ALTHOUGH NOT PARTICULARLY RELIGIOUS
THE BLACK’S HOUSE ON WESTRICK STREET was a brick built, bow window fronted semi-detached house constructed in the 1930’s. The land sloped upwards from the road, front garden steep, mostly rockery and a dozen steps led up to he fully glazed front door. Suzanne Fillmore paced about the front room, unable to comfort the distraught parents, already the dread of the worst was woven about Derek and Jenny like a dark clouded shroud; hope all but extinguished.
As she looked out from the window, she saw a white Riley driving up the road towards the house and a sudden rush of fear coursed through her stomach. It might be good news she tried to tell herself but to no avail. The car pulled up outside and a grim visaged Yarrow climbed out. One look at his face was enough to tell her all she needed to know. The little girl was dead.
She quietly walked towards the front door to let Yarrow in, Jenny Black looked up hopefully, but reading nothing in Suzanne’s demeanour sank back into her torpor of anguish and despair. Silently Suzanne opened the door before Yarrow could ring the bell and ushered him in.
‘It’s bad news, isn’t it, sir?’ she asked quietly.
‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’
‘She’s dead? Little Emily is dead?’ and Yarrow nodded sadly.
Although not particularly religious, Suzanne crossed herself with a muttered Prayer. ‘The poor thing, God bless her.’
She led Yarrow through into the front room, Derek and Jenny only just realising they had a visitor. Jenny looked up, her eyes bloodshot and swollen. Hope flashed across her face for a brief second before seeing the grimness of Yarrow’s face and buried her head into her husband’s chest, clutching at him and beating her fists against his body in her anguish, howling out her torment in piercing shrieks of despair.
Derek Black asked the question he had been dreading all morning. ‘You’ve found her? She’s dead, isn’t she, our little Emily is dead?’
‘I very much regret to have to tell you that we have found the body of a little girl who matches the description of your daughter. I am so very dreadfully sorry.’ Yarrow answered with all the compassion he could. Behind him, Suzanne Fillmore discreetly wiped away a tear.
Derek seemed to collapse within himself, his body seemingly boneless, fleshless. He took deep racking breaths, tears trickling down his face.
‘How… how did she …?’ unable to finish the terrible question.
‘At this moment, I’m afraid I can’t say. We shall have to wait until the post mortem to tell us that.’ Under no circumstances was he going to tell them, at this dread harrowing time, that Emily’s murderer first raped her before dashing out her brains with a club or rock. ‘I also must ask that you come to make a formal identification. Of course, in your own time’
‘You mean there is some doubt that it might not be Emily?’ a forlorn hope rearing up in Jenny’s breast like a mirage.
‘I cannot raise your hopes on that, I’m sorry. There can be little doubt I’m afraid that the body we have recovered is that of your daughter. Of Emily.’