‘Can we borrow this, Mr Kennett?’ asked Keedy.

‘Yes, of course,’ replied the other.

‘I’d like the inspector to see it and it will enable us to give the press a more detailed description of the wanted man.’

‘It will be a stigma on us if he does turn out to be guilty.’

‘Why is that, sir?’

‘It will look bad, Sergeant — very bad. Personally, I feel very uneasy at the thought that we may be harbouring a killer in this factory.’

‘Then there’s something you haven’t noticed,’ said Keedy, unable to resist the comment. ‘Everyone who works here is engaged in the production of dangerous weapons. It looks to me as if you’re harbouring several thousand killers.’

Eamonn Quinn was less than pleased with what his wife told him.

‘Sadie Radcliffe came here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then why the hell did you let her in?’

‘She came to apologise, Eamonn.’

‘I’d have sent her on her way,’ he said, vengefully.

‘She’s Agnes’s mother,’ Diane reminded him, ‘and you should have some sympathy for her. Because our daughter left that party early, we were very lucky. Sadie wasn’t. I admire her. With all that she has to cope with, she nevertheless felt that she wanted to say sorry for things she said about Maureen.’

‘I’ll never forgive her for that.’

‘We’d have done the same in her position. If our daughter had died and Agnes had survived, we’d have been bitter and said things we didn’t really mean.’

Quinn was adamant. ‘I always mean exactly what I say.’

After washing his hands in the sink, he dried them and took his seat at the table. Diane prodded the potatoes and decided that they needed a few more minutes in the saucepan on the stove. She told her husband how her visitor had asked for advice with regard to the offer made by the factory. Her husband’s reaction was instant.

‘Stupid woman!’ he exclaimed. ‘She should snatch their hands off.’

‘Sadie was undecided.’

‘Think of the money she’d save.’

‘She has to put Agnes first. Money doesn’t really come into this.’

‘Yes, it does,’ he insisted. ‘The factory owes those girls something. They work their fingers to the bone and come home looking like refugees from Peking. The least they deserve is to have their funeral expenses covered.’

‘It’s the idea of a burial all together that worries me,’ said Diane, ‘and I think it would worry Father Cleary as well.’

‘Why?’

‘We’re Roman Catholics and the other families are not. Father Cleary would want us to keep apart from them.’

‘I’d do what I wanted and not listen to him.’ He sat back as she put four plates on the table. ‘What did Sadie decide in the end?’

‘She really wanted to know what the other families thought. Since they’re all strangers to her, she asked if Maureen would go with her because she knew where the parents of the other victims lived.’

‘Then she’s got a damn cheek, if you ask me!’

‘It was a simple enough favour to ask, Eamonn,’ said his wife. ‘Agnes would have done the same for me if she’d been the one to survive. As it was, Maureen refused. It really upset her to be asked. She just ran off upstairs.’

‘Maureen did the right thing.’

Diane went to the door and called to her daughters. Maureen and Lily came into the kitchen and took their places at the table. Their mother put out the cutlery before draining the potatoes. She then served them directly onto the plates. Thin slices of mutton followed with some peas. Bread and thinly-spread butter were already on the table. Quinn began to eat the moment that food was put in front of him. His daughters waited for their mother to slip off her pinafore and join them at the table. After giving Maureen a warning glance, Diane braced herself.

‘We had another visit from Sergeant Keedy,’ she said.

Quinn glared. ‘Why is he still bothering us?’

‘He wanted to talk to Maureen alone.’

‘Well, I hope you told her that he couldn’t. I don’t care who he is, Di. He can’t come barging in here and bombarding Maureen with questions. She’s still recovering from what happened.’ He pointed his knife at Diane. ‘You should have refused outright. Did you?’

‘No — but they were only alone together for a short while.’

‘Two minutes would have been too long!’ he protested.

‘He felt that Maureen could help the investigation.’

‘I didn’t mind,’ said Maureen, coming to her mother’s aid. ‘Sergeant Keedy was very nice. He didn’t make me feel uncomfy or anything. He just wanted to know a little more about the others.’

‘The best way to do that,’ said Quinn, ‘is to talk to their families.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ said Diane. ‘They’re still struggling with the shock of what happened at that pub. Besides, they could only say what their daughters were like at home. Maureen knew them at work where they behaved differently.’

His gaze shifted to Maureen and there was menace in his tone. ‘Don’t you dare tell me that you talked to him about our family. I warned you against that.’

‘Sergeant Keedy didn’t ask about us,’ said Maureen.

‘So what did you tell him?’

‘I just told him the truth. I liked them all. They were friends. I miss them. The person that the sergeant was really interested in was Enid.’

‘Enid Jenks — she the one who plays the violin?’

‘Yes, she played the piano as well.’

‘And what did you say about her?’

Maureen hesitated, looking at her sister to indicate that Lily was perhaps too young to hear the information. Quinn became restive. He spoke through a mouthful of half-chewed potato.

‘Well — what did you say, girl?’

‘I told him that Enid was having trouble with a man at work.’

‘What sort of trouble?’

‘He wouldn’t leave her alone.’

Meals of any kind always posed a problem during an investigation. Marmion and Keedy had to eat on the hoof, grabbing whatever they could at whatever unlikely time it might be. It was mid-afternoon before they finally managed to have some lunch. Back at the police station, they munched sandwiches and sipped lukewarm tea. Keedy’s visit to the factory had given them a much more rounded picture of their chief suspect and the photograph was an added bonus. As he reached for another sandwich, Marmion studied the face of Herbert Wylie.

‘What do you see when you look at him, Joe?’ he asked.

‘I see an ugly little bugger in a decent suit.’

‘You’d never think he was off on a works outing, would you?’

‘Maybe he didn’t want to spend a day with a load of other men,’ said Keedy. ‘His idea of fun is to be alone with Enid Jenks.’

‘Alan Suggs was no oil painting but, compared to this sour-faced chap, he was dazzlingly handsome. If he wanted to impress women, why didn’t Wylie learn to smile properly?’

‘Who knows?’ He looked over Marmion’s shoulder at the photograph. ‘There’s a mean glint in his eye. You can imagine him stalking his prey.’

‘That’s only because you know what he did to Enid Jenks,’ said Marmion. ‘If you didn’t, you’d probably have said that he needed spectacles. I mean, look at this character over here,’ he went on, pointing to a plump individual in the middle of the group. ‘He’s got the face of merciless killer, if ever I saw one, yet he’s probably a devoted husband and father who’s led a spotless existence. The camera does lie sometimes.’

‘That’s a fair point,’ conceded the other. ‘I daresay that anyone looking at a photo of me would think I was a homicidal maniac. And remember how Harte reacted when he first set eyes on you? You’re a highly respected detective inspector yet he thought you looked shifty.’

‘There’s no need to bring that up,’ complained Marmion.

‘It shows you that you should never judge a sausage by its skin.’ Keedy glanced at the telephone. ‘Are you going to ring Chat for a chat?’

‘He’ll be too busy claiming credit for unmasking our new suspect.’