The first was that Jacob would never come back again and ask for more, the relationship was at an end. The second condition she would require was he not run any story that could lead back to her. So he could not do a piece in the paper that led back to what she told him. He had to use the information to find out the rest of the story himself; the true story of who she was and where she was. He could only go public if he got that story. He must not leak this information in a way where it could be linked back to her. It was not just for her own sake, she could not bear for Ross to ever find out she had used privileged information he had let slip to harm his client.
In the end she decided she would do nothing until the weekend, three days away. But if, after viewing the tape, it did not change her mind, she would ring Jacob in London on Sunday. She would do it when her mother was taken to church by a neighbor. She would not tell the story at first. Rather she would get a clear agreement to her conditions before she revealed any more.
She was locked in her own world, thinking this out as she walked to where her car was parked. Someone was standing in her way, blocking the pavement in front of her. She stepped to the side to go round them. They stepped that way too. She stepped back the other way, they followed.
She felt annoyed and was about to dish out a caustic, “If You Don’t Mind, Get The Fuck Out Of My Way, PLEASE!!!” She looked up, vaguely aware of the dark skin, thinking, Drunk Aborigine.
It was Jacob. He did not look like an aborigine, but his skin was half way to that color. She was lost for words; he was the one person she did not want or expect to see. She thought she had made up her mind just before to talk to him. But now he was here in person, she realized her mind was still in a state of flux, she needed a couple days to think this through and compose herself before she was ready to talk to him.
He gave her a half grin, saying, “I know you have been doing your best to avoid me, so I decided I had to see you in person. Now I have got to see you, you had better come with me for a drink and a talk. We have important stuff we need to discuss, lots of important stuff.”
She could not mobilize the will to fight him so she meekly followed him as he led her along the street to the bar on the corner, then followed as he went into a corner booth where she sat facing him.
He could feel his sexual magnetism grabbing at her. She knew he was going to proposition her both for more information and a night in bed. She felt powerless to say no to either.
He went and bought them both a drink, remembering her usual gin and tonic from last time. He clinked his glass to hers and took a mouthful as he looked at her thoughtfully. “Here is to renewing our friendship,” he said.
She lifted her glass in return and took a sip; it did taste good. She took a proper swallow, then thought, “what the hell, my body wants another night with him, and I want the money, what is the harm!”
Three drinks and an hour later she felt fully mellow. With each swallow he looker sexier and sexier. In a slightly dreamy state she let him take her hand and lead her out and along the street to his hotel then into the lift and up to his room.
As he undressed her she felt incredibly horny, pushing the little voice of caution out of her mind. Then he was on top of her on the bed, riding her up and down. While her body was loving it, her mind suddenly snapped back. Why am I doing this? Why am I letting him fuck me?
She shook her head and pushed him away. “This is all wrong. I just want this to be over. I will tell you what you want to know, what I know right now, but only on the condition it ends today, no more sex, no more pestering, no threats of telling anyone anything about me.
“You can take what I give you and see if you can find the girl and get your story. In return you can give me the ten thousand dollars I need for a new wheelchair for my mother. At least that will be something good from the bad thing I have done.
“I don’t know much about this girl but she is better than either of us. She deserves a new life after the bad that has happened to her. Remember that if you do find her. You are the arsehole in this, not her. Before you smear her name across the tabloids, think, What harm has she ever done to you that entitles you to treat her like this?”
She turned her face and then her body away. She found herself crying quietly. How had she let herself come to this place? She wished it was over now, except for her mother’s need of her and her income, she would throw her job, catch a plane and vanish, try to do the same as this girl was doing, find a new life without a past. She felt anger driving her. She would keep her bad bargain, if he agreed to her terms. But she would end it today.
She grabbed at the sheet and pulled it up over her body, then turned to him with the anger glistening through the tears. “Well, what is it to be. Do you want what I have to tell you, at my price, or shall I just get dressed and leave now?”
She watched the emotions swirl across the dark face. He looked shocked and hurt too at her stinging rebuke. But despite her mental slap there was still hunger in his eyes, not hunger for her and her body, that had never had any meaning beyond the sex act, but hunger for her knowledge and for the power and status it would bring him if he could find the girl Susan and write another chapter of her story. It was the hunger of a poor boy, risen to the top, who could feel it all slipping away and could not bear the thought of becoming a nobody again. Despite her anger a part of her felt sorrow and sympathy for his degradation, alongside hers.
He went to his briefcase and pulled out an envelope, it was thick. There are 100 fifty pound notes, in there. “They are yours, right now, no strings. And there is another envelope the same for when you tell me what you know. Then I will leave you alone. I will call it quits, whether I find the girl or not, I will let you alone after today.”
She dressed and then sat in a chair facing him, wanting this to be over fast. “What I know is this. She has been found but we do not know where she is. She has two children. The name she uses now is Jane. I do not know where she lives now, except I think it is somewhere in a coastal town, not too far from Brisbane, perhaps somewhere like the Gold Coast, where she can hide amongst other people. She lives with a man whose name I don’t know and wants to get married to him as soon as it can be arranged. He treats the children as if he is their father and she loves him. That is what I know, perhaps it is enough to find her, if you are as good as you say.
“The only thing I ask is that, if you find her you treat her better than you have before. You could still write a good story which would sell and remake your name without harming her, this time you could try to be a little kinder. She deserves decency and a new life.”
For a minute she thought about saying about her memory loss. She also thought of telling about the seeking of a pardon. But the first thing was only the girl’s business and the second was only the law’s business. He did not need either for his story. She felt better not to have surrendered these two small things, as if a corner of her soul had retained something of its own.
He passed her the second envelope with a nod of thanks.
She took it and walked out the door without looking back. Her hand holding the money felt on fire, as if she was holding a burning devil. But, having sold her soul, she would not let the devil go.
Chapter 24 – Secret Pardon
In the days that followed Beck tried to forget what she had done. She told herself, over and over, that she had done no real harm, the money was for a good cause and the girl was away free and would soon be married and living a new life where the past could not touch her.
Her lack of memory was her salvation. It made her untouchable. So this man may find her and ask her questions, but all she could say was she did not know, she did not remember. That was no story and interest would fade.
Beck walked miles along Nightcliff and Casuarina beaches as she reran and repeated this mantra in her mind, scuffing sand and kicking little waves, as she tried to walk away the memory, make herself believe it would be OK.
On the Monday morning the mailman
brought a package to her work. It was a slim square package with a note from Ross saying this was the agreed DVD of the interview. She closed her office door and loaded the DVD into her computer, watched as the icon came up showing it was loading, then when that finished she pressed play
The video was good quality though mostly it showed Ross’s face to the camera. The other person was sitting with only her side profile in view from behind. It took Beck long seconds to connect this image with her mind image of Susan. Dark hair was replaced by something auburn to blond, tied loosely in a haphazard fashion, conveying a person who cared little how they looked. Her face was unseen but the profile conveyed a sense of unreality, a non-person filling the space, a part was due to the strange view, more due to a demeanor more absent than present. Ross had mentioned something about this girl seeming to be missing a part of her soul, an empty shell sensation. But until she saw this image these were just words.
Now she understood him; the person sitting there brought to mind a beautiful but lifeless piece of porcelain. It was hard to believe that this person had anything linking them to the girl she had last seen sitting in the dock, smiling brightly but incredibly controlled, a will of steel inside a pretty face, with an incredibly vital life force emanating. It was so much easier to believe that here was a different person. No wonder she was hard to find.
Beck half wondered if it was really her, rather than some clever charade of a different person, role playing, out for fame and glory. The change in the life essence was too hard to take in.
A few seconds later she began to speak. In that instant the uncertainty resolved. It was so her, the voice, the accent, it was unmistakable.
“Doctor Sangster, I know this is important for others, so I am doing it for them. But, you see, even though it seems important for these people to know about me from before it is not important to me. I know I was someone else once, but I am not that person anymore. I don’t need to know that person anymore to live a good and happy life now.”
At that point there was a clear discontinuity as if a part had been edited from the tape.
It then jumped to a place where Ross asked her to tell of her earliest memories saying.
“Tell me what is the last thing you remember from when you were a little girl, living in England?”
She replied, “It was my first year in High School, when I met Anne and we became friends. I can remember the first day I met Anne. She was a gawky twelve year old with flaming red hair and a big cheeky smile. We had desks side by side. We used to talk when the teacher was not looking.”
Ross said, Put yourself back into that place now and try to remember the last school holidays before then, where you went and what you did.
A few seconds of silence ensued then the voice continued, “I remember those school holidays. They were summer holidays. We went to a farm up in Scotland. It was the farm where my Dad had grown up, in a valley between big green hills. His parents lived in one house and his sister, who was married, lived in another house nearby. Her husband did the farm work. My Dad loved to help on the farm and I did too. My Dad would bring me out on the farm with him.
“My brother Tim did not like farm work much, he had a cousin about his age and the two of them would spend hours playing together. There was also another cousin, but she was younger than Tim. I felt too grown up to play with her. I liked her and talked to her but I did not play with her much.
“I also remember my Aunt Em, my Dad’s youngest sister. She still lived at home with her parents, she had just finished school. She was the baby of the family, that’s what Dad used to call her. I was twelve and she was eighteen. She was to go off to University after summer. She was really pretty and a bit wild. I would sit with her and talk for hours about boys and going out and things like that. I can’t really remember exactly what we talked about but I just remember how much I liked being with her. She was so excited to be going off to a big city to live and study. It all sounded exciting to me and she would talk to me like I was as grown up as she was.
“I remember how she, me and Dad would sometimes talk, all sitting around the fire in the evening. Em and Dad both loved animals, particularly the big wild animals in other countries, the lions and tigers, the elephants and giraffes, the monkeys, chimpanzees and gorillas.
“We all wanted to go to Africa and see them, particularly the lions, leopards and cheetahs hunting in the national parks. I don’t know if we ever did, but we dreamt and talked so much about it, being camped by a waterhole and watching all the animals coming in to drink and how a lion pack would try and ambush them, while we watched from a hidden hide.
“What were your favourite animals?” Ross asked.
There was another pause as if she was thinking. Then she answered, “I am not sure, I thought the apes were so amazing, they are so like us, their behaviours and the way they interact. But I loved the predators too, the way a cat would stalk up, or silently wait in ambush until something came along.”
Ross asked, “Did you ever see any wild animals that you remember, perhaps at a zoo or something like that?”
Another pause and then she said. “I think the year before those holidays my Dad took me to a zoo called Whipsnade Zoo and also to London Zoo in Regents Park. I can remember watching a cheetah stalking someone who was walking along the outside of its enclosure at Whipsnade Zoo. And I also remember feeling a bit sorry for the lions at Regents Park Zoo. They were lying out in the sun and their enclosure was mostly concrete. I thought of them out in Africa, in the long grass, hunting animals. I thought, What a pity, they have nothing to chase and nowhere to hunt in there.”
Ross asked, “Have you ever seen a crocodile?”
At first she said nothing though a flinching movement passed over her body and her side face took a hard and squeezed up look, which washed away as her mouth opened into what looked like a grimace.
As it did a noise began, somewhere deep inside her. It started as a thin wail, rising in tone and volume into a screech of terror. Then the noise was gone, as if she had bitten it off. Now her body began to shake which soon became huge sobbing movements, with the words, “No, No, No, My Babies,” said over and over again.
Beck watched as Ross stumbled to his feet and ran to her, putting his arms around to comfort her. She turned to the side towards him bringing her face into view. It was a mask of pure and unadulterated terror. Suddenly the screen was blank, though the image was still burned deep into Beck’s retinas.
Then the face image returned; she was there again, facing Ross, saying with accusing eyes.“Why did you say that, that thing about the crocodiles? It is evil. I saw my babies swimming in a pool full of crocodiles. Lots of big crocodiles, swimming towards them, mouths open. My babies needed help and I could not reach them. I was stuck here in the wrong body. I knew the crocodiles would take them, tear them apart, then eat them. I knew my babies would be torn into little pieces. I could not reach them or help them. I could not bear to watch it happen. It was so real.
“I wish you never said those words. I don’t want to talk about memories. I don’t want try and remember, it is all too terrible. I never want to see that awful thing again. I just want to be left alone.”
Beck knew in that instant it was a terrible mistake for her to pretend this girl was alright, that she could retreat behind a no memory mask. She knew now it was not true, already her past had destroyed one life.
Now, even though she had built something new which had cut all links with the past, leaving her with little more than a shell of her past existence, it was a fractured place. Deep cracks ran between the new and the old and the wrong words could tear this fragile edifice apart and smash it to bits. If that happened she would be culpable.
The video was finished now, a real blank screen. Beck looked at it with blank eyes; her only remaining image was the overwhelming terror in this poor girl’s eyes. Shame rose at her own part, reflected from this image.
There was a knock on the door. She called out,
“Yes.”
Her receptionist came in, saying, “I have a Dr Ross Sangster on the line and he would like to talk to you urgently. He says he had to fly to Darwin at the end of the week and thought that he could perhaps schedule a meeting to discuss the video and his report. He just needs to know if you can arrange that before he confirms his bookings.”
She picked up the call, a welcome distraction from her thoughts. “Hello Ross. Can I expect to see you in Darwin?”
“Yes I have been asked to meet with and review the treatment plan for an aboriginal man in Darwin Hospital who has traumatic and alcohol related brain injury with severe memory impairment. They have asked me to fly up for the day on Thursday, and I wondered, before I locked in flights, whether there was value in me discussing my report either with you or your other legal colleagues. I could do either Wednesday or Friday though, to be honest, Friday works better for me. If I came then I would stay for the weekend for a bit of sightseeing as I have never been to Darwin before.”
She answered, “Can you give me ten minutes? I just need to check the Attorney General’s diary and also to see if at least one of the two others, the coroner and the sentencing judge would also be available and could fit in a meeting.”
She walked out to her receptionist, saying, “Jenny, could you get onto, Judge Davis’s associate and see if she can squeeze us into his diary for an hour sometime on Friday, it is about the Susan MacDonald case.
“Also ring Coroner Edwards’ personal assistant and check his availability, ideally for the same meeting though it can always be for different meetings if needed. I will go and check with his lordship the AG.”
She knocked at the door, knowing her boss had been in for at least half an hour and that he liked to be left alone to catch up on reading the daily pile of briefs for his first hour of the day.
Sunlit Shadow Dance Page 15