Lost Girls (9 page)

So I pick up;
heavy bag; something inside. I shine torch in and see ladies
sandal, and I see underneath something else, dark and stripes. I
put in my hand to take out and it bite me, bad pain in hand. Think,
Maybe snake inside bag bite me.
But no mark on hand.

“I get long
stick and take out sandals, then look inside bag again. Now I see
that crocodile totem, that Baru. It same one you show me, one you
find along side of billabong where I find man head and you find
footprint. That place right there, same one, same Baru you show me
before.

“I know, when
you show me last time, it bad one. That time I tell you, ‘Baru
spirit not my totem, it dangerous to me’. Today when I try touch it
in bag it bite me hand. I already know not touch, now it bite to
say the second time. ‘I bad spirit, you not touch.’

“You tell me
one time already you think Baru missing when that Susan lady go
missing. Now I find it back near billabong. Me, I think it say,
Maybe she come back to billabong.

“So I need to
come and tell you straight way. This time I not bring anything
away. Just leave Baru and shoes on ground where I take out of bag
until you come and look.”

Alan and Sandy
questioned back and forwards until it was clear they had the story
straight – that he had found the same carved crocodile that Alan
had shown him before and also a pair of pink woman’s sandals.

Then Alan rang
police HQ to organise a team to come out in the morning, first
thing. He tossed up ringing their other friends but decided he
needed to do an initial investigation before he told them and then
they could go from there. He was not sure it would lead to
anything, he was not even sure it would be the same crocodile
totem; similar things were for sale in tourist shops across the Top
End. But Charlie was convinced it was the same, said he could feel
the same spirit inside it, the exact same one as the other
time.

Alan thought he
had to trust Charlie on that for now. He remembered the day he had
shown it to Charlie. It was a Friday, just after the trial and
before sentencing, the day he had gone back and searched the site a
second time, looking for what Susan had hidden, the box with the
passports that they had now found.

As he came back
to town that day he had called to Charlie’s place with a six pack,
wanting to get his wisdom on anywhere else to look. He had shown
Charlie this discovery and Charlie had refused to touch it, saying
it was a crocodile totem called a Baru from the Gove country. He
had told Alan that, as an initiated elder of another totem, he must
not touch it, it would bite or hurt him or his family if he
did.

That day, after
they had finished a beer each, Alan had taken it home. As best he
could remember he had just dropped it on the computer desk at home,
never officially logging it though he had noted its discovery in
his notebook. It had then been forgotten when he had travelled out
to Gove the next day and again on his return. It was because of his
rush to get to Katherine and try and trace the phone calls which
led to the discovery of the texts, the thing that had finally
cracked the case.

By then it had
seemed unimportant, and slid out of his memory. When Susan
disappeared from the flat he had vaguely wondered what had happened
to it and mentioned to Charlie it was gone. He was fairly certain
he knew where he had left it and it was not there. So he had asked
Sandy but she had no knowledge of it. So it got forgotten, not
deliberate but seeming unimportant.

Now suddenly it
had come back into the centre. If Charlie was right someone had
taken it back there and the only someone that person could be was
Susan. So, if it was confirmed as the same object, it must mean
that she had gone back to the billabong. That was good news for
no-one. Hence better to be sure before he let this cat out of the
bag.

Now Charlie was
saying he would go home to bed but if Alan called for him in the
morning he would come out with him and show him the way to the
place where the bag was. Alan arranged to pick him up at six am, it
would mean up at five o’clock here but it was too important to
waste time on. Sandy would not be able to come and examine it on
site as she was due in court the next day. But he soon had a second
car organised to follow out with two more of his team and they
could secure the site while he came back to town and made
arrangements for whatever needed to happen from there.

The sun was
still low in the eastern sky and a steamy mist was rising from the
water surface into the cool air as they pulled up alongside the
billabong, keeping well back from where the plastic shopping bag
lay visible on the ground. The walked across to it, Alan getting
Charlie to follow in his footsteps, staying behind him.

He tried to
remember when it had last rained. It came to him, two days of rainy
weather in the middle of April about three weeks ago and that was
the last of it. He could see Charlie’s tyre and footmarks from last
night. It did not look like anyone else had been to this place
since before it last rained. It looked like it must have been a
heavy shower as he could see the outlines of some dried puddles,
their smooth dried mud surface still evident, with only a few
leaves fallen on top since then.

They came over
to where the bag had originally rested and Charlie pointed out the
outline of where it had sat, clearly it had been there since before
the last rain as its outline in the dried dirt was clear.

Charlie had
dropped it again about a metre from that site, where it now rested
alongside two pink strappy sandals. As Alan looked at them they
definitely looked familiar. He had a feeling he had seen Anne
wearing them, maybe they were hers. He had an idea that when they
compiled an inventory of everything anyone could remember that
Susan had in the flat, Anne had listed them and they were not
there. So it had been presumed that Susan was wearing them when she
disappeared as none other of her shoes seemed to be missing.

He carefully
picked the sandals up and placed them in one specimen bag, then he
picked up the shopping bag, peeked inside to glimpse the Baru
totem, it certainly looked the same. He placed that in a separate
bag. He would bring these to town, there was a good chance they
would find fingerprints or even some DNA on these.

He organised
for his other two men to do a careful search of the rest of the
site with minimal disturbance, to see if it warranted a full scale
search. He was not hopeful, the rain seemed to have washed away any
sign of visitors from before, but once they had checked more
carefully he would see what they came up with and decide.

In the meantime
he and Charlie were on their way back to town.

It had been an
excruciating two months. They had confirmed the sandals and the
Baru had been with Susan, her fingerprints were on both and her DNA
on the sandals. They also had Mark’s diary and his multiple
identities, they had Susan’s testimony on tape and transcript, they
had four passports of vanished girls and a new one to add, they had
five sets of distraught families. Yet they had almost nothing,
nothing to give any real clue where any one of these people could
be found, not even anyone’s last resting place.

Alan felt like
screaming in frustration. He had wanted this case, first to make a
reputation and then to seek Susan’s salvation. Yet she was gone and
he could not find her and he could not find any of the others as
well.

The only
redeeming feature was the friendships that sustained him. Strangely
the most important was the friendship with Charlie, that wise elder
who could look past this place of blockage to sense something
beyond, it gave Charlie equanimity and this gave him continuing
hope.

The others were
the gang, so to speak, of Anne and David, Buck and Julie, Vic, and
of course his own dearest Sandy. Whenever others came to Darwin
they would have a gathering of some sort, sometimes at Alan and
Sandy’s flat, sometimes at a restaurant or hotel, but mostly at
Charlie’s place to eat a ritual fish curry, catfish was best but
when not to hand there were plenty of other substitutes, washed
down with ice cold beers.

At one of these
gatherings David had an idea: “We have tried this on our own now
for more than two months and it has not got us far. Why don’t we
turn it on its head and try and enlist public support.

“There is no
longer anything much to hide, all the private secrets of these
girls are being ferreted out and fed to the tabloids, but that is
just scuttlebutt to feed the sensation seekers. However, while
these rumours circulate, our search is getting drowned. There must
be somebody out there who remembers something. I don’t mean regular
police publicity calling for assistance, but something much
bigger.

“We need two
things, a sympathetic story of each girl which the public will
remember and be moved by, and we need public attention which will
bring in money, money for rewards, money for investigations, but
most of all to buy publicity to reach into people’s distant
memories.

“I have
connections into the commercial media of Sydney, why don’t I ask
them for assistance, perhaps just one company or perhaps they all
could come on board in sort of public appeal to raise awareness and
funds for this cause.

“Perhaps we
could call it the Lost Girls Fund, not just for them but for all
the others who have disappeared without a trace across Australia:
money to fund ongoing investigations, on behalf of distant parents.
Most of all, money to find these girls and bring them home if
possible, or if not to place a memorial to remember them where they
last were.”

Everyone agreed
it was a good idea. Alan said he would need to clear it with his
bosses but thought it made sense. So David said he would pursue it
on his return to Sydney.

They left it to
David to use his contacts and see what he could arrange.

He started with
a journalist who worked in a major TV current affairs program who
he had known over several years. David had dealt with him when the
accusations against Susan had first surfaced. This man had been
surprisingly sympathetic to this story; perhaps because he already
knew David at a personal level and, despite the desire for
sensationalism, he had done an initial very balanced report on the
suspicions that were swirling around Susan’s role in Mark’s death
at that time. Since then he had steadfastly resisted the urge to
sensationalise.

They knew each
other well enough to go for a quiet beer and an off the record
chat. At the end of the chat it was agreed. This man, Mathew, was
strongly enthusiastic about the cause, he had a cousin who had
vanished over a decade ago and knew the anguish this part of his
family was still going through. He said he had good friends in the
two other major commercial TV channels and thought it might even be
possible for these channels to get together and cooperate on this
event.

So in the end a
deal was struck. The stories on each channel would share some
common threads but each would pursue a part of the story using
their own contacts and networks, each having their own night to run
a feature story so they were not competing head to head.

All would be
provided with access to Anne and David to tell of their knowledge
of what had happened in this event. Then each channel could focus
on their own stories relating to either these girls or to other
missing people who had vanished somewhere in Australia without a
trace.

Each TV station
would make a public announcement asking people to get in contact
with them about missing people they were trying to trace. Together
with Anne, David and Vic they would then work with police and
missing people organisations to profile a range of people and tell
these tragic stories in a way that would capture the sympathy of
many others.

Of course many
parts of the current police investigation could not be detailed but
the fact that four passports identifying these four girls as
missing had been in the possession of one Vincent Bassingham was
now public knowledge, as well as the trial and then disappearance
of Susan.

So there was
plenty of meat on the story and plenty of leads for each channel to
chase. The dates were set, three consecutive nights, one for each
to run their profile story. After each night’s story the channel
would launch their part of the appeal using the same hotline
number.

It was a
frantic time pulling it all together and establishing a charitable
foundation to handle the donations they expected.

But finally all
the bits were in place and the programs went to air.

All nights got
huge ratings, all the channels claimed it had benefitted them,
their journalists were fired up with their own personal motivations
to discover the stories of many missing girls and also a few
missing men. It was not targeted at the big end of town but just at
ordinary families who had known such people and shared the
pain.

At the end of
the week well over a million dollars had been raised to pursue the
investigation. The following week the trustees met and agreed to
fund further publicity and build memorials to remember those who
had gone missing somewhere in Australia, vanished without a
trace.

At this meeting
Anne had an idea which she put to the trustees. She had Susan’s
story on tape and wanted to write it, it was the best memorial she
could think of to remember her beautiful friend by.

She had now
talked to the other four sets of parents and they too wanted their
daughter’s stories to be told. So, if the trust would agree to
assist her in this pursuit, she would find time to travel and get
all these stories and then sit and write them up.