Girl in an Empty Cage

by Graham Wilson

  Chapter 11 - Susan’s Plan

  Yesterday afternoon Susan had been told that the forensic pathologist wanted to visit her and ask her some questions about any knowledge she had of the prior identity of the murder victim before she met him.

  It immediately raised a red flag in her brain. Her overwhelming motive for everything she had done since she had first been arrested in London was to hide the real Mark from public view. At first, when they arrested her, it had seemed that officials had been happy enough to let Mark fade from view, they had a license ID for a Mark Bennet, she assumed this would give a trail for people to confirm the identity of her Mark, and, having got this investigators would let it drop.

  But once the association had been made with his second assumed name, Mark Butler, Susan realised that this could well cause trouble, it raised a question of what was Mark’s true identity.

  Last night Susan had another dream. In her dream Mark’s secret was in great peril, with people investigating what happened on her trip from Alice Springs and tracing her phone calls and text messages to Anne. In the process they were starting to link Mark to his victims. If Susan’s text asking Anne to investigate the missing girls and Anne’s reply was found, then it could all unravel. She did not think Anne would volunteer this information readily, but she knew that Anne was conflicted. However, on balance, she thought her friend’s loyalty to her would come first.

  Anne did not really know the story. But she knew about the initial inquiry and Susan had effectively admitted that this was Mark. So Anne would see the link between her, Mark and those cases, and she also knew of the existence of Mark’s diary. However, with Susan’s admission to the murder and her stated intention to plead guilty, she felt she was closing a door to the danger of that revelation; at least once she was sentenced.

  However the dream seemed to be warning otherwise. In the dream Alan and Sandy were exchanging the name Vincent Mark Bassingham and saying they would try to trace this person, with Sandy planning to use DNA to make a link to other family members. She heard Sandy whispering to Alan, “Who is Vincent Mark Bassingham. He is the key, if we can trace him we can find the true Mark.” And through her mind link she knew of Sandy’s burning desire to get to the real story, the why.

  She read in their minds they were doing this to help her. It was like the old logic of her childhood, “Ye shall know the truth and the truth will set ye free,” that Biblical line from Presbyterian Sunday School.

  But for Susan this truth was not freedom, but a whispered secret. Its retelling would be all anyone knew of this case, its memory would follow on for decades.

  It was already sensational enough; it did not bear thinking about how a new revelation would play out. While she had previously considered the option to plead self-defence, reveal about Mark, and then once released to vanish under a new name, she knew this would be easier said than done. In this IT age true disappearance was extraordinarily hard, made even more so if she wanted to still have her own family and friends, the people her child would need as a growing boy.

  But most of all she would not go there because it was fundamentally disloyal to Mark, it would turn him into a monster when the truth was far more complex. She was glad he was the father of her child; she did not believe he was evil absolute; she had glimpsed and tasted goodness at his core, despite all. But that story could never hold up in the court of public opinion. So she would not allow his identity and person to be treated that way, it would be a further betrayal of him.

  In the dream Alan was trying to revisit all the other information about Susan and Mark and see if any of it would give more clues to who Mark was and why Susan had killed him. He was poring over records he had tracked down about Mark and in the process had got Susan’s mobile number, the SIM card she had bought in Cairns.

  It was funny that no one had ever gone digging into this before; but then, once they had made her identification all those other minor details were ignored as extraneous. From this dream she understood that Alan had been taken off the case, but Sandy was stepping into the breach. So they were still working together and exchanging information.

  She could sense Alan’s frustration. He was hamstrung by other work, he had little time to use, plus his boss had told him to drop it, the case against her was open and shut, that no one else cared about the why, it was only guilt that mattered.

  Susan wished Alan would just drop it like the rest. But she also saw it from his point of view; an injustice was happening and he was trying to prevent it. In part it was that because he had first uncovered the murder he felt obligated to have the whole truth told. At the same time he also thought he was helping her.

  At the time she had met him on the aeroplane she had willed him to help her like this. But that was when her mind was in a mess. Now she saw clearly that Mark’s secret must stay hidden. She wished she had not encouraged him the way she had done so. So now she must think of a way to prevent his desire for truth from succeeding.

  In the dream Alan had linked a number on Marks phone to her, and following from that was now tracing all the calls she had made. The only item of concern was her text to Anne and Anne’s reply.

  As she woke from the dream she realised she needed to find a new diversion to throw them off track of tracing this, to make them feel they had another better lead to follow and to put their free time into that. The name Vincent Mark Bassingham kept coming into her brain. They had the name and would follow it, like a bloodhound on a scent.

  At first this idea filled her with fear. Then it dawned on her. Let them follow it; it was the name of a child of twenty years ago, a boy abused by his father who had run away. Mark’s story as a child was all this name would tell. So there would be family information about this child to run down, it would take more time to find, but the adult would not be there. As best she could understand it was only after Mark went to the Middle East, when he was about twenty, that the callous, wanton killing begun. Revelation of that Mark was what terrified her. By then he was a man who worked under other names and took great care to hide his true identity. So the child was not the man, nor the man the child.

  She must throw a false trail, one that seemed to lead somewhere but actually lead away, where the sum of a month or two of investigation would be zero. They would know the real identity, know a few bits about his difficult and abusive childhood, things that would perhaps bring some sympathy, but then it would all vanish.

  He would become someone who had changed his identity because of a violent father, and had made a new life in the NT under names based on his middle name and initials, not so remarkable really. It would feed the gossip mills for a day or two and then would become yesterday’s story. Alongside this old identity the new one would fade. The police would soon stop using the name Mark and begin call him Vincent. She would admit to Vincent’s murder. And adult Mark would fade away.

  It would serve the purpose of occupying a month or two of official time, seen as doing an important job in getting to the bottom of this identity mystery. By the time they had got to the ends of this, to where this trail led, the time to investigate other things would have passed; she would have been convicted and sentenced. She would be one of many prisoners serving out their time, soon forgotten as public attention and police investigations moved on to new juicier stories.

  So that is what she would do. She would give them the name they were seeking, send them off following this trail, all the while letting the story she was protecting slide away.

  But she must be careful. Sandy was clever. In the same way she could glimpse parts of Sandy’s mind, Sandy could do so with her. It was a cat and mouse game, throw bait one way for the cat to pounce on while you quietly crept off in a different direction.

  She wished it was a guilt free and painless process. She liked Sandy, Sandy could be her friend, she would gladly accept any friendship offered. It was the same for Alan and Buck. Yet here she was, acting out a role for their apparent benefit, whi
ch had the purpose of deceiving them. She did not feel good about herself. The old, decent Susan was fast sliding away, replaced by a manipulating and conniving actress.

  In trying to hide the true Mark, she had become a shadow figure of her former self, now she was the great dissembler, the one who showed people a face they wanted to believe in and used all her tricks to make it seem true. That was the face of the Mark she had discovered. Now she had become a second him, a person trapped by bad decisions and poor choices into perpetual dishonesty.

  The only person who had seen through this was Vic, on that day when he had refused to accept her meaningless answers. Now he was gone too and she was left alone, ever and always alone, in an empty place.