Girl in an Empty Cage

by Graham Wilson

  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 could 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 before, her bravura acting performance at the trial, 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 Alan had told Sandy of the hill but decided that, with just one day for looking, he would ignore it. He had walked around it and it did not seem promising. Susan 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 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 what she would do.

  She must think of a way to forestall this. She could not bring her sentencing 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 circus. She suspected it would result in sentencing being delayed until after her babies were born. They would rush her off to hospital to deliver the babies, maybe a Caesar, with an anaesthetic. So, after, while she was in recovery she would act; potassium into her drip line would be best, perhaps she could also use some 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. She could feign sleepiness to get her chance before they took her back 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. It would give her a chance to check out what the opportunities were and hopefully put something in place.

  She thought about what to use to induce her labour on sentencing day. The best drug was Oxytocin. She needed a loaded syringe of this to be on hand for use on 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.

  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 almost 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 reassured her, saying they were doing just fi
ne.

  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 that date 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. She secreted these plus an empty syringe and needle on her person. That was more than enough to bring her into labour. Normally it went in an IV drip but an injection into the muscle of her leg would work just fine.

  When the time came all she needed to do 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. 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 would load the syringe and needle and strap 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.