lay balled up on the floor next to his chair. He stood up quickly as the two police officers approached him and offered a hand.
‘Thanks for seeing me, appreciated,’ he said. He sounded Irish, but Helena wasn’t familiar enough with the country’s regional accents to know what part of the country his came from.
‘I thought I needed to see ya as soon as possible, so I took the day off work,’ he continued. ‘My cousin Danny … well, I thought I might have some information that might help.’
‘Great.’ Helena sat down on the chair opposite him, and Mike slid into the seat beside her. ‘So, what have you got for us, Mr O’Connor?’
He cleared his throat.
‘Well, yesterday Gemma came to see me.’
‘Gemma O’Connor? She came to London?’ Helena was immediately interested.
The man nodded. ‘Yes. She said she was worried about Danny and how the cops … sorry, you, the police …’ He coloured slightly but carried on. ‘How you seemed to think she might have done somethin’ to him. To Danny. And she wanted my help, to persuade you that she’d never do anythin’ like that.’
He paused and licked his lips.
‘Go on.’ Helena smiled encouragingly, realizing that he was nervous.
‘The thing is, she says she’d never hurt him, she said it again to me yesterday, but she has a history, you see. Of hurting him. And he never went to the police about it, well you wouldn’t would you, as a man, it’s embarrassing, telling anyone a woman’s been beating you, but he told me. But that’s why you probably don’t know about this, because he never got her charged, so I thought I’d better tell you … I have pictures, look.’
He bent down to lift his jacket from the floor and fumbled in the inside pocket, pulling out an envelope.
‘Hang on, do you mean domestic violence? Gemma O’Connor was violent towards her husband?’ said Helena. She could hear the excitement in her own voice.
‘Yeah. Look.’
Quinn opened the envelope and removed two photos from it, sliding them across the table. Helena and Mike leaned forwards simultaneously. The pictures were of a man they both instantly recognized as Danny O’Connor, standing shirtless against a white wall. In one shot he was facing the camera, in the other facing away. In both pictures, a large area of livid bruising could be seen across the right side of his torso, stretching from just under his arm to below his ribs.
‘Ouch. Looks painful,’ said Mike. ‘What happened?’
‘That was just a couple of months before they were planning to leave London,’ Quinn said. ‘He said she started kicking him in the ribs for absolutely no reason when he was lying in bed one night. Well, they’d had some sort of minor row a few hours earlier, but he didn’t think it was a big deal, like. She obviously thought differently. The next time I saw him he asked me to take photos, just so he had the evidence, like, if he ever decided to use it. But he always said he could handle it, and he didn’t want to go to the cops … sorry, to you guys. Embarrassing, like I said.’
‘And this would happen how often?’ asked Helena, eyes still on the photographs. ‘Are there any other pictures?’
Quinn shook his head.
‘Happened every now and again. But those are the only pictures to prove it, as far as I know.’
‘OK.’ Helena looked at Mike, who raised an eyebrow.
‘Why didn’t you tell us about this before, Mr O’Connor?’ he said.
Quinn hesitated. ‘Well, as I said, it made Danny sound a bit soft. If he’d just gone off on a jolly, and he was going to come back, I didn’t want to go back on my promise to him to keep my mouth shut about it. But it’s been a while now, and maybe he’s not coming back, and after yesterday, well, I just thought …’
Helena nodded.
‘I understand, but there’s no shame in it, Mr O’Connor. Domestic violence is domestic violence, no matter who the victim is. But thank you very much for bringing this to our attention.’
She paused.
‘Can I just ask you one more thing? In your opinion, would Gemma O’Connor be capable of more than punching or kicking her husband? Do you think she’d have the capacity to hurt him badly? To actually inflict fatal injuries?’
Quinn sat up very straight in his chair and looked her straight in the eye.
‘Do you mean kill him?’
She nodded.
‘Well then yes, I do. I think she’d be very capable