This is a story that women returning home late at night will be able to identify with anywhere in the world. Sarah Everard, a 33-year-old marketing executive, left a friend’s place in Clapham, south London, at 9pm on March 3, to walk home to Brixton. It should have taken her 50 minutes. A CCTV camera picked her out as she passed a residential street as 9.30pm. She has been missing since.

Late on Friday afternoon, Scotland Yard assistant commissioner Nick Ephgrave, who is heading the investigation, confirmed the news that Sarah’s family and friends and indeed everyone in the country had been dreading: “On Wednesday evening detectives investigating the disappearance of Sarah Everard discovered a body secreted in woodland in Kent. The body has now been recovered and a formal identification procedure has been undertaken. I can now confirm that it is the body of Sarah Everard.”

On Thursday when the House of Commons debated International Women’s Day, Labour’s shadow domestic violence minister Jess Phillips took four minutes to read the names of 118 women who have been murdered over the past 12 months mostly by the men in their lives: “Vanita Nowell; Tracey Kidd; Nelly Moustafa; Zahida Bi… Shadika Mohsin…. Balvinder Gahir…. Poorna Kaameshwari Sivaraj, who was killed alongside her three-year-old son…. Hansa Patel… Geetika Goyal…”

The house listened in silence as she concluded: “There has been much debate over what I would say at the end of the list. Her name rings out across all our media — we have all prayed that the name of Sarah Everard would never be on any list. Let us pray every day and work every day to make sure that nobody’s name ends up on this list again.”

Sarah’s father, Jeremy, 67, a professor of electronics at York University, and mother Sue, 64, a charity worker, and her sister Katie and brother James, who had joined a search of Clapham Common s said in a statement: “We long to see her and want nothing more than for her to be found safe and well. We are desperate for news and if anyone knows anything about what has happened to her, we would urge you to please come forward and speak to the police.”

Sarah, a Durham University graduate, moved to London from York 12 years ago. She was wearing a green rain jacket, navy blue trousers with a white diamond pattern, and turquoise and orange trainers when she went missing. Her last 15-minute call was to her boyfriend, Josh Lowth, 33, who raised the alarm the following day when she didn’t keep their appointment.

More than a hundred police officers were drafted in to look for Sarah in this exceptionally high profile case.

And late on March 10, Dame Cressida Dick, the first woman to be head of Scotland Yard, called an emergency news conference to announce the worst was feared. “This evening detectives and search teams investigating Sarah’s disappearance have very sadly discovered what we believe at this stage to be human remains.”

What she added would resonate with women living in fear throughout the world: “Sarah’s disappearance in these awful and wicked circumstances is every family’s worst nightmare.”

She confirmed that a very senior police officer, Wayne Couzens, 48, a member of the elite parliamentary and diplomatic protection squad – he is licenced to carry a gun and was on duty until 8pm guarding the US embassy in Battersea three miles away from Clapham on the night Sarah disappeared – had been arrested on suspicion of her kidnap and murder.

The grim faced Metropolitan Police Commissioner said: “The news today that it was a Metropolitan Police officer arrested on suspicion of Sarah’s murder has sent waves of shock and anger through the public and through the whole of the Met. I speak on behalf of all my colleagues in the Met when I say we are utterly appalled at this dreadful news.”

In the course of his duties, Couzens would have been called upon to protect diplomats at the Indian High Commission in the Aldwych, especially during the regular demonstrations held outside the building by Pakistanis bussed in from all over the country.

Police missed a trick when Couzens, described by his neighbours as a friendly and devoted family man with two children – his 39-year-old Ukrainian wife, Elena, was also arrested for assisting an offender but later released on bail – exposed him indecently in a South London food takeaway but inexplicably allowed to continue with his duties.

It seems he did not know Sarah. But a CCTV camera on a bus in Clapham at the time Sarah disappeared picked out a hire car that was traced to Couzens. And the dense network of motorway cameras allowed police to track the car all the way to Couzens’s home 55 miles away in Ashford, Kent. The human remains were found in nearby woods but their poor condition means identification will take “some time”.

On Thursday Couzens was taken to St George’s Hospital, Tooting, in south London, with “head injuries”, but returned to custody after treatment.

On Saturday women throughout Britain – many have been running in parks throughout the pandemic, often after dark, as a way of keeping fit – will hold nationwide “Reclaim These Streets” vigils to remember Sarah.

Organisers said police had “told women not to go out at night this week”, but “women are not the problem”, they pointed out. “This is a vigil for Sarah, but also for all women who feel unsafe, who go missing from our streets and who face violence every day.”