Five Dead Canaries (22 page)

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!’

As a rule, June Ingles didn’t get to see a morning newspaper. Her husband always bought one on his way to work, read it during his lunch break then discarded it before coming home. There’d been a radical change that day. Brian Ingles had not only bought three different newspapers, he kept reading their front pages at intervals as if he’d forgotten what news was being featured. When she caught him glancing at the headlines of one paper yet again, she was curious.

‘You must know that article off by heart now,’ she observed. ‘Why do you keep picking it up?’

‘I find it reassuring, June.’

‘Well, I don’t. I hate seeing Florrie’s name mentioned in print like that. It brings back that awful moment when we were first told what happened.’

‘But the police
know
who did it,’ he said, tapping the newspaper.

‘They only think they know, Brian.’

‘Inspector Marmion wouldn’t have released this name if he wasn’t
pretty sure. People all over the country will know that this Herbert Wylie was responsible for the explosion. Someone is bound to spot him.’

‘What good is that to us?’

‘He’ll be caught, convicted and hanged.’

‘That won’t bring Florrie back, will it?’

‘No,’ he conceded, ‘but it will give us the satisfaction of knowing that the person who murdered her will get his just desserts.’ He put the paper aside. ‘I intend to be in court to see it happen.’

They were in the living room. The only bonus of their daughter’s death was that June had been able to enjoy her husband’s company for successive evenings. After work, he often dined at his club or went to a meeting of one of the societies of which he was an active member. It was only at weekends that they spent any time together. Though irritated by his regular recourse to one of the newspapers, she was pleased to see that his spirits had lifted. Immediately after the news of the explosion, Ingles had been close to despair. Instead of consoling his wife, he’d been in need of consolation himself. It was June who’d had to find the strength to carry the two of them through the initial horror. That had changed now. Ingles had recovered his habitual self-confidence and shrugged off his earlier torpor. What pleased his wife was that he was no longer talking about selling the house. She could now think of ways of improving their existing home.

‘We need new curtains in here,’ she said.

‘No, we don’t.’

‘Take a proper look at them, Brian. They’ve faded badly.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with them.’

‘But you promised me that I could choose some new ones.’

‘Did I?’ he said in surprise. ‘When was that?’

‘Months ago – don’t you remember?’

‘There are more important things to spend our money on, June, so you can forget about the curtains.’

‘But you said that we’d go to London one day to look at fabrics.’

‘That will have to wait,’ he said, brusquely.

‘I’ve been waiting for ages already.’

‘For heaven’s sake, June, stop blathering on about curtains!’

His harsh tone alarmed her. ‘I’m sorry.’

There was a hurt silence. He tried to make amends for his momentary outburst by offering her a conciliatory smile and a pat on the knee. After another glance at the headline in the newspaper on his lap, he changed the subject.

‘Did I tell you that I saw Neil Beresford this morning?’

‘No,’ she replied, ‘you didn’t.’

‘He’d just been to the newsagent’s. It was quite cold but he was wearing a singlet and a pair of shorts. Apparently, he’d been out running.’

‘Why?’

‘You’ll have to ask him. It seems a strange thing to do at a time like this.’

‘I envy him,’ she admitted. ‘Neil Beresford lost his wife but he’s young enough to find another one. We can never replace Florrie.’

‘Don’t go on about it, June.’

‘But it’s true.’

‘I know,’ he said, squeezing her hand, ‘but we mustn’t let it cloud our thoughts indefinitely. We have to build our lives anew – and so will the families of the other victims.’

Seeing the deep sorrow in her eyes and the sag in her shoulders, he tried to cheer her up. He put his newspaper aside and crossed to examine the curtains.

‘I can’t see them properly in this light,’ he said, holding the fabric, ‘but they do look as if they’ve faded a bit.’

‘We’ve had them for five years, Brian. We need a change.’

‘Perhaps we do. Let me think about it.’

‘Thank you.’

The telephone rang in the hall. Ingles was on the move at once.

‘That might be the inspector,’ he said, hopefully. ‘I asked him to ring the moment he had any positive news.’

He left the room and lifted the receiver with a smile on his face. But it was not Marmion at the other end of the line. It was a voice that chilled him to the bone.

‘Hello,’ said a man. ‘Do you remember me?’

The stationmaster was a mine of information. He knew the times of departure of every passenger train that came there during the day and he also knew when the regular goods trains were due. The detectives had not lost Niall Quinn, after all. They knew where he was going. According to the stationmaster, the goods train on which the Irishman had contrived a free ride was heading for a marshalling yard some fifteen miles or so away. Since it would maintain a reasonable speed all the way, it would give Quinn little opportunity to get off in transit. If they could get to the destination before the train, they stood a chance of catching the fugitive. It meant a mad dash in the car and considerable discomfort for the two passengers as they were thrown about in the rear seats but Marmion and Keedy raised no protest. They were willing to endure anything in order to overtake Niall Quinn.

‘We’ll just have to hope that the train doesn’t slow down at any point,’ said Marmion, ‘or he may be able to jump off.’

‘I don’t think he’ll be jumping anywhere, Harv. Didn’t you see the way he hung from that bridge so that he didn’t have so far to fall? That limp tells us that he’s hurt one of his legs,’ argued Keedy. ‘Otherwise, he’d have leapt off that bridge like the daredevil that Major Gostelow
described. In any case, didn’t the stationmaster say that the goods train wouldn’t stop until it reached the marshalling yard?’

‘There could always be an emergency stop.’

‘Niall Quinn will want to go as far as the train will take him.’

‘You’re probably right,’ said Marmion, ‘and we do have one thing in our favour – he thinks he shaken us off. He doesn’t realise we’re after him.’

‘The surprise element is always useful, especially when someone is armed.’

‘We must take no chances, Joe.’

‘I’d feel a lot happier if we had guns as well.’

‘You’re not trained to use a firearm.’

‘I ought to be and so should you.’

‘Take it up with the commissioner,’ said Marmion, ‘though you’d be spitting in the wind. It’s a matter of pride to him that, in the main, we’re not armed. I know that constables on night patrol in certain areas do carry weapons but they’re the exception and their pistols are not always reliable. Don’t forget what happened at the Siege of Sidney Street.’

‘How could I?’ said Keedy, bitterly. ‘It was a disgrace. Our guns were useless and our so-called marksmen couldn’t shoot straight.’

It was only five years since the siege and it remained fresh in the memory. Three policemen had been shot dead while trying to arrest a gang of Latvian burglars. Just over a fortnight later, the police received information that two of the gang were hiding in a flat in Sidney Street. A gun battle developed. While the police used bulldog revolvers, shotguns and firearms more suitable for a rifle range, they were up against men with Mauser pistols capable of rapid and accurate fire. Eventually, the police had to ask for volunteer marksmen from the Scots Guards.

‘It really showed us up,’ complained Keedy. ‘When they saw how inadequate our guns were, they withdrew them from service, then reissued them as soon as the war broke out. Do we never learn?’

‘It’s a question of budgets, Joe. It always is.’

‘It’s a question of common sense.’

They swung hard to the left as the car turned a corner at a speed that took two of its wheels briefly off the ground. As it straightened, it was racing down a road that was parallel with the railway line. A passenger train thundered past in the opposite direction, half-hidden in billowing smoke. Buildings and trees obscured the line for a few moments but it soon came back into view. Seeing something ahead, their driver increased speed until he drew level with a goods train.

‘Do you think that’s the one Niall Quinn is on?’ asked Keedy.

‘I’m sure it is, Joe.’

‘How can you be certain?’

Marmion chuckled. ‘Didn’t you see him wave to us?’

Convinced that he was safe, Niall Quinn lay back and rested. Some of the wagons had been carrying coal but he chose one with a tarpaulin over it in the hope of a softer landing. He was in luck. Beneath the tarpaulin were large cardboard boxes. While he had no knowledge of what they contained, he was grateful for the way they’d softened his fall from the bridge. His first task had been to inspect the swollen ankle. Nothing was broken but it really hurt. Accustomed to improvising, he tore a long section off the bottom of his shirt to use as a bandage and give his ankle support. Feeling marginally better, he was able to relax and consider how best he could get to Anglesey and thence to Ireland. He was sorry to complicate the lives of the Quinn family by turning up unexpectedly and he was especially sad to have terrified his cousin, Maureen. Under other circumstances, he’d have liked the chance to get to know her better. But his commitment to the ideals of Sinn Fein came first.

Remaining in England was too dangerous. As long as he was there,
he’d be hunted and he’d vowed never to be incarcerated in Frongoch again. Once he’d got back to the safety of Dublin, he decided, he might send a cheery postcard to Major Gostelow. The governor had a sense of humour. He’d appreciate it.

Their car had long since lost sight of the goods train and they had no idea if they were still ahead of it or indeed if it was the right one. They were in open countryside now with trees looming out of the dark.

‘I take it that Niall Quinn is no longer on your list,’ said Keedy. ‘If he only came back to the area today, he couldn’t possibly have set off that bomb at the pub.’

‘I accept that, Joe. He’s not the man we’re after.’

‘Then why are we chasing him?’

‘Would you rather let him go?’ asked Marmion.

‘Oh, no – he’s a danger to the public while he’s on the loose. When we’ve got a chance of nabbing him, we’ve got to take it. I’m not quite sure what Chat will make of it all, though.’

‘I think I do. If we arrest Quinn, he’ll rap us over the knuckles for straying away from our investigation, then he’ll enjoy bragging rights over Special Branch because we did their job for them. Chat always wants it both ways.’

‘What about the Quinn family?’

‘Technically, they were harbouring an escaped prisoner.’

‘They were doing it reluctantly,’ said Keedy. ‘I believe Maureen. Her cousin popped up like a jack-in-the-box and there was nothing she could do about it. If he hadn’t needed to reclaim his gun, Niall Quinn wouldn’t have gone anywhere near the house. We should remember that.’

‘We will, Joe. In fairness to Niall, he didn’t mean to get them into trouble. We happened to arrive on their doorstep at the wrong time.’

‘I’d have thought it was the right time.’

‘It is, in one sense,’ said Marmion. ‘When we found Niall there, we struck gold. He’s the one to blame, not the family.’

‘Maureen told us the truth,’ said Keedy, ‘I’m certain of it. I’m less certain that she told us the full truth about the night of the explosion.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘There’s always this sense that she’s holding something back.’

‘Most of the time, it will just be tears.’

‘Perhaps I’m not the best person to question her.’

‘I’d say that you did very well, Joe. After all, you were the one who got the name of Herbert Wylie out of her. That marked a huge advance for us.’

‘There’s more to come, if only I knew how to draw it out.’

‘We’ll both have a go at her next time.’

‘I’m not sure that that’s the answer, Harv. We’re men and she’s a young woman in a tragic situation. With the best will in the world, we can’t ever win her over completely.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s a job for a woman,’ suggested Keedy. ‘Maureen needs someone who can console her and gain her trust. That’s where the feminine touch has the advantage.’

‘We don’t have female detectives,’ said Marmion.

‘We have policewomen. In fact, you’ve got one in the family.’

‘Let’s not drag Alice into this.’

‘But she’d be the ideal person to talk to Maureen,’ said Keedy. ‘She’s patient, softly spoken and full of sympathy for anyone in distress. Also, she’s fairly close in age to Maureen. I think that Alice would know instinctively what to say to her. She’d win Maureen’s confidence in a way that we could never achieve.’

Alice Marmion got off the bus and walked in the direction of her flat. Though she was not directly involved in the case, she knew enough about it to make deductions of her own. It was a more pleasurable exercise than tramping the streets as she’d done when on duty that day. She envied her father and Joe Keedy. They were at the heart of a multifaceted investigation that kept throwing up new lines of enquiry. She longed to face such challenges. When she got to the house, she let herself in and instantly forgot all about the case. Waiting for her on the table was a letter sent from someone whose handwriting she’d recognise anywhere. Seizing the envelope, she tore it open and read the letter from her brother.

It was full of loving apologies for forgetting to say anything about her engagement to Keedy in his earlier letter. He admitted the mistake and gave her his warmest congratulations. Paul was less enthusiastic about her decision to join the police service but he admired her courage in doing so. Alice was ecstatic. Her anxiety had been unfounded. Her brother was ready to welcome Keedy into the family. She would count the days until she saw Paul again.