Crocodile Spirit Dreaming - Possession - Books 1 - 3

by Graham Wilson

  After some time sweet talking and cajoling her she admitted that it may be possible inside of 48 hours and the absolute best case was a bit over 24 hours, perhaps late tomorrow afternoon. She assured him she would put it to the top of the pile and mark it highest priority and she would also follow it up tomorrow morning when she was back on duty.

  Alan thanked her; he knew he had got the best result possible. Late in the night he got an identity on the owner of the English phone. It was Anne, Susan’s best friend. Alan did not feel surprised. He knew she worked as a legal secretary in London, just the sort of person one would ask to trace other missing persons.

  About 4 pm the next day his phone rang. It was the operator he had spoken to the previous day. She said, “I have the texts, I will email you the transcripts though I can also read them out if you like.”

  He said “Thanks, but no,” not wanting any chance of this information being broadcast in the office where perhaps others would hear. He also needed to see a hard copy in front of his eyes, daring not to let his imagination run away, lest he mishear or misunderstand.

  So he said, “Could you email them through straight away please.” Within a minute a new email pinged on his phone. His hands were shaking as he opened it. It was a one line document with two files attached, each a text transcript. Now he read.

  Message sent at 11.57am, Australian Central Standard Time.

  The date was Susan’s day in Borroloola.

  It read.

  Anne,

  Can you check out two names below?

  Saw notice saying missing in a place I stayed.

  ? Whether home now and OK. Text back soonest.

  Will check next town, where phone works.

  Having a great time in Oz.

  Love and see you soon

  Suz

  Names

  Fiona Rodgers Age 25, Aberdeen Scotland

  Amanda Sullivan, Age 24, Newark New Jersey USA

  The reply was three days later, received at 9.05 am, Australian Central Standard Time.

  It read

  Dear Suz,

  This FREAKS me, what I found:

  Those girls came to Australia but are missing.

  USA one came 3 years ago, last seen Daintree, Qld. 3 months later.

  UK one came 2 yrs ago, last seen Adelaide, SA, 6 months later.

  Both listed as missing, but not under current investigation

  Investigation summary –

  - Girls may have wanted to disappear

  - Both withdrew most of their cash before they left

  - Both announced they were going on a trip – never seen since

  - Did not say where were going or with who

  - No current links between cases

  - Last contacts followed up, no useful information

  - Both girls seen meeting unknown man a couple days before last seen.

  - One friend thought this man’s name was Mark – no such person located

  - Parents are convinced of abduction or worse

  - Re Fiona Rodgers, that was her real name but everyone called her Kate – dead sister’s name she used from when a little girl – weird

  This all makes me scared – Be Careful!!! Take extra care if you meet a Mark.

  Love Anne

  This was the smoking gun, this was dynamite. Now it all made sense, an almost exact fit to yesterday’s speculation. This must be Mark, her Mark.

  Alan must just confirm that the two girls were still missing. That would be a job for tonight, when offices on the other side of the world were open. Then he must get back to Darwin in the morning before the sentencing hearing was finished. He must give this evidence to both barristers and the judge.

  He rang Susan’s barrister, a man who he knew socially. They had an off the record chat where Alan advised him that by tomorrow he would be in possession of new evidence that would dramatically change the complexion of the whole case, but it might be mid-morning before he had it all, as he needed to get some information from the USA tonight.

  The barrister advised that Alan would need to be there by 2 pm sharp as he would begin his summing up around then and needed anything he could give him at that time. He could stall a bit but once he was finished it would be too late, the judge would make his decision and it would be very difficult to reopen the case after that.

  He also advised Alan that he did not want him to come early as before that all the different parties’ depositions would be made. So he wanted that all out of the way before he produced this. “In fact,” he said, “when you arrive the best thing would be to approach the bench directly on your own behalf, but send me an advance copy just in case anything happens to delay you.”

  Alan printed the text. He put it inside in an envelope and wrote on the outside, “Only to be opened if I do not arrive in time.” Then he put this into an overnight express bag, marked with the barristers address and dispatched it.

  Chapter 21 – The Rat Trap

  Susan smelt a rat, she knew the minute she saw Anne’s face two days after the trial, when she came to visit, that something had changed. Anne was no longer in her corner. For a minute she felt overcome by panic, what could she do. If Anne released the texts it would all be to no avail. Anne did not seem to pick up that Susan was on to her, so Susan tried to let nothing show from her side, though her mind was churning.

  Once Anne was gone she made herself think rationally. What would Anne do with this information? Now she saw her error. It was in asking Anne and David to be godparents. She remembered her final words as they left, “I just can’t wait for it all to be over and to get out of this place forever. I am glad it won’t be much longer now.” She had caught a flicker on Anne’s face as she said this, now she turned these words over in her mind again. It was like when she had said them on that day they had been pre-formed in her mind.

  They were what she was thinking but they were words that someone else had used, that she heard and replayed, as they fitted her own life too. Now she remembered. These were word that Anne had told her almost a year ago. They were the words Anne’s friend, Beverly, had said on the day before she committed suicide. Anne had been pretty broken up about that, and by the fact that, if only she had listened better she would have acted, and if she had perhaps she could have stopped it.

  Now she had taken those words from her subconscious memory and played them back to Anne with exactly the same meaning. And if there was any doubt her bravura acting performance of the day before yesterday was the sort of thing that would only be done by someone who had a no-future end game. So with her desire to leave with a blaze of glory, a self-indulgent piece of theatre, she had pushed Anne into action. That court acting was yet another mistake, she really was getting careless.

  But what would Anne do? When would she act? She was a careful and reasoned person. She would not act impulsively like Susan did. She would make a plan and determine the best time for the revelation. Anne would realise that the danger would only become real once the babies were born and Susan’s responsibility for them ended. So she did not need to rush. The deadline would be to act before the judge pronounced sentence. But she would delay it to as late as possible before then. If she was playing this endgame for the other side, she would pass a note to her barrister just before he stood to sum up. Then, as he read the content of the texts, he would realise that the whole basis of this case had shifted and he must bring this into evidence before the judge decided.

  Yes that was the most likely time. Anne would not want to open the Pandora’s Box if there was another option. So she would delay and hope that she would not be the one to betray her friend. She would hope that Alan could dig something up to make her admission unnecessary.

  Now Susan realised her own plan needed to cover this eventuality too. Sandy had visited this morning before Anne, and from her ongoing glimpses into Sandy’s mind she saw that Alan was planning to re-search the billabong site today and tomorrow, looking for whatever was hidden. She saw that A
lan had told Sandy of the hill but decided that, with just one day he would ignore this, he had walked around it and it did not seem promising. Then she knew he would be away next week and could do nothing further until the two days just before the trial. She could not see into Sandy’s mind about the trip they had made last weekend down to the Gulf, she knew they had gone but the details were not available to her. Sandy had got much better at hiding her thoughts now she realised how well Susan could see them. So she could not see here, but she had a sense that the texts would have been part of what they were looking for, though she knew nothing specific had been found, that would have been too big in Sandy’s mind to be hidden.

  At best Alan would have one or two days to pursue these phone records before the sentencing date. Anything he found would get admitted very late, probably on the day; so his timing and Anne’s would be almost the same, should a revelation come. Her feeling was very strong that something would happen but it was only a guess. So she must wait and see, not act precipitately herself; even with Anne she was not fully sure.

  She must think of a way to forestall this. She could not bring her sentence date forward; she must shift the other time. There was a six week gap after sentencing until her babies were due. What she needed was for her babies to come early, no later than sentence day, or perhaps if she went into labour on that day that would work. Her babies would be premature and later was better for them.

  So in her mind she made a plan. If she could induce her labour to start on the date of sentencing, no later than just before the judge stood up to give his sentencing then that would throw a massive distraction into this whole circus. She suspected it would result in sentencing being delayed until after the babies were born. They would rush her off to hospital and deliver the babies, maybe a Caesar, with an anaesthetic. So while she was in recovery she would act; potassium into her drip line would be best, perhaps she could also use some of the anaesthetic that would be accessible in this place. She had seen the things available in the hospital and knew the security was weak. She could easily get her hands onto something lethal; that was the benefit of her medical background; that she knew what all these things were and how they worked. She would only need a minute to do it and she could feign sleepiness to get her chance before they removed her from recovery. She was better than ninety per cent sure it would work, that seemed like the best odds she could hope for. And once she was gone the trial or sentencing would be over, no guilty party would remain, case closed. Sure they might try to dig into Mark, but there was no useful evidence. Vic was gone so that closed off the diary. Alan might pursue what happened to the missing girls but Mark had more or less told her that he had covered his tracks too well for anything substantial to be found without other evidence, that is the passports or the diary and neither of them would come to light – she was almost certain that with them gone that search would also come to nought. So that was her plan.

  It was not ideal but it was the best option she could think of. It was now Friday; on Monday she would be going to the hospital for her routine pregnancy check-up. That would give her a chance to check out the opportunities and hopefully put something in place.

  She thought about what to use to induce her labour on sentencing day. The best drug was Oxytocin, and she needed a loaded syringe of this to be on hand that day. It was routinely used in the obstetric ward she would be visiting on Monday and she was confident she could find some on a trolley; no one really watched her closely these days, they had decided she was not a risk.

  So, mostly, the prison guard with her read a book or watched TV and barely looked her way. With her medical knowledge she would often chat to the nurses and doctors doing their medical rounds. So she was sure a chance would come to get what she needed.

  Then on sentencing day in court she would watch like a hawk and, unless something gave an early alert, either Alan coming into the court or some signal of impending action from Anne, she would act just before the judge started to sum up; that would create maximum impact and drama. She would have the loaded syringe close at hand. Only a couple of seconds would be required to inject it and drop the syringe behind her, unseen.

  She re-ran it through in her mind to make sure she had the script and timing right in her head for what she knew would be her last and best performance. Unless Anne acted right now, which she was sure would not happen, she should win. Once she went in to labour other things would be forgotten and then, when the babies were safe out, she could end it all. A hospital was an ideal place, so many alternatives and she knew the range of things to use. She would be on a drip and so running an extra drug into the drip line would be easy peasy. It would barely take a minute before it was too late.

  The next Monday, once she arrived at the hospital, she checked with the doctor how her babies were going. The doctor told her they were doing just fine.

  She asked what would happen if all the stress of the trial sent her into early labour, would it still be OK. The doctor assured her the babies were already big enough to be delivered by Caesarean, and by this time the odds were better than 99 percent that they both would be fine. Susan decided she could live with that chance.

  She found a trolley left parked nearby with two ampoules of oxytocin on it and secreted these plus an empty syringe and needle on her person. That would be more than enough to bring her into labour. Normally they gave it in an IV drip but an injection into the muscle of her leg would work just fine.

  When the time came all she needed was to plunge the needle into her leg and inject, it would take barely a second and her labour would begin. It might take an hour or two but she could fake an hour or two until the real thing kicked in. They would take her to hospital, cut her open and take her babies out to safety. Then, when this was done, she could either load up her IV drip with some potassium or disconnect her alarms and dial up the anaesthetic to a sufficient dose and in a few minutes it would be over.

  She felt pleased it would be that easy and painless, she was tired of all this other stuff and did not want the ending to be hard.

  When she returned from the hospital she put away the crocodile stone and returned to her crocodile spirit dreaming, loving being in the presence of Mark. She felt really impatient for the end day to come.

  On the morning of the sentencing hearing, bright and early, she loaded the syringe and needle and strapped them to the inside of her thigh where she could get to them quickly when they were required. It was good to be in control of some things. They had thought they had sprung the trap. Instead she would open it and set the rat free.

  Chapter 22 - Sentencing Day

  They were all gathered in the court. The only person Susan could not see was Alan, but then perhaps he did not want his nose rubbed in the disappointment of failure, and he may still come yet, but she had a plan for that. Still Sandy was there. The judge ordered the court into session and said he was here to rule on the sentence to be given to Susan McDonald after finding her guilty of the murder of Vincent Marco Bassingham.

  David and Anne had organised innumerable petitions of support, character references and statements from prison officials as to Susan’s behaviour and conduct as a model prisoner. Susan had agreed to them making submissions on her behalf. They said her life was there for all to see, the model school girl and University student, successful laboratory technician; a person who had made a misstep and admitted it and was now willing to pay for what she had done. But they and her barrister would now argue that compassion from the law was required, to allow her to have a life with the children which would soon be born.

  Even the prosecution had indicated a willingness to be reasonable as they saw it. Rather than seeking that she spend the rest of her life in jail, never to be released, as would be a reasonable expectation for such a cold and callous murder, they had indicated that they would be happy with a sentence of a minimum of twenty five years, and a non-parole period of around twenty years, and the betting seemed to be that this was about right, even th
ough the judge was noted for no nonsense sentencing.

  Still, even the judge seemed to feel some sympathy for her, but in reality his hands were tied too, sentencing rules for crimes like this were pretty clear, with a not guilty plea it would be 30 years plus and with a guilty plea, remorse and good behaviour, release was possible in around twenty years. So people were saying that Susan would only be around 45 and still have life in front of her when released.

  But Susan found herself unable to care.

  Tonight her babies would be delivered. Then it would end. So whether a sentence was given of ten years, twenty or thirty, or it was deferred, it would matter little. They would have carried her away in a box and this awfulness would be over. She had longed for this day to come, the day when she could stop fighting the world and deceiving her friends and let it end. She had even worked out how to do it with minimal discomfort. She did not even feel really frightened at the prospect. It could not be that hard after everything else she had been through since she had met Mark. It was just one last test of character, one which she knew she could pass.

  So she found herself only half listening as the various parties opened sentencing submissions. The prosecution was reasonably short and to the point, saying that in a case like this they would have normally sought life in jail, but in view of the guilty party’s early guilty plea, her apparent remorse and otherwise good character they would be prepared to agree to a sentence of 25-30 years. However despite sympathy for the plaintiff in some quarters of the community they could not go agree to anything below this, as a strong deterrent message was also required. Hence they demanded an absolute minimum non parole period of twenty years.