Jeez, What A Day

A pretty horrendous day today all round.

Anyone who lives in the Hertfordshire area will remember last spring, when various human body parts started showing up in isolated locations across the county. I remember following the case - mostly unwillingly; I'm not someone who likes watching or reading the news, but every time a new discovery was made the papers threw it out there for all of us to see - but after a while the horror and disgust died down, and I stopped following it.

Then today, I got a call from a journalist, asking to meet with me to discuss a murder case. Turns out it was the above case, which the papers dubbed "Jigsaw Man", and there are two people on trial for it - a woman who I've never met, but whose name has been haunting my dreams, and a man that I know. A man whose wife, in fact, I've known very well indeed in years past.

*sigh*

The case haunted me when it first came out, and I figured it was just down to the grisliness of it, and the fact that it was in my own backyard. We don't get a huge amount of murders round this way, and rarely one as high-profile as this. But finding out today that it's closer to home than I thought, that the probable murderer is a man I've had in my house, served tea and home-baked cookies to, had many long intimate conversations with the wife of...well, that's thrown me. A lot.

I don't know if I should speak to this journalist or not. He came by the house earlier, when I was asleep, and Mom told him that I'd talk to him, but that was before she knew the facts of the case. I knew he was a bad man, but this is worse than I expected. When I first heard he was up on a murder trial, I assumed it was a business-related thing. Murder is horrendous whatever way it happens, but somehow a man shooting another man over a drug deal doesn't strike the same horror in me as a man who stabs a guy for unspecified reasons, then cuts him up and scatters his body parts around a large county. It was only when I came online to do some research that I realised that the case the journalist mentioned, and the body-parts murder, are one and the same.

Apparently the journalist is looking for the wife, who I knew well for a time. All he told Mom is that she's been missing for a long time. I may or may not have information that could help find her - I don't know where she is, but it's possible that she said something to me in the past that could be dredged up with proper questioning. If she's missing because he's done something to her, then I need to help if there's any way I can, but it's equally possible that she's missing because she's hiding from him, in which case I don't want to lead anyone to her. And there is also a slim possibility that her husband knows where she is, and she's hiding from the law. I don't think she would murder anyone, but I know for a fact that she knows what her husband is capable of, and that she was comfortable enough with it to go back to him after they separated once before.

Hell, I don't want to get anyone into trouble, least of all myself and my loved ones. I don't know if talking to a journalist could put us in danger. Probably not; I think it's likely that the husband will go down for murder, and be away for a long time. He's supposed to be sentenced this coming week.

And of course, it WOULD be the week I'm serving jury duty, wouldn't it?

But then on the other hand I think that someone needs to find the wife, soon. Nevermind that we parted on unpleasant terms, that I have no charitable feelings whatsoever towards the woman, and that the day she left my house I danced around singing "Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead". If she's in trouble, then she needs to be found.

*sigh*

I hate any kind of drama in my life, and this is more drama than usual. I don't even know what to feel - scared, disgusted, sad, worried...instead I'm just kind of numb. I've felt something bad coming for the whole last year, and it appears that this is it, but now it's here I don't know how to react to it.