Jack Higgins: Brought in Dead

Macek sat there staring at him, horror in his eyes, and Jack Brady’s iron fist descended, jerking from the chair. “On your way, soldier.”

Macek stumbled from the room and Miller turned to the window and pulled the curtain. Rain drifted across the glass in a fine spray and beyond, the first light of morning streaked the grey sky. The door opened behind him and the young probationer entered, the tea and cigarettes on a tray. “That’ll be six bob, sarge.”

Miller paid him and slipped the cigarettes into his pocket. “I’ve changed my mind about tea. You have it. I’m going home. Tell Detective Constable Brady I’ll ’phone him this afternoon.”

He walked along the quiet corridor, descended three flights of marble stairs and went out through the swing doors of the portico at the front of the Town Hall. His car was parked at the bottom of the steps with several others, a green Mini-Cooper, and he paused beside it to light a cigarette.

It was exactly five-thirty and the streets were strangely empty in the grey morning. The sensible thing to do was to go home to bed and yet he felt strangely restless. It was as if the city lay waiting for him and obeying a strange, irrational impulse he turned up the collar of his dark blue Swedish trenchcoat against the rain and started across the square.

For some people the early morning is the best part of the day and George Hammond was one of these. Lockkeeper in charge of the great gates that prevented the canal from emptying itself into the river basin below, he had reported for duty at five-forty-five, rain or snow, for more than forty years. Walking through the quiet streets, he savoured the calm morning with a conscious pleasure that never varied.

He paused at the top of the steps at the end of the bridge over the river and looked down into the basin. They catered mainly for barge traffic this far upstream and they floated together beside the old Victorian docks like basking sharks.

He went down the steps and started along the bank. One section of the basin was crammed with coal barges offering a convenient short-cut to the other side and he started to work his way across.

He paused on the edge of the final barge, judging the gap between the thwart and the wharf. He started his jump, gave a shocked gasp and only just managed to regain his balance.

A woman stared up at him through the grey-green water. In a lifetime of working on the river George Hammond had found bodies in the basin before, but never one like this. The eyes stared past him, fixed on eternity, and for some inexplicable reason he knew fear.

He turned, worked his way back across the river, scrambled up on the wharf and ran along the bank.

Nick Miller had just started to cross the bridge as Hammond emerged from the top of the steps and leaned against the parapet sobbing for breath.

Miller moved forward quickly. “Anything wrong?”

“Police!” Hammond gasped. “I need the police.”

“You’ve found them,” Miller said crisply. “What’s up?”

“Girl down there in the water,” Hammond said. “Other side of the coal barges beneath the wharf.”

“Dead?” Miller demanded.

Hammond nodded. “Gave me a hell of a turn, I can tell you.”

“There’s an all-night café on the other side of the bridge. ’Phone for a patrol car and an ambulance from there. I’ll go down and see what I can do.”

Hammond nodded, turned away and Miller went down the steps quickly and moved along the bank. It had stopped raining and a cool breeze lifted off the water so that he shivered slightly as he jumped for the deck of the first coal barge and started to work his way across.

He couldn’t find her at first and then a sudden eddy of the current swirled, clearing the flotsam from the surface and she stared up at him.

And she was beautiful — more beautiful than he had ever known a woman to be, that was the strangest thing of all. The body had drifted into the arched entrance of a vault under the wharf and hung suspended just beneath the surface. The dress floated around her in a cloud as did the long golden hair and there was a look of faint surprise in the eyes, the lips parted slightly as if in wonder at how easy it had been.

Up on the bridge, there was the jangle of a patrol car’s bell and in the distance, the siren of the approaching ambulance sounded faintly. But he couldn’t wait. In some strange way this had become personal. He took off his trenchcoat and jacket, slipped off his shoes and lowered himself over the side.

The water was bitterly cold and yet he was hardly conscious of the fact as he swam into the archway. At that moment, the first rays of the morning sun broke through the clouds, striking into the water so that she seemed to smile as he reached under the surface and took her.

A line of broad steps dropped into the basin twenty yards to the right and he swam towards them, standing up when his knees bumped a shelving bank of gravel, lifting her in his arms.

But now she looked different. Now she looked dead. He stood there knee-deep, staring down at her, a lump in his throat, aware of a feeling of personal loss.

“Why?” he said to himself softly. “Why?”

But there was no answer, could never be and as the ambulance turned on the wharf above him he went up the steps slowly, the girl cradled in his arms so that she might have been a child sleeping.

Detective Superintendent Bruce Grant, head of the city’s Central Division C.I.D., stood at the window of his office drinking a cup of tea and stared out morosely at the driving rain. He had a slight headache and his liver was acting up again. He was getting old, he decided — old and fat through lack of exercise and the stack of paperwork waiting on his desk didn’t help. He lit a cigarette, his first of the day, sat down and started on the In-tray.

The first report was headed Found Dead — Unidentified. Grant read it through, a slight frown on his face, and pressed the button on his intercom.

“Is Sergeant Miller in?”

“I believe he’s in the canteen, sir,” a neutral voice replied.

“Get him for me, will you?”

Miller arrived five minutes later, immaculate in a dark blue worsted suit and freshly laundered white shirt. Only the skin that was stretched a little too tightly over the high cheekbones gave any hint of fatigue.

“I thought you were supposed to be having a rest day?” Grant said.

“So did I, but I’m due in court at ten when Macek is formally charged. I’m asking for a ten-day remand. That girl’s going to be in hospital for at least a week.”

Grant tapped the form on his desk. “I don’t like the look of this one.”

“The girl I pulled out of the river?”

“That’s right. Are you certain there was no identification?”

Miller took an envelope from his pocket and produced a small gold medallion on the end of a slender chain. “This was around her neck.”

Grant picked it up. “St. Christopher.”

“Have a look on the back.”

The engraving had been executed by an expert: To Joanna from Daddy — 1955. Grant looked up, frowning. “And this was all?”

Miller nodded. “She was wearing stockings, the usual in underclothes, and a reasonably expensive dress. One rather sinister point. Just beneath the maker’s label there was obviously some sort of name tab. It’s been torn out.”

Grant sighed heavily. “Do you think she might have been put in?”

Miller shook his head. “Not a chance. There isn’t a mark on her.”

“Then it doesn’t make sense,” Grant said. “Suicide’s an irrational act at the best of times. Are you asking me to accept that this girl was so cold-blooded about it that she took time off to try to conceal her identity?”