Sunlit Shadow Dance (25 page)

Jacob
decided that he would begin at the
bottom end of the strip, fly to Brisbane, get a hire car, then work
his way north. He figured two weeks south of Brisbane would let him
work his way through northern NSW and the Gold Coast and then he
would need another week to cover the Sunshine Coast. If he found
nothing by then he would rethink his options, try a different
tack.

Having made his plan he booked
the lunch time flight to Brisbane and rented a luxury hire car
to
collect
from the airport. He decided he wanted to play the part of a high
end private investigator employed by Jane’s parents. His invented
back story was they were desperately seeking to trace their
daughter who had left London after a family falling out. She had
gone off travelling without keeping in touch. Her mother was now
critically ill with advanced cancer and the family urgently wanted
to find her and give her the news in the hope she could return to
see her mother again before she died. He would tell people that her
last known address was in Cairns where she had a baby, twins
actually, born about a year after she left and these would were now
about two. She had sent them a card telling them this news from
Cairns but that was the last definite contact.

However it was known she had left that
address a few months ago and travelled south, having rung a friend
who now lived in Brisbane to say she lived in a coastal town not
too far away but not giving the address. So his job was to try and
locate her and ask her to get in touch with her family urgently He
intimated that there was a substantial reward on offer from the
family to anyone who could give the information that found
her.

He knew he could tell this
story convincingly. He had a card made up giving his contact
details as a private investigator with a checkable London firm. As
he travelled he would leave cards and a photo of her with people he
met along the way. On the bottom of the photo was written,
Have you seen Jane?
Reward for information about her location
, and his mobile number. The photo
was of Susan taken earlier in her life with her hair cut shorter
and her face rounder. It was sufficiently different not to easily
link her to the NT Crocodile Girl, but with enough similarity to
trawl some possible sightings.

A week passed
as he worked his
way north, then a second week. He had been to lots of places,
talked to lots of people, building and caravan park managers, small
neighborhood shops and cafés, children’s playgrounds, childcare
centres, toyshops, and those who sat around watching
others.

He had run to ground a few
leads which had turned into nothing. Overall people bought his
story and the reward mention
ed sharpened their interest, but there was nothing
convincing about any likely sightings and there were no more
substantial leads. He had given away over a thousand cards and
photos in his travels. He felt that with all this something should
come back his way if she was around.

But so far nothing
had
. Even
though he was not ready to give up yet it felt like a lot of effort
for so little.

Tomorrow he would begin at
Noosa and work his way back down the Sunshine Coast to
Brisbane
. If
that yielded nothing then he would need to rethink how to do
this.

Another week passed, he had
done all the towns
of the Sunshine Coast, both those on the coast and the near
inland ones, except for the last one, Caloundra. After that all
that remained was the bayside villages and towns along Moreton Bay
until they were hard up against Brisbane suburbia. Once he got
there he would have to admit he had failed.

So today was Caloundra. He would start at
the southern tip where there was a caravan park and work his way
north. At 8:30 he knocked at the caravan park office and was
greeted by a middle aged couple who announced they were the park
managers. He asked about a girl named Jane with two small children,
twins, aged around two years old. He knew in an instant he had got
a hit, it was there in both their eyes.

“
Yes, we had a Jane who stayed
here until about two weeks ago. I am afraid I don’t have a
forwarding address. She left quite suddenly with the man she was
with. We had thought they were married, they really seemed like a
family, but Jane told Leah they were heading off to get married,
she did not say where. Leah has gone to the shops but will be back
in about an hour. You had best talk to her as they were good
friends and she is most likely to know anything
further.”

So Jacob sat in his car and
waited, trying to calm his jangling nerves with some soothing
music. At last a girl of a similar age to Susan came driving
in
; she
looked like she belonged here. The manager came out and pointed to
her and the unit where she stayed.

So Jacob went over and knocked on the
door. “Coming,” came a voice and in a few seconds she was there
looking out at him. She was not quite suspicious but there was
something guarded about her.

He went through his story but
he could tell this woman did not believe him,
as he spoke she became even
more guarded and cautious. The mention of a reward only served to
make her more suspicious.

Finally she said,
“I am sorry I can’t
help you. I really did not know her that well, we just chatted a
bit as we made up beds and things like that. Then one day she just
upped and off, not saying where she was heading.”

Jacob knew she was lying, her whole
defensive demeanor told him that. But he knew he was wasting his
time and decided that he had better try other options to find out
about them before the suspicions spread.

He decided that the wedding
story was likely
true, he saw it in Leah’s eyes when he mentioned hearing of
it. He had backed off then.

So instead he needed to try and
get a bit more about the man she was with, he would go back to the
park managers and ask them before Leah could warn them to be
careful. So he came back, thanking them profusely for all their
help but saying it was a pity that Leah had not known where they
had gone. As if in passing he said,
Oh she told me the man’s name Jane was
with, but I forgot to write it down, could you prompt my
memory.

“
Vic,” replied the man at
once.

You don’t know a surname asked Jacob. The
man thought for a minute, Bennet, he said. Nothing else you can
think of about him asked Jacob. The man scratched his head,
obviously giving the matter some thought. Only he was a dark one,
skin half way to your color and I have a feeling one day that Jane
said his Mum lived in Alice Springs. She was a sweet girl she was,
she thought the sun shone out of our Vic and it was something she
said one day about how she really wanted to go to Alice Springs to
meet his family, particularly his Mum who lived there.

Jacob could feel a huge and
rising elation. He would be
t London to a brick he had them, he had thought
Vic had gone overseas.

He had been informed about boyfriend Vic
being heartbroken and catching the flight to Canada around the time
the first rumors of Susan’s reappearance surfaced.

But the sneaky bugger had been smarter than
he credited, obviously having set this up as part of a disappearing
act, when all the while he had hooked up with his girlfriend
again.

He knew it was all inference at this stage
but how many blokes were there with skin that color and the name
Vic who lived in Alice Springs.

He could have asked these people for a
better description of Vic, even got a photo and shown it to them to
confirm it was him. But he knew he did not need that.

Instead he went out to his car, put $2000
cash in an envelope and passed it over to the man and his wife
saying, “My employer is a well to do and generous man. He would
like you to take this for your trouble. Perhaps you could treat
yourself to something nice with it.”

With that he gave them a wave, climbed in
his car and drove away.

He knew the end of the chase
was
very
near.

Vic looked back at the
o
ver the
month that had passed while they lived in seclusion in their desert
hideaway. He had loved this uninterrupted time spent with Jane and
the children. Even though he knew another man was their father they
felt like the Jane’s children were fully his now. He had worked
hard on the station in return for keep but the work was a pleasure,
doing things with his hands and knowing that each night he would
return to his family who always greeted him with ferocious
joy.

Now the weather was cooling at
night and
,
at the main station, a stock camp had been assembled to start the
season’s muster. Next week they would draft off the steers for
fattening in the river paddock and brand all this year’s calves
from the close in paddocks before they went mustering further out.
Vic and Jane mostly stayed in their outstation cottage but a few
times they had come in to the main homestead to join the others for
dinner.

His Mum
and Jillie had visited again
the weekend before last to tell them that all the arrangements were
now made for their wedding. Jane had sent Vic across to talk and
drink with his Uncle for the afternoon, the children playing at his
feet. She had closed the doors and put covers on the windows so he
could not look in while she had taken Rosa and Jillie inside to
help her select a wedding dress and make other style arrangements.
He understood from Jane that her two bridesmaids would be Jillie
and Anne while their children would carry flowers and follow her.
He also knew that Jane’s mother, father and a few other key friends
would attend. He wanted to keep it low key but it was easier said
than done. Jane had a penchant for issuing invitations and did not
see the need for secrecy. So it was hard to keep it quiet, but
overall it seemed to have worked.

Sorting out all the legal complexities had
been tricky and Vic knew he owed a great debt to Buck, Alan, Anne
and many others. However it had all come together as well as he
could have hoped, much better than expected.

It had worked been worked out
in two places at t
he same time.

Following on from the video the Northern
Territory Government agreed to grant a pardon to Susan Emily
MacDonald. It would be signed in two days time, on the Friday
evening before their Saturday wedding. But it would not be
announced until the following Monday, limiting to chance for
journalists to go digging.

At the same time the English
Government had privately organized to grant new identity papers,
also released on the Friday, English time
. This would happen once the NT
government confirmed the pardon was signed. These documents, which
changed the name of Susan MacDonald to Jane Bennet, had been lodged
on Jane’s behalf by her parents, with the support of the
psychiatrist, Ross Sangster. He confirmed her memory loss and the
risk of severe mental or physical harm if Jane was forced to become
aware of her past identity.

His statement was supported by
an eminent English colleague who had
been given the transcript of his previous
interview with Jane along with the video and a summary of the trial
information. He had fully concurred with Ross Sangster’s opinion.
The English lawyers from Anne’s former firm had got a court order
to suppress this identity change from public disclosure for a 5
year period.

S
o, barring unforeseen hold ups, it would
all happen like clockwork. Scanned copies of the NT documents would
be sent to the UK once signed and then scanned copies of the new UK
passport and other identity forms would arrive in time for the
Saturday wedding ceremony. The originals would be couriered in both
directions on flights leaving Friday night from both London and
Darwin. They would be available in both London and Alice Springs at
the end of the following day. So the original documents for the
wedding could be lodged the following Monday in time for official
registration procedures, and the English passport would be in their
hands before they boarded the plane on Monday morning.

The end result was Vikram Campbell was
marrying Jane Bennet. It would be decreed in the official marriage
ceremony. It would all be legal. And Vic lived in hope that no one
outside their immediate circle would be any the wiser as to how
Susan had become Jane, his bride.

Early on Monday morning they would fly
from Alice Springs via Cairns for a month’s holiday in remote
northern Scotland, staying on the family farm where Jane’s last
childhood memories remained. She would travel under this new
passport issued to Jane Bennet.

After that they would see what
happened and decide on whether they could become public people
again in either Australia or the UK or whether they needed to
establish a new life in some other unknown location, perhaps New
Zealand.
Vic
liked that idea as he had contacts who could arrange work there as
a pilot, flying helicopters again in the mountains.

For now
Vic was happy to know almost
nothing of the detailed wedding plans. All he knew was that they
would drive back to Alice Springs, tomorrow, Friday. Jane would
stay in a very private resort with her parents and Anne that night.
He would have a night with his mates, a low key bucks’ ceremony he
insisted. He was determined not to have a hangover. He would stay
that night at his sister’s place with his Uncle in two of Jillie’s
kids’ bunk beds.