The Dark Series

by Catherine Lee

  “Thank you, coffee would be lovely after that drive,” Cooper answered. When Mary left the room Quinn shot him a look, dismay at the possibility of having to drink instant coffee, but Cooper just shrugged. It paid to be hospitable when you came looking for answers. As it turned out the coffee, when it came, was surprisingly good.

  “It’s very kind of you to see us on such short notice, Mrs Schofield,” Cooper began. They’d called ahead to confirm she was home, but even so, he remembered his manners.

  “Oh, it’s no trouble. I’ve just got a medical appointment in about an hour, but we’ll be done by then, won’t we?”

  “Of course, we’ll be out of your hair by then. Tell me, Mrs Schofield, in your own words what can you remember about the time your sister disappeared?”

  “Please, call me Mary. I’ve been thinking about this ever since you called, you know. It’s been quite a few years.” She settled herself into an armchair opposite him.

  “Just as you remember it, I promise we’ll put no pressure on you for details.”

  “Well, okay, although there’s really not much to tell. Like I said to the officers who came to see me at the time, one day Annie was there, the next day she was gone. Robert called to see if she was with me. I was still in my house back then. I only moved in here about five years ago. My daughter, Rachael, was still living at home before that. When she moved out I thought it was time, so I bought this place off the plan.”

  “But you were still in your house when Annie disappeared?” Cooper tried to get her back on track.

  “My house, yes. Annie used to come down and visit me quite often, you see. I lost my husband when our children were still young, and Annie helped me out whenever she could. Robert too, of course, although he was always quite busy. But his family helped me out financially; I was in a bit of a pickle when Geoff passed away. It took me a couple of years to get back on my feet. Robert said he’d support us, but I didn’t want his charity. I wanted to make my own way. So once the kids were old enough to not need me around all the time, he helped me to set up my own business. Annie would bring David and Tim down for the day, and they’d have a wonderful time with my two while Annie helped me sort out the books. She was good with that sort of thing, you know.”

  Cooper took a sip of his coffee. He didn’t want to rush her, but he did need her to stay on point. “So how did you first learn of your sister’s disappearance?” he asked.

  “Well, like I said, Robert called me. He asked if Annie was here, but I said no, she wasn’t due to visit until a week later. The kids had grown up by then, so just the two of us had planned to take a walk around the botanic gardens. Robert thought maybe she’d come down on a whim, you know. He said they’d had a fight of some sort and he thought she may have come down here to blow off some steam with me.”

  “But you hadn’t seen her?”

  “No.” Mary shifted in her chair, and Cooper thought she might be struggling with the beginnings of arthritis. He remembered his own mother’s inability to sit still.

  “Did she phone? Call to tell you about the fight, perhaps?”

  “No. I hadn’t heard from her for a couple of weeks. Which wasn’t unusual, Annie was always relatively busy with charities and such. There was always some party to plan, some event she and Robert were either attending or hosting to get ready for. We usually went a few weeks without contact, then she’d either call or come down and we’d debrief with a bottle of red.”

  Cooper noticed a glint in the woman’s eyes. “It sounds like you had a good relationship with your sister.”

  Mary nodded, pulling a tissue out of her sleeve and wiping her eyes. “Yes, we always got on well. We fought, too, of course. In our younger days. All sisters do. But Annie and I were close. That’s why I never believed that ridiculous suicide theory the police came up with at the time.”

  “You don’t think Annie would have taken her own life?”

  “Absolutely not. Why would she? She had everything to live for.”

  “What about the loss of her son?”

  “Well yes, of course losing Tim was devastating. But that happened five years earlier, and before that we’d had time to prepare. We knew he was sick, we knew he might not get a kidney transplant in time. Watching him waste away like that was unbearable for Annie, not being able to do anything to help. Tim died, and it was awful. No parent should have to lose their child, Detective, but Annie was strong, she coped. She had David, and she had us. She never forgot Tim, but she got through it. Annie realised that life was precious, she wouldn’t have taken her own. She wouldn’t have left David.”

  “Then what do you think happened to her?” asked Quinn, taking a seat on the lounge in front of her.

  “I don’t know. But something did happen. She wouldn’t have just up and left.”

  “Do you think it’s possible that her husband had something to do with her disappearance?”

  “Robert? No, I don’t. Look, he may not be an easy man to get along with. He can be quite abrasive at times, but that’s just his personality. I didn’t like some of the things Annie used to tell me about the way he treated her, but in all the years they were together he never laid a hand on her in anger. She said as much to me not long before she disappeared.”

  “It’s hard to really know what goes on behind closed doors though, isn’t it?” said Quinn.

  “Yes, Detective, I suppose you’re right there. The media gave him such a hard time, at one point I actually started to believe he might have done it.”

  “What changed your mind?”

  “He came to my house a few times, looking for her. Thought she might have come down here to get away from him. The last time I sat him down and we had a proper chat. He told me some things, how he regretted not being the man she wanted him to be, how he took her for granted. I looked into his eyes, and I knew he could never have hurt her. He can be an unpleasant man, but he loved my sister.”

  “Mary, we’ve recently begun to consider the possibility that Annie might still be alive. Do you think there’s any chance that could be the case?” asked Cooper.

  Mary Schofield’s eyes widened, and for a minute Cooper thought she was going to slap him across the face. He actually recoiled from her a little.

  “That’s as ridiculous as suggesting she committed suicide.” Mary almost spat the words out. “The only way on this earth my sister would still be alive and not have contacted us would be if she were being held against her will. She wouldn’t let me suffer like that, there’s no way. And David, of course. He’d already lost his brother. Annie wouldn’t put him through that pain again, she just wouldn’t.”

  “Okay, Mrs Schofield. Mary. I’m sorry to have asked. Can I just ask you one more thing?”

  She wiped her eyes again and nodded.

  “Do you ever see Robert or any of the Fisher family these days?”

  “I get a card from Robert every Christmas, but I suspect that’s his secretary’s doing. I haven’t seen him in over ten years. I do see David, occasionally. He comes to visit now and then. He’s a good boy to remember his old aunt.” She stared out the window for a few seconds, seeming to gather her thoughts. “Why are you here, Detective? Why are you asking questions about Annie after all this time?”

  “We’ve been investigating the death of Robert Fisher’s niece, Jill,” said Cooper. “We’re just trying to get a better picture of the family, and we discovered during our investigation that your sister’s disappearance had never been solved. I guess you could say we were curious.”

  “Well, yes, I suppose that makes sense. David called to tell me about Jill. What a terrible business. I only met her a few times, her and her sister. They were kids back then. Family functions, that sort of thing. And Tim’s funeral, of course. I do hope you find whoever hurt that girl, Detective.”

  “So do I, Mary. We’re doing everything we can.” Cooper sensed it was time for them to leave. He took a card out of his wallet. “Thank you very much for your time. If th
ere’s anything else you can think of, please give me a call. Any time.”

  32

  After lunch on Monday, Beth and Gail made their way back to the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages. Mr Evans greeted them in the reception area.

  “Good afternoon, ladies. Back for more, I see.”

  “Hello, Mr Evans,” Beth replied. “We went out to the cemetery on the weekend, and got some information about my third great grandfather which might help us get a bit further.”

  “Oh, that is good news.” He let them through the security door and into the same little research room they’d used last week. “Is there any paperwork I can get you now? Or do you need to search a bit more first?”

  “You could answer a question for me,” said Beth. “Last time we were here we looked for the birth records for this particular ancestor, but we couldn’t find anything. We found death records for a number of Charles Fishers, but no births. Is that because your system doesn’t go back that far?”

  “Sort of. We have good records from 1856 onwards, because in that year legislation was brought in to control the compulsory registration of all births, deaths and marriages in NSW. But before that we have to rely on old parish records, which are not in the best condition and are far from adequate. I’m afraid it’s pot luck before 1856. When was your Charles Fisher born?”

  “1823.”

  “Oh. Then yes, I can see that you might have difficulty. Do you know when he was married?”

  “No, but I know his son was born in 1847, so I presume it was before that.”

  “I see. You’d be relying on parish records for the marriage certificate, too.”

  “Does it help that we have narrowed down his birth date to within one year?”

  “It makes the job of searching the parish records easier, yes. Why don’t you give me the dates and I’ll see what I can find for you?”

  “That would be wonderful, if you could spare the time.” Beth handed over the piece of paper on which she’d written the dates. Mr Evans sat down in front of the computer and got to work. After twenty minutes he’d come up empty.

  “I’m really sorry,” he said. “Some parishes maintained accurate records, but others were a bit hit and miss, you might say.”

  “That’s okay,” said Beth. “We appreciate your time.”

  “Speaking of which, I’d better get back out the front. Is there anything else I can help you with today?”

  “No, thanks. We’ll just take a few minutes to work out where to go next, if that’s alright.” Beth was conscious of taking up the research room for too long.

  “Take as long as you need.” With that Mr Evans left them to it.

  Beth struggled to contain her disappointment. “There must be a way to go further,” she complained, sitting down at the main desk. “Jill managed to, according to her friend Bryce Allen.”

  “I’ve been thinking about what he said, you know,” said Gail. “About Jill working on something else lately. Didn’t you tell me he said she’d changed her focus to looking for relatives that might still be alive?”

  “Yes, that’s right. What are you thinking?”

  “Maybe this whole secret thing has nothing to do with the distant past, the First Fleet. I mean, it seems far-fetched to think that some two-hundred-year-old secret would be important enough to kill to protect now. Maybe it’s about something in the later generations that Jill had started looking at.”

  Beth laid her pencil down on the family tree and cupped her hands in front of her. She had to admit, Gail had a point. She’d been so focused on completing the tree, that she’d never even considered she might already have the answer. Suddenly all thoughts of taking up space in this office were gone. She picked up her pencil and added Charles Fisher’s birth year to the family tree.

  “It was important to Jill that the family tree be finished, and I want to honour that. But we can get the rest of that information later from Bryce. You’re right,” she told Gail. “We have six generations from myself and Jill, back to Charles. It makes more sense for the secret to be somewhere in there, rather than the first generations.”

  “So let’s have a look at them.”

  As they studied the tree, Beth noticed something. “We don’t have any information about siblings, except for Uncle Robert. See, we have him and Dad, and above them there’s our granddad, William. We know he was an only child. But before that, there could be any number of siblings we don’t know about. William’s father, Ross, might have had a brother or sister, for example.”

  “That would make them a child of James, the company founder. There’d be something in the company history, wouldn’t there?”

  “Only if he or she were part of the business. In those days, it was common for a family business to be left to the eldest son, not shared equally amongst siblings. But it’s worth checking.” She pulled her laptop out of her work bag and fired it up. While they were waiting, Beth thought about what Gail had said. It made sense that finding out that Bryce Allen was distantly related would have triggered an interest for Jill in finding out if she had any more living relatives she didn’t know about. Jill was a people person. She’d always wished she was part of a bigger family. Maybe that’s what the lunch was for, to tell Beth that she had something new to focus her research energy on.

  The computer asked her to log on, which she did. Within minutes she was digging around in some company history documents she’d remembered. She already knew the brochure Vicki had put together mentioned nothing about any siblings of Ross Fisher, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t something in the archives. After a thirty minute search, during which Gail went out for coffee, she came up with nothing.

  “I’m going to have to head off,” said Gail when she returned with the takeaway cups. Beth noticed the concern on her face.

  “Something wrong?”

  “It’s Anton. It’s probably nothing, but we had an argument last night and I really want to make an effort to patch things up. You going to be okay here?”

  Beth checked the time on her laptop. It was after three. The registry office didn’t close until four-thirty, but she wasn’t sure she could get much help from them today anyway. Maybe she should head back to the office and continue her search from there. She might even be able to get David to help her.

  “I’ll come with you,” she said, packing up her stuff.

  “What’s going on with you and Anton,” Beth finally asked as they walked back to Fisher & Co. “Is it the age difference again?” Anton was seven years younger than Gail, and the two of them had often joked about her status as a ‘cougar’. But they were well suited, and it didn’t take long for the age difference to be irrelevant to the two of them. Other people had more of a problem with it than they did, but that didn’t bother Gail.

  “No, it’s not that. My mum has finally come round to him, as well. It’s something else.”

  Beth got the feeling her friend was keeping a secret of her own. “Come on, Gail. Don’t shut me out. You’re ditching work early to go and smooth things over with your boyfriend. That is so unlike you. What’s going on?”

  They’d reached Hyde Park, and Gail stopped walking and sat down on a bench. Beth sat beside her.

  “You remember I told you there was something funny in a few of the Customs documents? I was getting it checked out. Well when I ducked out for coffee this afternoon I gave the guy in accounts a call. There’s something not right, Beth, but it isn’t Fisher & Co. It’s the Foundation.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. But it looks like someone at the Foundation has been making payments to Thailand, and they’ve been trying to cover it up. Anton’s been acting really strange lately. You know he has a history with drugs, right?”

  “Yes, but that was years ago. He’s been clean ever since you guys met, hasn’t he?”

  “He has. I don’t want to think the worst, Beth, I really don’t. I love this guy. But I can’t just ignore this. There’s
no reason the Foundation should be receiving anything from Thailand, is there?”

  “Not that I know of, but I don’t really have much to do with them. Did you ask Anton?”

  “I did. I called him after I spoke to the accounts guy, and he went ballistic. Told me to come over there, not to ask stuff like that on the phone.”

  Beth couldn’t blame him, it was a strong accusation. “So you’re going over there now to talk to him about it?”

  “Yes. He didn’t deny it, Beth. I virtually accused him of going back to his old habits, and he didn’t deny it.”

  33

  After a reasonably uneventful evening, during which Quinn checked out the local nightlife while Cooper caught up with some reading in the hotel room, the pair arrived at the docks in Port Kembla in time for the five-thirty am rendezvous with Grayson and the rest of his team. The plan was for Cooper, Quinn, and Grayson to go in undercover as trainee customs officers, teamed up with two real customs officers from JOCG. One of them, Danny North, was now looking more nervous than they were as they waited for the two containers they’d chosen ‘at random’ to be brought to the inspection area.

  “How much longer?” asked Cooper.

  Grayson shrugged. “As long as it takes.”

  “Just stay cool, all right?” said North, shuffling through the papers on his clipboard for the fifth time, not that Cooper was counting. “We’ve put over a year into the Chiefs, we can’t afford for you blokes to come in and screw it up now.”

  “Yeah, we get it. We won’t blow your op, mate,” said Cooper. “But we’ve got two murders, and this is our best lead yet. You’ll understand if we’re keen to get on with it.”

  North didn’t get the chance to respond. The first of the two containers arrived in the inspection bay, accompanied by North’s partner who’d been supervising to make sure the correct containers were retrieved and not tampered with on the way. They all waited while the container was put in place, then North checked the details against his paperwork before nodding to his partner. North broke the customs seal and opened the container door while his partner took photographs, documenting the inspection. Cooper understood the need for all the cross-checking and documenting, but he was itching to get inside that container.