Girl in an Empty Cage

by Graham Wilson

  Chapter 17 – The Bush Trip

  It was Friday morning and Sandy felt really excited. A bush trip, just for the two of them! They were heading down to Timber Creek via Katherine today. Buck was putting them up at VRD tonight then tomorrow they would head east, stopping at Top Springs for morning tea, then Daly Waters and Heartbreak Hotel en route before Borroloola became their next night time destination, a long seven hundred kilometre drive. The following morning they would go further east to Seven Emus and meet the people there before the long, thousand plus kilometre, drive home to Darwin that night.

  She knew it would be a lot of long and boring hours of driving and yet she could not wait to be gone, both to get a taste of the vast expanses of this land and to be with Alan, uninterrupted, for this time.

  Normally they slept at her flat and used Alan’s place as a store, even though his place was bigger and more comfortable. Alan said he liked all her girly things and all her smells, her scent in the bed particularly, it was a real turn on, and she liked him being turned on.

  As a child no one ever told her that sex could be so much fun. So she had been a slow starter, but with him it was just so, so, delicious; she felt herself blush inside at the thought. Her mind drifted around that space, We have three days away together – so plenty of time for in-bed play.

  Last night they had slept in Alan’s flat. It was big and comfortable but a bit impersonal for her taste. Soon they must get rid of it - only keep the one place until they were married; it would help save money. But they had come here because he kept his bush gear here, his swag and other camping gear that he wanted to bring.

  Now it was six thirty in the morning and she was fixing a quick breakfast while he shaved in the shower. He came out in his towel and swept her into a huge hug. Then his towel fell away. She saw his aroused body and before she knew it they were back in bed, even better than her randy thoughts over toast.

  But now they really must be away, so they packed quickly and headed out. They took turns driving, both were Officers of the Crown, and legally authorised to do the trip. They made the six hundred kilometre trip to Timber Creek in time for a late lunch. They questioned everyone they could find who knew Mark, particularly anyone who had seen him and Susan together, but the pickings were slim.

  Tanya, the main witness was gone, but Alan had met her briefly in Darwin before she left to return home and had her statement. It was good to see this place in person. He had sent an officer to investigate here and, even though he had seen photos, it was different seen with his own eyes.

  He picked up and read Tanya’s statement again and looked at the photos. He worked out where Marks vehicle had been parked when Susan came out to it. He looked back to the pub from there. It was in clear view from the kitchen window, where Tanya said she was working, so that part added up, there was no reason not to believe it was as she described.

  The way the vehicle had been parked, facing Katherine, meant the passenger door would have been facing her window. Tanya described how Mark got a pillow from the back of the car and propped in under Susan’s head before he walked around to his side and drove away, heading towards Katherine. So that was it, the last time anyone other than Susan had seen Mark alive.

  Alan read back over the full statement again. Susan had come out a bit after eight o’clock in the morning, yawning and looking very sleepy. She took out her phone, as if to check for messages, before she climbed into the car, then lay down on the seat and apparently fell asleep, Tanya saw her lie down and disappear from view. The car window was open so she could see clearly. While she did not watch Susan every minute she had not seen the door open or her sit up.

  The next thing that happened was when Mark came out. Tanya was pretty sure of the time when Susan had come out; the morning news on the radio had just come on which meant eight o’clock. Mark’s time of coming out she was less sure about. She had finished serving breakfasts and was doing the washing up so it must have been around nine o’clock.

  It all fitted. It seemed so idyllically normal, exactly how he imagined he would be with Sandy if she had fallen asleep. So what happened to change it?

  The description of Susan checking her phone jangled in his brain, something he had never noticed when he had read the statement before. Not that it was unusual, everyone checked messages these days, and the reception out here was limited.

  But still it seemed a bit odd to be checking messages when half asleep first thing in the morning, unless of course one was expecting a message, but why? Perhaps she was seeking a confirmation of flight details home or something similarly mundane. He shrugged, he would park that question for now though when Tanya came to Darwin next week to give evidence he must ask her more, dig for any little thing.

  Speaking of which he must ring his boss in Darwin and give a quick update. He pulled out his phone, damn, just a flickering half bar of signal, not enough reception to ring from here. He walked along the road for fifty yards. Now the signal was better. He had two bars and the phone rang through.

  They drove on to Victoria River Downs Station, arriving in the late afternoon. There were only a couple people still working here who had met Mark and Susan on that night, apart for Buck and Julie, his wife, both of whose stories they already knew. Again slim pickings, though one person remembered that Mark and Susan had both gone to bed early pleading tiredness and how Mark had given Susan a very lascivious look as she was yawning, just before leaving, and she had gone bright red. But they slept in separate rooms, because only dormitory bunks were free that night. That was it really.

  Sandy and Alan also retired early after one of those friendly dinners in the kitchen with all the other station workers, presided over by Buck and Julie, plain station food but satisfying. An almost full crew was on hand as the mustering season was about to start. They got their own room, with a full sized double bed, and made good use of it.

  Alan and Buck were now fast friends, and Sandy could feel herself really getting to like Julie, even though she and Alan had only met her today for the first time.

  They were away early next day, it was on to Top Springs first stop. They hoped that from here things would start to get more interesting.

  The barman, Mike, was sweeping and mopping as they arrived. He finished up and wiped the sweat off his forehead with a dirty rag, it was already getting hot. He waved them inside to the bar, cool and inviting in the dim light.

  Alan said, “I am the policeman who talked to you on the phone a couple days ago, Sergeant Alan Richards, and this is my partner Sandy.” They all shook hands.

  Mike replied, “Yeah I remember, about my old mate, recently deceased, Mr Mark B.”

  So they got to talking. It was a rambling tale, interspersed with side anecdotes of which there were many. Eventually it got to the point.

  “Known Mark mebbe ten years; proper good bloke, but wild, with a mean and dangerous streak.”

  “What do you mean dangerous?” asked Alan.

  “Well, they tell me I am a bit fey, must be de Irish in me, came out as a young fella from de green land, and back dere tis always talk of spirits and divils, faeries and the like, ye know what I mean. So sometimes I sees what ordnary folks doesn’t.

  “Ever since I fust met Mark I could see a sort of divil sitting on his shoulder, not a proper divil, more like a bad spirit which filled an empty place inside him. Used to call it crocodile spirit, cos he always carried dat crocodile totem, sometimes touchin it, like. But I could see it there, sort of in the shadow right behind him. Some blackfellas from round dis way, dey could see it too. So, even before I see him do anything, I knew he was real dangerous.

  “Then there was the odd story to be told, ye know, bar talk, nuthin nobody had seen direct like, but how somebody knew somebody he had hurt bad, on account of a man had tried to bully him and stuff like dat”

  “He would pass through here a lot, more often than not with some pretty girl alongside. It used to be a joke, never the sam
e one twice. Once or twice someone would ask why all different girls. He would say, ‘Easy Come, Easy Go.’ You sorta got used to it after a while.

  “He was a popular guy, always buy a drink for a mate, no job too hard for him and he worked like a Trojan. And he was good to the local blacks, would fix up houses, give dem meat, lend dem money, only if he thought it legit though, he was no soft touch.

  “So we all sort of liked him and stuck by him. He was one of us, though nobody ever knew more about him than his first name. He introduced hisself as Mark, sometimes Mark B. I niver knew his proper name, though once I heard tell from a VRD ringer it was Mark Butler, said he sees it on a bit of paper.

  “Anyhows, one night Mark was drinking here, beers and rum chasers. We all had a bit, three other blokes in the bar, along with Mark and me. One fella was a fair tosser, big burly bloke, up from the south for a year or two, good bit bigger than Mark or the rest of us. He was always tellin how it was all done much better down there. Sometimes we would say if he loved it so much he should piss off back there.

  “Well, after we had been drinking steadily for an hour or two, all good company like, this bloke turned to Mark and said, ‘What no girl tonight? Why do you keep changing them girls anyway? What do you do, root them, shoot them and chuck them in a hole?’ Then he laughed at his own joke, a sort of nasty laugh.

  “There was a split second of dead quiet. I was watching Mark’s eyes and after it was said he had the most evil look I have ever seen, twas dead scary it was, like a cobra about to strike.

  “So he picked up this guy’s beer, he always drunk from a glass like a true city slicker. Mark flings the beer in his face, and tips the rum over his head. Then he says, ‘Now shut yer fuckin mouth and don’t ever talk like that again. If you do I will kill you.’

  “The guy fires up, ‘What you do that for? Can’t you take a joke?

  “Mark points a finger at him and says. ‘Shut the fuck up. And if you don’t like it why don’t you just follow me outside?’

  “Then Mark walks out and closes the door.

  “This guy is bridling up, full of piss and bad manners, reckons he doesn’t need to cop shit like that, he was just makin a joke. He thinks it will be easy enough to sort Mark out. He’s got the size and fancies himself as a bit of a pub room fighter.

  “We all tells him to calm down, not to fuck with Mark, but just be glad he didn’t get his teeth broken for the trouble. But he keeps firing himself up, muttering that he won’t cop that shit, he will show him.

  “So, after a minute, he goes charging outside, yelling, “I am comin to git you, motherfucker.”

  “We sort of ignored him, hoping Mark was gone and he would fall over in the dark and sober up for a minute. We heard a couple grunts but nothing much.

  “After a while, maybe ten minutes, one of the other blokes, Fred, says, ‘Think I better check outside, jus make sure all is fine.’ He goes out and a minute later he calls out ‘Jasus Fuckin Christ, Boys I need some help. Bring some light.’

  “We goes out and finds the big fucker lying in the dirt, it looks like he had been hit by an express train, face is smashed pretty much to pulp, and he looks like shit, big ragged breaths like he could croak anytime. Of Mark there is no sign.

  “So we call the flying doctor, air lift him out and the paramedic tells me it was touch and go. The face looked the worst, but he had several broken ribs, a punctured lung and a busted liver. Don’t know what Mark did but it was like he hit him with a sledgehammer a few times.

  “Anyway the bloke gets better, goes back to Sydney with a slightly patched up face but not too much worse for wear. The rest of us decide that he got what was comin his way and say nuthin. And the guy is obviously not goin to complain lest Mark come back and finish the job.

  “Well, like I say, Mark is a dangerous man; we all sort of knew it before but after that the word got around our parts and you can be sure no one since tried to pick a fight with him on a dark night.”

  Now that Mike had finished his tale he leaned back on the bar, pulled out a can of coke for them each and cracked his knuckles. “I guess you gets what I mean about dangerous, so.”

  Alan nodded. Now Sandy spoke. Do you remember the day he came through with the girl, the one you visited in jail.

  Mike turned to her with a grin, “Well, you are the sharp one, aren’t you. Now how did you be knowin dat?

  Sandy grinned back, “Even a city slicker like me can read the name of Michael Riley in the prison visitor book.”

  Mike continued, “Yeah, sure, I remember her well enough, she was somehow different, she really liked him, I could tell that from the start, not that it was so unusual, plenty really liked him, though for her maybe it was a bit deeper, serious like. But what was different was that he really liked her too, it was writ all over him.

  “So we talked away for a good while and they had a feed, ye know, Mark and me tellin bush stories, all fine and dandy. Then, as they gets up to go, I had this real powerful vision of her being in great danger. That crocodile spirit, I sees it now, coming round to the front of him, like it was protecting him. I sensed that it wanted to attack her, even kill her. It was not him, Mark, but the bad spirit. He could not have harmed her; she was like the light in his life, but it had the power.

  “I knew then there was danger for her and I tried to warn her. Not that I could say it clearly. With that warning Mark got sort of protective of her and the spirit pulled back to behind him. Then I saw that while the danger was for her, there was something protecting her and it would turn the danger back on him.

  “In that minute I knew he was not long for this world. I knew then that, in the next few days, a choice would come for him and her. One of them would have to go; the evil spirit would take its own. But now Mark had proper understood that this bad thing was coming. I knew he would choose for her to live and him to die.

  “There is one more thing I can tell you. Since that silly fucker said that thing about the girls and Mark, it got me thinking. Even though he was mouthing off it told me something.

  “I think how Mark acted was saying it was at least part true. That bad spirit acted to protect its own that night by almost beating the life out of that man. Marks hands did it, no doubt, but what I saw in his eyes was not my friend Mark, it was like this pure evil beast that would keep its secret.

  “It did not come to me straight out, but over months and years, the little pieces joining together in my head since that time when it happened, maybe two, three years ago. And then, on that day with Susan, it was like a war was happening inside him, a war between that beast and his better part. In the end I knew his better part would win, but only through letting the beast take him instead of her.

  “So I went and tried to talk to her in jail, to tell her I knew what the good part of him wanted for her and it was not to end her life in jail to protect his name. But her love for him was too strong. She would not listen. In the end I knew I could help her no more. Now you must try.

  “She wants to be with him, and she thinks the only way she can is to surrender her soul to the evil, to let the crocodile spirit take her to join him. The only thing keeping her in this place is the babies she is yet to have. Once they be born she is in great danger from herself.”

  For the last five minutes, since he had told of Susan, it was like the man had spoken to them from a trance, looking from somewhere deep inside himself, seeing a truth that the world could not see, something in the place of shadows dancing.

  Sandy felt goose bumps run up her arms and neck. It fitted too well with what she had glimpsed inside Susan to treat this story he told as an old man’s mad ravings.

  Suddenly Mike returned to his normal banter, the shadow was gone. He looked at the clock, went to the bar and pulled out three beers. “One for the road; one for each of ye, tis on the house. And one for me to give me the strength to finish me cleaning.”

  They thanked the man and left. As they went out Sandy gave M
ike a spontaneous hug, a sign of affection that felt like it came from both her and from Susan for his attempt to help. The old man winked at Alan and said, “Watch out, this one is like that Susan girl, she is smart and her mind can see shadows too, maybe ye both can. So take care.”

  Alan and Sandy exchanged a puzzled look as they walked out.

  Late in the day they came to Borroloola with nothing useful found out in Daly Waters or Heartbreak Hotel. They were both struggling to come to terms with what they had heard at Top Springs. To any normal person it would sound like the man, Mike, was mad, and yet.

  They had tried to talk about it, the idea that a part of Mark wanted to kill Susan and that, instead, he had deliberately chosen to sacrifice himself for her. It did not quite fit with the facts, but there was a truth somehow hidden within this story. It could not be dismissed but yet it could not be understood. Still they knew there was something vital locked within the puzzle he had given them, if they could only see it.

  Now they were tired of talking and thinking. They wanted to hold close to each other’s bodies in the night and push the shadows they had glimpsed away.

  Next morning they woke to a bright clear sunny day. The muggy heat and humidity was gone. Instead a light, cool breeze was blowing from the south east, “the start of the dry season,” Alan said.

  They knew Borroloola was an intended destination for a visit by Mark and Susan and they may have spent a few hours here. They did not know if anyone would know or recognise either of them from a photo after all these months. So they each took a part of the town to work their way round, showing the photos and seeking recognition.

  Alan said he would go first to the police station; the local copper might have some clues, if not through recognising one of them, by suggesting where to ask others.

  Sandy said she would start with the hotel, petrol station and local shop. She walked into the hotel bar. It looked like it had only just opened. It was dark and felt cool. She let her eyes adjust and walked over to the counter where a solid middle aged man looked up.

  She explained her mission and passed over the photo of Susan.

  He held it to a light, looked at it for a bare half second and nodded. “Yes I remember her quite clearly, a pretty girl with an English accent, like you say sometime around last August. The reason I remember was her nice manners mixed with something, a sort of anxiety, like she needed to do something unpleasant and did not want to.

  “She ordered a lemon lime and bitters and went and sat in that corner just next to the door you came in through, and she kept glancing towards it as if to check whether someone else was coming. When she was first at the bar she asked me what time it was. When I told her, just about twelve noon, she said that meant it was around three o’clock in the morning in England.

  “Then she asked if she could charge up her phone, said the battery was getting pretty low and she needed to send a text, that she could not ring her friend in England at that time of night so she would text.

  “So I pointed to the power point just next to that seat and she plugged her phone in and sat there to have her drink. I did not take a big lot of notice but I saw her pull out a tiny notebook from her purse and look carefully at it while she was sending the text.

  I thought maybe flight details home or something like that. It took her a few minutes; it was like she was trying to work out what to say as she did it. She was clearly nervous, the way she kept looking up. Then, when it was done, she finished her drink, unplugged the phone and walked to the outside. Actually a bloke came in and she went out with him. When he came she did not look nervous anymore, more like relieved.”

  Susan showed him Mark’s photo. “Is that him?”

  The barman replied. “Could be, not sure, I barely looked at him. Only she obviously knew him and was pleased to see him. But she had already put her phone away, soon as she was finished texting, and the moment he came in she left.

  The strangest thing is that I am sure I have seen her picture since, like on TV or a paper or something but I am dammed if I can remember when, it just seems too familiar.”

  Sandy sat at the bar for a few minutes and wrote out the details. She read them back to the man. He confirmed their accuracy, she asked him for his name which she wrote down, then thanked him and left. She knew she had something significant so she rang Alan to find out where he was.

  He too had found a man with information, someone who knew Mark. Alan gave her directions to find him. It took five minutes to walk to the corrugated iron building where a middle-aged, non-descript man was showing Alan a photo of two beautiful blue stones, one set in a pendant and one set in a ring.

  Sandy heard the man say, “Those are what he collected. Said they were for his sweetheart, the nearest thing he could get to an engagement ring for someone who lived on the other side of the world.

  “I have had dealings with him from time to time over the last five or six years, ordering things in, selling off gemstones for him and the like. I suppose I am a bit of a wheeler dealer. I have contacts all over the place, and that is a bit the way he struck me too.

  “He was usually pretty guarded, never said much about his business, but always had plenty of cash and early on once he gave me his license details for ID; Mark Butler was his name though most people just called him Mark or Mark B. He seemed to know quite a few of the people round here, particularly the aboriginals, they would shout his name when they saw him in the street and he seemed often to have meat and fish to give away to them.

  “I had not seen him for a few months but he had rung a couple weeks before and asked if he could have a delivery made to my place which he would collect on his way through.

  “It was in a small box and I would not have known what it was except that I had to sign that it was received in good order. So I opened the box and checked its contents and that was what I saw. I took a picture just in case it was stolen, for insurance purposes.

  “The thing I best remember was that he was different on that day, normally he was serious and deadpan. That day he was excited when he collected it, he had a lovesick puppy look. He opened it to check in front of me and then he told me what it was for, the way I already said. He also gave me an extra fifty for my troubles.”

  Alan asked if he could get a copy of the photo. So they brought it outside and he copied it on his digital camera. Then they were on their way. They felt they had got what was most useful to know in this town. It seemed that Mark’s main purpose in coming here was to collect this gift. It sounded like it was intended as a present for Susan; they must check now whether anyone saw her wearing it. It was obviously valuable from the photo.

  But the thing that seemed most significant was that Susan had sent a text to a friend in England when it was the middle of the night there; her demeanour suggested she was anxious when she did it and it was done when Mark was not with her, and then she had put her phone out of sight before he met her again, with her nervousness gone.

  It may have been nothing but both felt the key was here. Now Alan kicked himself for never following up before whether Susan had a phone in Australia, if so what the number was and where it was now. His first job once he got back in Darwin would be to trace it.

  They drove out to Seven Emus for an early lunch. The people were very hospitable. They knew Mark quite well and remembered him with Susan. They told of a morning tea of Chinese dumplings and spiced pork, they told of Mark and Susan’s affection for one another, but could tell them nothing else that was useful.

  So then it was a long afternoon of driving first west then north before at last they arrived in Darwin in the early hours of the next morning, both feeling completely whacked. Alan knew he had one burning priority, he must find the phone that Susan had used.