Jacob left Beck behind feeling bemused and a bit frustrated. The aborted sex had left him full of desire – not just for Beck but for any raunchy hot young thing between the sheets. By the end of the night he had satisfied that itch with another girl he had picked up at the hotel bar, buying her a few drinks and sweet talking his way into her pants.
But after he had had her a couple times he found he had little to talk about with her, she was just a good time girl and was happy to go on her way looking for more adventure before the night was done. When she was gone he fell into a deep sleep.
He woke early, wishing Beck was lying beside him. He would have liked to start his morning having sex with her, but more he enjoyed talking to her, her mind was sharp like his own and she challenged him.
But she was not there. He knew she was now torn about what she had been doing, caught up by a guilty conscience. He wondered what led to her change of heart, had she found out something she was not telling him. In the end he decided that it had been a fair trade, the money for the information she had given him. Now they could both get on with their own lives.
As he showered and dressed he felt re-energized. He could sense this story was now within his grasp. It had that feel; his gut instinct told him it was able to be cracked open. This girl had gone into hiding under another name, he now had that name, the first name at least, and he had an approximate location for where she now lived, a coastal town somewhere within a hundred or so kilometers of Brisbane.
He spent a few hours on the internet in his hotel room, familiarizing himself with the geography of this area. After his searching he decided that either the Sunshine Coast or the Gold Coast, or perhaps the very north of NSW were most likely. There were loads of apartments for rent in the Gold Goat and also lots of other short term accommodation options, backpackers, caravan parks and the like.
A backpacker place was also unlikely with two small children. Her place was unlikely to be the top end of the market, these would want references and identification, two small children would also be a negative. That is unless she now had a sugar daddy and he could not discount this, she picked up men easily, some sort of sex and charm offensive. But her new boyfriend sounded like someone more her age, not a rich dude.
So the bottom end of the real estate market, the scummy flats which took cash rent and no questions asked, perhaps a caravan park where she rented a van with cooking facilities, that felt about right. The Gold Coast had a lot of these places, but once you went down to the bottom feeders the pickings thinned out. There were also quite a lot of these places between Tweed Heads and Byron Bay in the far north of NSW. Then there were a lot more places in Sunshine Coast, from Noosa south but overall these were of higher class with less chances for anonymity.
Jacob decided that he would begin at the bottom end of the strip, fly to Brisbane, get a hire car and work his way north. He figured two weeks south of Brisbane would let him work his way through northern NSW and the Gold Coast and then he would need another week to cover the Sunshine Coast. If he found nothing by then he would rethink his options, try a different tack.
Having made his plan he booked the lunch time flight to Brisbane and rented a luxury hire car to collect from the airport. He decided he wanted to play the part of a high end private investigator employed by Jane’s parents. His invented back story was they were desperately seeking to trace their daughter who had left London after a family falling out. She had gone off travelling without keeping in touch. Her mother was now critically ill with advanced cancer and the family urgently wanted to find her and give her the news in the hope she could return to see her mother again before she died. He would tell people that her last known address was in Cairns where she had a baby, twins actually, born about a year after she left and these would were now about two. She had sent them a card telling them this news from Cairns but that was the last definite contact.
However it was known she had left that address a few months ago and travelled south, having rung a friend who now lived in Brisbane to say she lived in a coastal town not too far away but not giving the address. So his job was to try and locate her and ask her to get in touch with her family urgently He intimated that there was a substantial reward on offer from the family to anyone who could give the information that found her.
He knew he could tell this story convincingly. He had a card made up giving his contact details as a private investigator with a checkable London firm. As he travelled he would leave cards and a photo of her with people he met along the way. On the bottom of the photo was written, Have you seen Jane? Reward for information about her location, and his mobile number. The photo was of Susan taken earlier in her life with her hair cut shorter and her face rounder. It was sufficiently different not to easily link her to the NT Crocodile Girl, but with enough similarity to trawl some possible sightings.
A week passed as he worked his way north, then a second week. He had been to lots of places, talked to lots of people, building and caravan park managers, small neighborhood shops and cafés, children’s playgrounds, childcare centres, toyshops, and those who sat around watching others.
He had run to ground a few leads which had turned into nothing. Overall people bought his story and the reward mentioned sharpened their interest, but there was nothing convincing about any likely sightings and there were no more substantial leads. He had given away over a thousand cards and photos in his travels. He felt that, with all this, something should come back to him if she was around.
But so far nothing had. Even though he was not ready to give up yet it felt like a lot of effort for so little.
Tomorrow he would begin at Noosa and work his way back down the Sunshine Coast to Brisbane. If that yielded nothing then he would need to rethink how to do this.
Another week passed, he had done all the towns of the Sunshine Coast, both those on the coast and the near inland ones, except for the last one, Caloundra. After that all that remained was the bayside villages and towns along Moreton Bay until they were hard up against Brisbane suburbia. Once he got there he would have to admit he had failed.
So today was Caloundra. He would start at the southern tip where there was a caravan park and work his way north. At 8:30 he knocked at the caravan park office and was greeted by a middle aged couple who announced they were the park managers. He asked about a girl named Jane with two small children, twins, aged around two years old. He knew in an instant he had got a hit, it was there in both their eyes.
“Yes, we had a Jane who stayed here until about two weeks ago. I am afraid I don’t have a forwarding address. She left quite suddenly with the man she was with. We had thought they were married, they really seemed like a family, but Jane told Thea they were heading off to get married, she did not say where. Thea has gone to the shops but will be back in about an hour. You had best talk to her as they were good friends and she is most likely to know anything further.”
So Jacob sat in his car and waited, trying to calm his jangling nerves with some soothing music. At last a girl of a similar age to Susan came driving in; she looked like she belonged here. The manager came out and pointed to her and the unit where she stayed.
So Jacob went over and knocked on the door. “Coming,” came a voice and in a few seconds she was there looking out at him. She was not quite suspicious but there was something guarded about her.
He went through his story but he could tell this woman did not believe him, as he spoke she became even more guarded and cautious. The mention of a reward only served to make her more suspicious.
Finally she said, “I am sorry I can’t help you. I really did not know her that well, we just chatted a bit as we made up beds and things like that. Then one day she just upped and off, not saying where she was heading.”
Jacob knew she was lying, her whole defensive demeanor told him that. But he knew he was wasting his time and decided that he had better try other options to find out about them before the suspicions spread.
He decided that the wedding story was likely true, he saw it in Thea’s eyes when he mentioned hearing of it. He had backed off then.
So instead he needed to try and get a bit more about the man she was with, he would go back to the park managers and ask them before Thea could warn them to be careful. So he came back, thanking them profusely for all their help but saying it was a pity that Thea had not known where they had gone. As if in passing he said, Oh she told me the man’s name Jane was with, but I forgot to write it down, could you prompt my memory.
“Vic,” replied the man at once.
You don’t know a surname asked Jacob. The man thought for a minute, Bennet, he said. Nothing else you can think of about him asked Jacob. The man scratched his head, obviously giving the matter some thought. Only he was a dark one, skin half way to your colour and I have a feeling one day that Jane said his Mum lived in Alice Springs. She was a sweet girl she was, she thought the sun shone out of our Vic and it was something she said one day about how she really wanted to go to Alice Springs to meet his family, particularly his Mum who lived there.
Jacob could feel a huge and rising elation. He would bet London to a brick he had them, he had thought Vic had gone overseas.
He had been informed about boyfriend Vic being heartbroken and catching the flight to Canada around the time the first rumors of Susan’s reappearance surfaced.
But the sneaky bugger had been smarter than he credited, obviously having set this up as part of a disappearing act when, all the while, he had hooked up with his girlfriend again.
He knew it was all inference at this stage but how many blokes were there with skin that colour and the name Vic who lived in Alice Springs.
He could have asked these people for a better description of Vic, even got a photo and shown it to them to confirm it was him. But he knew he did not need that.
Instead he went out to his car, put $2000 cash in an envelope and passed it over to the man and his wife saying, “My employer is a well to do and generous man. He would like you to take this for your trouble. Perhaps you could treat yourself to something nice with it.”
With that he gave them a wave, climbed in his car and drove away.
He knew the end of the chase was very near.