The Dark Series

by Catherine Lee

  “Nothing at all?” asked Cooper.

  “No,” replied the guy from Customs. “But you need to bear in mind that our routine inspections only cover just over one percent of all the containers moving in and out of the country’s ports. We don’t have the resources to cover more than that. That’s why we’re happy to be part of investigations like these — if you can give us information that allows us to take a more targeted approach, we’re all for it.”

  “And that’s what our next move should be,” said Grayson. “You and I will sit down after this and look at what Fisher & Co have coming into local ports in the next few days. We’ll pick our targets and organise to get some of these guys undercover on a few supposedly routine inspections, see what we can find.”

  “Sounds good,” said the customs officer.

  Grayson continued with the rest of the meeting. One of the most interesting facts to come to light as far as Cooper was concerned came from a JOCG analyst. Apparently the analyst, Marie something, had done some preliminary work this morning as soon as she found out she’d be part of the team. Cooper was impressed by her enthusiasm. It was well known the Chiefs held an annual charity ride, but Marie had discovered that one of the beneficiaries of the donations to that ride was the Tim Fisher Genetic Research Foundation. It might be nothing, but it was another connection between Fisher & Co and the Chiefs.

  “Do you think we’d be able to get a warrant to look at the Foundation’s financial records?” Cooper asked the group.

  “We don’t need a warrant to look at the basic information that’s available to the public,” replied the analyst. “I’ve only just found the connection: I haven’t looked into it yet.”

  “Okay, Marie,” said Grayson. “See how much you can dig up first, then we’ll decide if we need a warrant to look any deeper. That okay with you, Coop?”

  “Sure,” Cooper answered. He’d get Zach to have a look as well.

  Grayson wound up the meeting, encouraging them all to stick around for a bit and get to know each other. Cooper introduced himself and Quinn to DeSousa.

  “Oh yeah, sorry about yesterday,” said the Drug Squad detective. “This whole thing gets my back up a bit, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know. You guys had a good start on the Chiefs.”

  “We weren’t getting anywhere, though. That bikie code of silence crap does nothing for my clearance rate. We caught a few breaks, but the bastards just replace whoever we put away and carry on, business as usual. The ones who get convicted do their time as if it’s nothing, then they’re straight back into it when they get out. Then every so often they get publicity by claiming we’re harassing them. The new laws aren’t helping us, they’re making it harder.”

  “I hear you,” Cooper sympathised. Something told him he wanted this guy on his side. “You want to get a beer with us this afternoon? You and your team?”

  DeSousa considered them both, and obviously came to the same conclusion as Cooper. After all, they were as close as each other had to allies in a team of strangers.

  “Sure. We’ll meet you at Cassidy’s around six.”

  28

  Gail was able to make them an appointment at the NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages for one o’clock that afternoon. They’d then both called work separately and made excuses. Beth was anxious as they made their way there, wanting to get started but cautious of what they might find.

  The woman on the front desk gave a welcoming smile as they approached. Gail mentioned their appointment.

  “Wait here,” she said, retreating into what looked like an attached break room. Before long she was replaced at the front desk by a gentleman well into his sixties judging by the lines on his face.

  “I’m Richard Evans,” he announced, shaking hands with both of them. “You weren’t too specific on the phone. What is it you need?”

  “We’re interested in tracing the Fisher family history,” said Gail, sounding very official. “I have Beth Fisher here with me. This work has already been carried out by her sister, Jill, but unfortunately Jill was taken from us. It’s very important that we finish her work as soon as possible. Is there any way you can find out exactly what records Jill Fisher requested, and get us copies of those same records? It would certainly save us a lot of time.”

  Mr Evans’s brow furrowed. “I’m not sure we’re allowed to do that, I’m afraid. There are issues of confidentiality.”

  “With respect, sir, Jill Fisher is dead. This is her sister. I can’t see how there could be a confidentiality problem.”

  The man looked like he wanted to help, but he must have been concerned about his job. Beth pulled out her handwritten copy of the Fisher family tree, along with her own birth certificate and driver’s licence.

  “Mr Evans, it’s okay. I have proof of my identity here, and I’d like to get as many birth, death, and marriage certificates for my ancestors as far back as we can go. I’m happy to pay the required fee for each of them. All we’re asking here is for your help to make the process a little faster than usual.”

  He gave this a moment’s thought, then nodded. “Of course, Ms Fisher. That sounds like something I can do. But it’s still not appropriate for me to just give you copies of everything your sister ordered.”

  “No, I understand. Do we start with my parents, then?”

  Mr Evans nodded. “Yes. Why don’t we make you a little more comfortable?” He buzzed them through a security door to the left of the main desk. “We can use one of the group research rooms here.” He ushered them into a room with a table and chairs in the centre, and a small desk to one side with a computer on it. They settled themselves at the table, and Beth spread her family tree out in front of them.

  “If you have information regarding your parents’ date and place of birth,” Mr Evans continued, “we can find their birth certificates. Those should list their parents’ details, and we can work backwards from there, matching the official documents to the information in your tree. You can use this computer over here to do the search, and when you come up with certificate numbers, I can then retrieve the documents.”

  “Okay. We’re mainly interested in the Fisher side of the family, so we won’t worry about my mother’s side for now.” Beth took a seat at the computer and after a quick demonstration from Mr Evans, she got to work. They soon got into a rhythm, with Beth looking up the details and writing on her tree, finding exact dates of birth instead of just the years she had previously. Gail sat next to her, and when they found the right person or record she wrote down the record number for Mr Evans. It was a long process: with Fisher being a popular surname there were multiple records for the names they entered. The computer program only gave so much information, so it was necessary to request the actual certificate to either confirm or rule out a particular person from the family tree. They ended up with quite a number of birth and marriage records for people who were not part of the family.

  “Let’s take a break,” suggested Gail, after a particularly disappointing hour of searching. They had started out well, managing to retrieve the birth certificates for both Beth’s father, Joe, and her grandfather, William, with no real problem. The next in line, William’s father, Ross, was a little more difficult. There were seven Ross Fishers born in 1875, so they searched for his marriage certificate to narrow it down. Ross had married Beverly Collis in 1905, and when they found this record in the computer, Gail requested the relevant document from Mr Evans. The marriage certificate listed Ross’s full date and place of birth, so they were then able to find his birth certificate. They had similar difficulties with Ross’s father, James, the founder of Fisher & Co, but eventually managed to find his birth certificate. James was born on January 26, 1847, and his father was listed as Charles Fisher of Surry Hills. This was where they had hit a wall, with Beth unable to find any birth record for him.

  “At least we know where he was from,” said Gail, stretching in her chair. “That’s more than we came in with.”

  �
��Yes, but it’s not much more.” Beth gestured towards the pile of documents they’d accumulated. “All this is good, but it’s not really anything we didn’t know. This is the point I wanted to get to, to be able to work from Charles Fisher with a solid foundation. But there’s no record of his birth.”

  “Why don’t you start with his death, then?”

  “Okay.” Typing the details and an appropriate range of years into the system, Beth found forty-five Charles Fishers who died between 1847 and 1950. She scratched her head. “How can forty-five of them die, yet none were born? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Maybe it just means the records of their birth don’t exist,” said Gail. “We should ask Mr Evans. In the meantime, let’s try and narrow some of these down. What do we know about Charles? James was his son, did he have any other children?”

  Beth shook her head. “None that I know of, at least not from the company records.”

  “What else do the company records say about its founder?”

  Beth hunted through her bag and pulled out the Fisher & Co corporate brochure she had picked up from Vicki. There was a paragraph dedicated to the birth of the company, back in 1874. She quickly scanned and summarised it for Gail.

  “It just says that James began as a labourer on the docks. His father taught him to save his money from an early age, and after a number of years labouring, James had enough saved to buy a share in one of the trading ships. It was a smart move, and he continued to invest wisely. By the time he was twenty-five years old, he owned his first ship outright, and founded Fisher & Co.”

  “So we know his father was around when he was a boy. To teach him how to save money, in those days, I’d say Charles had to have still been alive when the child was, say, fourteen? That puts us at 1863, so we can eliminate any Charles Fishers who died before that. Agreed?”

  Beth couldn’t fault her reasoning. “Agreed,” she said, entering the revised date into the computer. “That still leaves us with forty-one records.”

  “Right. Let’s look at the other end. I think 1950 might be a bit of a stretch.”

  From James’s date of birth, they estimated that Charles must have been born no later than 1830. It was rare for a man to live past ninety in those days, but even if he lived to a hundred, they could still narrow the death certificate search back to 1930. That gave a much better result, returning twenty-three entries. They decided to further narrow the field by eliminating any who died outside the Sydney area. Beth reasoned that with an only son and two grandsons established in Sydney, it would make sense that the father remained in the area. This gave them a total of thirteen Charles Fishers, still a long list, but more manageable than forty-five. They looked at the dates again and chose nine who were the most likely contenders. Beth made a list of the registration numbers while Gail went out to find Mr Evans. Hopefully, something on one of those death certificates would point them towards the correct Charles Fisher, and get them one step closer to the First Fleet.

  Fifteen minutes later, Gail came back with coffees at the same time Mr Evans delivered the nine death certificates. Beth made a note of them, keeping her own list of the records they’d requested just in case there were any mistakes when it came time to pay the bill. Not that she didn’t trust Mr Evans or the registry office, it was more out of habit than anything.

  “James Fisher’s birth certificate listed Charles as being from Surry Hills, so let’s start with these two,” suggested Gail. She was really getting into this, thought Beth, as she looked over her friend’s shoulder at the two death certificates she’d isolated. One of the Charles’s had died in Paddington, the other in Surry Hills itself. Beth didn’t know much about early Sydney life, but it seemed plausible that many people would live their whole lives, and die, in the same area they were born. And with James working at the Quay and setting up a shipping business right in the heart of Sydney, it was certainly as good a place as any to start.

  “They don’t give the wife’s name, or any children,” said Beth, looking over the two death certificates. She had a quick look at the other seven. “None of them do.”

  “No, but they say where they were buried. Maybe there’s a cemetery record?”

  It was a good idea. Beth saw that the two Charles Fishers who had died in Paddington and Surry Hills were both buried in Rookwood Cemetery. She turned back to the computer and typed ‘Rookwood’ into the search engine, then clicked through to the Wikipedia page and quickly scanned the history section.

  “It says here Rookwood was used once they closed down the Devonshire Street Cemetery.” That explained why they hadn’t been buried closer to home. “They wanted to move the burial site out of the city.” Beth clicked on a link that took her directly to the cemetery’s own website.

  Gail was reading over her shoulder now. “It looks like you have to sign in to do a search. I wonder why that is?”

  “They’ll probably be making a list, use it for marketing or whatever. That’s what most sites do these days, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, but a cemetery?”

  Beth shrugged. “Everybody dies.” She put in enough details to get a username and password for the site, then was able to do a search. There were seventeen Charles Fishers buried at Rookwood according to this site. She shouldn’t have been surprised at the number: Rookwood was the largest cemetery in the southern hemisphere. The Wikipedia site estimated that over one million people were buried there, divided into sections according to their religious denomination. Looking through the list, though, none of the records matched either of the death certificates.

  She looked again at the website and its accompanying map. The header at the top of the page said Rookwood Anglican and General Cemeteries. On the map, there was a large Anglican section, and a smaller general section. However, these were only two of the many religious sections at Rookwood.

  Gail must have been wondering the same thing. “What religion is your family?” she asked.

  Beth shook her head. “We’re not. I’ve never been to church, and I don’t remember my parents or grandparents ever going. Mum and Dad always said religion was a personal choice, and if Jill and I wanted to join one, they would help us make an informed decision when we were old enough. Neither of us ever gave it a lot of thought, we just got on with our lives.”

  Gail looked at the death certificates. “There’s no religion listed on either of these. Maybe we should check out the independent section of the cemetery.”

  Beth typed ‘Rookwood Independent’ into the search engine, and found a completely different website. This one had a search facility that was available without joining, and using the dates of death on the death certificates Beth was able to quickly locate the graves of the two Charles Fishers they were interested in. Unfortunately, the website gave only four pieces of information per grave: name, date of interment, section, and grave number.

  “Looks like we’re going to have to go out there ourselves, if we want to see what’s written on the headstones,” said Beth. At least the website search facility had an integrated map system, so she was able to print out a reasonably detailed map for each grave.

  Gail leaned over the table and picked up the other seven death certificates. “We should check if any of these are out there as well, then. Just in case.” She looked through them, pulled out another two Charles Fishers buried at Rookwood, and handed the certificates to Beth. Beth found them on the database, and added their details to her notebook.

  “It’s getting late,” said Gail, once they were done. “Shall we head out there tomorrow?”

  Beth pointed to the screen. “It says here the cemetery is open from dawn to dusk. There are a couple of hours of daylight left, can’t we go now?”

  Gail shook her head. “I can’t, I’ve got to go see my mum this afternoon. And I really think you should wait, Beth. With peak hour traffic you wouldn’t get there before dark. The last thing you need to do is go searching through a cemetery at night. Tomorrow’s Saturday. I’ll pick y
ou up nice and early, we’ll tell Louis we’re going for a run or something.”

  As much as she wanted to go now, Beth knew waiting was the smart thing to do.

  “Okay. Let’s settle up with Mr Evans and get out of here. I’d better get home to my family.”

  29

  He could see it was going to break: there was nothing he could do about it. Instead, Cooper just watched as the wine glass shattered into what seemed like a million pieces, each one of them finding its own hiding place inside the dishwasher. He stood, contemplating the steps that would be required to clean this up before Liz got home, when the doorbell rang.

  “Hi, boss,” said Quinn, letting himself in. When had that become the norm?

  “Just in time.”

  “What have you done now?” Quinn threw his keys into the bowl by the front door, again looking like he lived there, before joining Cooper in the kitchen. “Shit, you’d better get that out before Liz sees it.”

  “Yes, thank you, Joe. I’m aware of that.” Cooper continued to empty the rest of the dishwasher’s contents onto the bench. “What do you want?”

  “Had an idea, thought I’d run it past you.” Quinn helped to lift the empty baskets out of the dishwasher, and they both knelt and started collecting glass fragments.

  “Well?”

  “Right. You know how we’re not supposed to do anything unless it’s agreed to by the team and signed off by three different people,” said Quinn.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I got the feeling you weren’t very happy with that situation yesterday.”

  “You are perceptive this morning.” Cooper was dropping more glass than he was collecting, and was getting frustrated.

  “So I was wondering whether we needed to do all that if we were able to keep our enquiries discreet.”

  “Discreet? What exactly did you have in mind?”

  “I thought maybe we could use Beth Fisher to get a look at some of the Fisher & Co paperwork. She’s their lawyer, right? And we’ve ruled her out as a suspect. Anderson and Baxter have gotten close to her. Meg, particularly. Surely there’s a way we can use that to our advantage without treading on any toes, so to speak.”