‘But, according to Mrs Quinn, they never went to church.’

‘That’s all the more reason why Maureen would have been spotted and reported. One of the women I work with is a Roman Catholic. Her priest is always dropping in at the house. She calls him a spy for the Almighty.’

Keedy was thoughtful. ‘You might be on to something there, Alice.’

‘It’s only a guess but I think it’s worth looking into. The priest will know the family and be able to give you more information about them. He’ll also be aware of that explosion in Hayes. It’s common knowledge now. Maureen needs comfort and he’ll surely want to provide it.’

Seated around the kitchen table, the four of them ate their supper in comparative silence. Diane Quinn made a few comments, Lily asked when she’d be going back to school and her father told her that he’d make the decision in due course. Maureen said nothing. Unaware of their presence, she ate her food without really tasting it. She gazed down at her empty plate and replayed in her mind the moment when she heard the explosion. It had blown her whole world apart. She didn’t hear Lily being sent off to bed or see her father pouring himself a glass of beer from a flagon. Only when her mother moved Maureen’s plate to the sink did she come out of her reverie. Diane sat down again and glanced across at her husband before speaking.

‘There’s something we need to discuss,’ she ventured.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Quinn, peremptorily. ‘She doesn’t go.’

‘Maureen must make her own decision, Eamonn.’

‘She’s not strong enough to do that. I’ll make it for her.’

‘What are you talking about?’ asked Maureen, looking up.

Quinn flicked a beefy hand. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Yes, it does,’ argued Diane. ‘It matters a lot.’ She turned to her daughter. ‘We’re talking about the funerals, Maureen. They can’t be far off. Your father doesn’t want you to go to any of them.’

‘I’m not having everyone staring at her,’ he said.

‘She can’t stay away. They were her friends. What will people say?’

‘Who cares?’

‘I do,’ said Diane, meeting his glare. ‘The families of the other girls will be very hurt if Maureen can’t even make the effort to go. They’ll feel betrayed.’

‘We have to put our daughter first, Di. She’s bad enough as it is. If she has to sit through five funerals, it will be a terrible strain for her. I want to spare her that.’

Diane touched her daughter’s arm. ‘What do you think?’

‘I don’t know,’ replied Maureen in a daze.

‘I’ll come with you.’

‘Steer well clear,’ said Quinn. ‘That’s what I’ll do.’

Diane ignored him. ‘I know it will be an ordeal for you, Maureen,’ she said, softly, ‘but I’ll help you through it. Think how upset Mrs Radcliffe will be if you don’t turn up. Then there’s Shirley’s family. She was a good friend — you played in the football team with her. And don’t forget Florrie. It was her birthday party. That’s where this whole thing started.’

Maureen looked hopelessly confused and unable to come to a decision.

‘There you are,’ concluded Quinn. ‘She doesn’t want to go.’

‘Maureen hasn’t said that.’

‘It would be cruel to force her, Di.’

‘Think how it will look if she doesn’t go.’

‘You can be there instead of her. Say that she’s too poorly.’

Diane paused to consider. ‘Perhaps we should ask Father Cleary,’ she said at length. ‘He’ll be able to advise us.’

‘Keep that nosy old so-and-so away from here.’

‘He’s our parish priest, Eamonn. He’ll know what the decent thing to do is.’

‘I’m not letting him back into my life again,’ said Quinn, bitterly. ‘I had enough of Father Cleary when we first moved here. He was always calling in to cadge a cup of tea and tell me how to bring up my children. He was here so often that he might as well have moved in with us.’

‘Don’t exaggerate.’

‘He downright pestered us, Di. In the end, I was sick of the sight of him.’

‘We’re not talking about you,’ she reminded him. ‘When he came to see Maureen, he helped. That’s all I care about. He soothed her. Father Cleary knows how people feel when there’s been a disaster in their lives. He understands what Maureen must be going through.’

‘Well, he can keep his advice to himself.’

Diane looked at her daughter again. ‘Would you like to talk to Father Cleary?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Shall I ask him to call again?’

‘I don’t know, Mummy.’

‘You must have been thinking about the funerals.’

‘I have,’ admitted Maureen. ‘I’ve been thinking of nothing else all day. If I go to one of them, it will bring it all flooding back and I don’t think I could bear that. I don’t want to let anyone down, Mummy, but to be honest, I’m terrified of going.’

‘There you are,’ said Quinn, triumphantly. ‘I was right.’

After his meeting with the superintendent, Marmion went to his office and sat at his desk while he reviewed the facts of the case once more. If only one victim had been targeted and killed, his job would be much more straightforward. There’d simply be one person’s background to explore instead of five. When he added Maureen Quinn to the list, he realised what a mass of material they would assemble, most of it turning out to be irrelevant in the course of time. Other investigations had left him starved of information. In this case, he had far too much of it. When he opened his notebook, he was daunted by the number of names he’d already recorded in connection with the crime, and he suspected that there would be many more before the case was solved.

It was time to leave. Having dismissed his driver for the day, he travelled home by bus and walked the last few hundred yards down streets that had a reassuring familiarity. Nobody else was about. Marmion hoped that his wife would have had the sense to go to bed. He was always overcome with remorse if he kept her up late. When he saw the light through the living room curtains, he knew that Ellen was still there and reproached himself for not leaving Scotland Yard earlier. He let himself into the house and hung up his coat and hat before peeping into the living room. Ellen was sound asleep, slumped in a chair with an open book in her lap. Marmion smiled and crossed the room to plant a delicate kiss on her head. As he picked up the book, an envelope fell out of it and landed on the carpet. He retrieved it at once.

‘Hello,’ he said to himself, ‘what do we have here?’

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Exhaustion finally got the better of June Ingles. Though she tossed and turned for hours, she finally fell into a deep sleep. She came out of it when the birds were heralding a new dawn. The first thing she noticed was that her husband was wide awake, sitting upright beside her and frowning with concentration. June made an effort to shake off her drowsiness.

‘Did you get any sleep?’ she asked.

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘You need it, Brian. We both do. Let the doctor prescribe sleeping pills.’

‘I don’t need any pills,’ he said, bitterly. ‘The only thing that would make me sleep again is to have Florrie back with us, and that’s not going to happen.’

‘We have to get used to the fact.’

‘It will take time, June.’ He suppressed a yawn. ‘I’ve spent half the night thinking about the letter I’m going to write.’

‘What letter?’

‘It’s that headline in the newspaper,’ he said. ‘“Five Dead Canaries” — it was tasteless, indecent and incorrect. Florrie wasn’t a canary. She was a wonderful daughter with a lovely disposition. She was an individual, June, and deserves to be treated as such, not tossed into a common pot labelled “canaries”. It’s demeaning.’

‘You shouldn’t have read that paper if it was going to upset you.’

‘How could I help it? Someone put it through our letter box.’

‘Yes,’ said June, ‘but they didn’t mean to offend you. They thought we might be interested in what was being said about the explosion.’ She sat up and put the pillow at her back. ‘What else have you been thinking about?’