Chapter 3
The tragedy that occurred on June 2, 1986, in a small town in Surrey caused a public outcry across the United Kingdom. The superintendent of the police station, upon receiving the report from the officer on duty, filtered the swearing from the rest of the incoherent speech and, speaking in Russian, was simply stunned, despite being a native Briton. He picked up the phone and contacted the Home Office, then the Crown Prosecution Service and dispatched all available personnel to the cursed house number four. He was certain that the house would earn such a nickname. After all the calls, the superintendent began to think that he’d been in that chair too long and should retire.
Within an hour, the house was surrounded by a tight ring of police, prosecutors, forensic experts, and even a special forces armored vehicle! London was generous; it was necessary to show the citizens that the police were actively working. And around this whole orgy, members of the press were swarming – many of them intrusive, brazen, and ready to sell their own mothers for a sensational story. Rumors of Satanists and terrorists were rife among the local population. And the most popular version of events was that Vernon was a secret KGB agent! And everything that had happened was the Kremlin’s revenge for the failed assassination of the Queen.
The cops, initially thinking it was some kind of intimidation plot against the mafia, quickly pieced together the events with the help of prosecutors and forensic experts. Everyone understood everything, but they kept hoping for the Kremlin’s hand until the very end. However, there was the eerie closet under the stairs, the bloody footprints of children’s feet from the pantry to the kitchen to the table, where two murder weapons were missing from the stand. Then these tiny feet climbed up to the second floor, smearing the walls with “a red liquid resembling blood,” as the report would later describe. A red imprint of a tiny hand on the white door to the room where two non-human corpses lay on the bed. The woman had only leaked a little, the wound was minor, and death was almost instantaneous. But the fat man tried to fight the skinny one, but with a severed jugular artery, life doesn’t last long. He managed to soil everything around him with more than just blood. The medical examiner, lifting the blanket for a detailed examination of the body, let out a linguistic quirk his colleagues hadn’t heard from him in all his years of work. The examiner then began collecting additional samples from the fat freak’s genitals and was willing to bet his annual salary that this sample and the bloody footprint of a child on the floor would match 100% in blood type and DNA analysis. The bastard didn’t even wash after satisfying his lust!
The high-profile murder was solved in less than an hour. However, this didn’t bring any joy to law enforcement officials, as the victim, witness, and perpetrator of the double murder was now in the operating room at the Central Hospital, where top doctors were fighting for her life.
Local police were thirsty for blood, Crown Prosecution Service investigators wanted to figure out how THIS could have happened, and forensic experts and special forces simply wanted to get the hell out of there; their job was done. The residents of Little Whinging, like everyone else in Britain, were hungry for a spectacle, and reporters were clamoring for a scoop. Chief Public Prosecutor Baron Michael Havers, who took personal charge of the case, delivered what everyone wanted.
That same day, the head of Surrey’s child protection department, David Kent, was arrested. He, by an incredible coincidence, happened to be a former classmate of Vernon Dursley. Next came the bastard’s sister, Marjorie Dursley, whose ignorance of what was going on in her brother’s house was simply incredulous, as the cops simply couldn’t believe she was a regular visitor. All neighbors and residents of the surrounding houses were detained and questioned. The wheels of justice were turning.
The investigation revealed the following: Petunia’s sister, Lily Evans, died mysteriously along with her husband on October 31, 1981. No one knew how the child ended up in the Dursleys’ home. David Kent, out of old friendship and a generous £400, arranged all the guardianship paperwork, including increased benefits. For a modest 20% of the monthly child support, which Vernon regularly handed over to him. During inspections, a report on the perfect and respectable family would appear on David’s desk. Forty pounds a month—that’s what the child’s life and health were worth!
Under intense questioning, Marge quickly cracked: she not only approved of, but even supported, this attitude toward the “crazy girl.” A survey of neighbors revealed the following: no one cared; they had enough problems of their own. Petunia said the child’s cries in the evenings were due to mental health issues, and everyone calmed down. But the main thing had been done: scapegoats had been found. The trials of David Kent and Marjorie Dursley will be loud and public. And as for the children: Dudley Dursley was sent to an orphanage two days after the tragedy, where, at 16, he would change his surname upon receiving a passport. As for the main character of this tragedy, she will wake up eight days later in the intensive care unit of a central hospital.
