Sunlit Shadow Dance (16 page)

Living this
dual life gave her empathy for this other girl Susan, how it was to
be trapped by bad decisions and their consequences, even if well
meant. She was pleased at the thought that what she was doing now
may help this girl, tip the balance back a bit against the bad she
had done before. But now she had a big moral dilemma to deal with,
whether to pass on this new stuff to Jacob in return for more cash.
That decision could wait.

Next day Beck
went early to the doctor’s waiting room, hoping to meet him and
form her own view before the barrister for the other side
arrived.

A receptionist
showed her in. Beck said she was early for an appointment with
Doctor Sangster and, as she had reading to do, she would sit and
wait until the due time arrived. The lady nodded then ignored her,
she obviously serviced a range of consultants, each with their name
of their own room door, though no other patients or activity were
evident.

While Beck
waited she studied the dossier she had compiled on this doctor. He
must only be in his mid-thirties, based on the date of his initial
graduation, but after his primary degree, he had moved quickly to
specialise in psychiatric illness associated with memory loss of
traumatic origin.

After doing a
Master’s Degree in memory associated disorders he worked as a
consultant psychologist in a Sydney practice. Within three years he
had enrolled to do his doctorate, with an overseas fellowship to
study at John Hopkins University in the US. He worked there for a
further 5 years in a post-doctoral role before returning to
establish his own specialist practice in central Brisbane.

It was clear
he could have made a bigger mark in Sydney or Melbourne, but his
choice was Brisbane. Now he was generally considered the leading
expert in traumatic memory loss in Australia, seeing patients from
all over the country. This brief was a bit different, he was not
being asked to treat a person but simply to assess whether the
memory loss seemed real and could be explained by the
circumstances. He would also be asked to give an opinion on the
risk of harm if the person was forced confront the events of which
the memory was suppressed or lost.

As Beck sat
reading about his career and rapid rise, she lost track of the
external environment, absorbed in reading through the list of the
abstracts of his key publications. They seemed highly relevant,
most about the impacts of physical injury, but some about other
emotional triggers.

She became
aware that someone was standing looking down at her. He was tall,
with straggly dark hair and a bit dishevelled, as if personal
grooming was not a big focus, though he was well dressed, as if
someone else chose good clothes for him, but he then selected and
dressed in them with minimal effort and care. She would not have
said he was handsome, but there was something arresting about him.
She looked up, “Yes?”

“
I was wondering if you were waiting for me. As far as I know
none of the other consultants are in this morning and I don’t have
my first appointment for another half an hour. You seem to be here
waiting for someone though you do not look like a patient,” he
said.

Beck looked at
him properly now. “Are you Dr Sangster?”

“
Last time I looked at my face in the mirror it seemed to
answer to that name,” he answered, giving a self-deprecating shrug
and a cautious smile.

She stood up
now and held out her hand, “Beck Singleton, from the Northern
Territory, she said.

Now he raised
an inquiring eyebrow, he really did have a curious and expressive
face, “A singular origin and a singular name,” he said, then,
“Pardon the pun, too many singles all in one place.”

She gave him a
searching look, “Way to cryptic for me, Doctor. But yes I am here,
waiting for an appointment with you, though still rather early. But
I decided to sit here to read about you rather than wait down in a
coffee shop. Your biography is impressive, but I would have not
joined it to your face if I had run into you in the street, perhaps
in the same way that my life is full of singularities, yours is
full of little discordances.”

Now he
genuinely smiled, “Ah, someone to rise to the challenge of the
mind. I do like that! My work with memory and the mind is like
riddles within riddles. I fear it has affected both my speech and
manner.

“
But seeing you are not waiting for me in a coffee shop and I
am yet to have a morning coffee, please come inside and join me in
having one. I am yet to brew a morning coffee which I need to fire
up my memory and mental faculties in preparation for my formal
meeting with you and the other lawyer, a QC his clerk said, who I
presume is yet to arrive. So rather than me drinking my caffeine
dose alone, perhaps you will share it with me?”

He showed her
through to an anteroom at the back of his examination room. It held
a computer with a large screen on one side and a mini kitchen with
a gleaming coffee machine and a large jar of chocolate cookies next
to a sink on the other side. Between the two places was a large
window which looked out to the river, in front of which were two
comfortable chairs with a small table between them.

He indicated
to Beck to have a seat, filled and pushed a button on the coffee
machine, then set two cups and plates, each with a cookie, on the
table. He sat silently in the opposite chair while the coffee
bubbled away, filling the room with a delightful aroma.

In a minute
the coffee was made. He poured them both a small cup and offered
cream and sugar, saying, “This is one of my American acquired
indulgences, to sit and sip my coffee with a dollop of cream and
sugar, along with an American cookie before I start on my day’s
work, that of trying to understand how the mind works and, when it
stops working properly, how to put it back together.

“
I think my days of work are like making complex jigsaw
patterns, trying to find shapes amongst so many mixed up bits. The
mind is like that; it holds vast stores of information and,
remarkably, manages to keep them organized and retrievable, like a
massive filing system. What is surprising about memory is not when
it malfunctions or fails, but how, in all the millions of everyday
tasks, it works so superbly. Understanding how and why it works, as
well as the reasons when it does not, is my life’s great
challenge.

“
But we should leave business until its time has come, for now
tell me about you, the singular girl from the singular
NT?”

Despite the
bizarre introduction she found this man was easy to talk to. She
told him about her study to become a lawyer and her job in the NT,
she even told him a little of her difficult life with her mother.
But she did not want to get stuck there with expressions of
sympathy, so she quickly moved the conversation on, asking about
him and what had brought him to Brisbane, when a glittering career
in the US seemed on offer.

“
Well, like you in the NT, this is country is home. After my
years in the US I found I was homesick for Australia and
particularly for its more tropical places, but yet I needed a big
city to pursue my work so Brisbane seemed most desirable. Now I
have moved here I find myself content. Neither of my parents is
alive and I do not have other family. Sometimes I think of moving
north, but it would be hard to sustain my practice and expertise in
a smaller town, so here seems to offer the best of both
worlds.”

There was a
tap on the door and the receptionist indicated the barrister had
now arrived. Dr Sangster went out to meet him and bring him in,
saying Beck should finish her biscuit and coffee before she joined
them.

Dr Sangster
poured the barrister his own cup of coffee and went into to
examination room for full introductions before they proceeded with
their meeting. She and the barrister explained what they needed,
for him the most critical requirement was for absolute privacy in
relation to his client, for her it was the need to have an
objective examination that would stand up to legal scrutiny, but
which did not add further injury to an already damaged person.

After this
both gave a sketchy outline of the situation, the claim of loss of
memory by a person accused of a very serious crime in the NT, the
need to evaluate if it was real, and provide a confidential report
on this for legal consideration, but without any specifics. It was
all generalities.

Dr Sangster
put up his hands, saying. “I need to stop you both there. My rooms
are private and soundproof. The other consultants all are away
doing hospital work this morning. The receptionist is the only
other person on the premises, as of now. She is paid to answer the
phone and I have told her not to disturb us.

“
So I feel we are going in circles and not getting to the
point. I am happy to give an undertaking for total confidentiality
in relation to this meeting. But if I am to examine this person in
any capacity, whether to give you a report or to try and treat her,
I need an accurate history of what has happened in order to give
you advice about how best to go about it.

“
Each person is different, every examination is different. It
is something I need to plan carefully before I meet the client and
I need to be as open as possible about my knowledge once I know
them. I cannot do this if both of you keep talking in circles.
Perhaps we can begin by you both deciding on whether you are
willing to give me full information about this matter. Then when
you have decided that we can decide on next steps from there. I
will go out and talk to the receptionists about my patients for the
afternoon and while I am there you can talk between yourselves and
decide whether you can be sufficiently frank for us to proceed.
There is no point going further unless I understand what has
happened. If I do not know what happened I risk causing much more
harm in the process. I will not do that.”

With that he
walked out of the room. Now they had to rapidly strike up an
agreement about how to deal with the unknown Susan, how much to
share with each other and how much each could tell Dr Sangster.

They quickly
agreed they were both happy to engage this man, he was the best in
his field and despite some quirky mannerisms there was no doubt
about his skill. So they would jointly tell him about the murder
trial, Susan’s disappearance and the inquest.

When they got
to that point the barrister informed Beck that the information he
held about Susan’s current situation could only be disclosed
privately without Beck present, because there had been previous
internal leaks from the NT government about this case. She winced
internally at this, realizing she was on thin ice, and agreed that
she would leave the meeting while this information was provided,
then return once it was done to confirm arrangements from here.

So they called
Doctor Sangster back in and began the story together.

Beck led off.
The person of interest is Susan McDonald, I am not sure if you have
heard of her, the sensationally labelled ‘Crocodile Woman’.

Beck watched
an expressive eyebrow go up as the name was said, and a small nod
to indicate that he knew exactly who she was. Over ten minutes she
gave a quick summary of the agreed publicly known events from Susan
first coming to Australia, travelling in the company of a man with
the alias of Mark Bennet, discovering his role in the disappearance
of other backpackers and then killing him. She told of the
discovery of the head and forearm, the evidence linking to Susan,
of her extradition to stand trial and of her guilty plea to murder,
but her refusal to describe what happened and why.

She told of
sentencing day with a general expectation of a twenty year
sentence, then of the sensational evidence of the day about the
texts linking Susan’s action to her belief that this man had killed
the other backpackers, giving grounds for self-defence, then how
the judge had ruled that while this was investigated Susan
MacDonald be released on bail, only for her to vanish less than a
week later.

Beck told of
information suggesting she had become suicidal, evidence suggesting
her return to the waterhole of the murder, and then of the failure
of all further inquiries to determine her fate. Beck said there had
been a general view she was dead but with lots of doubters who
thought she had fled justice. Then Beck told how the inquest had
returned an open finding about her fate while also making a finding
that, despite her guilty plea, there was good evidence she had
acted in self-defence.

Beck then told
of recent contact by parties claiming to represent her, indicating
she was alive but had a total memory loss of these events and
refusing to disclose her location. She also told him that the
desire was now to resolve her legal situation with the idea of a
pardon based on the inquest evidence along with her inability to
testify. But in order for this to be pursued they needed to be an
assessment of her mental state, to determine whether the memory
loss appeared genuine. They also sought advice on the risk of
further harm if she was to become aware of what had happened before
or if was returned to jail or subjected to further legal
processes.

When she had
finished her recitation, Ross Sangster leaned back, flexed his
fingers and looked at her intently. “Well you have certainly
described a situation which captures my interest. Of course you are
asking me to play God and tell you consequences of finding out
unremembered events, which is unknowable, but I can at least
evaluate her current psychiatric state and point out what the key
risks are. They are likely to be great.”