Jack Higgins - Brought in Dead

“I shouldn’t think he’d be foolish enough to hang around while he still had time to get out.”

“All the same, sir, I’d like your permission to give Craig a ring. I’d feel happier.”

Grant leaned back in his chair and looked at him reflectively. “You like him, don’t you?”

“I suppose the simple answer to that is yes — a hell of a lot.”

Grant indicated the ’phone on his desk with a sweep of his hand. “Be my guest.”

The ’phone rang for a long time at the other end before it was lifted and Harriet Craig said sleepily, “Yes, who is it?”

“Harriet — is that you? Nick Miller here.”

“Nick?” There was a pause and he had a mental picture of her struggling up onto one elbow, a bewildered frown on her face. “Nick, what time is it?”

“Twenty to six. I was hoping to speak to your father.”

“I’m afraid he’s gone away for a few days.” Suddenly, her voice changed and she came wide awake. “What is it, Nick? Is something wrong?”

There was genuine alarm in her voice and he hastened to reassure her. “Everything’s all right, I promise you. Are you on your own?”

“No, Jenny’s here.”

“Tell you what. How would you like to give me breakfast? I’ll tell you all about it then.”

“That’s fine by me. What time?”

“Seven-thirty too early?”

“Not at all. If you think I could go to sleep again after this you’re mistaken.”

Miller replaced the receiver and turned to Grant. “She’s on her own — her father’s out of town. Mind if I put a car on watch up there? Just in case.”

“Just in case?” Grant said and smiled. “Young love — it’s marvellous. Go on — get out of here.”

It was raining heavily when Miller drove up to the house and the patrol car was parked by the entrance to the drive. He got out of the Cooper and walked across and the driver wound down his window.

“Anything?” Miller asked.

“Not a thing, sarge. Some bird came out of the door about five minutes ago and took a walk in the garden, that’s all. She must be nuts in this weather.”

“Okay,” Miller said. “I’ll take over. You can shove off now.”

The patrol car moved away and he got back into the Cooper and drove up to the house. As he got out, a voice hailed him and he turned to find Harriet crossing the lawn. She was wearing an old trenchcoat of her father’s and a scarf was bound around her head peasant-fashion.

“I saw the police car at the gate when I came downstairs,” she said, her face grave. “What is it, Nick?”

“Maybe we’d better go inside.”

“No, I’d rather not. Jenny’s in the kitchen…”

“And she doesn’t know what you and your father have been up to, is that it?”

She turned away, an angry flush staining her cheeks, and he pulled her round to face him. “You said your father had gone away for a few days. Is that the truth?”

“Of course it is.”

“And you didn’t know what he was up to last night?”

She shook her head, her eyes anxious. “Please, Nick — I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He looked at her searchingly for a moment and then nodded. “All right — I believe you.”

He sketched in the events of the night briefly and when he finished, she looked pale and drawn. “I can’t believe it.”

“But you knew about the other things.”

She gazed up at him searchingly. “Are you here as a friend, Nick, or as a policeman?”

“As a friend, damn you.” He took her hands and held them fast. “You must believe that.”

She nodded. “Yes, I knew about the other things. It seemed wrong somehow that Max Vernon should get away with what he did.” She looked up at him fiercely. “I’m not sorry.”

“You will be if he gets his hands on your father.”

“You think that’s possible?”

“Not really, he’s too many other problems facing him at the moment, but you never can tell what a man like Vernon might pull. We’d better give your father a ring just in case.”

“But there isn’t a ’phone,” she said. “He’s staying in our houseboat on the river at Grimsdyke.”

“In the marshes?”

“That’s right, he goes for the shooting.”

“That’s about twenty miles, isn’t it?”

“Eighteen on the clock.”

“Good — we’ll drive down and see him. It’s early yet and the roads will be quiet. Shouldn’t take more than half an hour.”

She nodded briefly. “I’d better tell Jenny. I’ll only be a moment.”

She turned and ran across the lawn to the terrace and Miller walked back to the car.

It was no more than ten minutes after they had left when the ’phone rang and Jenny answered it on the kitchen extension.

“Colonel Craig’s residence.”

The voice was smooth and charming. “Good morning — my name’s Fullerton. Gregory Fullerton. I’m a colleague of Colonel Craig’s. He told me he was going away for a few days and gave me his address so that I could get in touch with him if anything came up. Damned stupid of me, but I’ve mislaid it.”

“It’s the houseboat you’ll be wanting, sir,” Jenny said. “That’s on the river at Grimsdyke in the marshes about a mile south of Culler’s Bend.”

“So kind of you.”

“Not at all.” She replaced the receiver and went back to her work.

When Max Vernon emerged from the telephone box at the end of the small country lane he was grinning wolfishly. He opened the door of the brake and climbed into the passenger seat next to Carver.

“Right, Benny boy, we’re in business,” he said. “Let’s have a look at that map.”

The marsh at Grimsdyke on the river estuary was a wild lonely place of sea-creeks and mud flats and great pale barriers of reeds higher than a man’s head. Since the beginning of time men had come here for one purpose or another — Roman, Saxon, Dane, Norman, but in the twentieth century it was a place of ghosts, an alien world inhabited mainly by the birds, curlew and redshank and the brent geese coming south from Siberia to winter on the flats.

Miller turned the Cooper off the main road at Culler’s Bend and followed a track no wider than a farm cart that was little more than a raised causeway of grass. On either side, miles of rough marsh grass and reeds marched into the heavy rain and a thin sea mist was drifting in before the wind.

Harriet lowered the window and took a deep breath of the salt-laden air. “Marvellous — I love coming here. It’s like nowhere else on earth — a different world.”

“I must say I’m impressed,” he said. “I’ve never been here before.”

“Lost in a marsh punt in a sea mist it can be terrifying,” she said. “In some places there are quicksands and mud-holes deep enough to swallow a cart.”

The closer they got to the estuary, the more the mist closed in on them until visibility was reduced to no more than twenty yards. Finally the track emerged into a wide clearing of rough grass surrounded by thorn trees. Craig’s Jaguar was parked under one of them and Miller braked to a halt.

“We have to walk from here,” Harriet said. “It isn’t very far.”

They followed a narrow path through the reeds. Wildfowl lifted out of the mist in alarm and somewhere a curlew called eerily. The marsh was stirring now, water swirling through it with an angry sucking noise, gurgling in crab holes, baring shining expanses of black mud.

“If we don’t hurry we might miss him,” Harriet said. “The tide’s on the ebb. The best time for duck.”

She half-ran along the track and Miller followed her and suddenly, the wind was cold on his face and she called through the rain, waving her hand.