Sunlit Shadow Dance (19 page)

“
And I remember how she, me and my Dad would sometimes talk,
all sitting around the fire in the evening. Em and my Dad both
loved animals, particularly the big wild animals in other
countries, the lions and tigers, the elephants and giraffes, the
monkeys, chimpanzees and gorillas.

“
We all wanted to go to Africa and see them, the lions,
leopards and cheetahs hunting in the national parks. I don’t know
if we ever did, but we dreamt and talked so much about it, being
camped by a waterhole and watching all the animals coming in to
drink and how a lion pack would try and ambush them, while we
watched from a hidden hide.”

“
What were your favourite animals?” he asked.

She thought
for a minute and then answered, “I am not sure, I thought the apes
were so amazing, they are so like us, their behaviours and the way
they interact. But then I loved the predators too, the way a cat
would stalk up, or silently wait in ambush until something came
along.”

He asked, “Did
you ever see any that you remember, perhaps at a zoo or something
like that?”

She thought hard and then said. I think the year before those
holidays my Dad took me to a zoo called Whipsnade Zoo and also to
London Zoo in Regents Park. I can remember watching a cheetah
stalking someone who was walking along the outside of its enclosure
at Whipsnade Zoo. And I remember feeling sorry for the lions at
Regents Park Zoo. They were lying out in the sun and their
enclosure was concrete. I thought of them out in Africa, in the
long grass, hunting animals. I thought,
What a pity, they have nothing to chase and nowhere to hunt
in there.”

Ross did not
know why but the image of a crocodile lying in ambush suddenly came
into his mind, perhaps it was all the media speculation about the
Crocodile Girl, perhaps it was that freaky story Vic told him last
night of a huge crocodile swimming alongside him as he escaped from
the wilderness after he crashed his helicopter, or perhaps it came
from an association with the predators in her story. The words
popped into his mind and were on his tongue before he could think
and take them back.

“
Have you ever seen a crocodile?”

He watched her
face as he spoke, wishing he could take the words back.

First she
screwed up her face as if thinking. Then her face transformed into
blank dread from which, like a slow motion picture, it morphed into
abject horror and overwhelming fear. As it did a noise began,
somewhere deep inside. He mouth took a rictus shape. A thin banshee
wail flowed from it, rising in tone and volume into a screech of
unrelenting terror. Suddenly the noise was gone, bitten off into
even more ominous silence. The terror in her eyes was undiminished
and her body began to shake before giving way to heartbroken,
convulsive sobbing of the words, “No, No, No, My Babies.”

Ross was first
paralysed into inactivity by the noise, but as it transformed into
sobbing words he rushed around the table and put his arms around
her shoulders, pulling her to him and talking to her as to a small
child. “It is OK, no one is hurting your children, they are safe,
they are with Vic.”

Slowly her
sobbing and shaking abated, her eyes returned to where they were
focused on him, but with an accusatory look, “Why did you say that,
that thing about the crocodiles? It is evil. I saw my babies
swimming in a pool full of crocodiles. Lots of big crocodiles,
swimming towards them, mouths open. My babies needed help and I
could not reach them. I was stuck here in the wrong body. I knew
the crocodiles would take them, tear them apart, eat them. I knew
my babies would be torn into little pieces. I could not reach them
or help them. I could not bear to watch it happen. It was so
real.

“
I wish you never said those words. I don’t want to talk about
memories. I don’t want try and remember, ever. It is all too
terrible. I never want to see that awful thing again. I just want
to be left alone.”

Ross tried to
calm her, telling her they would go out and see her babies now,
they were safe with Vic, it was something she had imagined. It was
not real. Her wild eyed terror remained though gradually the
self-control came back and the accusation faded from her eyes.

He suggested
she wash her face, go outside and see the others. She complied, but
in the manner of a rag doll, moving without purpose.

So he brought
her out to Vic and her children. She hugged her children tightly to
her as if fearful they were a mirage and would vanish.

As she held
her children Ross explained to Vic what he had done, his foolish
words and how frightened she had been.

Vic had an
instant flash of annoyance on his face, but he seemed less
perturbed than expected. “As you said Doc, there is a whole world
of pain trapped inside her. I am not sure that I am glad about what
you did but it needs to find a way out. So thank you for trying to
help. I will talk to you tomorrow after she calms down.”

Vic walked
over and enfolded Jane in his arms. He stroked her hair like that
of a small child as he murmured soothing words.

Soon her
children grew impatient at being ignored. “Mummy, mummy come and
see the boats on the river.”

Jacob was pissed off. He knew
that lawyer tart
, Beck, in Darwin, was stuffing him around. Once upon a
time she had been only too happy to take his money for scraps of
information. And largely because of her he had made it big time,
the journalist that everyone was talking about.

But
now she seemed to have got cold feet.
When he rang her work receptionist asking to talk to her, she was
always busy and never returned his calls. When he tried to ring her
mobile it went to message unanswered, when he emailed her private
email she never replied. He knew he could not use her government
work email – way too dangerous for him and her if it was shown he
was trying to pervert the course of justice.

He thought of upping the ante,
doing something more direct with her work to scare the pants of
her, perhaps leaving a message with her secretary
that Jacob
Shoesmith a journalist from the London’s Fleet Street needed to
talk to her urgently about the Susan MacDonald case.

That would really put a scare
into her. He also thought about his threat to send the bank deposit
slip for the most recent sum he had paid her
bank through to her boss in the
mail with a ‘please explain’, anonymous of course. But that was
just a threat. She would lose her job if anyone foG160llowed that
trail and the goose laying golden eggs in the Susan story would
stop laying.

Plus he had enjoyed his nights
with her when he visited Darwin, she was only a mediocre sort to
look at, good body but face a bit angular for his taste,
but she was really
hungry for sex when he got her between the sheets, her other recent
bonks had obviously been limited with a sick mother. So he recalled
the two nights spent with her as memorably good, they had turned
each other on big time, perhaps his black body made her horny, her
milky white thighs certainly had that effect on him. It would be
nice to do it again at least one more time.

But
, for now, she needed to deliver
something. He had money waiting to send her. But she needed to use
inside information to reopen the trail on the Crocodile Girl which
had gone cold. He licked his lips, savoring finding that Susan
tart, sticking a camera in her face as they brought her back to
jail.

It had been far and away the biggest story
he had ever broken. He had followed it from the start, from when
they unearthed those clues saying the crocodile was not the real
killer. The crocodile had only come along after the bloke was dead,
finishing the murderer’s work. Instead it had come out that someone
with a girl sized footprint had finished of that Australian Outback
dude, Vincent Mark Bassingham, whacking him on the side of the head
with a big lump of wood and dragging him to the water. This person
obviously expected the crocodiles to do the rest and leave no
trace. So he knew from the start she was as guilty as hell the way
she had deliberately tried to hide the evidence. No lovers tiff
this but a cold and calculated murder from a clever but thoroughly
nasty little bitch.

He had to give it to her; she was a great
actress, deserving an Academy Award for her Saint Susan role in the
murder trial. She had barely spoken, silence and beauty were such
effective weapons when put together, playing the martyr image. But
he had cracked that open, with a bit of help from the Darwin girl,
Beck. He found that she spread herself around pretty well, that was
her past history. Now she must have moved on to a newbie. Pity she
and Vic had not stuck, he was sure he could have found Susan
through him if he knew where she was. But he had seen Vic’s plane
ticket for Canada, 18 months or so after Susan vanished. Jacob’s
sources had told him the word was Vic was all broken up.

A
bit after Vic’s going abroad, rumors
had surfaced about Susan having been found in Queensland. Beck had
fed this rumor to Jacob back when she was talking to him. She told
of a vague story of a person who looked just like her working in a
town up north. So he had jumped on a plane there and spent a month
looking around for anything that was real. He checked out the
obvious places, Cairns, Townsville, he went to the smaller places
and resorts, checking out all the shops and bars and businesses,
flashing her photo and cash around and telling that he would pay
well if anyone knew where she was. He had been pretty well
everywhere except the blackfella places where no one in their right
mind would go. And he had found zip.

But still the rumors bubbled
around.
When
she vanished she was too pregnant for an abortion. A nurse at the
hospital told him it was twins. He imagined her now with two small
children. She should be easy to find.

He remembered the adrenalin
rush from that time almost two years ago when his
piece, ‘The Two
Faces of Susan Emily MacDonald’, had been far and away the highest
rating story of the English tabloids. Then Beck had told him about
her going by her middle name. He thought that was both weird and a
bit silly, as if by taking that name she could vanish.

Back then he got part of his story came
from an earlier boyfriend, Edward, definitely still a bit smitten
by her. Edward told Jacob the story of how she had dumped him and
how she was a party girl, always willing to try it on with new men.
To add to that he had the story of her shagging both the outback
bloke, Vincent, Mark B or whatever and at the same time that rich
dude, David. Then, the instant she was out of jail on bail, Beck
told him she was shagging the helicopter pilot. At that point he
knew he had gold, a true English tart, giving plenty on her back
but quick to put the knife in when she no longer wanted
it.

Not to mention that she proudly
carried a belly full of arms and legs from her contest, who knows
whose it
really was, perhaps one each to two fathers, seeing as the
nurse also told her they were a girl and boy, not identical. The
brats in her belly did not come from being a good girl who only
went to church. So, when it was added to the crocodile killer, it
was a story of sensation made in heaven. It had pushed him right to
the top. He loved being in that place where his name was on
everyone’s lips. But then it slowly slid away. As it did he slowly
slid down the ratings and pay scales.

N
ow he had to make the story come alive
again, it would be even bigger if he could find her now,
particularly after all the Saint Susan TV publicity her red headed
friend had done last year. He knew, if he could just get that Beck
bitch to give what she knew, he could crack it. Perhaps he should
double the offer to twenty big ones. He thought about it for a
minute.
Yes,
he was sure that would bring her round
. He knew she needed more cash for
her mother’s treatment. She may not want to talk to him but her
mother’s part time nurse had no such scruples and had told him
about the need for a new wheelchair for ten big ones. So it stood
to reason that if she needed that cash just for one thing then she
would need more for other things as well.

S
o she must be playing hard to get to put
up the price. He needed to get out there and get in her face.
Nothing like more pillow talk, after a good fuck, to bring her
around. Being there in person would make it very hard for her to
refuse him, either the money or the sex.

Having decided how to move it
along
he
booked his flight to Darwin for next week. It was a small town and
Beck would be easy to catch up to. Who knows, after he bonked her,
paid her and got what she knew, he could spend a couple more weeks
working all those Queensland towns again himself, if he talked to
enough people and threw plenty of cash around he would surely dig
something up.

That afternoon he got an OK
from his boss for a ten thousand pound cash advance to pay his
source
, and
another five for his own expenses for the trip he had booked. His
boss was as hungry as him for a new big splash, but his patience
was starting to wear thin.

“
I don’t mind paying for results
and you certainly delivered in spades a year or two ago on this
one. But you have nothing to show for the money we have laid out
since then. It is time to move on if this does not pan out. Plenty
of local stories in our part of the world that you need to put a
bit more effort into or your pay packet will take a haircut at your
next performance review.