“Then why didn’t you wait for me? Our staff is entitled to legal representation. I should be involved in these interviews.”
“No-one’s under arrest. We’re simply asking all of the people who worked with Gail and your sister a few questions, that’s all. These are informal interviews. No-one’s asked for a lawyer.”
“Even so, I’ll sit in from now on, thank you. Can I see your warrant?”
“Of course.” Detective Cooper handed over the warrant, and they all waited while she read through it. Beth took her time, making sure the police were entitled to confiscate the computers and documents Jacquie had told her about. It all seemed legitimate. She nodded, allowing Detectives Cooper and Quinn to continue interviewing her sister’s boss, Stan Walters.
Detective Cooper pointed to a copy of the organisation chart for the Operations Department spread out on the table in front of them. “Stan, is this up to date? Do all these people work here?”
“Yes, except him.” Stan crossed out one name and wrote another in its place. “And Jill and Gail, of course.” Beth noticed the tiniest of smirks on his face when he said the names of the dead, and she realised she wanted to be anywhere but here. Still, the company needed her. Her family needed her.
“Right,” said Cooper. Beth wasn’t sure if he’d noticed the smirk, but he continued on as if he hadn’t. “And all these people have access to your computer system?”
“At various levels, yes. That’s how they do their jobs.”
“I need you to write down next to each name the level of access they’ve got, please.”
Beth watched as Stan slowly picked up the pen again and started writing. She wondered, not for the first time, whether he had something to hide. As head of Operations, Stan was in control of the comings and goings of every ship on their books. There were no movements he didn’t know about. If there was some kind of drug operation going on here, surely he would know about it. And that would make him top of the suspect list for Gail and Jill’s murders. Beth’s skin crawled: she had to get out of this room.
“I need to speak with my uncle,” she said to the detectives.
“What about my legal representation?” asked Stan. Beth ignored him.
“You just keep writing,” said Detective Quinn.
Cooper was about to say something when his mobile phone rang. He looked at the caller ID and decided to take the call. He didn’t say much, but Beth could tell that whoever had confiscated their computers and files had found something.
“We need to take a break here,” said Cooper when he was off the phone. “Why don’t you go and find your uncle, Beth. I need to get back to headquarters. Detective Quinn will continue the interviews here in about half an hour. How does that sound?”
Beth nodded. “Okay.” She pointed to his phone. “Anything you can tell me?”
“Not right now.”
“What about me?” asked Stan. He’d finished labelling each staff member’s name with their clearance level.
“We’re done questioning you for now, but don’t leave the office. We may need to speak to you again when we’ve interviewed the rest of your staff.”
Stan left the room, and Beth followed. She caught some of the exchange between the two detectives on her way out. Cooper told Quinn to make sure Stan didn’t leave the building.
* * *
Beth found her uncle in his office. He was busy talking on the phone, but when he saw her he quickly ended the call.
“Where have you been? The police told me they took you and your family somewhere safe.”
“Yes. Louis and the kids are still there. But I figured you’d need me here.” Robert came around his desk and squeezed her arm. It was the closest thing to a hug he ever gave, and she was grateful. “I walked in on them interviewing Stan downstairs. I think he might have something to hide. Oh, Uncle Robert, what’s happening to us?”
“Here, sit down.” He guided her to a chair then sat beside her. “I’m not entirely sure what’s going on, Beth. The police obviously suspect we’re involved in some kind of drug ring. With the business we’re in, it was only a matter of time before something happened to get the attention of the authorities. Your sister’s death, and then Gail and her partner, well, it stands to reason they think something fishy is going on.”
“And is it?” Suddenly she needed to hear the truth from the head of the family.
“No,” he said, with an emphatic shake of his head. “We have tight controls in place to ensure against that sort of thing, you know that. Every interaction with customs is double-checked, and the staff down in Operations rotate on a regular basis to make sure the same people on our end aren’t always dealing with the same people at the ports. David is pedantic about these controls. He’d never allow the good name of Fisher & Co to be associated with anything illegal.”
Beth had to admit he had a good point. Her cousin was such a stickler for the rules, and he worked so hard both here and at the Foundation. She knew he’d never let anything tarnish the one hundred and forty year history of Fisher and Co.
“Where is David?” she asked.
“He’s over at the Foundation. Apparently the police are looking into things over there, as well.”
That made sense. The Foundation was mostly financed by Fisher & Co, and Anton had worked there. Beth remembered Gail’s suspicions about her boyfriend.
“There must be something going on, though, Uncle Robert. Four people are dead, and they were all associated with this family in one way or another.”
“Yes. We can’t argue with that. We should let the police do their jobs. I want to know who killed your sister as much as you do, Beth. And if someone at Fisher & Co has betrayed us and is behind all this, I want them prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”
It made her feel better to hear all this, to know that her uncle was in control. Reassured that the family business was in good hands, Beth excused herself to go back downstairs and represent their employees in the rest of the interviews. It was shaping up to be another very long day.
40
“What have we got?” Cooper strode back into the strike force operations room, sensing they were close to something big. Zach hadn’t said too much on the phone, just that there had been a development and Grayson wanted him back here.
Zach glanced up from his three computer screens. “Nothing too specific on the Fisher & Co systems, but if we put it together with what Drug Squad have been working on regarding the Chiefs, we think we might have a breakthrough. Grayson wants to fill you in, he’s over there.” Cooper followed Zach’s pointed finger and found his target at the coffee machine.
“You want one?” Grayson asked when Cooper joined him.
“Nah, had too much already. What’s the latest?” Cooper was keen to be brought up to date.
“There’s a particular customs officer that Drug Squad have been watching closely,” Grayson began, as they both took seats at a nearby table. “They don’t have enough to move on him, but he’s been seen twice with a known associate of the Chiefs.”
“Not a member?”
“No. They’re too smart to get that close. But we’ve got this customs guy on camera meeting with Paulo Sloan, whose brother is an ex-member of the Chiefs.”
“Ex-member? I didn’t think there was such a thing?”
“It’s not common: they’re not big fans of letting fully-patched members out. We think it’s a cover, that the brother is still very much involved in the club. Either that, or giving them Paulo as a clean go-between was the price for leaving. It doesn’t really matter. The point is, we have Paulo Sloan meeting with both the customs officer and Vince Macklin.”
Cooper’s smile widened at the mention of Macklin’s name. “Okay, so you have eyes on a potentially corrupt customs officer. What else?”
“He’s on shift today at Port Botany, where a Fisher & Co ship is currently lined up waiting to unload. The company’s system has given us the crew manifest, and two of them are know
n to Drug Squad. Plus, the ship’s come from Thailand.”
“It’s pretty circumstantial, Phil,” said Cooper. “Not enough for a warrant.”
“No, but we’re still digging. You get anything over at Fisher & Co?”
“I got a bad feeling about the operations manager, Stan Walters. He’s involved in something. Quinn’s back there interviewing the rest of his team now.”
“Anything we can use? I really want to get onto this ship.”
“You and me both. Let me get back to you.”
Cooper changed his mind and made himself another cup of coffee. He sat at the desk he’d finally moved up to in the strike force office, and thought back over the interview with Stan Walters. The guy was definitely shifty, no doubt about it. He was continually evasive, even when asked basic questions the detectives could have asked any of the staff. Cooper’s gut was not a fan of Stan Walters. The problem was, though, he had an alibi for all four murders. Stan might be up to his neck in whatever drug-related crimes Fisher & Co were involved in, but he didn’t kill anybody.
“Hey Coop, I might have something,” Zach called over from his own desk.
Cooper was by his side in seconds. “What?”
“Drug Squad have been monitoring the phone logs of Chiefs members. Vince Macklin got a call from a pre-paid mobile at 2:07 pm today. The call came from somewhere within a hundred metres of the Fisher & Co offices.”
“Do they have a tap on Macklin’s phone?”
“No. They couldn’t get a warrant for that.”
“Damn. Okay, keep an eye on it.” Cooper looked around for Grayson. That call was made minutes after his interview with Stan Walters finished. As far as he could figure, it could mean one of two things. Either Walters thought the risk was too great, and he was calling to warn Macklin off, or he thought they had nothing, in which case he was calling Macklin to confirm that whatever was going down was still on. Macklin would know the police were all over Fisher & Co, he’d definitely have eyes on the place. He suspected Walters was cocky enough to tell Macklin the police had nothing. He told Grayson as much once he’d found him.
“Do we know whether Macklin made any calls after receiving that one?”
Cooper looked over at Zach, who’d heard the question himself.
“No, hasn’t made a call since,” Zach answered.
“That supports the theory,” said Cooper.
“Yeah. Or else he used a different phone. We can’t know for sure.”
Could they know anything for sure? Cooper was beginning to think he’d need something a lot stronger than coffee before this day was over.
“I told Quinn not to let Walters leave the building,” he said. “What if we cut him loose, tell him we’re finished for the day. Say we’ll start the interviews again tomorrow. If he believes us, he’ll be confident they can unload whatever they’ve got on that ship tonight and have it safely away from the dock before we figure out what’s going on.”
“And then what? Tail him?” asked Grayson.
“Yeah. You’ve got undercover guys who could do that, right?”
Grayson leaned back in his chair and contemplated the idea. Eventually he shrugged. “All right. I’ll get a team in place outside the car park, and a man on foot in case he decides to walk.” He picked up his phone, and Cooper listened as the arrangements were made. “Give them twenty minutes,” Grayson said to Cooper once he’d hung up, “then tell Quinn to shut the interviews down and send them all home. You got a photo of this Walters character I can send to my guys?”
“I’ll get Zach to give you everything we have on him. Thanks, Phil.”
“Let’s just hope it works.”
* * *
Less than an hour later they were congratulating each other after the plan had indeed worked. Stan Walters had left the offices of Fisher & Co on foot as soon as Quinn had made his disappointment at achieving no result clear throughout the office. Grayson’s man outside had timed his run perfectly, posing as an office worker with headphones on absorbed in the contents of his mobile phone screen. It hadn’t been hard for him to fall into step about three paces behind Stan, close enough to hear and record snatches of the conversation Stan was having on his own mobile. When the officer played the recording back for the rest of the team, Cooper heard “we’re all good,” and “they’ve got nothing,” in amongst plenty of laughs and expletives. Zach confirmed that a call was made to Vince Macklin’s phone from the area at the exact time of the recorded call. It was enough for a warrant to search the ship.
“How long until it’s due to unload?” Grayson asked Zach, who was somehow monitoring the ports. Cooper didn’t want to know how.
“About two hours.”
Grayson looked at his watch. “That’s puts it at a little after six tonight. We’d better get a move on.”
“Have you done this before?” Cooper asked.
“A couple of times. We need to board the ship and quarantine the crew as soon as it docks, we can’t afford to give anyone time to go over the railings. I had that happen once before, but the bloody idiot couldn’t swim. Imagine being a crewman on a cargo ship and you couldn’t swim.”
“I guess for most of the journey if you go overboard swimming isn’t going to save you.”
“No, I suppose not. Anyway, we go in fast and take control. Then we can take our time to unload and search.”
“You need us?”
“I’ve got plenty of guys, so no, but I won’t object if you want to tag along.”
Cooper noticed Quinn’s eyes light up. He was half tempted himself, having never been involved in a bust on a container ship before. But Grayson and his men could handle it. He needed to get back to the homicide investigation.
“Let me know as soon as you find anything,” he said by way of response, watching as Quinn struggled to hide his disappointment. “C’mon, Joe. We’ve got murders to solve.”
Back at their own desks, Cooper and Quinn returned to the tasks they’d been focusing on before the warrants for Fisher & Co and the Foundation were served.
“What happened with Bryce Allen’s alibi?” Cooper asked.
“Davis and Saulwick were looking into that, boss.”
“It’s solid, Coop,” answered Sammy Saulwick, who’d overheard the request from his desk a couple of metres away. “We checked with the airline, plus the hotel staff and the customer he was meeting with up there. They all verified he was there, and the customer had dinner with him in a Brisbane restaurant the night Jill was murdered. It definitely wasn’t him.”
“Shit.” That wasn’t what he wanted to hear. Bryce Allen was hiding something, but it obviously wasn’t murder.
“I’ve got something on that, Coop,” Zach called out. “I checked out the emails sent to Beth Fisher. They came from an internet cafe on Broadway.”
“They have security cameras?”
“No, but I sent Nora over there to see what she could find out. IP address pinpointed the computer as one in the back corner of the place. There were no customers there when Nora looked around, and she got the impression it wasn’t busy at the best of times. So she took a chance and dusted the keyboard for prints. One matched your man, Bryce Allen.”
“And you’re just telling me this now?”
“Fingerprint analysis just came in, Coop. I’m doing my best here.” Zach pointed to the three screens in front of him, all of which displayed numerous windows of information.
“Fair enough. Good work, both of you.”
“So what does that mean, boss?” asked Quinn. “If he didn’t kill Jill, why would he send those emails?”
“You found out who sent the emails?” Cooper turned to find Meg approaching their desks, fresh from the autopsies. He was losing his touch: he should have been able to smell her before she got that close. He filled her in.
“Bryce Allen was responsible for the threatening emails to Beth, but his alibi for Jill’s murder checks out. Doesn’t make much sense.”
“He was
trying to hide the affair, worried that Beth would tell his wife.” Meg took off her jacket and hung it over the back of her chair.
“Not really worth sending threatening emails over though, you wouldn’t think. I mean, we told Beth about the affair anyway, didn’t we? She’s got more important things to worry about than telling his wife. What good would it do now that Jill’s dead?”
“Fair point. Why don’t we ask him?”
“He’s out of town, isn’t he? When’s he due back?”
Meg flicked through pages in her notebook. “First thing tomorrow.”
“Excellent. Let’s have a little chat with him then, shall we?”
41
Beth poured herself another glass of red wine as she realised just how much she missed her family. Coming home to an empty house was not as appealing as she thought it would be. She missed Emily’s smile and Jacob’s kisses, she missed the smell of whatever Louis was cooking for dinner. She missed Louis.
Cooking was not her strong suit, so she’d ordered enough Thai food to keep her going for a couple of nights. The doorbell signalled its arrival, and she put down her glass and grabbed her purse on the way to the door.
“You’re not my Thai food,” she said when she opened the door, not knowing what else to say. Bryce Allen stood in the doorway.
“No. I’m sorry to call on you at this hour, Beth, but I’d really like to talk to you.”
“What about?” She didn’t move, not wanting him to realise she was home alone.
“Jill. I’ve brought the paperwork, so you can finish the rest of your family tree.”
“Oh. I thought you weren’t coming back from Melbourne until tomorrow?”
“My last engagement was cancelled, so I got an earlier flight. Can I come in?”
“Now’s not really a good time.”
“It won’t take long. I’d appreciate five minutes of your time. Do you mind?” this time he didn’t wait for an answer, squeezing past her into the house.
Beth wasn’t sure what to do. Gail had worried that this man might have been the one to send the emails threatening her family, and she had come to the same conclusion herself. Now he was in her house, and she was on her own. She decided her best bet was to diffuse the situation.
The Dark Series Page 57