‘When are you going to see Joe again?’ asked Ellen.

‘I wish I knew, Mummy.’

‘It doesn’t get any better with the passage of time.’

‘Are you trying to warn me off marrying a policeman?’

‘I’d never do that, Alice. You’ve made the right choice. Stick by it.’

Alice was sad. ‘If only I could hear Daddy say that!’

‘You will one day,’ said Ellen. ‘He’s already starting to mellow.’

‘Well, why didn’t you say so, you fool?’ yelled Marmion, angrily. ‘The car must be available at all times. It’s your job to make sure that it is.’

‘I’m sorry, Inspector.’

‘If you knew there was a problem, you should have reported it.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said the driver, cowering under the onslaught.

‘That’s why we have mechanics. They keep our vehicles on the road.’

‘I didn’t think that the problem was serious.’

‘Get it fixed.’

‘I don’t have any tools.’

‘Then find someone who has,’ said Marmion, pointing a finger down the road. ‘We passed a garage on our way here. When you heard that noise in the engine, why didn’t you stop and ask for help?’

He made an effort to rein in his temper. Ordinarily, the driver was extremely dependable, working at all hours without complaint. But he had slipped up on this occasion. As a result, the car had broken down and both of them were now standing on the pavement beside it. To get to the police station would only take Marmion a ten-minute walk but that wasn’t the point. Reliability of transport was vital. Had they been speeding to an emergency, the breakdown could have had critical results. The driver clearly didn’t need to be told that. He was writhing with embarrassment.

‘It’s never happened before, sir,’ he argued in his defence.

‘I know,’ said Marmion, anger subsiding, ‘and it’s my fault as much as yours. I heard that strange noise when you did. I should have insisted you pulled into that garage. Sorry I lost my temper.’

‘I deserved it, Inspector.’

‘I’ll go on foot now. Bring the car when it’s been repaired. And if it turns out to be beyond repair,’ he added, ‘we’ll have to borrow one from the police station. We can’t solve a murder case by riding around on bicycles.’

The driver’s laugh was more out of relief than amusement. He was grateful that his reprimand was over. Marmion rarely lost his temper but, when he did, he could be very scathing. The driver was still feeling the force of the blast.

Marmion set off with long strides. His brisk walk got him to the police station where he found Joe Keedy awaiting him. He got no sympathy from the sergeant.

‘Now you know how I have to manage,’ said Keedy. ‘While you’ve had a chauffeur, I’ve had to walk everywhere or use public transport.’

‘We can’t all have a car at our disposal, Joe.’

‘Neither of us does at the moment.’

Marmion sat opposite him and heard about the visit to Sadie Radcliffe. He was intrigued to learn new intelligence about Florrie Duncan. It transpired that she was not the dutiful daughter that her parents had spoken about. According to Sadie — working on information supplied by Agnes Collier — there’d been a serious rift in the family before Florrie’s marriage. Because of her parents’ strong objections to her choice of husband, Florrie had moved out of her home and into a flat. Neither her mother’s pleas nor her father’s hectoring had been able to bring her back. In the wake of their son-in-law’s death, the parents had expected their daughter to turn to them for comfort but Florrie made a point of avoiding them.

‘I talked to the men who’ve been knocking on doors in the area,’ said Keedy, ‘and they told a similar story. It’s not a happy family and Mr Ingles is disliked by his neighbours.’

‘That’s because he’s so objectionable,’ said Marmion. ‘But you haven’t told me what it was that was likely to wipe the smile off his face and that of his wife.’

‘I’m not sure if this is true or just idle tittle-tattle.’

‘What did Mrs Radcliffe tell you?’

‘Her daughter had the feeling that Florrie was pregnant.’

‘That could be good news if it was her husband’s child.’

‘It can’t possibly be, Harv. The dates don’t fit.’

‘Well,’ said Marmion, sitting back to absorb the news, ‘that could mean that there were six victims of that explosion. From her parents’ point of view, it might be just as well that the post-mortem didn’t reveal signs of pregnancy. How certain was Mrs Radcliffe that her daughter was telling the truth?’

‘Agnes Collier had a child of her own. She knew the signals.’

‘Did she have any idea who the father was?’

‘No, Harv, but it does show Florrie in a different light. She was obviously a young woman who enjoyed life,’ said Keedy. ‘We’ll never know if the baby was an accident or a deliberate means of scandalising her parents.’

‘I’d go for the first explanation, Joe. Florrie may have fallen out with them but she’d know the terrible stigma that a child born outside wedlock would bear. It would make life very uncomfortable for mother and child. No woman would want that.’

‘I wonder if the father knew about what had happened. They could always have got married, I suppose.’

‘Not if he was already married,’ Marmion pointed out. ‘Or he could have been some careless chap who simply wanted a bit of fun and wasn’t prepared to face the consequences. Either way, he’d have left Florrie to cope on her own.’

‘Unless …’

They were both thinking the same thing. Someone who was confronted with the information that he’d fathered a child might have taken extreme measures to get rid of it. If he and Florrie had been close, he’d know the date of her birthday and be aware that the party was taking place in the outhouse at the pub. Again, the likelihood was that the man worked at the factory and therefore had access to materials that could be used to fashion a bomb. Marmion slipped a hand into an inside pocket and took out the lists that Leighton Hubbard had drawn up for him. One of the names could well belong to Florrie Duncan’s lover. They might have a second suspect. Herbert Wylie had apparently acted because he’d been rejected by a woman. It was the opposite case here. A man’s advances had been welcomed and he’d taken his pleasure with Florrie. What could have moved him to contemplate murder was the pressing need to remove her and her child from his life.

‘What will Chat make of it all?’ asked Keedy.

‘The superintendent has a mind that none can fathom, Joe.’

‘Are you going to tell him?’

‘I’ll wait until he rings me.’

‘I still think that Wylie might be our man.’

‘We can’t dismiss this new suspect,’ said Marmion, ‘whoever he might be. Thank goodness you called on Mrs Radcliffe. What sounded like idle tittle-tattle may turn out to be the solution to the crime.’

‘What about you, Harv?’

‘Oh, I uncovered no interesting new evidence. I did have some luck, though. When I got to Mr Harte’s house, he not only let me in, he had Brian Ingles there. It saved me a second visit.’

‘What did they have to say for themselves?’

Marmion gave him an abbreviated account of his time at Reuben Harte’s house. In view of what he now knew about Florrie Duncan, he could see that most of her father’s grandiose claims about her had been so much hot air. Ingles was blissfully unaware that his daughter had a new man in her life and that he’d impregnated Florrie. It would have been shattering news to her parents. Keedy was so enthralled by what he heard that he forgot to mention that Harte had earlier thought that Marmion looked shifty.

‘Ingles has a lovely house,’ he said, enviously. ‘Why sell it?’

‘That’s what I wondered.’

‘He surely can’t want anything bigger.’

‘Not when there are only the two of them there, Joe. I can tell you this, though. When my father was killed, the last thing my mother was thinking about was selling the house. It’s such a peculiar thing to do.’