The first thing the shoebox yielded was a photograph of three smiling young women standing in front of an old van with a cross on its side. I could tell by their uniforms that they were nurses from the First World War. On the back, in slightly smudged ink, someone had written ‘Midge, Rose and Margaret – Flanders, 30 July 1917. Friends Inseparable For Ever!’

I stared hard at the photograph and, though my imagination may have been playing tricks on me, I thought I recognized Rose as the one in the middle. She had perfect dimples at the edges of her smile, and her eyes gazed, pure and clear, directly into the lens. She bore little resemblance to the Rose I had known as Mad Maggie, or indeed to the body of Rose Faversham as I had seen it. But I think it was her.

I put the photograph aside and pulled out the next item. It was a book of poetry: Severn and Somme by Ivor Gurney. One of my favourite poets, Gurney was gassed at St Julien, near Passchendaele, and sent to a war hospital near Edinburgh. I heard he later became mentally disturbed and suicidal, and he died just two or three years ago, after nearly twenty years of suffering. I have always regretted that we never met.

I opened the book. On the title page, someone had written, ‘To My Darling Rose on her 21st Birthday, 20 March 1918. Love, Nicholas.’ So Rose was even younger than I had thought.

I set the book aside for a moment and rubbed my eyes. Sometimes I fancied the residual effects of the gas made them water, though my doctor assured me that it was a foolish notion, as mustard gas wasn’t a lachrymator.

I hadn’t been in the war as late as March 1918. The injury that sent me to a hospital in Manchester, my ‘Blighty’, took place the year before. Blistered and blinded, I had lain in bed there for months, unwilling to get up. The blindness passed, but the scarring remained, both inside and out. In the small hours, when I can’t sleep, I relive those early days of August 1917 in Flanders: the driving rain, the mud, the lice, the rats, the deafening explosions. It was madness. We were doomed from the start by incompetent leaders, and as we struggled waist deep through mud, with shells and bullets flying all around us, we could only watch in hopeless acceptance as our own artillery sank in the mud, and our tanks followed it down.

Judging by the words on the back of the photograph, Rose had been there, too: Rose, one of the angels of mercy who tended the wounded and the dying in the trenches of Flanders’ fields.

I opened the book. Nicholas, or Rose, had underlined the first few lines of the first poem, ‘To the Poet Before Battle’:

Now, youth, the hour of thy dread passion comes;

Thy lovely things must all be laid away;

And thou, as others, must face the riven day

Unstirred by rattle of the rolling drums

Or bugles’ strident cry.

Perhaps Nicholas had been a poet, and Gurney’s call for courage in the face of impending battle applied to him, too? And if Nicholas had been a poet, was Rose one of the ‘lovely things’ he had to set aside?

Outside, the all-clear sounded and brought me back to earth. I breathed a sigh of relief. Spared again. Still, I had been so absorbed in Rose’s treasures that I probably wouldn’t have heard a bomb if one fell next door. They say you never hear the one with your name on.

I set the book down beside the photograph and dug around deeper in the shoebox. I found a medal of some sort – I think for valour in wartime nursing – and a number of official papers and certificates. Unfortunately, there were no personal letters. Even so, I managed to compile a list of names to seek out and one or two official addresses where I might pursue my enquiries into Rose Faversham’s past. No time like the present, I thought, going over to my escritoire and taking out pen and paper.

I posted my letters early the following morning, when I went to fetch my newspaper. I had the day off from school, as the pupils were collecting aluminium pots and pans for the Spitfire Fund, so I thought I might slip into Special Constable mode and spend an hour or two scouring Fingers Finnegan’s usual haunts.

I started at Frinton’s, on the High Street, where I also treated myself to two rashers of bacon and an egg. By mid-morning, I had made my way around most of the neighbouring cafes, and it was lunchtime when I arrived at Lyon’s in the city centre. I didn’t eat out very often, and twice a day was almost unheard of. Even so, I decided to spend one and threepence on roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. There was a lot of meat around then because the powers that be were slaughtering most of the farm animals to turn the land over to crops. I almost felt that I was doing my national duty by helping eat some before it went rotten.

As I waited, I noticed Finnegan slip in through the door in his usual manner, licking his lips, head half-bowed, eyes flicking nervously around the room trying to seek out anyone who might be after him, or to whom he might have owed money. I wasn’t in uniform, and I was pretending to be absorbed in my newspaper, so his eyes slid over me. When he decided it was safe, he sat down three tables away from me.

My meal came, and I tucked in with great enthusiasm, managing to keep Finnegan in my peripheral vision. Shortly, another man came in – dark-haired, red-faced – and sat with Finnegan. The two of them put their heads together, all the time Finnegan’s eyes flicking here and there, looking for danger signs. I pretended to pay no attention but was annoyed that I couldn’t overhear a word. Something exchanged hands under the table, and the other man left: Finnegan fencing his stolen goods again.

I waited, lingering over my tea and rice pudding, and when Finnegan left, I followed him. I hadn’t wanted to confront him in the restaurant and cause a scene, so I waited until we came near a ginnel not far from my own street, then I speeded up, grabbed him by the shoulders and dragged him into it.

Finnegan was not very strong – in fact, he was a scrawny, sickly sort of fellow, which is why he wasn’t fit for service – but he was slippery as an eel, and it took all my energy to hang on to him until I got him where I wanted him, with his back to the wall and my fists gripping his lapels. I slammed him against the wall a couple of times to take any remaining wind out of his sails, then when he went limp, I was ready to start.

‘Bloody hell, Constable Bascombe!’ he said when he’d got his breath back. ‘I didn’t recognize you at first. You didn’t have to do that, you know. If there’s owt you want to know why don’t you just ask me? Let’s be civilians about it.’

‘The word is civilized. With you? Come off it, Fingers.’

‘My name’s Michael.’

‘Listen, Michael, I want some answers and I want them now.’

‘Answers to what?’

‘During last night’s air raid I saw you coming out of a house on Cardigan Road.’

‘I never.’

‘Don’t lie to me. I know it was you.’

‘So what? I might’ve been at my cousin’s. He lives on Cardigan Road.’

‘You were carrying something.’

‘He gave me a couple of kippers.’

‘You’re lying to me, Fingers, but we’ll let that pass for the moment. I’m interested in the raid before that one.’

‘When was that, then?’

‘Last Wednesday.’

‘How d’you expect me to remember what I was doing that long ago?’

‘Because murder can be quite a memorable experience, Fingers.’

He turned pale and slithered in my grip. My palms were sweaty. ‘Murder? Me? You’ve got to be joking! I’ve never killed nobody.’

I didn’t bother pointing out that that meant he must have killed somebody – linguistic niceties such as that being as pointless with someone of Finnegan’s intelligence as speaking loudly to a foreigner and hoping to be understood – so I pressed on. ‘Did you break into Rose Faversham’s house on Aston Place last Wednesday during the raid?’