Chapter 18 - The Trial
Susan was awake early in the morning. She should be calm but could feel anxiety swirling around inside. This was a critical day and she needed to get through it without any major mistakes. She had felt anxious almost continuously since that pre-trial meeting blunder. She had been mostly worried about them tracing her phone calls before.
Now on top of that was a whole new line of inquiry. Could they find the box she had buried with the four missing girls passports and Marks multiple fake IDs? Why had she left them together? The passports on their own did not link to Mark, but to be found alongside all his own documents, well that was game set and match for association. She could read through Sandy’s mind Alan was closing in on her.
Why had she willed him to do this on the aeroplane? An average lazy copper would have been gloating that he had nailed her and would have looked no further.
But this was a man on a mission and she had a premonition he would succeed. What would she do then? Perhaps she would find a way to kill herself and her unborn children so that they would all be gone and never have to live with this. But no, she could not countenance that, these children did not deserve to die. Well, once she was gone the whole story would fade away, and by the time her children were old enough to know it would all be long buried under yesterday’s news.
Then she realised she was being silly, nothing had happened, no startling revelations. After today it would pretty much be too late; Conviction, Guilty, Move On.
So now she must focus on getting her mind into the right state for her murder trial. She must be a credible witness to her own guilt, not too abject, let them all think she was a conniving bitch who was playing games with the truth. So she would plead guilty as planned.
But she would now contest the evidence about her attempt at concealment, about what had happened before and after and any speculation as to motive. She would gloat a bit at her little wins which would come if they overplayed their hand. Most of her challenges would probably not succeed but the performance would give entertainment to the assembled cast and audience and give the press new dead end leads to follow. She knew her performance would not endear her in the public mind. They wanted to think of her as an evil witch; well let them; it would be her role for today.
The trial went pretty much as planned. She was glad that she had her own barrister in the end. He stuck strictly to her instructions though she could tell he did not like it. But it was her show, she was the star and she was playing her cast character how she wanted.
As the day unfolded she realised that today was little different to any other theatrical production. She had a flair for this acting stuff: She could choose to be Saint Susan today, Slut Susan tomorrow.
The only difference was that the stakes now were higher; they were all playing for her life. But what the hell she had already conceded that, so there was nothing more to lose.
It was simple really, a game of chess. When the chess game was lost you knocked your king over. As he lay dead on the ground everyone else knew it too, the game was really over.
So the day ground its slow way forward and she ground out her best acting, worth an Oscar, she thought.
When the prosecution finished its tortuous and contested trail of evidence, she took the stand, swearing to tell the truth, she blocked the word ‘whole’ out of her mind, she would tell no lies.
Her evidence took barely a minute and her guilty plea was entered. She could see everyone squirming, saying this is not enough, there must be more, there must be another something, the why.
She looked the devil in the eye and laughed; her trademark grin to the audience. She heard gasps from the back stalls at her obvious lack of remorse. She noticed a reporter furiously scribbling a line to crucify her.
From a far off place she heard the judge asking her, most earnestly, to provide some better explanation, something that would help him to understand and reach a verdict. A tale that balanced justice with a story that made sense of the situation for the whole community who watched on, not least her family, friends and her many other supporters.
She looked him in the eye, smiled brightly again and said, “Your honour I have told you that I killed him, when and where I killed him and how I killed him. What more is there that you need to know before you reach your verdict?”
She could have sworn he muttered a curse under his breath and she allowed herself a further tiny smile of victory. He called a short recess and asked to speak to her with just her legal representative present.
The judge explained to her that he saw no choice but to find her guilty by her own admission but he found the whole thing very distasteful, unsatisfactory and disturbing, that she would willingly submit herself to spending many years in jail without offering any resistance. He implored her to give him some explanation of why or what she was hiding or protecting. He said he would be delaying sentencing for two weeks and would require her to undergo psychiatric assessment as he was very concerned about her mental state. He asked her to give it one last consideration before he walked back into the court and made a ruling.
Susan could feel something like a great weight pulling at her to give something, at least to admit her fear or that, in the end, she knew it had been a mistake. But every step forward from where she was now opened the Pandora’s Box, if fear then of what, if a mistake then why. She took a breath, hardened her resolve again, and answered.
“Your honour, I am not being deliberately contrary, I would dearly like to help you, the court and all my friends to understand why I did this. But I just am not able to say. I refuse to say. I am informed that is my right under law. Therefore you will have to rule only on the facts which are before you. I, like you, wish it was otherwise. But it cannot be so.”
So she walked back to her place and the judge walked back to his bench and he ruled that she, Susan Emily McDonald, was guilty of the murder of Vincent Marco Bassingham as charged. He made no findings as to premeditation or otherwise. He announced sentencing would occur two weeks from tomorrow when he would consider any submissions that the parties wished to make. In the meantime he ordered that she go for a psychiatric assessment.
Susan thought she should savour her success, but it now left such a bitter taste in her mouth and such an empty place in her soul; betrayal on betrayal. She did not care about the sentencing. It held no fears; it could not undo the verdict. So, only one last real step remained, well perhaps two when she counted her babies, before she would be free.
Girl in an Empty Cage Page 21