing. Now that both kids a
re in school he’s reconnecting with the industry. Seems like a nice enough guy, but he wasn’t too forthcoming when I asked about Jill.”
“You think he was hiding something?” asked Quinn.
“I couldn’t say for sure. He was just a bit too cagey for my liking. I’m going to see if I can get him on his own and have another go at him.”
Cooper took all of this in. He’d spent the morning looking over all aspects of the case, including what they’d learned from Jill’s colleagues yesterday, and the more he looked at it the more he was convinced that this wasn’t a burglary. The general consensus was that Jill had been very good at her job, and she was happy there. No-one understood why she was being transferred to the Foundation, and Jill herself would change the subject every time it came up. On the surface, she said she was happy with the move, looking forward to the challenge, all the usual bullshit, but Cooper got the feeling it was a step in the wrong direction, career-wise. One colleague in particular, Gail Simmonds, had voiced her concerns.
“She said she wanted to go, but I could tell she didn’t,” Gail had told them yesterday.
“How so?”
“She just didn’t. Women know these things, Detective. She was very quiet. She’d stopped talking about her ancestry research, for one thing. She used to bore the lot of us with those stories, you know. I shouldn’t say that. Sometimes it was interesting, the stuff she came up with. You know she even found out that one of her ancestors, well over a hundred years ago, was involved in some murderous love triangle? She had the old newspaper reports, it was fascinating. Anyway, she loved that stuff. Then maybe a week or two ago she just seemed to drop it.”
“And you found that to be out of character for Jill?”
“Kind of, yeah. To be honest I didn’t connect the two things, her transfer to the Foundation and losing interest in the ancestry. But looking at it now, they definitely both happened around the same time.”
It could be anything, Cooper thought to himself now. People have stuff happening in their lives all the time, family crises, work dramas. It doesn’t always follow that the dramas have anything to do with their death. But sometimes it does. Cooper believed he owed it to the victim to cover every possible scenario. It was especially true in this case, where the intruder angle was questionable.
“Meg, did you get that friend of yours from Rescue to try climbing up onto the balcony?”
“Yeah, he met us back there yesterday when we were looking for the genealogy documents. He did it, but said it wasn’t easy. You’d need some serious upper body strength, coupled with a slim-to-athletic build. Too much weight and you’d never be able to pull yourself up there, no matter how hard you worked in the weights room.”
Cooper nodded, and made a note. The burglary was still a possibility, then. He leaned back in his chair, contemplating their next steps.
“I don’t think we can rule anything out just yet,” he said. “You two stay on Beth and her husband. Flynn, see if you can talk to him alone. Find out what his relationship with Jill was like. Meg, talk to Beth about Jill’s social circle, if she had one. Who were her friends, was she part of any groups, that sort of thing. We’ll head over to the Foundation and see what was going on with this transfer.”
* * *
The Tim Fisher Genetic Research Foundation occupied a number of offices and clinical testing rooms in the Genetic Therapy Unit of Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. To Cooper it was a rabbit warren, and they had considerable trouble finding the right building. After asking someone dressed in scrubs rushing past with a sandwich in one hand and a coffee in the other, who was no help at all, they finally located the unit and were directed to the Foundation’s reception room.
“Can I help you?”
Cooper introduced himself and Quinn, and asked to see the person in charge.
“That would be Professor Keane. I’ll see if he’s available.” She picked up the phone, leaving Cooper to wonder why so many people thought detectives visiting their workplace were an inconvenience they could easily say no to. Fortunately he didn’t need to have the usual argument, as a man in a white coat with a name tag identifying him as the said professor came straight out to greet them.
“Detectives, how do you do,” he said, offering his hand to Cooper. “I assume this is about Jill? Terrible news, I can’t imagine what her family must be going through. Come in, please,” he continued, ushering them back through the door from which he’d so quickly appeared.
“Thank you for seeing us, Professor,” acknowledged Cooper once they were seated and the formal introductions were out of the way. “We understand Jill Fisher was due to start work here next week. Is that correct?”
“Yes. David and his father had agreed to transfer her over here. Our little organisation has grown so much in the last few years, but as a non-profit we rely on donations to continue our good work. Jill was going to head up a new fundraising team, hopefully get us some new corporate sponsors. I’m not sure what’s going to happen now.”
“That’s not really our concern.”
His face dropped. “No, of course. I’m sorry, that sounded callous. I’d only met her a couple of times, but Jill seemed like a lovely girl. How can I help you with your investigation?”
“Can you give us an idea of what you do here? How is it connected to Fisher & Co?” asked Quinn.
Professor Keane sat forward in his chair. “David Fisher was the driving force behind the formation of this foundation. His brother, Tim, was born with a rare disease called nephronophthisis. Basically, it is a genetic disorder of the kidneys, which, in the teenage or young-adult years, results in end-stage renal failure. Currently the only cure is a kidney transplant, but as you’d be aware there are far more people on transplant waiting lists than ever receive new organs. Tim was one of the unlucky ones who died waiting. David, with the backing of his father and Fisher & Co, established the Timothy Fisher Genetic Research Foundation in the hope that one day we’d find a cure for this and other genetic diseases.”
“And have you?” asked Cooper.
“Found a cure for nephronophthisis? No, not yet. But labs like ours have been able to identify the eleven genes thought to be responsible for it. That’s the first step. We’ve also been doing a lot of research in other areas, exciting research that might address the problem in a different way, and change the face of medicine in the process.”
Cooper’s eyes narrowed, he wasn’t sure what the professor meant.
“We’ve been doing a significant amount of work in the area of stem cell research,” Professor Keane continued. “We believe it is highly possible that one day, not far from now we’ll be able to grow replacement organs, removing the need for donor organs altogether. People like Tim will no longer have to wait. We will simply be able to build them a new kidney in the laboratory.”
Quinn looked impressed. “How can you do that?”
“Through the magic of stem cells, Detective. Do you know what stem cells are?”
“I’ve heard the term mentioned on the news now and then, but no, not really.”
“Basically a stem cell is the human body’s building block. We humans have two hundred and twenty different types of cells. Regular cells can multiply but they can only become the same type of cell. Stem cells, on the other hand, can multiply and become any type of cell. When life starts in an embryo, the embryonic stem cells replicate themselves many times over, and the new cells become all the different types of cells as the body develops and grows. If we can harness this process in the laboratory, we can get stem cells to grow into whatever part of the body we want them to be, including new organs. It’s quite a bit more complicated than that, of course, but you get the general idea.”
“Of course,” said Cooper, not at all sure that he did. “Are you the main researcher here then, Professor?”
“Yes. I’m here almost full time now, and I have a number of students helping me out when their timetables allow it. A lot of what we’re doing is confidential,
of course, but if you like I could show you around the lab?”
“No, thank you, that won’t be necessary. Can you tell us what type of relationship, if any, Jill had with the other staff here?”
“Well she hadn’t started yet, of course,” replied the professor. He picked up a pen from his desk and started twirling it in his hand. “She didn’t really know any of the researchers. The other admin staff we have are all part time, and I’m not even sure Jill had met any of them yet, either.”
“Were any of them going to be members of her new fundraising team?”
“I believe so, yes. But again, I don’t know whether they’d met each other yet. You’ll have to ask them.”
“We will. What about David and Robert Fisher?”
“She seemed to get on well with David. He was her cousin, you know. And I remember David saying that Jill was looking forward to helping us out due to the family connection. Apparently she and Tim had been quite close when they were children. As for Robert, I really couldn’t say. He doesn’t have much to do with us over here. He’s on the board, of course, but he leaves the day-to-day stuff to David and myself. David looks after the financials, and I see to it the lab runs smoothly and according to protocols. We’re a pretty small operation, really. I think as far as Robert is concerned we’re good for his reputation, so as long as we don’t become a financial black hole, he leaves us alone.”
Cooper and Quinn thanked the professor for his time and spent the rest of the afternoon interviewing as many of the other staff they could find, but not one of them had managed to ever meet Jill Fisher. There was nothing at the Foundation that gave any clue as to why she might have been murdered, yet Cooper couldn’t shake the idea that something in Jill’s life had led to her death. He hoped Anderson and Baxter were having more luck.
The Dark Series Page 40