Chapter 25: Festering Wounds
"I think it must be late afternoon by now," Molly said yawned, the sleepiness still thick in her voice
Molly had awoken moments before and Jack had pounced on her for more information as soon as she was able to string a coherent sentence together. Before she had fallen asleep, she had started to fulfil Jack's request for information.
"Where was I?" she murmured with a frown on her face "Oh yes!" she suddenly exclaimed "I remember now. I was telling you about the first time I met him,"
Jack nodded silently as he listened to Molly speak. His mind was whirring with thoughts and plans but the pain in his head still punctuated those thoughts.
"My parents didn't always live in the countryside. They used to both live in London, in the city, but I don't think they ever really settled there. They are not city folk really, their hearts yearned for the wide open green spaces,"
"So they moved here then?" Jack asked and Molly nodded
"Not long after they were married. I suppose they didn't really have much of a choice. They didn't like the city and felt even more unwelcome there after their marriage. I told you before that my mother's side of the family disapproved of their relationship. Anyway, they set up home here and not long after that I was born. Dad was working as a freelance journalist then so spent long hours away from home,"
"Didn't your mother get lonely?" Jack frowned
Molly shook her head "She was quite content with her own company. She might have preferred her husbands of course. But even when the people we love aren't physically present, they never really leave our hearts do they? Still, she did spend lots of her time alone up at our house or wandering in the woodland and she'd take me with her as she travelled. That's when I first met him,"
"I was still a very little girl so my memory is hazy but I recall we were walking by the stream, not too far from where I met you in the woods, and there he was. We'd stopped and were playing and laughing and that's when I saw him. On the other side of the stream, tucked away into the shadows, he was just watching us. Or rather watching her: my mother,"
"So he was stalking her?"
Molly wrinkled her nose "Stalking is a bit of a strong word. I still don't know whether he came across us in the woods that day by mere coincidence or whether it was something more planned out but either way it was an ill-fated encounter,"
"How so?"
"He never left her alone after that. He was always there, always watching, trailing our footsteps. He was infatuated with her, I think, from the moment he saw her in the woods,"
"I guess your dad wasn't too happy about that?" Jack asked and Molly shook her head
"My mother told him of course, when Dad returned to our house. But she wasn't too scared by the whole thing. I think she felt sorry for him. She would try and engage with him in friendly conversation for she often told me she sensed a kind of loneliness about him. Maybe that's why he was attracted to her; he assumed she was lonely like him. That was a mistake, a misjudgement. Being alone did not consume my mother in the way that it consumed him,"
"I didn't put him down as the lonely type," Jack said recalling the encounter with his captor
"That aspect of him has long since passed," Molly told him "Like I said, it consumed him. What started off as a harmless emotion, turned into something far more sinister. When you're cut off and out of society it leaves a wound. Sometimes that wound can heal, like it did with my mother and the isolation and loneliness does not touch one deeply. But in his case, the wound began to fester and turn rotten,"
"I can't believe he was harmless before all that though,"
"Oh I never said that," Molly corrected "He was never really harmless or purely good. None of us are. But the hatred and anger hadn't touched him too deeply then. It was waiting there, festering away; it just needed an outlet,"
"The death of your mother," Jack guessed and Molly nodded sadly
…
"Do know what Jack was working on before he left the lab yesterday?" Nikki asked Clarissa
The two of them had decided to go over Jack's last movements in an attempt to glean any information concerning his whereabouts. They had heard no word from the police and had set about their own investigations instead.
"He was running some fingerprints against the system I think," Clarissa said flicking through the files Jack had left her
"From what?"
"A photo frame," Clarissa said trying to decipher Jack's messing handwriting "He'd gone back to the crime scene the previous day. I'd recommend that course of action to him. I thought it might help him get a fresh perspective to at least give him time to cool off,"
"From what?"
Clarissa sighed "I might as well tell you now," she said "DI Harris called Jack and asked him to sit in on Molly William's interview.
"She did what?" Nikki exclaimed
"I think it was a misguided attempt to get Molly to open up. I don't think that it went too well though,"
"That would explain his bad mood when he came back," Nikki said recalling Jack's frankly odd behaviour when he had returned from his abnormally long lunch break
"Jack seemed to think that DI Harris had got tunnel vision in relation to this case. He felt that she had made him come along to back up her half-baked theories. She seemed to be forcing the facts even though there was little evidence to back them up and Jack called her out on it,"
"That probably explains the complaint she made against him," Nikki nodded "So he went back to the crime scene for a fresh look and I suppose he must have found something,"
"This photo frame," Clarissa said producing a plastic bag with the item inside
Nikki pulled on a pair of gloves and emptied the bag of its contents. The photo frame was cheap and looked slightly worn down with age but still well preserved. It held a slightly out-of-focus photo of a beaming young woman who seemed quite familiar to Nikki,"
"Who is this?" Nikki frowned passing the frame over to Clarissa who once more peered again at Jack's notes
"Isabella Williams," she said "Molly's mother,"
…
"I told you before about how she died?" Molly cocked her head on one side
"You said she died very suddenly and no one was able to establish a cause of death," Jack struggled to recall her words but Molly's nodding showed him to have recalled the information correctly
"She went to bed one evening alive and was dead by the next morning. My dad found her. He'd tried to wake her up the next morning but she was stone cold,"
"But the police suspected him?"
"He was their only suspect," Molly said "They'd been seen in public having a row that evening and the police assumed he's murdered her because of that,"
"What were they rowing about?"
Molly shrugged "I think it was just a bog-standard domestic. Whilst their marriage was generally happy, it did have its ups and down. After all, 'Happily ever after' only exists in fairy tales,"
"But no cause of death?"
Molly shook her head "I've read the post-mortem reports. They put forward theories but coroner never took them up when it came to the inquest,"
"But your dad had different ideas?"
"He believed it was murder, like the police, but could never prove it. Dad always believed that she was murdered by her 'stalker' as Dad called him,"
"Did he have proof?"
"No," Molly said shortly "Just a strong inclination. He became consumed by the desire to prove his theories correct. Not just to clear his name but to find some closure. So he quit his job as a freelance journalist and started to work on his theories. The more he researched into such conspiracy theories the more he was able to construct some sort of meaning. I've told you before, that truth and meaning are not always synonymous,"
…
"Isabella Williams," Nikki said pulling up the post-mortem report on her computer "Female, aged 32. Found dead in bed at home. Initial investigations put time of death sometime during the night. There were no signs of a struggle and she was fully clothed when found,"
"What did the post-mortem bring to light?" Clarissa asked looking up from Jack's notes
"Very little," Nikki scanned the screen "Cause of death was not able to be determined. The coroner ordered another post-mortem but still no cause of death. The report here speculates it could have been something to do with her heart but there's no evidence to back it up,"
"Isn't that what Jonathan Williams came to speak to you about?"
Nikki nodded "He wanted me to go over the evidence. He was convinced that her death wasn't due to natural causes but that she was murdered. I briefly scanned the report but given there was nothing to suggest murder or foul play in the post-mortem there was little I could do. I felt he was clutching at straws and just desperate to find any explanation or meaning for the death,"
"But you couldn't give him one?"
Nikki shook her head "The best I could do was a cup of tea and a bit of sympathy and you recall how that turned out," she said and Clarissa nodded as she remembered Jonathan shouting at Nikki despite her attempts to placate him
"Still, there is something odd about this whole case," Nikki continued "Unable to find cause of death after three post-mortems,"
"Were there any suspects?"
"I think Jonathan was suspected at first but there was no evidence of it being murder. He was arrested though," Nikki said scanning the details on the screen
"I suppose they must have had some grounds to arrest him in the first place. Who was the arresting officer?"
Nikki's eyes widened as she read from the screen "PC Rachel Harris," Nikki said "Or rather now she's known as DI Harris,"
…
"Do you think your mother was murdered?" Jack asked
Molly paused before answering "I don't know," she said finally "And to be honest I don't think it would change anything even if I did. It won't bring her back, it change the fact I had to grow up without her and it won't make that lonely feeling go away either,"
"Did you ever speak with your dad about her?" He asked "Help keep the memory alive,"
"Only sometimes," Molly said "And only then in relation to his conspiracy theories. I think it was too painful for him. The loneliness he felt after her death, consumed him. It too began to fester away inside of him and he turned to drink as a way of dealing with it,"
"I'm sorry Molly," Jack said softly
She shook her head "He's not a bad person. Like I said before, no one is completely harmless or completely good. We're a complex mix of both. It's just that some wounds never heal. So we just carried on together. He busied himself in his work and soon the Underground magazine was born. He branched out his conspiracy theories from murder to aliens to ley lines. People joined up, writing article for him, and our circle expanded,"
"But then things began to change. He began to believe that we were getting closer to discovering the truth. He was vague about it at first, seemingly quite unsure, but then he rapidly became more and more certain. Of course, that's when it all began,"
"What did?"
"The murders,"
Author's Note: Thanks for the Reviews