The Dark Series

by Catherine Lee

  “I’m so sorry, I’ve only just heard. Gail is dead?” His question seemed directed at no-one in particular, so Cooper answered.

  “I’m afraid so, Mr Fisher. Gail Simmonds and Anton Coffey were found dead today. I believe they both worked for you? Gail in Operations at Fisher & Co, and Anton at the Foundation?”

  “That’s correct. How did this happen?” David took a seat at the table next to Beth.

  “They say it was a drug overdose,” said Beth. She reached out and put a hand on David’s arm. “Gail wouldn’t be involved with drugs, not willingly. Would she?”

  David patted her hand reassuringly. “No, I don’t think so.” He turned to Cooper. “Are you sure?”

  “Not until we complete our investigation. Beth, you were telling me what time Gail left you yesterday afternoon?”

  “Oh, yes. It was about three o’clock. We were down at the registry office, working on my family history for Jill. Gail was a big help. But she was distracted. There was clearly something wrong.”

  Cooper considered whether he should tell her about his meeting with Gail, the one that never happened. He decided against it for now.

  “So she went to confront Anton about his possible using yesterday afternoon. Did you hear from her again?”

  “No. I’ve been trying to call her all day, but obviously she didn’t answer.”

  Beth broke down, pulling tissue after tissue from the box on the table. Louis put his arm around her shoulders, and on her other side David held her hand. When she pulled herself together again, Cooper decided to risk the big question. He kept one eye on David Fisher as he asked.

  “Do any of you, or anyone you know have dealings with the Chiefs?”

  “The motorcycle gang?” asked Louis. “Why would we have anything to do with them?”

  “It’s a line of enquiry, Louis. I need Beth and David to answer the question.”

  “No,” said Beth. “I don’t know anyone like that. Unless you count that charity ride?” she looked at David, who hadn’t reacted at all when Cooper mentioned the Chiefs.

  “The research foundation accepts donations from many different sources,” explained David. “There’s an annual charity bike ride that a number of those groups participate in. I’m sure the Chiefs are one of them. They collect toys and money along the way. It’s widely publicised. But the Foundation is not the only beneficiary, and the Chiefs are not the only motorcycle club involved.”

  Cooper noticed that when talking about Gail and Anton’s deaths, Louis had called them a gang, but when it came to a charity event, David referred to them as a club. Despite their violence and illegal activities, public perception of outlaw motorcycle gangs was still very much in their favour. They even had members in charge of public relations these days, the guy whose job it was to get pictures of them giving toys to sick kids or to get his head on television convincing the public that recent changes to laws aimed at preventing their illegal activities were infringements on the civil rights of all Australians. It was bloody well working, too.

  “We’ve got people looking into the charity rides,” he said. “I want to know if you’ve seen any members or associates of that motorcycle club with anyone you know. Specifically, anyone who works at Fisher & Co.”

  Beth scratched her head. “No, I can’t say that I have,” she finally answered. “David?”

  “I think I may have met one or two of them in connection with the charity ride, but besides that, no. And Fisher & Co definitely don’t have any dealings with them that I’m aware of. Can I ask why? What do they have to do with Gail and Anton?”

  “It’s a line of enquiry we’ve been following,” was all he could say to answer that. It wasn’t enough for Beth.

  “Do you think maybe Anton was involved with them? Did he go back to old habits?”

  “We really can’t say at this stage.”

  “Beth, is there anything else you can think of that might help us?” asked Meg. “You and Gail were close. Besides being worried about Anton, how was she these last few days?”

  “She was great, helping me with the family history stuff. I was going to wait for that guy, Bryce Allen, to get back from his trip and give me access to his research. But Gail said maybe we couldn’t trust him, after you all found out he might be having an affair with Jill. And… well, there’s something I should tell you.” Beth left the table, shortly returning with a laptop computer. While she was waiting for it to start up, she said “I got an email the other day. I didn’t tell you about it, because I knew you’d freak out and stop me doing the research. But now… Here it is.” She turned the computer around to face Cooper and Meg, who read the email out loud.

  “‘Stop looking at your family’s past. Two people are dead already. If you don’t want to be next, stop asking questions.’ You should have told me about this,” Meg chided.

  “And me,” added Louis. “What were you thinking, Beth? This is a clear threat.”

  “I thought it was just some crank. You can’t take an email like that seriously. Someone who hides behind an anonymous email isn’t going to be a real threat, surely.”

  “You should have let us make that call, Beth,” said Cooper. He wasn’t sure what to think of this. On the one hand, Beth was right. In his experience anonymous emails were nothing more than someone trying to annoy the person they’d sent it to, the result of an unhealthy obsession but rarely amounting to anything more. But in the context of everything that’s happened to Beth and the people around her, this one should have been taken seriously.

  “We’re going to have to take your computer,” he continued. “I’ll get our technician to see what he can find out.”

  “But I need it for work,” Beth protested.

  “Under the circumstances, I think it’s best if you take some time off work for now. And until we find out who sent this, I’m ordering a protection detail for you and your family. This is a direct threat, Beth. We have to take it seriously.”

  “But I don’t understand! You’ve just been talking about motorcycle gangs and drugs. What does that have to do with my family’s past?”

  “It might have nothing to do with it. But we can’t take that chance. Four people are dead, Beth, and they all have something to do with you. Whether it’s your family’s history, or their company, or even their research foundation, we don’t know. So until we do, we need to keep you safe.”

  “Agreed,” said David, standing from the table. “I have to go. I just called in to see if you were alright, Beth. Please, listen to these people. They know what they’re doing. Whatever the hell is going on here, you need to stay out of it and let the police do their job. I don’t want to see you in the office until this is worked out. I’m not losing another cousin. Okay?”

  Beth stood and gave him a hug goodbye. “Okay, okay.”

  When he was gone Beth went into the kitchen. She opened cupboard doors, then closed them without getting anything out. There was clearly something else on her mind, thought Cooper.

  “What is it?” he finally asked, after the fifth cupboard door opening and closing.

  “Well I don’t know, exactly,” she said, sitting back down at the table. “Gail said something about work, something that she was looking into. She was going to talk to Anton about that, too. It had to do with the Foundation.”

  “What about it?”

  “She’d noticed some irregularities in a few customs documents. She followed it up without telling anyone else, and she found out that someone was making payments to Thailand. Whoever it was had been trying to cover it up.”

  “And this was coming from the Foundation, rather than Fisher & Co?” asked Cooper.

  “That’s what Gail said. That’s why she was worried Anton had started using drugs again. I’m not sure how she made the connection between payments to Thailand and drugs. But she called and asked him straight out, and he didn’t deny it. He just told her not to talk about it on the phone. That’s why she left, to confront him about it face t
o face.”

  Now it was Cooper’s turn to pace. That must have been what Gail had wanted to see him about. She was onto something, and somehow her boyfriend had been involved. But someone got to them both before she had a chance to speak. He turned to Meg. “Have you heard back from Munro yet?”

  “There’s a team on their way. Should be here any minute.”

  “Good.” He didn’t want this family unprotected for another second.

  “Are we supposed to just sit around the house with police watching us all the time?” asked Louis. “What about the kids?”

  Cooper looked at Meg. They were both thinking the same thing. Munro would start screaming about the budget if they had to put separate teams on the family again as they went about their normal daily routines. He needed them to stick together.

  “How long since you had a family holiday?” he asked.

  * * *

  It took another hour to negotiate and finalise, but Cooper eventually convinced Beth and Louis to take the children out of school for a week and head down the coast with a two man security detail. Louis was easier to convince than Beth, particularly when Cooper explained that they couldn’t take mobile phones or computers with them. He didn’t want anyone being able to use GPS to trace their whereabouts. Beth struggled with the idea of being completely offline, but Meg worked some kind of magic and talked her around.

  “What did you say to her?” asked Cooper once they were in the car and headed back to City Central.

  “I talked about Gail, asked her to think about what her friend would want her to do in this situation. I asked her how Gail felt about the children, and she said she loved them like they were her own niece and nephew. Beth agreed then that they were her priority right now.”

  “Good thinking.”

  Meg shrugged. “You just have to figure out what’s important to a person, Coop. Once you know that it’s not hard to make them come around. And nine times out of ten, it’s their kids.”

  “Do you have any?” he asked.

  “Two boys. Eighteen and sixteen. That’s why I love overtime. Costs a fortune to keep the buggers fed.”

  “I guess I have that to look forward to.”

  Cooper smiled as he thought of Michael and Patrick, and realised how right Meg was. If anyone wanted to get him to do something, they’d just need to put it in the context of being the best thing to do for his boys. He thought about the email Beth had received, threatening her family. How could she not take that seriously? He asked Meg as much.

  “She’s not like us, Coop. She doesn’t see the shit we see on a daily basis. The world is a safe place for Beth and people like her. She just couldn’t see that an anonymous email could be a serious threat.”

  “Even after her sister was murdered? And Terry Dorman?”

  “I’m not saying it was a good call. I think she realises that now.”

  “Let’s hope so.” Cooper parked the car under the building and they headed up to the incident room, where the rest of the team were waiting. He sent a quick text to Liz on the way. It was going to be another late night.

  36

  The team settled down quickly in the JOCG briefing room, eager to get started — they all realised there was a lot to get through. Grayson gave a quick rundown of the results of the container search, before handing over to Cooper to brief the team on the latest developments.

  “We’ll confirm it with the autopsy results tomorrow,” Cooper began, “but for now we’re working on the assumption that at least one of our two deaths today was a murder.”

  “Only one?” asked Quinn.

  “Gail Simmonds has no history of drug use. We have statements from both her mother and Beth Fisher that she was strongly opposed to illegal substances of any kind, so given that, the evidence of the neighbour who witnessed two men leaving the scene, plus the context of the other two murders, it’s unlikely she started using now and overdosed on her first try.”

  “But not impossible,” said Davis.

  “No, not impossible. Unlikely.” Cooper moved on. “The boyfriend, however, does have a history of drug use. So we need to keep an open mind where he’s concerned. It’s possible we could be looking at a murder-suicide.”

  “You don’t think so, though,” said Munro from the back of the room.

  “No, Sarge. Like I said, we have the neighbour who witnessed two men wearing leather jackets leave the building at around the same time she heard the victim’s door open and close. These two men rode off on motorcycles. She was too distraught this afternoon once we found the bodies, but we’ll interview her again tomorrow to see if she can give us anything further.

  “Taking into account the other two murders, and the connections we already have between the Chiefs and Fisher & Co, I think we’re looking at someone trying to cover up a drug importation ring.” Cooper paused to let that sink in to the tired minds around the room before continuing. “Beth Fisher stated that Gail had been investigating some irregularities in customs paperwork that involved the Tim Fisher Genetic Research Foundation, which is financed by Fisher & Co, coupled with payments to Thailand, that it looked like someone was trying to cover up. She spoke to her boyfriend, Anton Coffey, about it over the phone. Coffey’s reaction was to tell her not to speak about it over the phone, giving Gail and Beth the sense that he was either involved, or he knew something. She went to confront him, and called me to say she wanted to talk. The next thing we know, Gail and Anton are visited by some bikies and then found dead.”

  “It was cocaine you found at the scene, wasn’t it?” asked Quinn.

  “Yes. There was a small amount on the glass coffee table.”

  “How do you murder someone with cocaine? Isn’t that something you sniff?”

  It was a good question. “It’s unlikely Gail at least would have taken the stuff voluntarily. Perhaps they were coerced, or somehow convinced to take it,” Cooper suggested.

  “I think you’d better leave that sort of speculation until after the autopsy,” said Grayson. “We don’t even know that cocaine was the cause of death, yet.”

  “Fair enough,” said Cooper. He went on to explain the threatening email received by Beth Fisher, and indicated that he’d put her and her family into protective custody for now.

  “You still think this has something to do with the genealogy project?” asked Grayson.

  “I’m not sure what to think. But we’ve got four murder victims, all of whom have at least some connection to Beth Fisher. I have to take a threat to her family seriously, even in the form of an anonymous email referring to the genealogy project. At least until we work out what the connection is.”

  “That makes sense. Right, we need to figure out our next moves.”

  “Do we have enough for a warrant to search Fisher & Co?” asked Quinn.

  “Yes, as far as Gail Simmonds’s and Jill Fisher’s computers and surrounding workspaces. I’ll get the warrant and we’ll serve it first thing in the morning.”

  “We’ve also got enough for a warrant to look through the Foundation’s accounts,” said Marie, the analyst who’d first identified a connection between the Chiefs and the Foundation. “Can you get that one for us, too?” she asked Grayson.

  “Sure. Stay behind after this and give me what you’ve got so far, Marie.”

  “Can we be involved in the Fisher & Co search?” asked Cooper. “We’ve interviewed the CEO and some of the staff once already. Might help if we have the same faces over there again.”

  “Good idea,” said Grayson. “What else are you working on?”

  “We’ve been following up on the disappearance of Annie Fisher, Robert Fisher’s wife, fifteen years ago, but we haven’t got anywhere with that. I also want to look further into Bryce Allen, who we know was having a relationship with Jill Fisher at the time of her death.”

  “Doesn’t he have an alibi for her murder?” asked Davis.

  “Yes, but we haven’t had a chance to check it out properly yet. There’s something ab
out the guy I don’t like.”

  “Davis, where are you and Sammy up to with the Dorman investigation?” asked Munro.

  “Nowhere, Sarge. We didn’t find anything in the rest of the documents in his cloud account, we didn’t get anything from the neighbours, and you told us to steer clear of Vince Macklin.”

  “Right. You can follow up on the Bryce Allen alibi, then. Cooper and Quinn can stay on Annie Fisher, and go along with the warrant on Fisher & Co as well.”

  “What about the autopsies tomorrow?” asked Meg. “You want us to attend?”

  Munro nodded. “You found them. You should follow that one through. Okay by you, Grayson?”

  “Sounds good to me,” replied the detective inspector. Technically he was the one who should have been handing out orders, but as far as the murder inquiries were concerned he seemed happy enough to let Munro lead. Cooper found himself relieved that Grayson had been given this JOCG investigation. Once the group had broken up for the evening, he told him so.

  “It wasn’t that long ago I was in Homicide, remember,” said Grayson. “I worked for Munro. I trust his instincts. I remember you seemed to know your way around a murder investigation as well. I figure we’ll get a lot more done if I let you guys do your thing, and the rest of us can concentrate on the drug angle. If my hunch is right, Coop, we’ve got the potential to bust a major ring. I know justice for the victims is important, but if we can get significant quantities off the streets we’ll be doing a lot of good here.”

  “I appreciate the vote of confidence,” said Cooper. “How long before you can get a look at another shipment?”

  “Depends what we find tomorrow. Once we serve these warrants, they’re going to know we’re looking at them. I’m hoping we can find enough to get us a full search of whatever’s on the water already. We just have to move fast, and hope they don’t have anyone on board ready to dump the stuff before they dock.”

  37

  Their cabin was second in a group of six, all lined up in a neat row facing the beach. The two police officers charged with keeping them safe had the third cabin, and from what Beth could tell, the others were all taken up by families who’d been discreetly checked out and determined to pose no threat.