“The answer is already out there for you to discover through other means. And to do so you must do your job and take no account of me. It may be that when this is finished I will spend many years in jail for what happened, but that must not influence you. I do not want that, but there is justice in it for my actions. I will pay that price if I must.
‘Since that time I can feel part of my mind becoming crazy, withdrawing to an imaginary place where I still feel the love of the other, the one I whose death I am charged with yet still loved. I know it is not good and yet I am powerless to stop it, my desire for him is so overwhelming.
“There is a crocodile spirit that comes from my lover and it draws me in too, it is both good and evil in mixed parts, and part of both is now within me, taking me over too like a cancer of the soul. Perhaps it will win, the court trial will find me insane and I will spend my life locked up, a place with only dreams and memories for company.
But fighting against that is a new life growing inside my womb. It is his child, the child of my lover, and my lover wants for it to survive, grow healthy and carry his spirit forward.”
With that she took his hand and placed it on that place on her lower belly. It was an incredibly tender and intimate thing to do. She looked deep into his eyes with that brilliant blue. “You may not feel the movement, but open your mind to feel the spirit which moves within me, the spirit of new life; the continuance of that man.”
And Alan could feel something, like a tiny bright light pushing out from within her, only just a little light yet but he could feel its power. They sat like that, for a minute, in their intimacy.
Alan could feel his body aroused by her closeness and the feel of the soft skin on her belly. He desired to stroke her there and realised his fingers, were moving over her skin, barely separated by the filmy fabric of her dress. He could feel her arousal too, her belly pushing against his hand. Slowly she pulled his hand downwards. He could feel all the private places of her body beneath his fingers. Her fingers pressed his hand down and her body pushed up against him. He stroked and caressed that place, loving her warm softness, her slightly panting breathing. He rested his fingers there in total intimacy.
She turned to him and said, “Thank you, just for one minute I needed to be touched like a woman when a man desires her.”
Then she slowly pulled his hand back to the other place, where the life grew. After that she laid her head against his shoulder and cuddled into him. He felt her joy and for himself contentment. She seemed to fall asleep for a while, transported to another place of happy dreams.
When she woke she kissed him lightly on the cheek and said, “Thank for sharing this, it has helped me and given me new strength. Now you are my brother, in another life you could have been my lover.
Now you must tell me of what else is in your mind.”
He said, “There is nothing more to say, you have told it all. For me it was only to tell you how Sandy spoke of you, she knew your face when first I showed her your picture, she knew of your love and terror. But you know all that already.”
It was almost bittersweet when the plane landed in Darwin, she would go to her cell and he would go to his lover. He returned the cuff to both their hands. She smiled at him as he did and said, “Now our hands are linked again. Inside our souls will always be linked. Take care my friend, what you are doing and where you are going is a very dangerous place, that place of the crocodile spirit, but my love goes with you, you and my sister, your lover.”
That night as he lay with Sandy after their loving he told her of his trip and the girl with the so, so blue eyes, he even told of her power over him, that sense of attraction. He did not say of their touching.
Sandy said, “I knew it already. I too have felt the pull of the other man who loves her, and felt within myself the desire she feels for him. But you and I are the lucky ones. We love in flesh and blood. They can only love in dreams.”
Suddenly she sat up. She slapped him hard on the face, twice. “That is just to remind you, I am your woman of both flesh and dreams. Never forget that. I may be her sister but she may not share my lover.”
Alan laughed, rubbing his stinging face, “You pack a mean punch. Maybe you are even more dangerous than she is.”
Sandy laughed back, “The word is not maybe but definitely!”
Chapter 21- Search for the Truth
Alan knew the truth. Susan McDonald had killed Mark Bennet, but it was not based on real evidence. And he did not know why. The Why Question ate at him. There must be a solution. He would gather all his evidence and lock himself away with it for a couple days until some new secret emerged, giving him a light of understanding.
Meanwhile the trial of Susan was proceeding apace. Two days after she arrived in Darwin there was a preliminary hearing. It was merely a formality, it confirmed that she would stand trial for the murder of Mark Bennet, with a date currently set for March next year.
Alan had provided his evidence to the Director of Public Prosecutions who was of the opinion that the case for her being the murderer was now compelling and should proceed forward to trial without delay. The use of the evidence he had gathered thus far was now out his hands. They would prepare the case for the prosecution. He would be a key witness. Apart from that his role in the court case was finished.
They had now matched Susan’s footprint to the one at the billabong campfire site. That was the final linked needed. This made it clear that a woman of her size had been at the billabong, just after the deliberate clean-up of the site occurred. This footprint made in then wet soil was not like a fingerprint where it was totally conclusive but a foot size and shape match was still very compelling. So the evidence was more than adequate to go forward to trial.
Alan’s role should be over. He should now move forward to work on other cases and put this one aside. But he knew he could not do that. There was a whole other story that must be told for this to make sense. And he was certain that the telling of that story would lead to Susan’s exoneration and redemption. It would give her life back to her.
He was the only one with the understanding and commitment to find out this story. So find it out he must.
Since that day on the plane he felt bound to her in a way which meant he must do all within his power to help her. He must ensure she did not spend the next twenty to thirty years in jail. She would not try to help herself, so he must help her. He knew she had entrusted him to do this on that day.
Since that day, the day on the plane, she had shown no signs of recognition of him, no acknowledgement of that friendship. It was as if that 24 hours, when they sat side by side in such intimacy, was only an imagined memory. She had retreated inside a shell. He understood, it was her way of trying to gain protection from something she found too horrific even to think about.
At the committal hearing she had entered no plea, she had refused legal representation, and she had made no statements. She had merely listened in silence as others outlined the evidence against her.
He had hated having to give testimony against her, even though it was inescapable. Fortunately it was brief, little more than a recitation of a few key facts. Before giving his decision the magistrate had looked at Susan and specifically asked her if she had anything to say.
She had shaken her head. The magistrate pressed her, asking her to confirm this by words. So she said one word, “No.”
That was the entire defence contribution to her indictment to stand trial for murder. Alan sensed the magistrate was deeply uncomfortable to proceed on that basis. But he had no choice, so he had confirmed the charge and that there was a case for her to answer, and committed her to stand trial for the murder of Mark Bennet in three months.
Alan could tell that even the prosecution lawyers were seriously uncomfortable with the way it had gone. One of them said after “It felt like punching a defenceless person”.
Since the hearing Susan had barely spoken, even to her friends and family. Alan felt an appalled
sympathy for her predicament, left alone now with only her demons for company.
Alan had met with briefly with Susan’s parents at the hearing and had seen Anne and David who he felt he knew from Susan’s descriptions. Now Anne and David were running their own private investigation and, as part of this, were requesting a meeting with him. His supervisor strongly recommended against it, so Alan had declined, using a range of excuses to avoid them.
Alan knew they were digging for information about Susan’s guilt or motives but he could not talk about her guilt – that was for the court. They were also trying to get through to her, seeking any insights as to why she was behaving this way He understood they were trying to help Susan and would have loved to help them, to share his concerns and suspicions.
But this was not possible; it would compromise his position further, should he be seen to be helping others to undermine the case. Instead he must focus on an even more thorough examination of the evidence, to let the evidence do the talking as Susan had intimated. Despite the time and conversations on the plane her motives baffled him too, except for some vague sense of betrayal of the man, Mark, and protection of their joint child.
Her mother, father and brother were also in Darwin, trying to talk to Susan. They had also asked to meet him next week which had had also declined but, in the end, someone had put through a call from them and he had talked to them on the phone. He understood they had all met with Susan on two occasions. Susan had barely said a word to any them, just a couple of polite phrases assuring them she was alright, before she went back inside her head.
When they had tried to push her she had got stubborn and asked them to leave, saying, “Thank you for your concern. I know what I need to do. If you can’t accept it and support me in the choice I have made, I would rather not see you. I don’t want to discuss it.”
He found it hard to understand why these people, Susan’s family, would want to see him anyway, perhaps it was desperation. In their place he would feel anger at the person responsible for pursuing Susan, obtaining the evidence outlined in the English court which led to her extradition and was now likely to result in the ruin of her life.
What they thought Alan could do to help he could not imagine. He worked for the other side. He had been instrumental in getting her to this place. Nevertheless they seemed to sense his empathy for her. He understood their fear, not so much for the trial and its consequences, but because she was losing her mind. They all knew of her pregnancy, but no one else seemed to yet. The thought of her giving birth in prison, only to have the baby taken from her, was also awful to think about. Perhaps her parents could seek adoption.
It was crazy stuff, like her mind was living in a separate place from reality, but the harder people pushed the greater her resistance and withdrawal became. There were even serious discussions that she was mentally unfit to stand trial. But when she heard that the prosecution lawyers had suggested this and called for a psychiatric assessment Alan was told she had become very upset, almost distraught, saying to her warden, “Please don’t let them go down that path. I want it to be over, whatever happens. Then I will have my life back. I am as sane as others are, I just don’t want other people trying to make me do what I will not agree to.”
So Alan knew that time was fast running towards an inexorable result. He must somehow change that path or he would be responsible for a great injustice which would destroy this lovely girl with the blue eyes, for whom he felt huge affection.
He could see the result, she convicted of murder, her child taken away and then she having a complete nervous breakdown and being declared totally crazy. In a year’s time all that would remain was a shell. It was up to him to make sure that did not happen; but how?
He talked about it with Sandy. She, like him, was on Susan’s side. He was also concerned for Sandy as this progressed, knowing that she shared some of Susan’s pain. This horror was inside her mind too, even though she could barely comprehend it. He had not pushed her for information, remembering Susan’s advice.
Still, Sandy seemed to want to talk to him about it. She had told him of the fragments of memories she had, a man’s body being torn at by two crocodiles, a man squatting next to the water and communing with crocodile spirits, an image of a man’s startled face just before something momentous happened, and most of all of Susan’s overflowing terror, which swamped all else.
So they had agreed, this Sunday, when no one else was around, they would go into his office and together work their way through all the evidence. There must be a clue which would get him started down a path to the full truth.
On the Sunday they both awoke in the half light of dawn. Suddenly neither was sleepy. They wanted to get at it. It was before six thirty in the morning when Alan swiped his pass key. He had come in the back way so the duty officer did not see him.
He and Sandy went to his office. They collected all the material he had on the case and took it to where there were several desks outside the office. They arranged the evidence into groups on different desks, the pathology of the skull and arm in one place, the exhibits from the murder site on another, the third had a map showing Susan and Mark’s probable course through the NT along with the bits they had gathered at each place, photos at Yulara, the testimonies from Barkly Roadhouse, Heartbreak Hotel, Daly Waters and Timber Creek. On a fourth table they put the few things they had found out about Mark Bennet, a driver’s license and vehicle registration, and a small pile of mail.
It was a pitifully small amount to represent the life of someone who appeared to have lived in the Northern Territory for several years. They both looked at it, perplexed. Of Susan they knew plenty. Once they had her name she had been easy to discover and now they had the complete story of her life. But for him, even though they had had his name for longer than hers, they still had almost nothing. He was an enigma, a person whose only humanity was a name.
“Why?” Sandy voiced what Alan was thinking. “He is the key to the puzzle. We have to unlock his life. We keep thinking that Susan is the one who can explain this. But she goes, in a single day, from being a madly adoring girlfriend to killing this man who she is still patently in love with. And she was so terrified. I know this because it is that feeling that overwhelms everything else that I can feel inside her on that day. She kills him in terror. Why do that?
“The only explanation I can think of is that he is the cause. He had done something, or she found out something about him, that scared her witless. So she killed him in fear of what he would do to her. Then, once it is done, she is full of guilt or regret. Does that mean he is not really guilty of what she believed when she killed him? Or is her level of love and loyalty so strong that she is prepared to overlook something terrible in him. Perhaps her motivation is that she knows something terrible about him, but cannot bear for others to find out. She can not reveal her secret because that would be to betray him. But without telling she must share his guilt and also face inevitable guilt as his murderer.”
Sandy stopped talking and raised an eyebrow. “Is that all mad speculation, or could it be an explanation, somehow?”
Alan scratched his head. “There may be something in it even though, if you look at it from the outside, it seems a big stretch.
“However there are two things that do sort of fit with it. The first I don’t think I have properly told you about. On the day we arrested Susan the lead English detective seemed to be quite friendly with her. I could tell that he liked her, a sort of daughter like affection. He did not really believe she had done this thing. He appealed to her for co-operation. When that failed he looked for another way to get through to her. Up to that moment she was being pleasant.
“He asked something like what you said a minute ago. I think his words were ’What happened on that day? Did something happen to make you change?’ And without meaning to she gave a little nod of agreement. It was involuntary. It would have hardly meant anything but for what she did then.
“It is the only
time I have ever seen her totally lose it. First she shook her head violently as if to deny her own admission. Then she buried her face in her hands, it was as if she was crying, but she was shaking with rage and what seemed like a sense of betrayal. And then she bit into her hand, so hard it made it bleed and left big bite marks which were still there three weeks later. It was as if she was grief stricken and angry for what she had done.
But I also thought she was punishing herself for her lapse and perhaps it was partly theatre to distract us from her admission as well as a way to get her control back.
“Her self control after was formidable; she sat there for twenty or thirty seconds, biting into her hand. It must have really hurt but she was so concentrated on getting her body to follow her mind and not let us find weakness. Her jaw was clenched, her muscles were shaking, she was locked inside her mind, in a place of rage and pain, oblivious to all else. And slowly she forced herself back to a calm place, but still with implacable rage. When she looked up again her demeanour was like steel. After that she never again spoke another word, except yes or no, to any of us until we left the country.
“On that day her anger was really terrifying. In that moment I could see a danger in her that could have easily killed someone. The only difference was her anger was mostly directed towards herself for being tricked into a betrayal, she told me that later on the plane.
“And in that moment the only thing she had revealed was that something or someone, other than herself, had caused what happened. It was like, in her mind, she was first guilty of killing him, and then in that moment she had also become guilty of betraying him. She was appalled at what she had done and also furious with us for tricking her.
“So I think it must have been due to him. If there was not some bad thing she knew about him, or that he had done, I cannot see what there would have been to betray.
Crocodile Spirit Dreaming - Possession - Books 1 - 3 Page 43
