Cathy seemed a shadow of his love and friendship with Belle. This seemed to give him a measure of forgiveness for his past. And it seemed she left him with a promise, the new Queen would come.

  After Cathy was gone a year passed until Susan came. In the next twenty pages of notes there was no female presence, the story seemed to be mostly records of work and trips abroad, odd mentions of Vic and Buck, but mostly he was in the Middle East. It seemed he was there doing something significant, perhaps a major work project there though it seemed more of the nature of a search for an unnamed thing or person. At its end this part suggested he had found what he sought.

  Returning from a final trip, he wrote, “It is done. Search over. I am glad.”

  The day after this was written Susan appeared, glimpsed through trees on a beach in Cairns. She appeared ‘Goddess like’, and almost immediately it was clear he had found his new queen, successor of Elin, to whom he once promised an inheritance of a desert kingdom. This time an inheritance was given, written in a will, though Susan never saw it and its fate was unknown.

  Last time the Queen died, this time it was his turn instead.

  She killed the king and yet remained loyal, strange indeed!

  Anne saw the pattern like an ancient prophecy, predicted and fulfilled. But she did not understand why one or both must choose to die.

  It seemed like the Abraham story, with a life sacrifice at its heart. But it was not set in Old Testament times when God and man walked side by side.

  Part 8 - The Emptiness

  Chapter 43 – Endless Emptiness

  The year had passed and a new year had begun.

  Anne had returned from her travels in October, having gone to America after her holiday in the outback with David. She spent the final months of the year cataloguing all her information and turning it into a draft book called “Lost Girls”. By Christmas she had a good draft with her editors for review. She felt in great need of a rest from a gruelling year.

  She had lived an emotional roller coaster as she found out story after story, small parts happy, but in totality a trail of appalling tragedy.

  She felt profoundly sorry for all the girls and their wasted lives, Susan especially. But for Susan’s chance meeting with Mark, that had thrown her off the rails, her future had seemed so bright.

  But most of all she felt profound sympathy for the man at the centre, the man whose own life had been a series of ever increasing horrors. In the end he was perpetrator as much as a victim and part of her felt it was fitting that there was a closure with his death.

  Having walked so many miles in his shoes she could not find it in her to blame him, despite his final remorseless murders. She only wished it could have been otherwise, particularly before he had met Susan.

  She thought that Vic’s Mum had got closest to the truth; Mark had lost a mother and her love. It seemed that what had followed as he had gone through so many relationships was an increasingly desperate and demented search for another love, a new queen.

  So many times he could have found her but fate intervened. The final outcome, a an act in a classic Shakespearian tragedy where the death of the villain was preordained; but to get there he destroyed all he touched, with hindsight seemed inevitable.

  Anne wished there was a way to wind back the clock and make it otherwise, if only Elin had lived, his first fairy queen, if only Belle lived, she seemed the nearest in this story to a simple love, if only Josie, but for jealousy perhaps she would have had Mark’s measure, if only Amanda had not tried to wrest control from his soul. The final two deaths were much darker but it did not appear that Mark formed a premeditated plan to harm them, more it was that they were broken inside too and had failed to understand he was even more broken than them and how dangerous that made him.

  Cathy was the strangest; in a way she was the most broken of all. But yet, for the first time, there appeared to be a person with a power to heal and be healed, perhaps it was her need that had brought goodness from him. But, before that had run any natural course, she too was gone. Still the Mark that came after her seemed a less damaged person, the poem of the new queen seemed to be something he had taken to heart, seeking a new beginning.

  Then along came Susan; the way Mark described her she had fulfilled the new queen prophecy, first described by him as a Greek goddess. And she had the look, that ineffable look shared with Belle and Cathy, the dark hair and searching eyes but something more, a mix of mischief and joie de vie, perhaps love of life was the best way to say it. It seemed to reach into Mark’s soul and connect with him, was it a look, glimpsed as a child, of his long lost mother.

  Anne had seen a photo of Mark’s mother, taken on her wedding day, but this was a posed photo without life. While her hair and face were similar she could not judge if she too had that look, but perhaps. She knew that Sandy had other family photos from Mark’s past, but she had not viewed them, perhaps they would show something if she did.

  So when Susan had come along she too had a look, common to Belle and Cathy which caught Mark’s attention and made him arrange to meet her. It did seem he was seeking to start afresh and not damage this one. He begged her not to seek his past. But yet it could not be, she needed to know the man and the truth was uncovered. Then, under pressure, he reverted to type; professing love but tying her up like a dangerous animal, unable to reconcile his two parts.

  Then that final place of clarity where he realised he could not kill what he loved this time, but yet he could not stand by and let his history come out. He saw that to impart to Susan the knowledge of who he was would inevitably sow the seeds of future destruction, that the knowledge would tear her apart, little by little.

  And so he had chosen. Anne had no doubt that, if Susan had not acted first, he would have swam to join the crocodiles, the outcome would have been the same but without Susan having his blood on her hands.

  But then, as Anne thought further, even that alternate place seemed no solution; for Susan to watch her doomed lover being torn apart would most likely have damaged her equally to her own act. So Susan was in a trap of circumstances too; she saw no way out either. At last Anne felt she was in a place to understand the hopeless desperation that consumed her friend’s soul, emptiness feeding on yet more emptiness, without escape.

  So here she was now at the end of her own search, seeking a solution but there was none. Sometimes life just dealt shit cards giving no solution. And this story had a whole royal flush of them.

  By the end of the year Anne was totally numb from living this human storm, day after day, week after week. It was a relief to be alone with only David and his family, to be in a place where no one talked further about this last year. As she sat in the sun watching David’s family at work and at play she felt normalcy gradually return to her life.

  Chapter 44 - The Inquest

  Anne returned from a New Year’s holiday at David’s family home to Darwin in late January for a formal inquest into the disappearance and possible death of five girls, Elin, Isabelle, Amanda, Cathy and Susan.

  While Susan’s disappearance had no connection to the others in Mark being the person likely to be responsible, yet Susan was still inextricably part of the whole story, her life having run a very parallel course.

  After some preliminary argument and counter-argument the coroner agreed that Susan also be a subject of consideration of this inquest, if only to more clearly establish her role in the other disappearances and lay to rest some of the malicious rumours circulating that she was part of some grand plot, rather than just another victim, even if after the event.

  Neither her parents nor Anne had any objection to Susan being a person under consideration, their only interest was to find anything further that may lead to her or allow an understanding of what had happened to her.

  The judge also named an unknown further person of interest who may also have become deceased while in the company of Vincent Mark Bassingham. This person was of unknown identity and, for the purpose of the proceedings was only known as J, as this was the only clear evidence of identity within the diary. No one had come forward to give a possible identity of this unknown person so, in evidence, J she remained. Still in the media and peoples’ conversation she soon became known as Josie. It gave her a human face, perhaps it was her real first name.

  The judge ruled that J was not a formal subject of the inquiry but rather a person about whom the court was seeking to establish facts which may lead to an identity and subsequent investigation.

  On a steamy wet season day in Darwin the inquest got underway, the lawyers, police and witnesses moving quickly from their air conditioned cars to courtroom coolness, while the media scrum sweated out in the sun hoping for sensational shots of the main characters coming and going.

  The coroner called all to order. There were two main lines of evidence for the inquiry. The first was the police investigation led by Alan for the NT Police. The second was the evidence of the diary, provided jointly by Anne, Alan and a psychologist who sought to establish some key facts about its author including his mental state, history and personality type. The diary’s accuracy was also evaluated on the basis of internal consistency and other known history of Mr Bassingham.

  The police evidence was led off with Alan taking the stand, supported by many others, working through what the police had discovered. Alan described how the investigation initially discovered the metal box with the passports and then how the police had then established the identity of the four girls whose passports were found. He showed, in photographs, the former hiding place of the metal box in the vehicle of Vincent Bassingham, also known by his various aliases, then described the evidence leading to a connection between him and these missing persons.

  Various police officers then gave evidence as to how they had investigated the identity of each of the four girls and how, at the time when the passports were found, all the girls were considered missing persons but without any specific evidence as to their fate. The police described how they contacted the parents and others who knew each girl and obtained statements about their knowledge of the circumstances preceding each disappearance.

  All the parents and many of the friends were in court to corroborate this testimony. It established last known places of residence and intended travel plans of each girl, though it was clear that such knowledge in each case was very limited and fragmentary.

  The coroner was heard to remark that these girls seemed to typify many backpackers who came to Australia, with only a vague knowledge of where they were going and what they would do.

  The police then outlined their other lines of inquiry to find last known locations of each girl. This placed Elin’s last known location at Birdsville in the company of Vincent Bassingham, otherwise known as Mark Brooks, on the basis of evidence of the landlord of the Birdsville Hotel. Isabelle’s last known location was at Derby, where it was confirmed she stayed the night in a room in her own name but in the company of Vincent Bassingham, yet again with an alias of Mark Brooks. It established that Amanda’s last known location was at the Emerald Hotel, where she had shared a room with Vincent Bassingham, now with the alias of Mark Brown. For Cathy it established the last known location as the private residence of Nikko and Athena Christos, where she also shared a room with Vincent Bassingham, who they knew as Mark Bennet.

  Thus, all parties agreed that Vincent Bassingham, in various aliases, was the last person known to be in the company of all these girls and that all had appeared to travel willingly with him at that point.

  The evidence then moved to Anne who described first the transcript of Susan as captured on tape. Short excerpts of the tape were played to confirm the veracity of some parts and a full transcript provided to the coroner. Anne led them through a summarised version of this tape describing its key events from Susan first meeting Mark on the Barrier Reef to travelling with him from Alice Springs to the Top End of the NT.

  She told of the succession of discoveries Susan made, beginning with the multiple number plates, then the metal box with the passports and the multiple identities of Vincent Bassingham, the various Mark Bs, then of the text she sent and its reply. Finally she told of the events from Mark’s discovery about the texts, Susan’s captivity and coming to the billabong of the crocodiles, then of the final night and the next day. As she worked her way through this story she could see journalists running in an out of the court room, capturing ever more details, many horrific, as this story was finally revealed and rushing to tell their various media outlets.

  It surprised her that this story, which she carried in such detail inside her head, was as largely unknown to the outside world. Of course, while the police had released some parts, it had never been told as a coherent whole until this day of her testimony.

  Anne then described the verbal story, as passed on to Susan by Mark, that he admitted to killing some of these girls, particularly one whose story matched that of Amanda.

  Her next evidence was to be about the information within the diary. However, before she was called to give this, the psychologist, who had also investigated the contents of the diary, so as to appraise the mental state of its author, was called.

  He said he had formed the view that the diary was mostly a credible and accurate document, which predominantly showed its author was a rational and lucid person, though it increasingly showed evidence of anti-social and psychotic behaviours in its later parts.

  He also explained that it included parts of creative writing and poetry which were, in some instances, apparently fictitious. He said that in many cases it was difficult to distinguish between parts giving true information and fictional parts. However his overall assessment was the diary of one Vincent Mark Bassingham, who called himself Mark B should be generally treated as providing an accurate description of the facts it recorded.

  The police were also questioned about their investigations into the diary’s veracity and confirmed that, in places where information allowed, they had been able to verify many specific facts.

  Anne was then recalled to continue her telling of her discoveries of the fate of these girls from the diary records, later corroborated by other sources, particularly the various girls’ parents.

  She told the judge that with his permission she would use the name Mark to describe this man as that was his identity within the diary and also the name he was known by to all the girls. She explained how she had read the full diary document through several times and had begun by cross referencing the parts which told of Susan with the descriptions Susan had given of the same events. This had helped her to familiarise herself with Mark’s writing style and also give her a sense of the veracity of his descriptions. It also helped her differentiate between factual and creative components.

  Overall she said she had found close corroboration between Susan’s story and the diary records, though she noted that Susan’s story was more comprehensive and complete for the parts she knew.

  She then began giving the substance of the diary records made of Elin, which described the period after they left Birdsville and travelled into a remote part of south western Queensland where they had spent about a week removing opals from an abandoned mine shaft until its collapse led to Elin’s death. She told how Mark described this event, in apparent anguish. He told of his attempted rescue and how he buried her alongside a nearby billabong, marking the grave site with rocks placed to outline the boat he buried her in, following the custom of her Viking ancestors.

  The police corroborated the account of the diary and confirmed there were innumerable abandoned mine shafts in this part of Queensland, which had an estimated area of about 100,000 square kilometres. They said to date it had proved impossible to locate the site of the mine or the grave though searches were continuing, mainly using satellite images.

  Anne then told of her visit to Sweden and described how this burial site matched the form of burial of Elin’s own mother, providing a further and independent source of corroboration for the diary account.

  From there the coroner moved to examining the circumstances of Isabelle’s disappearance. Anne took them through the key points of the diary account, in this case the joint handwriting of both Isabelle and Mark with Isabelle’s French annotations now translated and confirmed as being in her handwriting by her parents and other experts. She then spoke of how Mark wrote of her fall from the cliff into the water below, surrounded by large crocodiles, and how he said he had shot her in the head with his rifle in the final seconds to alleviate her suffering.

  There was audible gasp of surprise from the press gallery at this revelation and Isabelle’s parents covered their faces in pain as it was recounted. The judge admitted these facts were deeply distressing to all parties and called a recess. After the recess the police advised they had searched for the location of Isabelle’s demise without success, but as there were hundreds of kilometres of coast in this area it was another needle in a haystack.

  Next came the story of the unknown J. Anne gave her account based on reconstruction of the events within the diary. The police confirmed that Mark owned a flat in Katherine which fitted the description of the time spent there. They also confirmed the visit of Mark and a girl at around this time to Rosewood Station though the girl’s name was not remembered. They had also located a track and billabong matching the diary description of the final site where they were together. However they had been unable to locate any evidence of their occupation of the former camp site. In relation to the identity of J they had been unable to find any leads, and the area where it was claimed she was buried was so vast as to be impossible to even begin a search. They confirmed the account of the barman in the Top Springs Hotel of an altercation taking place between Mr Bassingham and another patron which led to this man being severely beaten, needing prolonged hospital treatment for a ruptured liver. The man himself had been located but he refused to provide further evidence.