Free The Atlas Murders by John Molloy Page A

every three days and does his best to assess her medication. If
he thinks it’s not working he'll leave her on it for about a week and then
change to something else. He's done this about three times now and nothing
seems to be helping her. Her appetite is gone. The doctor has put her on a
tonic to try to get her eating, but she won't take the tonic; she says it makes
her feel sick. She's also taking sleeping tablets so I must go and give her one
now. I don’t allow her to keep them. I have to be careful that she doesn’t
accidently overdose on them."
    Denis left the room to go to
Katherine. Henry sat lonely and disconsolate staring at a large photograph of
Shirley, her bright happy smile lighting up a world of youth and dreams. He
began to visualize a ship sailing through a dark sea with heavy thunder and
lightning all round and this evil monster lurking along the deck and peeping
out from behind the bulwarks. He saw a beautiful girl in a cage with golden
bars. The monster was trying to reach and snatch her from the safety of her
gilded prison. Then Denis came back into the room.
    "Denis, could you pour
me a stiff scotch, my nerves seem to be running riot with me."
    As they sat and drank their
scotches, the silence between the two men was palpable.
    Denis broke the silence.
    "Henry, the doctor says
she has gone into an incurable state of self-destruction, and if it cannot be
checked, she will extinguish her life. He suggested to her to go for counseling
but she refused. I wanted the two of us to go together but she wouldn't hear of
it. You see Henry, it's tearing my insides out watching her dying before my
very eyes and not being able to do anything to help her." Henry covered
his face with his hands and laid his head onto his knees. Denis had never seen a
grown man cry or sob so heart-brokenly, a shy private person, he floundered in
the slipstream of henry’s sorrow.
    He refilled the glasses of
scotch.
    "Have another drop of
scotch Henry."
    He lifted his head and with a
large check handkerchief he wiped the tears. "I'm so sorry Denis; it's
just the helplessness that seems to have me trapped. It’s like being in a
straight-jacket and watching a tragedy unfold before you.”
     
    The train journey back to
London gave Henry space and time to fill. The monumental task to somehow
apprehend the evil killer evoked a momentary feeling of despair. He was glad
when he arrived at Euston Station. By this time he had shaken off any negative
thoughts as he purposefully made his way to Scotland Yard to see what
developments there were.
    Vincent and Tom were already
in the office.
     Tom laid a folder on the
desk. Vincent opened a drawer and took out some sheets of A4 settled on his
horn rimmed glasses and took up page one. "Now Henry, we've been busy
little beavers since we last met. If it's alright with you Tom, I'll start."
    "Go ahead."
    "Well, we'll leave out
Oswyn Welland; we've already gone through his background. So I'll start with
Gary Conrad, assistant steward. He is twenty-five years of age, born in
Hastings East Sussex, was married to a Mary Hayden when he was twenty-one. He
has been divorced one and a half years and lives back home with his parents in
Hastings. Now one of the reasons cited by Mary Hayden in her divorce case was
mental cruelty and physical abuse. I have a report here from the local hospital
of injuries she received from her husband; injuries that kept her hospitalized
for three days. This abuse was very deliberate and akin to torture. He bound
her hands behind her back and her legs. Tied to a bedpost, he stripped her
naked, gagged her and systematically beat her with his fists and a leather
belt. During the initial beatings he'd have sex with her, and proceed then to
abuse her verbally. He would leave her tied like this for maybe four or five
hours, going out to his local pub to get drunk. On returning he would beat and
maybe burn her with his lighted cigarette, before sodomizing her. He put up no defense
at