Sunlit Shadow Dance (44 page)

They dug down, each spade full of dirt
checked as they went. Two feet down the spade struck metal, the top
edge of the boat’s side. It was exactly as Mark had described, the
tin boat, a backpack, the opals and crushed body wrapped in a
blanket, pelvis fractured in the rock fall. They lifted the bones
out with all the care they could, mindful of the loving way she had
been once placed there.

Next day they moved to the next site. It was
only five miles away, further up the same rocky ridge. Mark had
linked them in his drawings, saying the easiest way to find the
place of Amanda is to go to the place of the boat, then follow the
track north five miles along the side of the ridge.

There you will find the site of
the mine which I worked on
in the days before she died. It is not as rich as
Elin’s mine but there is still much of value left there, I have not
worked it further. I feel it belongs to her and one day it should
be her inheritance, as she sat there, at first patiently, while I
dug it out meaning for her to have it all. If she had only waited a
little longer and not made me so angry I would have given its
proceeds to her.

So finding the mine was easy,
it was exactly where his drawing showed. Finding her grave was not
so easy. There was no diagram for it. Instead Mark described the
way he had walked. It was vague
, as if only half remembered, perhaps he
was no longer quite sure when he told of it. What he wrote
was,

I hit her hard. I knew I had
killed her; I could have softened it but did not. I
left her until my
anger passed. Then I picked her up in my arms. She acted like a
tigress but was only a cub, easy to carry. I walked with her, her
pack on my back, taking two sticks of gelignite and a
rope.

I went northeast, until my arms
grew tired, perhaps a mile. I rested near an old mine shaft. I lay
her down and put on her best dress, that of the first night, sweet
of memories. I took her to the shaft bottom, where I left her, then
set off the gelignite. It covered her grave so none will disturb
her. I should be sad but am not, it is better the end was
kind.

For an hour I talked to an
eagle in the sky, asking him to keep watch over her spirit until it
crossed safely over. As I talked I walked. Part way back, in an
empty shaft, I dropped her pack. I covered it using the second bang
stick.

I
am glad she lies near my Elfin Queen.
They are both free spirits and perhaps will dance together, both
beautiful together in the sunlight.

It sounded more caring than the way he had
told Susan and in the diary. The way he told it sounded like none
was meant to find her. And find her none could. They searched but
nothing matched what he said. They found plenty of abandoned mine
shafts, but they were empty. None was collapsed, as if from
explosive.

Her pack was easier, a bare half kilometer
from the mine site. Still it took a week of searching. But
eventually they found this place, her pack in a deep shaft tied to
a coil of rope. In the pack were the rubies he had given her, a few
clothes, a notebook, a computer tablet and twenty thousand dollars.
All were almost undamaged despite the years in the ground.

So that was it, they had found the one and
knew, almost, the resting place of the other. Amanda’s things could
be returned to her family.

Alan returned to Darwin for a week of
completing paperwork. While these cases were now for the Queensland
Police and coroner to deal with, he still had to do his reports,
based on what he had found.

After this he was ready to head on. This
time his site was in the Tanami Desert south of the VRD, down
towards Lajamanu, otherwise known as Hooker Creek. This time Sandy
was clearly part of the team, she was the assigned NT pathologist
for the recovery of this body. This time suggestions that the
others were not welcome were quickly put to bed.

Vic announced he was travelling
down in his big heavy lift helicopter, capable of taking a dozen
people, and that
Jane would travel with him. Vic knew the location so Alan
could hardly stop this flight. And as he had read Mark’s directions
it was hardly feasible to exclude him from the search. Also Alan
knew that for this search a helicopter would be useful.

So it was decided they would
all travel together. Alan
offered for the government to pay for the
helicopter.

Vic said
, “Don’t be silly, I am doing
it for my friend, the way he wanted and it is his money that is
paying to make something right.”

T
he first day they ferried to VRD. Alan,
Sandy, Anne, David, Cathy, Jacob and of course Jane, were all
onboard. They stayed the night there with Buck and Julie, each
having their own bunk beds, boys and girls sleeping separate in the
stockmen’s quarters.

As they sat over dinner, Jane’s first new
memory came.

She turned to Buck, “I remember Firefly,
not just being told his name but riding on him. It was like a magic
carpet, the way his body flowed. Another thing I remember the
helicopter dance in the Wickham Gorge. And I also remember sitting
here over dinner and Mark telling stories. I was falling asleep so
I went to my bunk bed. That it is all I remember, but it is
something.

“
Tell me, have I remembered
true, Buck?”

Buck winked at her and said, “It is true.
Now tell me, do you remember a day when you sat in that cell and I
came to see you. I apologized for not bringing Firefly to see you.
Then you laughed and I laughed until we were out of breath and our
sides ached.”

Jane
thought for a minute and then said,
“Yes I remember that too. But what I most remember from that day
was you told me that Vic was missing, vanished with his helicopter,
and I thought my heart was broken in two. But he is here now so
that part cannot have been true.”

Next morning they left early, Buck flew in
the station fixed wing plane to Lajamanu where he was to meet the
local policeman. They would drive from there to the site of Mark’s
map. This place was easy to find.

It was on a road which turned off the
Kalkaringi to Lajamanu road. It ran east for thirty kilometers,
until it came to a small rocky ridge in the desert. At its base was
a pool or water and behind the ridge to the east were sand hills
where, after rains, wild flowers grew. It was such a season
now.

Both Buck and Vic knew this
place, it had been shown them by Mark, a place he had found and
loved
to
visit when he had worked at Lajamanu.

Mark’s instruction was to walk to walk to
the back of the sand hills, about five kilometers into the desert.
There they would find a place where the sand met a small rocky
outcrop. That was the place of her grave. He had carved her name,
Josie, in the stone above, so the desert held her
memory.

They landed the helicopter at the end of
the road, next to the rock pool where the police vehicle waited.
Everyone was let off except for Alan, Sandy and the Lajamanu
policeman.

Vic flew to the east, keeping
low
. Now all
four looked for this place that Mark had described, thinking it
should be easy to find. After ten minutes of detailed searching it
was not found. Vic found a clear place on a clay pan and set down
on the ground.

He said, “This must be about where, but
where is a lot of there.”

So they each took a
quarter
to
search from the ground, agreeing to walk out two hundred steps and
search back from there.

Half way back Vic saw a place
where the flowers grew thicker in front of a small grove of desert
trees. As he came
up close the rocky place stood up, hidden from above by the
trees but easy to see in side profile. It was only his head height
above the ground.

Vic shouted
out
. The
others came over. On the rock face was chiseled,

HERE LIES JOSIE

My lost KID SISTER

Vic went a
nd ferried the others across
before they started digging.

It was as Mark had told, the body of a
teenage girl, small bones, wrapped in a soft mohair blanket, no
other clothes. A small round hole in the base of her skull told of
the killing. As they lifted her out and carried this blanket
wrapped package to the helicopter they all felt unutterably
sad.

Her death seemed so senseless, a testament
to evil.

David said, “Do you think we could just
leave her here. I think it is what both she and Mark would both
have wanted. He buried her with love in a place of desert beauty. I
think here she would be most happy.”

But it could not be so, at least not for
now. They brought the body to Hooker Creek airport, from where the
policeman would arrange the carriage to Darwin. It was so official
procedures could be done. Buck stayed with the policeman to help
with his paperwork before returning to VRD.

The others flew on to Halls Creek to stop
for the night before the last leg of the journey. Dinner in the
Halls Creek Hotel was a somber occasion.

Alan could see Cathy and Jacob chatting to
David, Anne and Sandy. Vic sat with him while Jane was on the
phone, checking on her family.

Alan said to Vic, “I could have sworn you
knew the way today. You seemed to walk almost straight there once
you landed the chopper.”

Vic said, “When you spent as long with
Mark as I did you start to think the way he does and look through
his eyes. When I saw that little sheltered place half under the
copse of tree I knew it was the sort of place he would choose. It
was alive with flowers. I think they caught my eye in the
air.

“
So, as we walked away, I chose
that side, it seemed most right. I forced myself to walk all the
way out before I looked there, not wanting to miss something else.
But, as I walked back, I could feel that place calling to me. As I
looked towards it the brightness of the flowers struck me. I later
realized it was because a huge pile of flowers was once there
before. All those seeds had germinated as the flowers broke down,
year after year.

“
I could picture it as he left
it that day, not a bouquet or two but armfuls on armfuls of
flowers. Mark was never one to do things by half. The flowers would
have been piled as high as himself before he left.”

David joined their conversation saying, “I
felt today that it was a place of peace, where Josie was happy. I
could see she was buried with love. It felt like a sacrilege to
disturb her grave. I thought we should leave her there. What was it
about her death that moved Mark so; brought out a kindness for her
in her death that he could not find for her in her
life?”

Vic replied, “I think Mark knew, on that
day he killed her, he had done a truly terrible thing and there was
no going back. The killings before then were done through
desperation or need, or to stop evil people.

“
On that day Mark chose to kill
his kid sister for no good reason except that she took something of
his that he cared about. So, after it was done, his only reparation
was to bury her with all the love and kindness he could find. It is
as if, once it was done, her spirit felt his goodness and forgave
what he did, happy to know his love. But, for himself, he could
find no forgiveness for what he did that day.

“
That day he lost the biggest
part of his human soul. Amanda was but a consequence of that day,
the hatred of himself became hatred of the part of her that was
like him, the person where self interest came first. So his killing
Josie made Mark despise himself and then killing Amanda was like
killing that part of himself he despised, something to take
pleasure from.

“
When he asked Amanda to
come with him he did it as a challenge, his diary clearly says
that. But when she came he never really gave her a chance, he
tested her to meet a standard he knew she could not meet. So he set
her up to fail and cared not.

“
He knew that leaving her
sitting in a God forsaken place, with nothing to do, day after day,
when she was used to getting her way, would drive her crazy. Yet he
forced her to hold to the bargain she had made unknowing. Even as
he watched what this boredom did to her, he offered no relief. He
could have made a trip, visited a station, gone somewhere nice,
just for a day. He could have done something, anything, to break
the monotony.

“
Instead he kept on digging,
collecting more stones for no good purpose. He neither needed them
nor the money they would bring. Yet he kept her waiting until, in
the end, she broke. He knew she was like him but without his
strength to fight him, the tigress who was really a cub.

“
When she pulled the knife he
could have stepped aside, taken it from her. This man, who was a
mercenary and who stared down charging bulls, was not afraid of a
slip of a girl with a kitchen knife. So he did not need to kill
her, he was not frightened, it was not self-defense. He chose to
hit her hard enough to kill her when a slap would have
sufficed.

“
It would have cost him
nothing to leave a day or two earlier, nothing but kindness and for
her he had none. That was because she was like him and he had no
kindness left for himself.