Marmion and Keedy had reacted like lightning. Flinging open the door, they’d pushed Quinn aside and hared up the stairs. They went into the back room and saw the window wide open and the curtains flapping. Though they only caught a fleeting glimpse of the fugitive, they learnt an important fact. He was limping. That would slow him down. Keedy didn’t stand on ceremony. Climbing through the window, he clung onto the ledge then dropped down. He then followed the same route as Niall Quinn, hauling himself over the wooden fence and finding himself in a narrow lane. Unsure which way to run, he turned to the right and sprinted off.
The inspector, meanwhile, descended the stairs to face Eamonn Quinn.
‘You’ve got a lot to answer for, sir.’ he warned.
‘He wasn’t here to stay,’ insisted Quinn.
‘You obviously didn’t learn your lesson.’
‘We didn’t ask him to come back, Inspector. I swear it.’
‘But you went to visit him in Frongoch.’
‘That was my sister’s idea. She wrote from Dublin and begged me to see how he was getting on. Niall has always been a bit wild.’
Diane and Maureen joined the two men from the living room. Conscious that she may have done the wrong thing, Lily threw herself into her mother’s arms.
‘My husband is telling the truth,’ said Diane. ‘Eamonn didn’t even know that he was here until I went to the pub to tell him. Niall turned up out of nowhere. It was Maureen who saw him first.’
‘I heard a noise in the garden,’ explained Maureen. ‘When I went to see what had caused it, Niall jumped out on me. He said that he hadn’t meant us to know that he’d come and gone. He was only here to collect something.’
‘What was it?’ asked Marmion.
‘He hid it in the shed the last time he was here.’
‘Was it more equipment to make bombs?’
‘No, Inspector,’ she said with a glance at her father, ‘it was a gun.’
‘Why did you have to tell him that?’ snarled Quinn.
‘It’s the truth, Daddy.’
‘But it makes everything worse, you stupid girl.’
‘No, it doesn’t,’ said Marmion. ‘It’s a vital piece of information and we’re very grateful to have it. Forewarned is forearmed. What Maureen’s just told us could save lives.’
After a dash of almost thirty yards, Keedy came to the conclusion that he’d either gone in the wrong direction or that his quarry had concealed himself somewhere along the way. He’d now reached the end of the lane and decided to walk around the corner and approach the house from the front. His exertions had made him pant but his frustration far outweighed his lack of breath. In pursuit of a man with a limp, he should easily have caught him. When he came back into the street, he trotted towards the car. Marmion was standing beside it.
‘He got away, Harv,’ he apologised as he reached the house.
‘Be grateful that he did.’
‘Why?’
‘He’s got a gun, apparently.’
‘Blimey!’
‘He’s determined not to be caught.’
‘Well, he can’t get far with a limp like that.’
‘Agreed,’ said Marmion. ‘That’s why I fancy he’ll try to catch a bus or a train. Get in the car,’ he went on, opening the door. ‘We’ll drop you off at the railway station, then round up some reinforcements from the local nick.’ He climbed in after Keedy. ‘I’ll then use the car to trawl around the streets.’
‘Let’s go,’ said Keedy.
The car shot away with a squeal from its tyres.
Having shaken off the initial pursuit, Niall Quinn skulked in a doorway and puffed hard. His ankle was hurting and he was unable to run at any speed. There had to be a better way to travel. He soon found it. An old man rode up slowly on a bicycle and dismounted nearby. Niall was on him at once, pushing him violently away so that he could have the machine. He pedalled away from the outraged cries of the old man. His ankle still made him wince as he pressed down on it, but he was able to move much faster. As he gathered pace and came to a downward gradient, he was even able to freewheel. There was another thing in his favour. The detectives were looking for a pedestrian with a limp and not a cyclist. He’d found a useful disguise.
When he reached the railway station, he abandoned the bicycle. His first thought was to buy a ticket for the next available train but that would only give him away. The clerk would surely remember a dishevelled young man with an Irish accent. He had to sneak unnoticed onto the train. Creeping along the railings, he came to a place where he was able to climb over without too much difficulty. The problem came when he landed. His injured ankle was jarred and the pain increased. Retiring to the shadows, he sat down to rest.
Having dropped Joe Keedy off at the railway station, Marmion was taken by car to the police station where he asked for assistance. Only a couple of constables were available and neither of them looked happy when informed that they were after a desperate man with a gun. Before they could leave the station, they saw an old man stagger in to report the assault on him and the theft of his bicycle. When he heard the rough description of the attacker, Marmion knew that it must have been Niall Quinn.
‘Which way did he go?’ he asked.
The old man blinked. ‘He rode off towards the railway station.’
He was there. Keedy couldn’t see him and nobody on duty reported noticing the Irish fugitive but the sergeant nevertheless sensed that he was there. He began to work his way systematically around the place, going up and down each platform and looking into every room. There was no sign of Niall Quinn but that only meant that he was hiding somewhere. Keedy was about to widen his search by jumping down on the track when he saw Marmion trotting towards him with two uniformed constables.
‘He’s here somewhere, Joe,’ said Marmion.
‘I know that.’
‘He stole a bicycle and headed this way.’
‘If we spread out,’ said Keedy, ‘we can comb the whole area.’
The constables didn’t take kindly to the notion of getting down onto the track, especially as they could hear a train approaching. It came out of the gloom at a moderate pace and they could see that it was a goods train. Wagon after wagon clanked past in what seemed like an endless procession. Marmion watched them but Keedy’s eye was on the bridge between the platforms. A figure had suddenly appeared above them.
‘There he is!’ he yelled, pointing a finger.
They looked up in time to see Niall Quinn, clambering over the side of the bridge before dropping into a passing wagon. Keedy was furious.
‘We’ve lost the bastard!’
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
As a rule, June Ingles didn’t get to see a morning newspaper. Her husband always bought one on his way to work, read it during his lunch break then discarded it before coming home. There’d been a radical change that day. Brian Ingles had not only bought three different newspapers, he kept reading their front pages at intervals as if he’d forgotten what news was being featured. When she caught him glancing at the headlines of one paper yet again, she was curious.
‘You must know that article off by heart now,’ she observed. ‘Why do you keep picking it up?’
‘I find it reassuring, June.’
‘Well, I don’t. I hate seeing Florrie’s name mentioned in print like that. It brings back that awful moment when we were first told what happened.’
‘But the police know who did it,’ he said, tapping the newspaper.
‘They only think they know, Brian.’
‘Inspector Marmion wouldn’t have released this name if he wasn’t pretty sure. People all over the country will know that this Herbert Wylie was responsible for the explosion. Someone is bound to spot him.’
‘What good is that to us?’
‘He’ll be caught, convicted and hanged.’
‘That won’t bring Florrie back, will it?’