Free Wages of Sin by J. M. Gregson Page A

we’re talking about is dead.’ Be as gentle as you can, but don’t wrap it up. Don’t make it out to be less of a tragedy than it is; there’s no way round it. Percy Peach had told him that, and Brendan Murphy listened to Peach as to no one else.
    He had got them sitting down before the news, but now Frank Dunne stood up and walked across to sit beside his wife, moving like a man waist-high in water. He was older than his wife, a grey-haired teacher in a Bolton school, a quiet, efficient man with great natural dignity. A man to whom this sort of thing should never happen. But what man anywhere could deserve this?
    Dunne put his arm round his wife’s shoulders, drew her unresisting body against his without looking at her, and said, ‘You’d better give us some more details, please, DC Murphy.’
    Brendan said, ‘There isn’t much we can tell you as yet. A body was found in a workmen’s hut on a derelict site. A female who answers to your daughter’s description. I’m very sorry.’
    â€˜A body? On a derelict site?’ Rosemary Dunne repeated the words woodenly, as if that might enable her to take in their meaning.
    â€˜We’re certain now that this girl was murdered.’
    Frank Dunne pulled his wife a little more tightly against his side with his right hand. ‘Murdered? How was she killed?’
    â€˜She was strangled. Apparently with her own scarf.’
    Rosemary Dunne’s hand flew to her mouth. She gnawed at the knuckle of her index finger, unable to produce words. It was her husband who said, ‘And have you got the man who did this?’
    â€˜Not yet. But we will do. We’ll be asking you to give us whatever help you can with the investigation.’
    Rosemary Dunne said, ‘But how can we help? We don’t even know any of her friends at the college.’
    â€˜Your daughter was at college?’
    Frank Dunne said with a hint of irritation, ‘I should have thought you’d have already known that. She was on a hairdressing and beautician’s course at the Brunton College of Technology. She wasn’t very academic, our Sarah. And she could have got a similar course in Bolton or Manchester and travelled from home, but she said she preferred the course in Brunton.’ He glanced for the first time at his wife. ‘I – I think she wanted to get away from home. Establish her independence, show her parents that she’d finished with school and was becoming an adult. It’s understandable, I suppose. That’s what I told Rosemary when she was worried about Sarah leaving here.’
    He was already taking on the burden of guilt for letting her move out into the dangerous world which had killed her, beginning to ask himself the questions which would gnaw at him for the rest of his life.
    Rosemary Dunne’s eyes were wide and glassy, but she spoke like one in a dream, fumbling for the words she did not want to voice. ‘Had she been . . .? I mean to say, was she . . .?’
    â€˜It seems that she hadn’t been raped, as far as we can determine at present.’ Brendan Murphy chose his words carefully, anxious to spare them this at least. ‘We shall perhaps have more details after the full post-mortem.’
    Mrs Dunne nodded several times, as if she might enter the knowledge into her reeling brain by this physical movement. Then she said, with a tiny vestige of hope, ‘But you said you weren’t certain yet that this girl was our Sarah.’
    â€˜I did indeed. But I don’t think you should raise your hopes too high, Mrs Dunne.’ He wondered how he could give the mother a dampening phrase of realism. Then he decided that it was safest to be straightforward. ‘I’m afraid the law requires that one of you should identify the corpse.’
    â€˜I’ll do it.’ Frank Dunne volunteered almost before Murphy had framed the words. ‘I’ll just get my coat and