‘There may be some small detail that slipped your mind.’

‘But there isn’t, Sergeant. I’ll swear it.’

‘Then I’ll let you go,’ he said, pleasantly, getting to his feet. ‘Goodbye.’

‘Goodbye.’

Having stayed at the hospital longer than she needed, Maureen now left it as if she had an urgent appointment elsewhere. Chewing on his pencil, Keedy watched her go. He felt profoundly sorry for her. Having dealt with survivors of explosions before, he knew how consumed with guilt they could become, blaming themselves for escaping from an accident that had claimed the lives of others. Not that the bomb at the Golden Goose was in any way accidental — it was deliberately designed to kill and wreck. Maureen Quinn had been extremely fortunate to leave the building when she did and she appeared to have had a good reason for doing so.

Keedy wondered why he simply didn’t believe her.

It was just like old times. Ellen Marmion was seated in her kitchen, having a cup of tea with a member of the police force. However, it was not her husband on this occasion but her daughter who was nibbling a ginger biscuit beside her. Having established that Joe Keedy had been sent off to investigate a crime that evening, Alice had sighed resignedly in a way she’d seen her mother do a hundred times. Instead of going back to her flat, she went back home so that she could commiserate with Ellen about their absent partners. Having joined the Women Police Service on impulse, Alice was now having regrets. Her duties were strictly circumscribed and seemed to consist largely of taking orders from her superiors and carrying messages to and fro. Longing to be given some operational role, she was confined to clerical work. It made her look back on her time in the Women’s Emergency Corps with fondness. The work had been onerous but it had a wonderfully unpredictable range to it.

‘Did you find out where they were going?’ asked Ellen.

‘No,’ replied her daughter, ‘but it must have been a major incident or they would have sent someone less senior than Daddy.’

‘That’s one way of looking at it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Let’s just say that Claude Chatfield is not your father’s greatest admirer. He takes pleasure in unloading awkward cases onto him. To give him credit, he does his job well but there’s a nasty streak in the superintendent.’

‘That’s because he knows, in his heart, that Daddy is a much better detective. At least, that’s what Joe believes. They call him “Chat”, by the way.’

‘Oh, I’ve heard your father call him a lot worse than that, Alice.’

They shared a laugh and reached for another home-made biscuit. Ellen was delighted to see her daughter again. Since she’d moved into a flat of her own, Alice’s visits had become less and less frequent. With her son away in France and her husband on call at all hours, Ellen was well acquainted with loneliness. An unexpected evening with Alice was therefore a bonus. She bit into her biscuit.

‘Have you set a date yet?’

‘We’ve set it a number of times, Mummy, but we keep changing our minds.’

‘Why is that?’

‘Things sort of come up.’

‘What sort of things?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Alice with a weary smile. ‘One minute I find a reason to change the date; next minute it’s Joe’s turn. It’s a question of finding a time when both our families can be there. My stipulation is clear. I’m not getting married unless Paul is back home from France.’

Ellen pulled a face. ‘Well, that’s in the lap of the gods.’

‘This war can’t go on forever.’

‘How many times have we both said that?’

‘Then, of course, there’s Joe’s family. They have commitments.’

‘You didn’t really take to them, did you?’

‘It wasn’t that,’ said Alice, remembering her visit to the Midlands. ‘I just never got to know them. When Joe told me that his father was an undertaker, I thought that he’d relax when he was off duty but he couldn’t, somehow. It was the same with Mrs Keedy — she chisels the names into the headstones so is very much part of the business. She and her husband are both grim.’

‘Maybe they’ll improve with a drink inside them.’

Alice grinned. ‘No chance of that — they’re both teetotal.’

‘I can see why Joe didn’t stay in the family trade. He was born to enjoy life.’ She put her hand on her daughter’s arm. ‘I’m so glad that this has happened, I really am. Your father may be against it now but he’ll mellow in time. He loves Joe. He just doesn’t like the idea of having him as a son-in-law.’

‘Would he rather that we just lived together?’

‘Heaven forbid!’

‘I was only joking, Mummy.’

‘Well, for goodness’ sake, don’t joke about it in front of your father. He’s very sensitive on that subject at the moment. Working with Joe always used to be a real joy for him. Now there are definite tensions between them.’

When he finally got back to the Golden Goose, Keedy found Marmion deep in conversation with a uniformed inspector who kept nodding in agreement. The crowd had drifted away now and the area was cordoned off with ropes. Two constables were on duty to ensure that nobody tried to loot the pub or poke about in the rubble. One of them chased away a dog that tried to urinate over the inn sign that had been knocked off its iron bar by the force of the blast. The golden goose looked outraged at the sudden change in its fortunes. Marmion excused himself and came over to Keedy.

‘You were gone a long time, Joe,’ he observed.

‘I know,’ replied the other. ‘After I’d talked to Maureen Quinn, I went over to the factory. They gave me the number of Mr Kennett, the works manager, and let me phone him at his home. He was knocked sideways by the news, Harv. He knew who Florrie Duncan was. She must have been a real character to stand out from the thousands of other women employed there.’

‘Was this Maureen Quinn the sixth guest at the party?’

‘Yes, she was still at the hospital when I got there.’

‘How would you describe her?’

‘She’s a very pretty girl but — not surprisingly — stunned by what happened.’

‘What did you learn from her?’

‘Lots,’ said Keedy, taking out his notebook.

After moving into the spill of light from a nearby lamp post, he translated his scrawl into a terse account. Marmion was relieved to hear that all five victims now had names. Since four of them lived in Hayes itself, he delegated the task of informing their next of kin to the local police, who’d locate the addresses far more easily. Thankful to learn the identities of the dead women, the uniformed inspector said that he would pass on the bad news in person to each of the respective families.

‘We’ll go to Agnes Collier’s address,’ said Marmion. ‘She lives some distance away.’

‘Her mother will be there, looking after her grandson. She’s a Mrs Radcliffe. I hope she’s got a husband or some good friends,’ said Keedy. ‘She’ll need someone to help her get through this.’

‘Yes, the birthday party has turned out to be a nightmare.’

‘What have you been doing, Harv?’

‘I spoke to the landlord, Leighton Hubbard. You only have to look at the pub to imagine how he must be feeling. The worst of it is that he thinks he’s somehow responsible for the deaths.’

‘That’s silly. It wasn’t his fault.’

‘He did give us one valuable clue.’

‘Oh?’ Keedy’s interest quickened. ‘What was that?’

‘That outhouse was almost never used. He only rented it out two or three times a year. That narrows down the possibilities at once, Joe.’

‘Does it?’

‘Of course,’ said Marmion. ‘It means that those five women were not just random victims. One or all of them were intended targets. The person who planted that bomb knew the time they’d be here and he could rely on them not being too inquisitive. When you go to a birthday party, the last thing you do is to search every nook and cranny for a bomb. They had no chance. They were sitting targets.’