Chapter 21 – Marco’s Story – Night 28
“My real name is Vincent Marco Bassingham. Vincent was my father’s name; Marco was the name of my mother’s brother, who died young. My mother, who was Italian, called me Marco. At school it got shortened to Mark, Mark B.
“I liked this name better than Vincent Bassingham, because I hated my father, and couldn’t stand being compared to him. He was a big burly man, quick with his fists and his temper. Few people could stand against him. Those who tried came out much the worse.
“He would hit my mother, mostly slaps but every now and then with a fist or a belt. She was terrified of him, she was naturally timid and he was a bully.
“Once, when he was hitting her in the street, a man tried to protect her. My father almost killed him. When the policeman came around to ask about it, he told him to ‘shoot through or he would do the same to him’. The policeman never came back.
“I was seven when my mum ran away, she was scared of him almost all the time and had to find somewhere to escape. He was really mad at her for doing this; he said it made him look bad.
“After she left she never tried to see me again; I think she was far too scared of him. Though my father looked for her, it was a long time before he found her. But he eventually did.
“He beat her so badly that she was taken to hospital. Though the police and hospital staff wanted her to press charges she refused.
“The day they discharged her, my father brought me with him to see her again. He told her she had to come back to look after me or he would thrash her again.
“The next day they found her dead. She had swallowed a whole bottle of pills. My father never told me what happened; she just was not there when I came home from school. I only found out years later, he just said she had died and he only told me that well after she was dead and buried. He went on with his violent drunken life without a backwards glance.
“I hated him, but I was frightened of him too. I could fight well enough at school, but with him I had no chance, he was three times my size and would hit me with anything he could find, belts, walking sticks, a horse whip, a cricket bat.
“Usually he went to the pub after work, and got home too drunk to do anything. Sometimes the lady next door gave me dinner; but mostly I just had to eat whatever I could find.
“I learned how to look after myself. I would shoplift, pick pockets, and steal from store-yards and from people’s homes. I was clever and almost never got caught.
“But, when I was twelve, a policeman saw me stealing a block of chocolate in a grocery store. He told the store manager. Other police were called and I was taken to the police station. As my father was drinking, and couldn’t be found, a neighbour was called to take me home.
“When my father got home and found out he flew into a towering rage and whipped me like a dog. My back was bleeding in lots of places. The next day, the police came around and took me away. They sent me to remand school for a year.
“I thought my father was a bully. But he had nothing on the guys who ran the remand school. They would line us up in a row for three hours most evenings. We had to stand still while they sat behind drinking beer. Every time someone moved they would belt him with a long whippy cane. They raped the prettier boys; they would take them to their rooms and often two would have a go together. The boys would come out bleeding and crying.
“They never got me that way, I was a bit smarter. But no one did anything to stop them either. A few times boys tried to run away but they were brought back and beaten, really badly. Some tried to complain but they got beaten as well, even worse.
“One day I was caught by one of the biggest guys, a warden that I really hated. He had taken to hitting me when I wasn’t looking. I was late coming down for school, I had tried to hide away to skip class, but as I came out there he was.
“‘This is my lucky day,’ he said as he saw me, then, ‘I have a big surprise for you.’
“First he took off his big leather belt, then started to unzip his pants. I knew what he was going to do, first thrash me with his belt, then when I was hurting too much to try and get away, he would fuck me.
“No one else was around. He grabbed me by the ear, right at the top of a big flight of stairs. He was planning to take me downstairs, to his room. He liked boys my age. He had already done this to most of the others.
“At the top of the stairs he tripped. I saw my chance and gave him a big shove. He went flying down the stairs. When I got down to the bottom he was lying there at a funny angle with his head facing the wrong way and not moving.
“I didn’t know he was dead, but I was glad I had hurt him because he was such a bastard. As no one knew I was there I snuck off to school.
“When I came back, after school, he was covered on a stretcher, ready to be taken away. The police were there and they asked a few questions. Had anyone seen what happened? Everyone said no. They assumed he must have had a heart attack or tripped, fallen, and broken his neck.
“After that I realised how easy it was to get rid of people I didn’t like.
“Later that year I ran away and got a job working on a cattle station. One day I was sent to help a man fixing the windmills, he was a bastard too. He used to hit me whenever something went wrong. One particular day he dropped a spanner from the high windmill tower. I was up there helping him, holding the bits together. He said it was my fault and laid in to me with a big piece of hard plastic pipe. I was scared he was going to knock me off the edge; he was hitting me so hard. So I kept my head turned away and hung onto the steel frame for dear life, waiting for my chance. At last he stopped.
“As he turned his back I gave him a push. He went over the edge; head first. I looked down and saw him lying, dead as a maggot, on the ground below. Back at the station I told the boss he lost his balance and fell off while I was below. The boss seemed happy to believe this. I think he was relieved that this man was dead too, to tell the truth.
“By the time I was twenty I had got rid of three more blokes like this. Nobody had asked any questions because each time, deep down, people were happy to see the end of these bullies.
“Then I heard there was big money to be made in the Middle East, so I got a job running security for the pipelines.
“We would get real smartarse robbers, mostly from African gangs, with no papers. They would try to steal oil and other things to sell. Our job was to make ‘em disappear; the more permanent the better. So we bumped off a few, dropping their bodies in empty wells, or shafts, places they couldn’t be found.
“The word got around pretty quick to leave us alone. We would catch and do another one every few months to keep things quiet.
“Then a guy who I was working with got me to go to the Congo with him, to do security there. There, as well as getting rid of men who caused trouble, you could take all the women you wanted and, if they got a bit difficult, you just shut them up for good. I joined in the same as all the others were doing. It was there I killed my first woman; she bit me when I was having her, so I hit her really hard and she was dead. We threw her body in the river and it washed away.
“I’ve killed maybe thirty people since I was a teenager, mostly blokes, but half a dozen girls. Generally the blokes were bad bastards and bullies and I reckon the world is better off without them.
“A couple of the girls were tarts who tried to touch me up for more money. One threatened to cry rape if I went to the police. Once you have done one, the rest are easy, one minute alive, the next dead with a surprised look on their face. Killing people is real quick and easy if you know how and don’t care.
“You just have to be smart to make sure that no one can identify you, keep away from CCTV and all that sort of thing. After you make sure the bodies and personal effects don’t turn up. That way they just get listed as missing persons, whereabouts unknown.
“With backpackers, when they come out here they go every which way. They rarely know each other?
??s names and yet they feel safe in each other’s company. So, provided they don’t know who you really are, or where you are going, it is real hard for anyone to connect you to their disappearance.
“And, of course, lots work illegally and choose to disappear for their own reasons. So it’s hard for cops to know where to start. I’ve picked up and made trips with maybe twenty backpackers in the last five years
“Most have been great fun, had a blast; quite a few still send me the odd postcard, to one of my alias addresses. A couple even came back for more on the side when husbands and boyfriends did not know. So people get used to seeing me with girls around the traps and, after a while, one girl looks much the same as another.
“Some girls want to spread it around a bit, try miners and stockmen and the like. I reckon good luck to them and the lucky bloke. When it happens I leave them with their gear and wave goodbye. They are usually too busy with someone else to complain and, even if they did, who would listen? They’re someone else’s problem.
“Only the odd one has been trouble, usually silly things. One demanded I stop the trip right there in the middle of the Queensland outback and take her back to Cairns even though it was a thousand kilometres away. I said I was happy enough to let her off at the next town. She said that if I tried to do that she would go straight to the police station and cry rape and abduction.
“With most of these girls I use a condom so they don’t get up the duff and try to claim paternity. But this one also said she was on the pill and not to bother. Now she was saying she wasn’t really on the pill, that she might be pregnant and would demand a DNA test to prove it was me.
“I think she thought she could trap me into staying around with her and make me do what she wanted. I told her to stop being stupid, but she spat at me, so I belted her across the face with a backhander. Then the silly girl tried to stick me with a big cooking knife, so I hit her, extra hard, and she didn’t get up again.
“I dropped her body down an old mine shaft, there were dozens in the place. Then for good measure I dropped a stick of jelly on top to bring down some rocks and make sure she was well covered. Then I took all her gear and put it in another mineshaft a few miles away. No one was likely to find it but again I used a rock fall to cover it.
“To be honest I have got much more selective over the last couple years, I don’t really want to get into these situations. Now I just take the occasional one I really like for a trip and try to show them a good time. I am a bit sad to see some go but then another sweet young thing comes along, full of desire to see the real outback. Usually by a week they are ready to head on and I am ready to be on my own again.
“But then you come along and it is different. The same in parts, the sex is good, you want to see the outback, but different as well; you try to find out who I really am underneath it all. I think, hey, she’s starting to fall for me big time, and I am hooked too. You feel like the best person I have been with and I want to make it really special for you, maybe even try and find a way to keep you around.
“But I know it is not going to work because I am one of those people who aren’t good to stay around, bad things happen, and I don’t want bad things to happen to you.
“In another life maybe we could have met like ordinary people, I could have got a regular job and we could have made babies together and lived happily ever after. But this is the only life we’ve got and I don’t see how we can get to that place from here.
“Deep down I am one of those selfish people who doesn’t want to give up the good things I have got. I know one day I’ll make a mistake and someone will take me down. But I won’t let anyone put me away, I will go on my own terms. I’m not going to spend my life in jail with a whole lot of other perverts and sad bad bastards. A year in reform was enough; I’m not going back again.”
As Susan listened she could feel this story split her mind and emotions into two parts, one which was horrified at his callous disregard for other people and their lives, and another part filled with compassion for this man who had never had a proper chance to be something other than a monster since a child.
She hadn’t said a word as Mark had talked and talked. She didn’t understand it all, but she got the picture, he had killed people, lots of them, including some young backpackers
It didn’t sound like he set out to do this deliberately, but when he was in a corner, or got angry, killing someone was the easy way out. He lacked any apparent remorse for what he’d done. She could sense there was a great evil in him. The way he felt that a person’s life could be so easily extinguished and that there wouldn’t be any consequences. After each death each person was left to one side and his life went on.
But then, wasn’t that what people did in war? They killed people because it suited their country’s interest, or sometimes just their own interests. Then when it was done they returned to their lives and families, and continued, just as before. Sure, a few got shell shock or PTSD. But, for most, the killing was left behind and life went on. Were these people bad people? Was Mark any worse than them?
He had just worked out how to do the killing easily and efficiently, without others knowing. As a kid he never really had a chance, no parents or other role models to give guidance and affection, no love to anchor his life to. If she had lived a life like that would she be any different? She thought not.
She had also seen what appeared to be another side to Mark, genuine and decent, his affection for his friends in the remote bush camps of the outback, his unsolicited gifts of meat and friendship with aboriginal communities. She knew that there must be something else in there. She needed to find it, the part where the decency, kindness and compassion lived, if buried deep.
She needed him to tell her about what was special to him, what he loved, what gave him real joy.
“Mark, tell me a time when you were really happy, something that makes you feel warm and smile inside.”
He thought for a moment, “When I gave you the ring at Heartbreak Hotel, and you asked me to make love to you. When you sat beside me as we drove across the Murranji Track and we barely talked, but you would give me little smiles.”
She wanted to go down this path with him but it was not the answer she needed. “I feel warm and happy thinking about those things with you too. But I mean something before you met me.”
He thought again for a while and said, “Soon after I first got to the NT I got a job at the Mine at Gove. The other white mine workers didn’t have a lot of time for me, I was just a young wet kid. But there were a couple of black boys who worked there next to me. They came from a local town.
“We became friends, and they invited me to come back with them, to meet their families: all their aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters. Soon I became one of the family, going fishing and hunting with them, they taught me how to shoot kangaroos and use a spear to catch fish, how to track animals in the bush.
“But most of all they gave me a sense of belonging. Since then I have always felt that the NT was my home, particularly this Top End country, though I love the desert too. Here was somewhere I would always be welcome. I never had a family in the city who took notice of me. But all these aunts and uncles wanted to tell me their stories each day. Even more importantly, they would sit and listen to all my stories. I finally felt I was someone.
“The most special day came a few months later. These boys, my friends, were to have an initiation to become full members of their tribe. Even though I didn’t have the knowledge for this, the elders decided that, on that same day, I should get a skin name and a totem to recognise me as part of their clan.
“They gave me their own skin name, and gave me the totem of the crocodile, their totem. They told me that as the crocodile was my totem, I had to look after crocodiles and the places where crocodiles live. To help me remember they gave me that carved crocodile spirit that you have seen, it is the symbol of my totem.
So, when I shoot a pig or catch some other anima
l, I often give it to a crocodile. While I shoot and kill many animals, I try not to harm crocodiles, though I am allowed to kill them if they threaten people of my tribe or family, as even with crocodiles there are bad ones.
“That’s why I have come here; this place is really special for me. In this billabong, lives the biggest crocodile I have ever seen, until you brought out that one in the Victoria River. He is very shy and hides away but, just occasionally, he comes out. Once before he took a pig I gave him. It was my original plan, on this morning, before this all happened, to go out and shoot a pig for him. Now I can’t do that because I will have to go away from here early in the morning. But maybe I will see him still and be with him before I go.”
Only an hour had passed but it seemed like a year. It was such a complex web of good and bad. She wondered where the truth and rightness lay.
He had done so many awful things; most people would call him a sociopath or psychopath, someone who lacked the empathy to restrain his ability to harm. But there was also a good and decent place within him; a part that gave her joy and made her feel warm.
And yet there was also that other half, the psychopathic mirror—the Jekyll to his Hyde. In a strange way Susan felt this split too, there was part of her that loved him without limit, had given her promise with full commitment to be the wife, but then another part of her hated him with a violent rage for bringing them both to this place, where every choice was a presage to disaster.
But now that he had told her his story she knew she must decide what to do. In this moment clarity came into her mind. Keeping this love alive was more important, it must rise above the hatred. She knew now what she must do from here.
She would go away, but she could do him no further harm unless he first tried to harm her. She had made her choice, her pact with the devil. She loved him and she would not act against him, despite all he had done. While she must leave him, she would still maintain her promise to him, even when she returned home. His secret would be her secret too; she only needed a promise he would not harm any others from here on. And perhaps, as time went by, they could try to build a real life together out of the ashes of this day.
She talked for five minutes and Mark listened, silent, next to her. She laid it out to him as she had laid it out in her mind. It was her only way to go on without more betrayal and violence.
He was silent for a minute.
“What do you say? Can it be so?” she asked
He said, “I wish, but no.”
Susan felt like he had slapped her.
How could they have lived all this, this night of their pact together, and he not have moved on; stepped beyond now and into a future which at least had a possibility where they would both continue their lives, even if not together.
He said. “It is easy to say you will keep my secrets. But you can’t un-know what you’ve found out, and what I’ve told you. What you know now will be a cancer inside you. It will eat you slowly, bit by bit. One day you will have to speak out. So it cannot end this way.
“Now I must bind you again for this night has passed. Tomorrow must be what tomorrow must be.
Susan stood up and replaced her clothes. Then she put out her hands to allow him to replace the cuffs. He took out long chain and padlock. He passed an end between her wrists and attached the other to the bull bar.
It could not end like this! Her whole being cried in outrage. How could love grow and die in the space of a night, how could a moth be let fly free then held to a flame until it wings burned away.
She did not want to beg, but she must implore him. It had to come from him, forgiveness and freeing of himself so he could free her too. He was wrong about her, so wrong. She was determined to find the goodness at his core. She could not let it; she knew it must not end like this.
Susan grasped Mark by the arm, to stop him walking away.
He stopped and looked back at her.
She thought he would look at her with regret. But his eyes held nothing, only chilling emptiness stared back at her.
She stared back, imploring with her eyes, not just begging for her own life but begging for his soul. He maintained her stare but nothing came.
Finally she looked away. A month of her life had just ceased to exist as she knew she would herself when the new day was come.
Mark walked away.
She was silent, just stood and stared at the endless sky. What was out there? Was there a god who could carry her soul to a place of peace? In the predawn sky there came a tiny pinprick of light, perhaps a star. She wished she could hold onto it, and that it could help her find her own peace and salvation.
Susan lay down on her bedding, and rolled to the side to hide her face from the small but penetrating light. She didn’t feel she could stand its scrutiny, the scrutiny of a god looking into her soul.
Away from the light her mind refocused.
The only one who could save her life was she. Susan had no hope in Mark’s words or actions, and there was not deliverance from the heavens.
Her chafed wrists were bothering her. She wanted a comfortable place for them without the covers touching the raw skin. As she settled on her side, she pushed her hands out from under the covers. She found her hands resting in dirt, just past the edge of the bedding. She went to pull them back to the softness of the bed.
As she withdrew, her fingers touched something in the dirt; it was cold and metallic. She felt for it again. It was a piece of metal: flat, six or seven inches long, and an inch or two wide. It came to a sharp point at one end. The other end was blunt and slightly rounded, like the inset of a knife into its handle.
That’s what it felt like, the blade of an old fishing knife that had been dropped in the dirt long ago. Its former handle had disappeared. She got her fingers under it and picked it up. The point and edges were sharp, though jagged, as if pitted with age.
A thought came to her, I have been seeking a way out and now here it is. That cold bastard couldn’t return my love, so now it is time for me to fashion my own destiny.
Mark’s two different faces kept flashing across her mind, one tender and loving, putting a ring on her finger, caressing her body; and the other with empty eyes that neither gave nor received anything.
One she could not conceive harming, but the other had no life force that she could reach or touch—it was just a hollow shell.