So now, as she sat on this aeroplane early on Christmas morning, almost three weeks of her month in Australia was gone and despite all her effort she had done little to help Susan’s cause. After the New Year, when she returned to Darwin there were only four days before she must catch a plane back to London and return to work, she had well and truly used up all her work credit and goodwill.
So part of her felt that her loyalty to Susan required that she stay in Darwin with her until then and keep trying to help her. But she knew it would have been a miserable time in Darwin between now and the New Year; Susan in prison, she alone in a hotel room, her own family in Reading, and all her other friends in other places.
If Susan’s parents had stayed in Darwin it would have been easier. But they were also flying to Sydney tomorrow, for a week, to see Ruth and Jess, the Australian cousins. They would return early in the New Year, after which they would refocus their efforts on helping Susan for another fortnight before they needed to return to the UK.
Anne, herself, did not have enough money for a side trip for this time and did not feel she could ask anyone else to help with this, even though, if she had the money, she might have flown to Cairns for a couple days to visit the Barrier Reef; like Susan she loved diving. But she had not told this to anyone, she did not want to put others under a sense of obligation for her own enjoyment.
Then, yesterday, David had made the suggestion that she come home with him for Christmas and, even though she had not said yes, feeling uncomfortable about getting in deeper with him, the next day, actually just this morning, he had presented her with a return ticket to Sydney, saying his family had invited them both to come and stay for a few days over Christmas and after that he was determined to show her the New Year’s Eve celebrations in Sydney before they returned to Darwin.
Despite her reservations she had agreed to go. In that moment she knew that a line had been crossed.
The week together in Sydney passed in a rapid but exhilarating manner. On arrival she re-met Susan’s cousin Ruth, who was one of David’s best friends. She had met her a couple times before in England. After a quick brunch and news exchange they drove, in David’s sports car across the mountains, to reach his home in time for Christmas dinner.
It was a thoroughly traditional affair with all the trimmings. The whole family made Anne feel very welcome and in return she could not help but like them, thinking what a nice family Susan had come into when she met David, and being glad she had now got to know them all too.
The next few days there were driving trips in the country and endless visits to and by relatives, combined with endless cups of tea and slices of Christmas cake. It was such a breath of fresh air after the last few months of Susan’s high dramas.
Occasionally Anne felt guilty about how Susan was locked up while she was enjoying herself; but she knew it was beyond her to help Susan at this time and her unease soon passed. Two days before New Year they said goodbye to all the family and returned to Sydney. David had organised for her to stay in the spare room at Jess’s place, perhaps sensing he should minimise temptation for them both as well as avoid the risk of gossip.
On the way David told her he would not be able to come back to Darwin right now as a red hot issue had come up for his business and he needed to spend a couple weeks in Sydney to sort it out. He asked her if she wanted to continue in Sydney rather than fly back to Darwin on New Year’s Day, as she was currently booked to do.
Their relationship was much more relaxed and honest since coming away. She knew both of them were happy to enjoy doing things together and for now, would park their desire for anything more.
She told him, “I would much rather stay here with you, I have really enjoyed this time. However my first loyalty needs to be with my friend. Seeing I have less than a week before I return to work I will spend as much of it as I can with her. I must see what I can do to get her to help herself; not to pressure her, but instead to try and help her find a way to tell the story of what really happened, to unblock her fear of whatever she is hiding from.”
David took her hand and squeezed it. “Thank you, you have been such a good friend to us both and I have enjoyed my time with you so much too.”
“But you are right, Susan is the priority for both of us now, I will be back in Darwin about a week after you leave. Perhaps it is better if each of us meets and talks to her alone. She may be more open on a one on one basis. It seems that whenever people try and put pressure on her together she feels we are ganging up on her, gets defensive and fights back.
“But I want you to come back as soon as you are able, certainly we will both need to be with her for a week or two before the trial starts. Will you be able to get away from your work?
Anne replied. “You can count on it.”
They had a lovely New Year’s Eve, on a boat on the harbour with Ruth, her boyfriend Steve, Jess and her partner Robbie and a couple of other friends.
Then the next morning it was off to the airport. They hugged tight as they said goodbye and that was it. As they pulled apart each said “I will miss you,” to the other. The question about them still remained but they both knew that now was not the time.
Chapter 2 - Helicopter X
Vic was flying low and fast, enjoying the thrill as he twisted his helicopter through the gorges of the Fitzmaurice River; he had done a job between Wyndham and Derby yesterday and was due at Timber Creek tomorrow to do a scenic trip for some tourists who wanted to see the country where the Victoria River cut through the broken river valleys in the ranges to the south of the town. These people were obviously well heeled and, in the wet season, regular work was a bit quiet; so today he had a day to kill in the little town.
He had logged his flight with flight control on leaving Wyndham, putting in a flight path from Wyndham Airport direct to Timber Creek, a sleepy town on the Victoria River.
But, feeling bored with the idea of a whole day in this quiet little town and knowing he had full fuel tanks and a couple of spare jerry cans giving plenty of flying time, he had taken a diversion from this route, flying east north east over the Joseph Bonaparte Gulf, a place of monumental tides, rather than south east direct to the town. As he crossed over the Gulf he noted the tide in its huge river estuaries was full but still running in. That fitted with the almost new moon he had seen late yesterday.
He had been avoiding reading the document that Susan had given him on the tiny memory chip. He knew he needed to read it; he had bullied Susan into giving it to him. He did not feel proud about that, he had promised Mark that he would take care of her. Yet, in his rage, he had slapped her up; he could still see the shock and the red mark outlined on her face from when he had backhanded her.
Now, even though he should still be mad with her, he just felt sorry for her. It had come to him, with dawning clarity as she talked, that Mark had done something really, truly awful and she had found out. Yes, she had killed him. But Mark was a wild and dangerous man, notwithstanding being a brother, always living at the edge and sometimes way past the edge. Vic had sensed in Mark a dangerous spirit that sometimes drove him to do bad things.
So something bad had happened between them which had tipped her over the edge. In the heat of it Mark had ended up dead. It somehow seemed a fitting way for his mate to go, killed by a lover then given to the crocodiles which were his other true love.
He knew part of the story of the bad Mark lay hidden in the diary which Susan had given him. But he wanted to hold on, just for a little bit longer, to the good memory of his friend. That was the real reason why he was avoiding reading it. He knew that, once he read this story, his mind’s image of his friend must mind must inevitably be transformed for the worse. He did not want to go there.
So, in the meantime, Susan was ‘holding the can’ for this awful thing. He was sure Mark would not want that. So he must bring himself to read and understand Mark’s story, then decide what to do. But, for now, he was in avoidance mode, at least for another f
ew days. This helicopter thrill ride was part of this avoidance, just like the other things he had done to fill up his days since he found out about Mark’s diary, days when he could have found time and means to begin reading, but did not want to.
He justified that it was still only a few days after Christmas, actually the day before New Year’s Eve and most shops were closed, his laptop could not read this tiny memory card that Susan had given him, he needed a Micro SD card holder that fitted into a regular memory card slot. He had not got the chance to buy one yet, he had not been in a town on a day when the shops were open – they were his excuses anyway, even if only half true.
He would go into Katherine for a couple days after New Year’s Day and he would do it then. In the meantime he was flying in one of those beautiful remote places of the Territory, the Fitzmaurice Gorge. He had only ferried over the top of it in his helicopter a couple times, and looking down as he flew over he had marvelled at the massive cliffs that fringed this river, which was really in the middle of nowhere. In his mind he had always thought of this block of country as the empty place and he had heard other locals talk of it that way too, the emptiest and most godforsaken part of the NT, so hard to get to and almost completely uninhabited. Even the Daly Reserve blackfellas, his coastal cousins, rarely came here and he knew why. It was too rough to walk through and with the big tides and lots of supersized crocs only a madman would come here in a small boat, particularly a dugout canoe.
Today he had decided he would have an up close look. This morning there was a big fresh flow thundering down the gorge, the result of big storm rains up around the back of Pine Creek.
It was such a blast skimming over thundering white water, running hundreds of metres wide, with beetling cliffs rising alongside. It was sort of like those Gulf Rivers, but even wilder, here the wet season flows combined with the thundering tides to be just awesome.
It was hard to think of a more inaccessible place, particularly in the wet, it must be a hundred miles to the nearest trafficable road, not even a rough bush track within 50 miles. God help anyone who got stuck out here. No one would ever find them and it was hard to see any way out of a place like this.
The helicopter engine was running like a dream, such a steady and sweet thump came from the blades of his metal bird. He passed a big creek running in from the right hand side, swelling the river with its own flow. There was a big sharp turn coming up, a hard turn to the right, with cliffs rising up straight ahead; he would go with it using his reflexes and the engine’s power to pull him and his chopper around the river bend before it. It would take full power to pull the old bird around this tight corner.
The cliff came racing towards him. He held off on his turn, wanting the thrill of pushing the limit of the machine. Now he must turn, it was barely a hundred yards to the cliff, right directly in front and he was closing at seventy knots. He had to make a thirty degree right turn to stay in the gorge and there was nowhere else to go; even with his machine at full power he could not pull a sharp enough climb to get out of here.
At that last critical moment when he knew he had to respond, he pulled the control stick hard right, what was wrong? It would not move; it felt jammed solid. He tried to flare up, jammed that way too. He threw all his weight behind the stick to move right. It felt like steering a Mack truck without power steering. He managed to move it a few millimetres with huge effort, turning the helicopter to the side so the skids came up towards the cliff.
With sudden clarity he knew it was way too late, this would be his date with destiny. He had just a half second to turn off the power before the helicopter slammed into the cliff face, fifty feet above the raging river. He reckoned his speed was still fifty knots in that split second before impact.
He felt a fleeting sense of his life passing before his eyes as this metal thing crumpled around him and his body crumpled inside. Then, as full impact hit, he felt nothing.
The hawks, soaring overhead, watched as this strange metal bird first attached itself to the cliff with a crashing and grinding sound and then slowly fell away into the river below. It was picked up by the raging white water and swept along with the current around the bend and then on down the river. For a minute or two it was partly visible on the surface as it bobbed along. Then it vanished from view.
Chapter 3 - Missing
Buck got a strange phone call just as dusk was settling over Victoria River Downs station. It was from the publican at Timber Creek. It was more puzzling than anxious. But there was something strange and fearful in this whole affair with Mark. He had just found out about it last week and that made him quite uneasy over and above this.
He had missed all the papers and TV news at the time that the Mark connection was made with the Crocodile Man. And, even then, if he had listened to the news, he was unsure whether he would have paid heed. November and December were often the busiest months of the year and this year was no exception. TV watching was lost in distant memory and the unread papers lay in a pile in the office.
So, when Vic had turned up the week before Christmas to do a job for him, to clean out the scrubbers from the top end of the station, where the river ran into the gorge country, he had been none the wiser. But he could tell, from the moment he laid eyes on Vic, that something was seriously wrong. No surprise, he and Mark had been like brothers for as long as Buck knew either of them. They had done so many jobs together. They had an understanding of how to work together which was much better than any other pilot and contract musterer he knew.
So, despite having his own machines and plenty of others to pick from, he still regularly booked the two of them for these tough jobs, the rough country clean-ups where the wrong operator had the ability to lose every animal that was mustered in one critical minute, and Buck would be left with an empty yard and a big helicopter bill to pay.
So he had wanted to book both Mark and Vic for this clean-up. For some reason he had never been able to run Mark to ground. Mark had not been seen around these parts for two or three months, not since he had come through with that pretty English lass, Susan; when they had helped to bring some cattle up the Wickham Gorge. Buck hadn’t thought much about it; Mark was like that; he sometimes dropped out for a couple months, then he would reappear when he was ready.
So, in the end, he booked another contractor to work with Vic and clean up that pocket of country in the week before Christmas. He had the idea that Vic might be able to shed some light on where Mark had gone; he expected the story would be something like an unexpected trip to the Middle East; that had happened at least once before that he could remember.
But the moment he had seen Vic’s face he knew there was more to this story, it was like a sixth sense. They had no time to talk until the mustering was done. It had gone well, Vic had lost none of his touch and Billy, who had run the ground side of the operation, was good, if not quite the class act that Mark was. So he had got 59 big scrub bulls in the yards and about the same number of cows and heifers, three quarters were cleanskins now wearing the VRD brand, along with a scattering of young stock that would go into the paddocks. It had been a good morning’s work.
But, as they sat down for a cup of tea at the end of the job, Vic pulled him aside, and asked him if he knew about Mark.
Buck’s perplexity had been obvious. He had replied, “Only that I have not been able to get in touch with him since August and that’s why, a month ago when I still had not heard from him, I booked Billy to work with you I hoped you could tell me where he was.
Vic’s reply was his usual direct self, “Yeah I wondered that too where he had gone, but I never really thought about it, too busy. Now I know; we won’t be seeing him anymore, he is dead; they say he has been murdered by that British bitch he was travelling with.”
So the story had come tumbling out. Buck still found it hard to believe. It was hard to imagine Susan, she seemed such a sweet girl, doing that, or even that it was Mark’s body they found. But Vic had no doubt; something about an
old bullet injury that Mark had to his arm had made him certain that it was Mark. Then Vic explained about the two surnames used by Mark and it gradually became clear as to why the name Mark Bennet on the news had not connected. He knew him as Mark Butler, same as Vic. Mark was a common name.
He could tell Vic was really angry, there was a cold, calculating rage bubbling inside him at the idea that someone would kill his best mate, whatever the reason. And that was only the half of what was odd.
There was also the way that, on that last night he had seen him, Mark had asked him to witness his will, right after dinner. The will was made in yet another name again, “Vincent Mark Bassingham.”
Mark explained this had been his name as a kid. But because his father was a bad bastard he had run away from home as soon as he was old enough. So he had kept the name Mark, but changed the surname he used, though the other was still the legal name.
That seemed fair enough but what was really odd was that the will gave all his possessions, apart from a few minor gifts, to the girl Susan who he was travelling with. Mark said to Buck that Susan knew nothing about it and probably would not agree if she was told.
Buck had only half read the will as he witnessed it, but it was pretty short and there it was for all to see. It was not something he was likely to forget.
When he’d questioned Mark as the whether he was sure about that bequest and why it was so important, Mark had admitted to Buck he was quite smitten with this girl. Plus he had a bad feeling that his nine lives were running out. So Mark had told Buck he had decided that if something happened, whatever it may be, then all his things would go to her, some of his stuff was worth real money and he preferred she should have it rather than it go to the state or to his mongrel father.
Crocodile Spirit Dreaming - Possession - Books 1 - 3 Page 48
