Rochester, Keedy had heard about information that had come in from places as far apart as Torquay, Bradford and Perth. The claims were being investigated by local police. Only when the evidence was compelling would the detectives be dispatched again from their base in Middlesex. With the whole nation on the alert, their suspect could not elude them for ever.
Herbert Wylie was at the top of their list. Marmion had put Niall Quinn in second place but had now dropped him down to third position. After their visit to Reuben Harte, both he and Keedy felt sure that Florrie Duncan had been involved in a romance at one point and that the man concerned was almost certainly employed at the munitions factory. She would not have been the first single woman there who’d become pregnant. Hasty wartime marriages would have been arranged in some cases but that was not an option available to Florrie — or so it appeared. The man in question might well have wished to get rid of the unwanted problem completely.
‘Why did she decide to leave the factory?’ asked Marmion.
‘The answer is that she had to go before the baby became too obvious,’ said Keedy. ‘Although they were very close, she didn’t confide that in Jean Harte. It was Agnes Collier who noticed the signs. She was the only mother in the group.’
‘There is another explanation, Joe.’
‘I don’t see it.’
‘Well, if the man worked at the factory, Florrie might have been embarrassed to go on seeing him every day. A blighted romance can leave you feeling sensitive.’
Keedy chuckled. ‘Do you speak from experience, Harv?’
‘No,’ said the other, pointedly, ‘I don’t. As men, we tend to have it easy. We not only have a monopoly on making the first move, we usually set the pace. If things don’t happen the way certain men want, they back away. Look at Alan Suggs, for instance. He picks women up and casts them aside all the time.’
‘I don’t think Florrie Duncan would fall for someone like that.’
‘Maybe not, but the factory could still hold unpleasant memories for her. She’d want to leave in order to put them behind her.’
Keedy was sceptical. ‘That doesn’t ring true, Harv,’ he said. ‘Remember what everyone told us about Florrie. She was a fighter. If it was only a case of a blighted romance, then she’d be more likely to drive the man concerned out of the factory than quit her own job. Then, of course, there was that remark about drinking herself into oblivion.’
‘Yes, that could be significant.’
‘It reminded me of a woman I arrested when I was on the beat. She was roaring drunk and swearing at passers-by. I had to manhandle her to get her back to the station,’ recalled Keedy. ‘She was barely seventeen, far too young for strong drink. I had to feel sorry for her. When she’d recovered, she told me her story.’
‘Was she pregnant, by any chance?’
‘It was worse than that, Harv. She’d got hold of the idea that if she drank enough, she could actually get rid of the baby. Instead of that, she ended up with a terrible headache and a charge of being drunk and disorderly.’
‘And she was still carrying the child.’
‘Yes.’
‘That can’t have been the reason that Florrie Duncan reached for the bottle,’ said Marmion. ‘She was a married woman. She’d know that you can’t secure an abortion that way.’
‘As a married woman,’ said Keedy, ‘you’d expect her to know something about contraception as well.’
The comment brought the exchange to a stop. Marmion was keenly aware of the situation in their private life. As a healthy and passionate man in his thirties, Keedy was more or less bound to have had sexual experience in his earlier relationships. It raised the question of whether or not he and Alice had been to bed together. Though he did his best not to think about it, the question kept popping up at random to jab away at Marmion. He forced himself to resume the conversation.
‘The person we really need is Agnes Collier,’ he said.
‘Why is that?’
‘She could have told us exactly why she thought Florrie was pregnant.’
‘It was just a feeling she had — that’s what she told her mother, anyway.’
‘Who else did she tell?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m wondering if Agnes spoke to anybody else about it.’
‘There’s one obvious candidate,’ said Keedy, ‘and it’s Maureen Quinn.’
‘They saw a lot of each other and travelled to work together every day. Also, they were the only two members of the group who didn’t live in Hayes.’ He got up from his seat. ‘I can well imagine Agnes saying something to her friend.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘I’m going to call on Maureen,’ said Marmion, ‘and you’re coming with me.’
‘The Quinn family won’t be pleased to see us.’
‘This is a murder investigation, Joe. I don’t care if they barricade themselves in and pour boiling oil down on us. Whatever it takes, I mean to speak to Maureen.’
Before he could move, however, the telephone rang.
When she’d been grabbed in the dark, Maureen Quinn had been seized with a feeling of shock and pain. There was worse to come. She was hustled into the house and warned not to scream because her attacker meant no harm. In fact, he apologised for frightening her. It was her cousin, Niall Quinn. She didn’t recognise him at first. He had thick stubble on his face and his hair was much longer than she remembered. In the year they’d been apart, he’d changed a lot. What had remained, however, was the beguiling lilt in his voice and the sense of purpose that he radiated. Niall was a very determined young man.
‘I didn’t mean to scare you, Maureen,’ he said.
‘What are you
‘I wasn’t intending to stay.’
‘You were somewhere in Wales, weren’t you?’
‘That’s right. It was a nasty place called Frongoch. I was honest with them. The moment they locked me up, I warned them that they wouldn’t be able to hold me.’ He smiled at her. ‘Aren’t you glad that I got free?’
‘I’m not sure,’ she confessed.
‘I’m your cousin, Maureen. Blood is thicker than water.’
‘It terrifies me, having you here like this.’
‘I was only intending to come and go without disturbing any of you. If you hadn’t come out to the shed, you’d never have known I was even there.’
She was nonplussed. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I came back for something,’ he told her. ‘I hid it in the shed when I was here last time. The police carried out a search when they arrested me but they never found the hiding place.’
‘What did you put in there, Niall?’
He produced a gun from inside his jacket. ‘It was this.’
When he held it up, Maureen almost fainted. Seeing her distress, he thrust the weapon out of sight again. It was too much for her. Maureen wished that she hadn’t reacted to the noise she heard from the garden. The news that a gun had been hidden in the garden shed all this time unnerved her. She knew that Niall had been arrested for trying to plant a bomb and she’d believed his claim that nobody would have been harmed by the explosion. The possession of a gun couldn’t be so easily explained away. It turned her cousin into a potential killer because she sensed that he’d be ready to use the weapon. Maureen had immediate proof of the fact. The sound of the front door key being inserted into the lock made her jump but it had a more dramatic effect on Niall. Fearing discovery, he drew the weapon once again.
‘It’s only us!’ called Diane as she entered the house.
Realising there was no danger, Niall put the gun quickly inside his jacket again. A moment later, Diane came into the kitchen with her younger daughter. She froze when she saw the stranger there.
‘It’s Niall,’ said Maureen.
