Текст книги "Five Dead Canaries"

Автор книги: Edward Marston

Соавторы: Edward Marston
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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Back at the police station in Hayes once more, Marmion and Keedy reviewed the situation. It was mid-evening but they were loath to call it a day and return home. New developments had set their minds working and given them fresh energy. While both of them were annoyed about the impostor who’d lured them on a pointless journey to Rochester, the incident had proved one thing. The plea for information about the whereabouts of Herbert Wylie had been widely circulated and prompted a response. The impostor was only one of a number of people who’d contacted the police. According to Claude Chatfield, more people had come forward throughout the day to claim sightings of the missing man. When he’d rung the superintendent to tell him about their setback in 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 doinghere?’ she demanded. ‘I know that you escaped because the police told us you had. It’s dangerous for you to come here, Niall.’

‘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.

‘Dear God!’ exclaimed Diane.

‘I thought you were in prison,’ said Lily, goggling at him.

‘Go upstairs.’

‘But I want to talk to Niall.’

‘Go upstairs to your room now!’ ordered Diane, easing the girl through the door. ‘This doesn’t concern you.’

Lily went off reluctantly, leaving her mother to assess the situation.

‘Your uncle will have to be told,’ she decided.

‘I wasn’t meaning to stay,’ said Niall.

‘You can’t stay. Maureen will explain while I go and fetch Eamonn. He’ll know what to do.’ She looked him up and down. ‘I know you’re family, Niall, but you’ve come at a very bad time.’ She moved away. ‘I won’t be long.’

Niall turned to his cousin and gave her a winning smile.

‘What is it you need to explain to me, Maureen?’

Before they left the police station in Hayes, they were delayed by a long telephone call from Scotland Yard. The superintendent wanted to defend his position. While exonerating himself from the charge of having sent them to Rochester on a fool’s errand, he reserved the right to criticise them for their naivety in believing that they were off to arrest their prime suspect. When Marmion told him they were seeking confirmation that Florrie Duncan might have been pregnant, he took care not to mention contraception. The subject was anathema to a strict Roman Catholic like the superintendent. While he didn’t put it into words, he was very unsympathetic towards Florrie’s predicament, clearly blaming it on the sin of having sexual intercourse outside marriage. When the call finally ended, Marmion rubbed his ear.

‘I’ve just listened to a sermon,’ he complained. ‘I’m surprised that Chat doesn’t have a pulpit erected in his office.’

‘You should have known better than to let him get on to religion.’

‘I couldn’t stop him, Joe.’

‘He roasted me earlier on,’ said Keedy. ‘Now it was your turn.’

‘Let’s be off before he rings again,’ said Marmion, reaching for his hat. ‘We need to get to Maureen’s house before she goes to bed.’

They went out to their car and the driver set off. For most of the journey they travelled in silence, each wrapped up in his own thoughts. The purpose of their visit was to establish that Florrie Duncan was pregnant but it was something else altogether that made Keedy eventually speak.

‘What Mr Harte told us was very interesting,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ agreed Marmion. ‘We learnt a little more about Florrie Duncan.’

‘It was the bit about her father that surprised me. Brian Ingles goes out of his way to impress people. You’d think he was rolling in money.’ Keedy turned to him. ‘Why should he need a large loan from the bank?’

Eamonn Quinn was very unhappy about being dragged out of the pub and having to leave an unfinished pint of beer on the table. The sight of his wife urging him to leave drew sniggers from the other men. Once outside, Diane told him why she was there and his ire subsided at once. They hurried back to the house to find Niall and Maureen in the living room. Quinn shook his nephew’s hand.

‘It’s always good to see you, Niall,’ he said, ‘but, as Maureen will have told you, this is not the ideal moment to call on us.’

‘Say the word, Uncle Eamonn, and I’ll be off.’

‘You can stay the night, if you need to.’

‘That’s asking for trouble!’ cried Diane.

‘Keep out of this, woman.’

‘Remember what happened last time.’

‘I told you to keep out of it, Di,’ he snarled.

‘It’s better for everyone if I just go,’ said Niall.

‘Yes, it is,’ added Maureen.

‘I don’t want to cause any problems for you all. I’m on the run. If I’m caught on your property, you could face a spell in prison yourself.’

Quinn was perplexed. Common sense told him to let his nephew go but family loyalty had a bigger pull. He was ready to take the risk of keeping Niall there.

‘It’s why you came to us, isn’t it?’ he asked, clapping his nephew on the shoulder. ‘You knew that you could rely on us.’

‘Niall only came to get something,’ said Maureen. ‘He hid a gun here.’

Diane gasped. ‘A gun!’

‘They’re after me,’ said Niall. ‘I need to defend myself. It was hidden under the floor in the garden shed. I nailed the wood back down again.’

‘This changes everything, Eamonn,’ said his wife. ‘He can’t stay here with a gun. Think of the consequences.’

‘Calm down,’ ordered Quinn. ‘Flying into a panic will get us nowhere.’

‘Get him out of here, that’s all I ask.’

‘P’raps it would be all for the best,’ said Niall.

He stiffened as he heard a car draw to a halt outside the house. His hand went instinctively to the gun. Maureen drew back the curtain to peep out.

‘It’s Inspector Marmion and the sergeant,’ she said.

Quinn took charge. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Get upstairs, Niall. You can go into Maureen’s room. The detectives are not here about you. They’re only interested in the explosion in that pub.’ Niall scampered off upstairs. Quinn turned to his wife and daughter. ‘You stay in here. I’ll get rid of them.’

Shutting them into the living room, he went to the front door. As soon as he heard a knock, he flung it open and blocked the doorway with arms folded.

‘Can’t you give us a moment of peace?’ he demanded.

‘We’d like to speak to Maureen, please,’ said Marmion. ‘And before you tell me that she’s gone to bed, I should warn you that we saw her clearly when she pulled back the curtain just now.’

‘You can’t talk to her.’

‘You can’t stop us, Mr Quinn.’

‘What are you going to do?’ challenged the Irishman.

‘Well, if you continue to refuse us entry, I’ll ask Sergeant Keedy to arrest you on a charge of obstructing police officers in the execution of their duty. That will mean a night in custody for you and an appearance in court.’ Marmion gave him a meaningful stare. ‘Do you really want that to happen?’

Quinn took a full minute to size up the situation. He then gave in.

‘You can talk to her for five minutes but one of us must be present.’

‘I won’t have a time limit set on it,’ said Marmion, ‘but I’m happy for a parent to be present. Given the subject, I suggest that it’s Mrs Quinn.’

After further protest, Quinn moved away to let them into the house. The detectives went into the living room and exchanged greetings with Maureen and Diane. Both of them looked distinctly uncomfortable. Quinn lurked outside the closed door to eavesdrop on what was being said. When the four of them had sat down, Marmion explained that they’d come to ask questions on a delicate subject that might have a bearing on the case. Maureen seemed to relax when told that she’d be asked about Florrie Duncan. Her mother, however, glanced uneasily towards the door.

‘You travelled to and from work with Agnes Collier,’ began Marmion.

‘That’s right, Inspector.’

‘Did she talk a lot?’

‘Agnes never stopped talking.’

‘Did she ever say anything about Florrie Duncan?’

‘Of course,’ replied Maureen. ‘She was our friend.’

‘I’m wondering if she mentioned her suspicion to you,’ said Marmion. ‘You see, the sergeant had a conversation with Mrs Radcliffe.’

‘I did,’ said Keedy, taking his cue, ‘and she told me what her daughter had told her. Agnes had the feeling that Florrie might be pregnant.’

‘Never!’ protested Diane, horrified at the idea.

‘Did Agnes say anything about it to you, Maureen?’

‘It can’t be true. Florrie was such a sensible woman.’

‘Let your daughter answer, Mrs Quinn.’

All three of them turned their gaze on Maureen. She wilted slightly.

‘It’s not a difficult question,’ said Keedy.

‘If she’d told her mother,’ reasoned Marmion, ‘we felt certain that Agnes would have told you as well. Did she?’

‘Yes,’ admitted Maureen, shyly.

‘What did she say?’

‘Agnes saw her being sick one morning and … there were other things.’

‘This is quite unseemly, Inspector,’ said Diane, hotly. ‘My daughter shouldn’t have to talk about it.’

‘There are only two things we wished to know, Mrs Quinn. Maureen has already told us the first of them. The second follows from the first.’ He looked back at Maureen. ‘Did Agnes know the name of the man involved?’

‘No, she didn’t,’ said Maureen.

‘Did he work at the factory?’

‘I can’t say. Agnes only saw them together once.’

‘How did she describe him?’

Before Maureen could answer, her sister interrupted her. Running to the top of the stairs, Lily yelled out to her father.

‘Come quickly, Daddy. Niall is climbing out of the window!’

Niall Quinn was tired of waiting. As long as detectives were in the house, he was in danger. Moreover, he was putting his relations in a difficult situation and it was unfair on them. His paramount concern was to get away and he’d hoped to do that as quietly as possible. All that he’d come back for was the gun. It was a vital asset to someone being hunted. As well as giving him reassurance and a means of defending himself, it enabled him to get the money he needed. Theft was a much easier crime when you could poke a gun at somebody. They handed over their cash instantly. That’s why he made the effort to come all the way back to Middlesex. The gun was his passport out of the country and back to Ireland.

He barely heard Lily’s shout inside the house. He was too busy dropping from the window ledge. Landing awkwardly, he twisted his ankle and had to rub it before hobbling off towards the fence at the bottom of the garden.

Marmion and Keedy had reacted like lightning. Flinging open the door, they’d pushed Quinn aside and hared up the stairs. They went into the back room and saw the window wide open and the curtains flapping. Though they only caught a fleeting glimpse of the fugitive, they learnt an important fact. He was limping. That would slow him down. Keedy didn’t stand on ceremony. Climbing through the window, he clung onto the ledge then dropped down. He then followed the same route as Niall Quinn, hauling himself over the wooden fence and finding himself in a narrow lane. Unsure which way to run, he turned to the right and sprinted off.

The inspector, meanwhile, descended the stairs to face Eamonn Quinn.

‘You’ve got a lot to answer for, sir.’ he warned.

‘He wasn’t here to stay,’ insisted Quinn.

‘You obviously didn’t learn your lesson.’

‘We didn’t ask him to come back, Inspector. I swear it.’

‘But you went to visit him in Frongoch.’

‘That was my sister’s idea. She wrote from Dublin and begged me to see how he was getting on. Niall has always been a bit wild.’

Diane and Maureen joined the two men from the living room. Conscious that she may have done the wrong thing, Lily threw herself into her mother’s arms.

‘My husband is telling the truth,’ said Diane. ‘Eamonn didn’t even know that he was here until I went to the pub to tell him. Niall turned up out of nowhere. It was Maureen who saw him first.’

‘I heard a noise in the garden,’ explained Maureen. ‘When I went to see what had caused it, Niall jumped out on me. He said that he hadn’t meant us to know that he’d come and gone. He was only here to collect something.’

‘What was it?’ asked Marmion.

‘He hid it in the shed the last time he was here.’

‘Was it more equipment to make bombs?’

‘No, Inspector,’ she said with a glance at her father, ‘it was a gun.’

‘Why did you have to tell him that?’ snarled Quinn.

‘It’s the truth, Daddy.’

‘But it makes everything worse, you stupid girl.’

‘No, it doesn’t,’ said Marmion. ‘It’s a vital piece of information and we’re very grateful to have it. Forewarned is forearmed. What Maureen’s just told us could save lives.’

After a dash of almost thirty yards, Keedy came to the conclusion that he’d either gone in the wrong direction or that his quarry had concealed himself somewhere along the way. He’d now reached the end of the lane and decided to walk around the corner and approach the house from the front. His exertions had made him pant but his frustration far outweighed his lack of breath. In pursuit of a man with a limp, he should easily have caught him. When he came back into the street, he trotted towards the car. Marmion was standing beside it.

‘He got away, Harv,’ he apologised as he reached the house.

‘Be grateful that he did.’

‘Why?’

‘He’s got a gun, apparently.’

‘Blimey!’

‘He’s determined not to be caught.’

‘Well, he can’t get far with a limp like that.’

‘Agreed,’ said Marmion. ‘That’s why I fancy he’ll try to catch a bus or a train. Get in the car,’ he went on, opening the door. ‘We’ll drop you off at the railway station, then round up some reinforcements from the local nick.’ He climbed in after Keedy. ‘I’ll then use the car to trawl around the streets.’

‘Let’s go,’ said Keedy.

The car shot away with a squeal from its tyres.

Having shaken off the initial pursuit, Niall Quinn skulked in a doorway and puffed hard. His ankle was hurting and he was unable to run at any speed. There had to be a better way to travel. He soon found it. An old man rode up slowly on a bicycle and dismounted nearby. Niall was on him at once, pushing him violently away so that he could have the machine. He pedalled away from the outraged cries of the old man. His ankle still made him wince as he pressed down on it, but he was able to move much faster. As he gathered pace and came to a downward gradient, he was even able to freewheel. There was another thing in his favour. The detectives were looking for a pedestrian with a limp and not a cyclist. He’d found a useful disguise.

When he reached the railway station, he abandoned the bicycle. His first thought was to buy a ticket for the next available train but that would only give him away. The clerk would surely remember a dishevelled young man with an Irish accent. He had to sneak unnoticed onto the train. Creeping along the railings, he came to a place where he was able to climb over without too much difficulty. The problem came when he landed. His injured ankle was jarred and the pain increased. Retiring to the shadows, he sat down to rest.

Having dropped Joe Keedy off at the railway station, Marmion was taken by car to the police station where he asked for assistance. Only a couple of constables were available and neither of them looked happy when informed that they were after a desperate man with a gun. Before they could leave the station, they saw an old man stagger in to report the assault on him and the theft of his bicycle. When he heard the rough description of the attacker, Marmion knew that it must have been Niall Quinn.

‘Which way did he go?’ he asked.

The old man blinked. ‘He rode off towards the railway station.’

He was there. Keedy couldn’t see him and nobody on duty reported noticing the Irish fugitive but the sergeant nevertheless sensed that he was there. He began to work his way systematically around the place, going up and down each platform and looking into every room. There was no sign of Niall Quinn but that only meant that he was hiding somewhere. Keedy was about to widen his search by jumping down on the track when he saw Marmion trotting towards him with two uniformed constables.

‘He’s here somewhere, Joe,’ said Marmion.

‘I know that.’

‘He stole a bicycle and headed this way.’

‘If we spread out,’ said Keedy, ‘we can comb the whole area.’

The constables didn’t take kindly to the notion of getting down onto the track, especially as they could hear a train approaching. It came out of the gloom at a moderate pace and they could see that it was a goods train. Wagon after wagon clanked past in what seemed like an endless procession. Marmion watched them but Keedy’s eye was on the bridge between the platforms. A figure had suddenly appeared above them.

‘There he is!’ he yelled, pointing a finger.

They looked up in time to see Niall Quinn, clambering over the side of the bridge before dropping into a passing wagon. Keedy was furious.

‘We’ve lost the bastard!’