Chapter 15 – Just a Guilty Plea
Susan sat in a conference room with a prison officer by her side. Sitting opposite her was a barrister and solicitor for the prosecution. Sitting at one end of the table was Alan, as principle witness for the prosecution, though he was only there to clarify any evidence that was unclear and not to otherwise speak, or so it had been explained to her.
Actually she wished she could have a few minutes to talk to him alone. She had not seen him at close quarters since they spent a day sitting next to each other on the aeroplane that returned her to Australia. Not that she had anything specific to say, but she felt affection for him and knew he was trying his best for her despite her best endeavours to lead him and Sandy in the wrong direction. That was just a necessity, it was not personal, and she would have liked to exchange a few friendly words, friends that she could talk to were so few. But instead she turned her attention to the business at hand.
Everyone had tried to get her to retain counsel to represent her in the trial and she kept declining all their offers. In the end the judge had made a ruling that, while he would not appoint a counsel against her wishes, he would appoint a legal representative to act on the courts behalf and seek to protect her interests where feasible.
Susan did not care, she was just glad she had got to this place without further delay. It was nearly over and she wanted it to be over. Today was really about confirming a few basic facts to save an argument over them in court. “To narrow the scope of what has to be determined during the trial,” was how the prosecution barrister had put it.
She nodded when someone laboriously explained it all again for the umpteenth time.
“Yes I get that,” she said. “I don’t need you to keep repeating it and I am not clear why you are bothering when I have told you that, once I am able to enter a plea, I will stand up and state that I wish to plead guilty. At that stage it should all be over. So I struggle to see what this whole drawn out process is about.”
She saw the barrister from the other side, the man who would stand up to bury her on behalf of the state in six days’ time, roll his eyes in a put on of weary exasperation. “Nevertheless Miss McDonald, we are obliged to go through this process, to outline the evidence we will lead, just so there are no surprises, no suggestions that we have relied on information not provided to the defence in establishing your guilt.”
Susan rolled her eyes in return and replied, unconsciously mimicking his weary exasperation. “But you do not need to prove anything, in my plea I will admit to the truth of the key facts which you state. These are that I killed Mark Bennet, or rather I should now say, Vincent Marco Bassingham, by striking him on the head with a piece of wood, and then, as he lay on the ground, either dead or unconscious, I don’t know which, that I dragged his body to the edge of the billabong where it was taken and consumed by three large crocodiles which tore the body apart between them.”
Susan could see Alan’s eyebrows raised in surprise; her description of the multiple crocodiles and what they had done as he lay on the ground was a new admission. She had stated this quite deliberately made so as to forestall any discussion that might ensue about how the separated body parts arose. However no one else seemed to notice.
The barrister replied, “Yes, Miss McDonald, we know all that. Like us you have made your points before, but I do need to go through the rest of the evidence we will lead.
“We will establish you met Mr Bassingham in Cairns where you went diving with him. We will establish you met him again after arriving in Alice Springs, that you travelled with him to Yulara and then on, over the next week and a half, to Timber Creek through a range of Northern Territory locations including the Barkly Roadhouse and Heartbreak Hotel. Do you agree to those facts?
“Yes,” said Susan, “As you are aware I have already provided that in an amended statement to the police.”
“Then we will establish that you continued to travel on with him to the billabong on the Mary River where his body was found.”
Susan sat up and looked intently. This was something new she had not thought about. She asked, “How will you establish that? I have admitted to being with him at the Mary River on the morning of that Saturday in August when I killed him. I have made no admissions about how I got from Timber Creek to the billabong, so how do you propose to establish that?”
The barrister looked caught out so she continued, “I do not propose to admit that fact or otherwise as nothing turns on it. It is only relevant that I was at the location where he was killed, at the time he was killed, in order to establish that I could have killed him, and I have already admitted to that.
“So no, I will make no admissions of how I got from Timber Creek to the billabong, because it is not relevant. As far as I can see you have no evidence of how I got there. So I am sorry but I will not agree to that as evidence. You can contest it in court if you choose.”
She glanced to the end of the table where Alan sat. She saw him trying to maintain a poker face but with the edge of a smile creeping into his eyes. He was enjoying this. She had to admit she was too. It was a long time since she had used her brain in an intellectually challenging way. Perhaps the day in court would be more fun than she had thought. Unfortunately the barrister on the other side seemed to lack a sense of humour and kept grinding away and she made herself paly the game. Yes she agreed to all the facts relating to the murder that she had already admitted to. Duh!
Now they moved on to what had happened after the murder.
The barrister droned on. “We will establish that you set out to systematically hide the evidence of the murder. That you scraped blood stains away from the place where his body first lay and from where you dragged him to the water.”
Susan replied. “I don’t consider that any of this is relevant to whether or not I murdered him, so I do not admit it however you can seek to prove it if you wish.”
The barrister continued “We will establish that you burnt all the items which belong to the victim to conceal his identity.”
Again Susan replied. “I don’t consider that it relevant to whether or not I murdered him, so I do not admit it however you can seek to prove it if you wish.”
The barrister continued. “We will establish that you removed and destroyed all the victim’s identity papers and other items which belonged to him, yourself or other persons unknown, and which may have provided a link between him, yourself and the murder site.”
As the barrister mentioned ‘persons unknown’ the four passports, which she had tried never to think of since that day, came bursting into her head, along with Marks diary.
Instinctively, before she had time to think, she shook her head. “No, that is not true.” The barristers barely seemed to notice, but she saw Alan look at her sharply. She knew he had picked this slip up though he said nothing.
She clarified. “I don’t consider that it is relevant as to whether or not I murdered him, so I do not admit it. However, you can seek to prove it if you wish.”
After another half hour it was all done. It was really a waste of time but so be it. She would fight those items that she was not admitting, line by line on the day, a few they could prove, most they could not. It would help her get through what she knew would be a gruelling day, her trial date, as her parents and friends watched on.
It was OK to play at it here, it was just pretend blood sport, but in there it would be for real. She felt pleased she had come here today rather than refusing to attend. It had toughened her up for the real thing when there would be a crowd baying for her blood and her parents and friends were watching it all in horror.
But she also knew that she had made a mistake, an admission which might provide a worm hole for that policeman, Alan, to burrow through. She thought he would be hard pushed to find anything on the basis of that little admission, but she was not completely sure.
She had as good as said there was still stuff she had not destroyed, the inference was that
it was still out there to be found. Of course the finding this material would be much harder but it was not impossible. She was glad that nobody thought to use sniffer dogs when they first searched the site. Even after a month or two they could have found the passports where she had buried them. Now, with all the wet season’s rain, she knew that chance had passed.
Still she felt a grudging admiration for Alan; he was nothing if not sharp. She was no longer so sure that all her secrets would stay hidden. If they ever found the metal box with those things of Mark’s she had buried it would all be over.