‘But you said that she keeps picking on you.’

‘Yes, I can’t do anything right for Inspector Gale.’

‘Have you complained?’

‘What’s the point?’ replied Alice. ‘Her job is to give orders and mine is to obey them. That’s all there is to it.’

‘I don’t like the thought of you being harassed by her all the time.’

‘I’ll survive, Mummy.’

‘Why not ask your father to intervene?’

Alice smiled. ‘Daddy is at the root of the problem.’

‘Oh? I can’t see why.’

‘Everyone at Scotland Yard knows and respects Inspector Marmion. When he solved those murders in Shoreditch, he became really famous; and people still talk about his other triumphs. It was the first thing Inspector Gale told me,’ recalled Alice. ‘She warned me that I wasn’t to expect any favours because my father was in the Metropolitan Police. And she said it so nastily. That’s what upset me.’

‘Is there a Mr Gale?’

‘No, she’s not married. She’d frighten any man off.’

Ellen was disturbed. ‘She’s not one of those suffragettes, is she?’

‘Yes, and it’s the one good thing in her favour,’ said Alice before correcting herself. ‘No, that’s unfair. Gale Force is very efficient at her job and works like a Trojan. Women police are still very much there on sufferance but she won’t let any of the men patronise us. She’ll even stand up to the commissioner.’

‘That takes a lot of doing.’

‘I just wish that she wouldn’t keep throwing her weight around.’

‘Have you told Joe about this?’

‘No, Mummy. I can look after myself.’

‘He might be able to give you advice.’

‘Joe has his own problems with Superintendent Chatfield — so does Daddy, for that matter. Superior officers always like to pull rank. I’ll just have to grin and bear it.’ Alice glanced at the clock once more. ‘Heavens! Is it that late? I’d better go.’

‘You can always stay the night,’ suggested Ellen. ‘Your bed is made up.’

Alice spoke with quiet firmness. ‘It’s not my bed any more, Mummy.’

‘Well, it is to me.’

‘I must be off.’

The moment that Alice rose to her feet, the telephone rang. Ellen got up and rushed into the hallway to grab the instrument. Her daughter could hear the mixture of pleasure and fatigue in her voice. When she eventually came back into the living room, Ellen was beaming.

‘Your father’s on his way back — and so is Joe. You’ll have to stay now.’

Marmion and Keedy sat in the back of the car as they were driven in the direction of central London. It gave them an opportunity to review what they’d so far established.

‘Let’s start with the positives,’ said Marmion.

‘I didn’t know there were any, Harv.’

‘We’ve just talked to one of them.’

‘Maureen Quinn?’

‘She’s a survivor, Joe. She was in that outhouse only minutes before it went off. Without realising it, she’s a source of valuable information. If her father hadn’t been there, we’d have got far more of it out of her.’

‘Yes,’ said Keedy, ‘he was an awkward customer, wasn’t he?’

‘More to the point, he doesn’t like policemen. He made that clear. As a rule, that means one thing. He’s been in trouble.’

‘Is it worth checking up on that?’

‘I think so.’

Keedy lurched sideways as the car went around a tight corner.

‘Right,’ he said, sitting up straight again, ‘what are the other positives?’

‘The local police were very cooperative. They don’t always put the flags out for what they see as overpaid detectives from Scotland Yard.’

Keedy snorted. ‘Overpaid! Is that what we are? I can’t say I’ve noticed.’

‘We’ve got them on our side, Joe. That will save a lot of time arguing over boundaries. They accept that we’re in charge. Another positive is that man you spoke to when you went to the factory?’

‘Mr Kennett is the works manager.’

‘According to you, he promised all the help we’ll need.’

‘He sounded like a thoroughly decent man, Harv. He was close to tears when I told him that five of his female employees had been blown up at that pub.’

‘Then we come to the last and best positive.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘We don’t have to go back to the Yard to tell Chat what we’ve been up to.’

Keedy laughed. ‘That’s a huge relief,’ he said. ‘Chat is bad enough in the daytime when he’s full of beans. By late evening, he gets tired and that makes him even more fractious. He’s like a bear with a sore head.’

‘That’s why I advised him to go home.’

After exchanging a few jokes about the superintendent, they turned their minds back to the case in hand. Marmion listed all the things they had to do on the following day. They had to deliver a comprehensive report to Claude Chatfield, then appear at a press conference, asking crime correspondents of newspapers to broadcast an appeal for anyone who saw any suspicious activity near the Golden Goose recently to come forward. Detectives would be deployed to go from house to house in the area in search of potential witnesses.

‘That outhouse was kept locked,’ said Marmion. ‘How did the bomber gain access to it to plant his device?’

‘And how sophisticated was the bomb?’

‘It was sophisticated enough to do the job, Joe. That’s what really matters. But it will be interesting to see what the experts say when they’ve collected enough bomb fragments. It should tell us if we’re looking for a rank amateur or for someone who works at the factory and is used to handling explosives.’

‘Do you still think someone had a grudge against one of those women?’

‘Yes, I do — against one or all of them. It may be some crank who objects to the very idea of women doing jobs always done by men in the past.’

‘There’s another way of looking at this,’ mused Keedy.

‘Is there?’

‘What if the real target was the landlord? Somebody could have fallen out with him or been banned from the pub. When he blew up that outhouse, he might have been completely unaware of the fact that someone was inside.’

‘It’s an idea worth considering, Joe, but there’s one thing against it.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Anyone who hated Mr Hubbard enough to plant a bomb on the premises would surely want to cause maximum damage. He’d blow up the pub itself,’ said Marmion, thoughtfully. ‘And I reckon he’d do it after dark so that no customers would be injured. If the landlord was the target, the best time to set off an explosion would be when he’s completely off guard, snoring in bed beside his wife.’

‘I still think we shouldn’t rule him out, Harv.’

‘Agreed — we keep every option on the table.’

‘That brings us back to the five victims.’

‘Yes,’ sighed Marmion, ‘and it confronts us with a massive problem. You know how people are when they’re bereaved. They withdraw into themselves. The parents of those girls won’t like it if we start prying into the private lives of their daughters — well, look at the trouble we had with Mrs Radcliffe. She was very defensive. Like her, the others will just want to be left alone to mourn. We’ll be seen as intruders.’

‘There’s nothing new in that.’ Keedy was struck by a sudden thought. ‘Let’s suppose you’re right, Harv, and that one of those six girls was the target.’ He turned to Marmion. ‘What if it had been Maureen Quinn? Amazingly, she survived. When he discovers that, will the bomber have another crack at her?’

Though they tried to relax, Ellen and Alice were on tenterhooks. Every so often, one of them would go to the window and peer through the curtains. Marmion had rung home from Uxbridge police station. The two women tried to work out how long it would take a car to drive back to the house, assuming that it was keeping to the speed limit. Because her knowledge of geography was poor, Ellen’s estimate was wildly optimistic. During her time with the Women’s Emergency Corps, Alice had driven a lorry all over London and well beyond it. She had a clearer idea of how long it took to get from place to place. She was nevertheless impatient and chafed at the delay. When they heard a car approach the house and slow to a halt, it was Alice who leapt to her feet and rushed to the door. She was in time to see the detectives getting out of the vehicle and ran into Keedy’s embrace.