Anne thanked them and put the letter in her jacket pocket, wanting to respect the sender’s wishes to open it in private. She waved her goodbyes and walked back into the street.

  It was only a few minutes’ walk back to the cafe where the coffee and cake had tempted. She decided to return before opening and reading this missive. She found an outside table in a sheltered nook. Once her coffee and a lemon tart were served, she savoured a lingering sip and bite before retrieving the envelope.

  She did not know why, but she sensed this was a thing of importance. She opened it with a nail file from her bag, carefully lifting the flap with a minimum of tearing. Inside was a single sheet of paper, folded once. There was writing on the inside of the folded sheet. She took the sheet, opened it and spread it on the table in front of her. In the same writing she read,

  Dear Anne,

  You do not know me though you have told part of my story. I saw it on TV a few days ago.

  I found it very hard to watch, most hard when my parents appealed to know where I am.

  I did not deliberately set out to hurt them.

  I ask you let them know I am alive to ease their pain.

  Perhaps one day I will be able to bring myself to contact them directly.

  In the meantime I ask you do not disclose this information to others.

  I do not want police or media searching for me even though I do not think they will find me.

  There is one other thing I want to say.

  It is that the Mark I knew was a good person. He was kind and never sought to hurt me.

  I wish I could say more but I cannot.

  Thank you.

  Cathy

  Beside the name Cathy was a funny little squiggle that did not mean anything to Anne.

  Anne felt like a bomb had exploded in her hand. It could be a hoax but it did not feel like it. She wondered if it was true, that when all the other searching failed the TV program had reached one soul who now wanted to lay her ghost to rest.

  She did not know what to do. They had all promised to share any information that came their way, that is between the group of close knit friends and family that had led the search. But this girl had expressly asked that the only communication be directly with her own parents and, even then, she could not release to them what she thought was the key, the story of the child. She supposed she would talk to David and together they would decide what to do.

  She picked up her mobile phone and dialled his number. He answered on the first ring.

  She said, “Could you come home for a bit. There is something really important I must show you.

  As she walked to the front of the block of flats his car was turning into the driveway. She sat in the passenger’s seat as he stopped alongside her.

  Wordlessly she passed him the envelope.

  He read it his face furrowing. “Wow,” was all he said for a minute. Then he said, “This is the best news in a year. Let’s go inside and ring her parents together. I know it is the middle of the night over there but, if it was me, I would want to know without losing a minute.”

  So they found their number in Anne’s contact list. There was the inevitable delay as the links connected through the different exchanges. Then they could hear it ringing. It rang and rang. Finally a groggy Scottish male voice came down the line.

  David asked, “Is that Mr Alastair Rodgers?”

  There was an affirmative grunt.

  David introduced himself and Anne. They had both met Mr Rodgers several times before.

  “Oh, aye,” came the reply; then, “What news?”

  David handed the phone to Anne. As she picked it up she heard a female voice, a bit distant, come down the line. “Who is it Alastair?”

  “Those people from Australia, the ones looking for Cathy, ye know who did that TV program.”

  “Oh my God, Alastair, what are they saying?”

  Before he could reply Anne spoke down the line, “Mr and Mrs Rodgers, we think we have got a letter from Cathy, it says it is from her.”

  There was a sense of stunned silence coming down the line, a sense of people too overcome by emotion to find words. Anne could feel tears in her eyes. She started to speak again, finding her voice was choked too.

  She passed the letter to David saying “Could you read it to them?”

  David took the letter and the phone and said to the continued silence. “Are you there Mr and Mrs Rodgers? Could I read the letter out to you? It is only a few lines long and we are not sure if it is real, but we knew you would want to know straight away.

  Two voices came down the phone line, almost together; a female, “Please do,” and a male, “Och Aye, Please Yes, for God’s sake.”

  So David read as slowly and clearly as he could. A couple times his voice had a slight tremor. Then he said, “At the end, just near where she signs her name Cathy, she had put a funny little squiggle, half like a face but not quite.

  They heard, down the line, the female voice, “God be praised, it really is our girl.” The male voice was silent but they could hear what sounded like a man sobbing.

  After a minute it calmed and he came on the line again. He said, “With the squiggle you describe we are almost sure it really is our girl. It was a thing she and her sister had for communicating together when they were little girls. It is like she put it there to tell us it is really her. We are both a bit overwhelmed with emotion right now but would it be possible to send us a copy as quickly as you can. I have an email in my home office so perhaps you could scan it and send it through.

  It was done in a minute while they stayed on the phone. Another minute later the voice came back again. “Yes we have the letter now. It is her handwriting and her signature. That squiggle is something that could have only come from her; so praise be to God, our prayers are answered and we know our girl is still alive.”

  There was not much more to say. The Rodgers’ said they would ring back next day once they had time to digest the news and decide what to do. They were already booked to come to Australia for the memorial ceremony in Darwin next month. Perhaps they could bring that forward and come for a couple extra weeks to try and find their Cathy.

  It was agreed they would talk again the next morning Scottish time.

  Chapter 48 - Laying the Ghosts to Rest

  On a cool breezy day in late June over fifty people gathered at a headland called East Arm. It looked out over Darwin Harbour on one side and on the other looked out across a vast flat ocean called the Timor Sea to a distant land below the horizon called Indonesia. Occasional sail boats moved slowly across the distant sea sky horizon.

  A rock, a big square slab of natural sandstone, taller than any of the people assembled, had been erected, set amongst other natural earth coloured rocks of the headland. It faced four ways with each flat side bearing a name at the top.

  There was Elin’s side facing directly to the northern ocean and across the world to a Nordic sea, a place from where a warrior queen may choose to sail in search of distant lands.

  There was Isabelle’s side which faced towards a less distant Kimberly coast where some fragments of a former life still lay hidden.

  There was Josie’s side which pointed south towards a distant desert grave covered, a grave once covered in dead flowers which held the last remains of an unknown girl.

  And pointing back across the city of Darwin and out to the east, was Amanda’s side, the city girl who had come to the bush, the girl from the land far across the Pacific Ocean, the girl who came to an unfamiliar land where she did not belong and was now lost somewhere to the far east or south east of this place. If Amanda’s spirit could choose Anne knew she would have chosen it to reside in a city of buildings not an empty desert.

  Each rock face was inscribed, carved into it, with a short story of the life and loss of a girl, simple things like date and place of birth, home town, favourite things. The final part was a short story of what brought them to this land and of where and when they died.

  Below these inscriptions were other plaques telling the stories of other missing “lost” girls and some missing men too. Half a dozen adorned each face but there were many more to follow.

  For Cathy and Susan there was no inscribed rock faces, that was too permanent, an abandonment of hope. All who knew these two girls were determined to still find hope. But still they were lost to those who loved them most.

  A simple bronze plaque told for both of them the story of what had brought them to here. Susan’s faced east, on Amanda’s side, pointing to the place of the river of crocodiles where she had left her lover and may have returned. Cathy’s faced south, to somewhere between Coober Pedy and Alice Springs where she was last seen. On her plaque was written the poem from Mark’s diary. It seemed a fitting way to remember her.

  Anne walked around the stone and came to a stop facing out to the sea, searching for the warrior queen of a distant horizon. Somewhere over the glittering sea of waves sparkling in the breeze she imagined she could glimpse her, Mark’s first loved Elin, forever travelling away to unknown lands. Anne could see her clearly now, the girl with the golden hair, the Elfin Queen, sailing a proud ship further and further out to sea. She really wished Mark was standing beside his Elin, sailing to a better place. Then this world of loss and heartache, for so many, would have never been.

  But if she could have one wish and only one wish it would be to see her friend Susan again, home safe, no longer another lost girl.

  Vic walked up beside her and took her hand. “We will find her; I know, deep down, we will find her when the time is right.”

  Dancing Shadows

  Crocodile Dreaming Series Book 5

  Graham Wilson

  Copyright

  Dancing Shadows

  Graham Wilson

  Copyright Graham Wilson 2017

  ISBN 9781370030002

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without prior approval of the author For permission to use contact Graham Wilson by email at grahambbbooks@gmail.com

  BOOKS IN CROCODILE DREAMING SERIES

  Book 1 – An English Visitor

  Book 2 – Crocodile Man

  Book 3 – Girl in an Empty Cage

  Book 4 – Lost Girl Diary

  Book 5 – Dance with Shadows

  Reader Reviews

  Great Five Stars - Great end to an outstanding series. But don’t begin here. Begin with the first book, ‘An English Visitor’ and see if you can guess where the story goes.

  I highly recommend this series; if you enjoy suspense novels or reading about Australia and especially both, you’ll be happy you got a hold of this.

  Exceptional story. Just loved it. The sense of place and aboriginal culture is great too

  You must read this series ….. the content is excellent

  It’s superb… So sorry to finish it!

  I read this series one volume at a time, over the last two years. It’s very entertaining, well-written and really makes you feel like you’re there with the characters. I can’t praise it highly enough!

  What a good series, so many stories, so many lives, growing darker with a thread of hope

  A compelling story, told with sincerity. It would make a good plot for a television mini-series!

  I thoroughly enjoyed this combined series. It is a nicely composed, thrilling script with essentially a fairy tale goodness. With this book I had my virtual tour through Australia.

  Author Note

  This book series has been a labour of love, assisted by many people along the way. You are too many to name and some do not want to be named, but you know who you are. I thank you all. Telling this story has been a long journey, both for me as for the story. It is both satisfying and sad to be at the end.

  For readers who have enjoyed the series, thus far, I thank you for your time spent in reading. Special thanks for those who told me of enjoyment through reviews and other means. I hope this final part lives up to your expectations. For those who have not found it to their liking, and said so, I thank you for this too, both for your time to read and to let me know. In revising these books this feedback, both good and bad, has helped.

  Final thanks to so many people from across the place called Australia’s Northern Territory. You, and its vast landscapes in their ever changing hues, have given me the ideas which grew in my mind to become this story.

  Special thanks to an unnamed English backpacker, one I met briefly in Cairns and who then came to the Northern Territory for a short stopover to see its remote places. She spent two days travelling with me in Kakadu and Arnhem Land, seeing places similar to those in my book.

  None of the awful things of this story happened to her and she returned home to England for a happy and successful life. However, for a brief period she was a delightful travelling companion and her English mannerisms and joie de vie remain burnt brightly in my memory.

  From this memory came the kernel of the character who sits at the centre of this story, my imagined Susan. She now lives on in the minds of thousands of readers, having gained her immortality through the medium of this book. It is likely that her memory will continue on long after we are all gone. But, without a real person to inspire the idea, she never would have been. So to the real English visitor I say a profound thank you. I am in your debt for giving me a series of great memories as the foundation for this story.

  Prologue

  It was a small hour of the morning, number around three or four. Her mind was sharply awake in an instant but she did not know where her body was, except that it was in a bed and the bed was unfamiliar.

  There was the sound of another human drawing breath, in and out, regular but not loud. She moved her arms around to explore the bed space. There was another body lying not far away, source of breath sounds, it was a hard and angular shaped, a body of elbows and bony protuberances. It must be a man. She had no idea of this man’s name or face. She knew only that she was here and he was there, sharing this time, space and place.

  Who and where was she and who was he? Her mind held no image of an identity, hers, his or other. It held no image of a future or any past; she knew only that the present was an unfamiliar place.

  And at the farthest edge of her mind and vision she glimpsed another place, a desert landscape of late bright sunlight reflecting off glowing hills. Within this fading light sunlit shadows were dancing. They were shadows in part familiar, as if she should know them but did not. Faint music came from where they were, it seemed that they called to her, but she could discern no voices or meaning, only that they seemed to be calling to her to come and join them, calling with yearning and sadness mixed into bitter sweetness. She knew them not, yet their kinship reached into the very edges of her mind

  She willed her return to sleep so as not to have to discover a present reality, feeling hope that she would awake to a new morning reality where memory and perspective again became clear, where knowing was returned.

  Chapter 1 - Daybreak

  It was early morning when she awoke again. She knew where she was and she knew her name was Jane, she was Jane Bennet. That was the name she had been holding in her hand when she had discovered herself, a person without a past, some months ago. The name was on a baggage label, written in crude marker pen writing. It was attached to the small overnight bag that her hand was grasped around. The bag held a dress, a pair of loose track pants and top, some underwear and canvas shoes. And it held an envelope with cash, Australian dollars to a value of around seven hundred. Her person had no other label; her memory held none and the name Jane seemed to fit. Jane rhymed with plain; plain Jane, an ordinary person. So she took the name and used it.

  That first morning of her remembered life she had awoken in a roadside shelter, lying on a bench seat. The shelter was built from four timber posts with corrugated iron on three sides and a roof. The fourth side was open to an empty dirt road which had seen no traffic since she awoke. It looked like a place built by a local farmer to shelter his children from sun and rain while waiting for a school bus to come. Its furniture was two planks of rough-hewn timber, bolted into a seat shape. It stood on four timber legs which rested on bare red dirt. That was it, her temporary home; it had been a place to sleep but it was not a place to stay.

  She knew she was in Australia, somewhere. It was not cold so it was probably somewhere in the northern half. And it was not desert as there were good sized trees growing nearby, though the ground was dry and the grass was dead and brown not green. But that was as far as her knowledge and memory could take her, beyond having her own written name which she was determined to hold to. It was the one thing that felt solid.

  She looked at herself. There was no mirror so she could not see a face, but she had thin pasty arms and legs, objects long hidden from the sun. Her hands were soft and free of calluses so they must have done little manual work of late. Her hair was shoulder length and, when she pulled it to her face, it appeared to have a dark brown or black colour. It smelt unwashed. A loose fitting smock, like any other cheap dress, covered her body in a shapeless manner. It had a pale floral design and was otherwise indistinct. It gave no clues. As she ran her eyes over her dress she saw that her belly protruded greatly. She smoothed her hands over it. The realization came that she was well and truly pregnant, expecting a baby and the baby was not far off.

  As she contemplated this new fact, and what it signified, she heard a distant sound. She saw a plume of dust coming towards her, it was a sedan car. As it came close she saw its occupants were an aboriginal woman driver and another aboriginal woman passenger. She waved to the car and it pulled to a stop.

  These people evidenced little surprise in seeing her, not a greeting of recognition, but a casual welcome. It seemed this was a place where people came and went. She was but one more.

  They spoke in broken English, “You want ride?”