“After that day on the aeroplane with Alan I feel like we have all been friends for a long time, even though today is our first meeting. So I am really glad to meet you now,” she said, holding out her hand.
Sandy felt delighted and charmed at this positive response but also a bit flummoxed. She had come to meet a person who she sensed was in great need of help. Yet this young woman opposite, very much her own age, seemed the perfect gracious host welcoming her to her house for a garden party, not someone facing a murder charge for killing a lover and feeding him to the crocodiles. It was all so incongruous. Sandy thought it would be more real if a needy or angry person sat opposite her.
Her puzzlement must have shown on her face because Susan picked up the cue. “You are probably wondering why I do not appear tormented or crazy, with what has happened. In a way I am, I have had very dark times; me in my own company with endless regret; it is an awful empty place. But I am coming to realise that I have to make the best of what I have, to treasure the pieces of blue sky and sunshine, like your visit today. I am trying hard to learn how to live in the moment and act with joy. Sometimes all I see is darkness and I feel my life has burned away, leaving only cold ashes which fill the barren place surrounding me. But then you come along and the darkness burns away for an hour.
“But you did not come to hear me tell you about my feelings. You came seeking information, to try and find out who Mark really was, the man with the different names. Is that not so?”
Sandy nodded, even more amazed. Was there anything this woman did not know of her own thoughts? It was like her mind was an open book allowing direct thought transference.
Sandy sensed the purpose of this visit was being pushed away from what she intended, she wondered if it was deliberate. This woman was an adept mind reader. Now she gained a sense she was being manipulated by a superb actress, one who could kill her lover in one minute and then share cake and tea in the next.
She made herself rise to the challenge and felt a sense of satisfaction come back from the other. She realised Susan had been testing her, seeing what substance was present in her character, and was now pleased she had pushed back, making her a worthy friend and contestant. So far it had all happened unsaid, within the space of their two minds.
Sandy pushed her body back in her chair, stretched and said, in a measured way, “You are right, I do want to ask some questions while I am here. But that is only a small part of the reason I came. Most, I too wanted to meet you, to see if our imagined friendship was real, to talk to you as I would to my other friends, to see what you were like.
“So please, tell me about how you find it being here, what is good and what is bad? I cannot imagine how I would cope with being locked up in this place. I would go crazy, alone by myself, day after day. Alan has told me you are expecting a baby. Tell me about that?
Susan replied, “I would like that, just to talk to you about ordinary things. Since coming here I have barely spoken any words and I feel consumed by silence.
“First I must say, I killed him, very much in the way your report described. But do not ask me about what happened on that day or why, that is off limits.Anything else I know I will tell you. I would like it if you would be my friend and visit me when you can. While I can offer little in return, as you can see, I can return friendship.”
So they sat and talked, like sisters who had known each other all their lives but had not met for a decade and now were full of news to exchange.
Once or twice Sandy thought, this is crazy, me going out of my way to befriend someone who is self confessed murderer.
Again Susan read her thoughts, saying. “It is crazy that we should be friends like this. But think of me as a silly young girl who became infatuated, did something she regrets, and now must make recompense.”
At first they talked about their shared interest and knowledge of pathology.
Sandy said, “Now I understand, it was what struck me when I went to the billabong; that the clean up after was done by someone who knew what they were doing and planned it carefully. It so nearly worked; if the head was not found, or if it had rained first, nobody would have ever known. Is it luck or is it destiny that it turned out this way?”
Susan answered with perfect clarity. “It is much better this way. At first I thought I could run away and hide from what I did. Now I know I could not and I am glad I don’t have to live that lie. It would have been like a cancer inside me, eating out my insides across all my future. For me the truth is better, even if my future is a bitter pill to swallow.”
Then they talked about the baby. Susan told her about David and Sydney, then meeting Mark again in Alice Springs, how excited and infatuated she had been, how pregnancy protection had been left aside. “As best I can tell I got pregnant in the middle of August; that makes me between five and six months now.
“It is funny but none of the officials seem to have noticed, though it is really beginning to show. I have told my friends but it never seemed important to tell others. I have asked my parents to adopt him, my baby, as I will not be able to keep him in prison; his middle name will be Marco, like his father’s name was.”
Susan continued, “Mark told me his proper name was Vincent Marco Bassingham. It is the only thing I know about his life before except that he told me he had a happy memory of fishing with his uncle in Brisbane. Oh, and he told me his mother died when he was a boy, I do not know her name but she was Italian and the name Marco came from her brother who died young. Also he told me he ran away from remand school after getting caught shoplifting when he was about twelve and he hated his father who was a bully, and has never seen him since.
“So if you can locate Mark’s true family that would be a good thing. While Mark hated his father, he seemed to like his uncle. Perhaps it would be good for my child to know any extended family from Mark’s side. That is why I am happy that you try to trace him. As you have Mark’s DNA that should assist in confirming any family links you find.”
Sandy asked if Susan would like her to notify the prison officials of her pregnancy. Susan she said she thought this was a good idea. In the end their visit was cut short by the warder saying that she was sorry but the time was up and Sandy would have to leave now.
On the way out Sandy notified the prison office of Susan’s pregnancy status and asked whether it would be possible for her to organise a doctor to visit or did it need to be handled by the prison. They said they were uncertain and would call her back.
As she walked away Sandy felt both pleased and perplexed. Her liking of Susan was real and instinctive, it was as if they were very much kindred spirits, the term “spirit sisters” resonated in her mind. Their friendship was natural and easy. Susan had great charm and was almost impossible not to like. And she sensed Susan was telling the truth about the terrible dark times she had lived through since the event, Mark’s death. She also had to admit that her own ego felt gratified that what happened on that day had been the way her pathology report described, an affirmation of her professional skill.
But there was an undercurrent here that made her uneasy, what was it? She chewed over it in her mind and by the time she reached her car in the car park it came to her. It was too easy; getting the past information on the identity of Mark was too easy. This consummate actress was steering her. She had no doubt that Susan had told the truth about the likely true identity of her murder victim, along with the fragments of childhood memory that he had conveyed, even down to the remand school. They were provided as details to check and help locate a person. It was in stark contrast to the secret of Mark now.
At the time Susan had told her these things she had accepted Susan’s facile reason for the disclosures, that it would be good for the child to know something about the father’s family. She and Alan had discussed how this former identity might be the lead that could crack the case open, get to the true Mark. It was based on the idea that, in Mark’s distant past there might lie the clue to who he was, something wh
ich would explain what had happened between them. Perhaps it was still so, that there was an important clue hidden there.
But she realised that this woman had detected Sandy’s desire to go down this path, and had steered her actively towards it. Susan was deliberately hiding a secret and yet she had steered Sandy towards what she and Alan thought may be the key. The name that had been whispered to them, Vincent Mark Bassingham, was now official and would justify an investigation to locate this new identity. Birth records, marriage records, next of kin records, DNA checks, thus giving the victim a face and identity. Susan had readily assisted in providing information for this search.
But why? Too easy, much too easy was how it seemed!
Chapter 11 - Susan’s Plan
Yesterday afternoon Susan had been told that the pathologist wanted to visit her and ask her some questions about any knowledge she had of the prior identity of the murder victim before she met him.
It immediately raised a red flag in her brain. Her overwhelming motive for everything she had done since she had first been arrested in London was to hide the real Mark from public view. At first, when they arrested her, it had seemed that officials had been happy enough to let Mark fade from view, they had a license ID for a Mark Bennet, she assumed there would be enough of a trail for people to confirm that to be the identity of her Mark, and, having got that far, people would let it drop.
But once the association had been made with the second assumed name, Mark Butler, Susan realised that this could be trouble, it raised a question of what was Mark’s true identity.
Last night Susan had another dream. In her dream Mark’s secret was in great peril, with people investigating what had happened on her trip from Alice Springs and tracing her phone calls and text messages to Anne. In the process they were starting to link Mark to his victims. If the text asking Anne to investigate the missing girls and Anne’s reply was found, then it would all unravel. She did not think that Anne would volunteer information, but she knew that Anne was conflicted. However, on balance, she thought that her friend’s loyalty to her would come first.
Anne did not really know the story. But she knew about the initial inquiry and Susan had effectively admitted that this was Mark. So Anne would see the link between her, Mark and those cases, and she also knew of the existence of Mark’s diary. However, with Susan’s admission to the murder and her stated intention to plead guilty, she felt she was closing a door to the danger of that revelation; at least once she was sentenced.
However the dream seemed to be warning her otherwise. In the dream Alan and Sandy were talking, exchanging the name Vincent Mark Bassingham and saying they would trace this person, at least Sandy was, planning to use DNA to confirm the link to other family members.
Last night, in her dream, she had heard Sandy whispering to Alan, who is Vincent Mark Bassingham. He is the key, if we can trace him we can find the true Mark. She felt strongly Sandy’s desire to get to the real story, the why.
In their minds they were doing this to help her. She understood this logic, stated as, “Ye shall know the truth and the truth will set ye free,” that Biblical line from her Presbyterian Sunday School.
But for Susan this truth was not freedom, but a whispered secret. Its retelling would become all that anyone knew of this case, its memory would follow on for decades.
It was already sensational enough; it did not bear thinking about how a new revelation would play out. While she had previously considered the option to plead self-defence, reveal about Mark, and then once released to vanish under a new name, she knew this would be easier said than done. In this IT age true disappearance was extraordinarily hard, particularly when she wanted to still have her own family and friends, the people her child would need as a growing boy.
But most of all she would not go there because it was fundamentally disloyal to Mark, it would turn him into a monster when the truth was much more complex. She was glad he was the father of her child; she did not believe he was evil absolute; she had glimpsed and tasted goodness at his centre, despite all. But that story would never be told in the court of public opinion. So she would not allow his identity and person to be treated that way.
In the dream Alan was trying to revisit all the other information about Susan and Mark and see if any of it would give more clues to who Mark was and why Susan had killed him. He was poring over records he had tracked down about Mark and in the process had got Susan’s mobile number, the SIM card she had bought in Cairns.
It was funny that no one had ever gone digging into this before; but then, once they had made her identification all those other minor details were ignored as extraneous. From this dream she understood that Alan had been taken off the case, but Sandy was stepping into the breach. So they were still working together and exchanging information.
She could sense Alan’s frustration. He was hamstrung by other work, he had little time to use, plus his boss had told him to drop it, the case against her was open and shut, that no one else cared about the why, it was only guilt that mattered.
Susan wished that Alan would just drop it like the rest. But she also understood it from his point of view; he saw an injustice happening and was trying to prevent it. In part it was that because he had first uncovered the murder he felt obligated to have the whole truth told. At the same time he also thought he was helping her.
At the time she had met him on the aeroplane she had willed him to help her like this. But that was when her mind was in a mess. Now she saw clearly that Mark’s secret must stay hidden. She wished she had not encouraged him, but she had. So now she must think of a way to prevent his desire for truth from succeeding.
In the dream Alan had linked a number on Marks phone to her, and following from that was now tracing all the calls she had made. The only item of concern was the text to Anne and Anne’s reply.
As she woke from the dream she realised she had to find a diversion to throw them off track of tracing this, to make them feel they had another better lead to follow and to put their time into that. The name Vincent Mark Bassingham kept coming into her brain. They had the name and would follow it, like a bloodhound on a scent.
At first this idea had filled her with fear. Then it dawned on her. Let them follow it; it was the name of a child of twenty years ago, a boy abused by his father who had run away. The story of the child was all this name would tell. So there would be family information about the child to run down, it would take a while to find, but the adult would not be there. As best she could understand it was only after Mark went to the Middle East, when he was about twenty, that the callous and wanton killing begun. Revelation of that Mark was what terrified her. By then he was a man who worked under other names and took great care to hide his true identity. So the child was not the man, nor the man the child.
She must throw a false trail, one that seems to lead somewhere but actually lead away, where the sum of a month or two of investigation would be zero. They would know the real identity, know a bit about his difficult childhood perhaps, things that would bring sympathy, but then it would all vanish.
He would be someone who had changed his identity because of an abusive father, and had made a new life in the NT under names based on his middle name and initials, not so remarkable really. It would feed the gossip mills for a day or two and then would become yesterday’s story. Beside this old identity the new one would fade. The police would stop using the name Mark and just call him Vincent. She would admit to Vincent’s murder.
It would serve the purpose of occupying a month or two of official time, seen as doing an important job in getting to the bottom of this mystery. By the time they had got to the ends of this, to where this trail led, the time to investigate would have passed; she would have been convicted and sentenced. She would be one of many prisoners serving out their time, soon forgotten as public attention and police investigations moved on to new juicy stories.
So that is what she would do. She would give them the name they
were seeking, send them off following this trail, all the while letting the story she was protecting slide away.
But she must be careful. Sandy was clever. In the same way she could glimpse parts of Sandy’s mind, Sandy could do so with her. It was a cat and mouse game, throw bait one way for the cat to pounce on while you quietly crept off in a different direction.
She wished it was a guilt free and painless process. She liked Sandy, Sandy could be her friend, she would gladly accept any friendship offered. It was the same for Alan and Buck. Yet here she was, acting out a role for their apparent benefit, which had the purpose of deceiving them. She did not feel good about herself. The old, decent Susan was slowly sliding away, replaced by a manipulating and conniving actress.
In trying to hide the true Mark, she had become a shadow figure of her former self, now she was the great dissembler, the one who showed people a face they wanted to believe in and then used all her tricks to make it seem true. That was the face of the Mark she had discovered. Now she had become him, a person trapped by bad decisions and poor choices into perpetual dishonesty.
The only person who had seen through this was Vic, on that day when he had refused to accept her meaningless answers. Now he was gone too and she was left alone, ever and always alone, in an empty place.
Chapter 12 – The Children and the Crocodile Stone
Two days after Sandy visited Susan was notified of a doctor coming to visit her and examine her baby. Sandy arranged this visit; the doctor was someone she had met through medical circles.
Susan was unsure, but in the end agreed, thinking it was not about her comfort, it was insurance that her baby got the best treatment. Once she had met the person she could decide on what to do and how to pay.
Crocodile Spirit Dreaming - Possession - Books 1 - 3 Page 53