Jack Higgins - Brought in Dead

“She was a strange kid. You could never tell what was going on beneath the surface.”

“Father Ryan doesn’t seem to think that Joanna Martin was her real name.”

“If that’s true, she certainly never gave me any clue.”

Miller nodded, turned and paced across the room. He paused suddenly. The table against the wall was littered with sketches, mainly fashion drawings, some in pen and ink, others colour-washed. All showed indications of real talent.

“Yours?” he said.

Monica Grey stood up and walked across. “That’s right. Like them?”

“Very much. Did you go to the College of Art?”

“For two years. That’s what brought me here in the first place.”

“What made you give it up?”

She grinned. “Forty quid a week at the Flamingo plus a dress allowance.”

“Attractive alternative.” Miller dropped the sketch he was holding. “Well, I don’t think I need bother you any more.” He walked to the door, paused and turned. “Just one thing. You do understand that if I can’t trace her family, I may have to ask you to make the formal identification?”

She stood there staring at him, her face very white, and he closed the door and went downstairs. There was a pay ’phone fixed to the wall by the door and Brady leaned beside it filling his pipe.

He glanced up quickly. “Any joy?”

“Not really, but I’ve a feeling we’ll be seeing her again.”

“I got through to H.Q. There was a message for you from Chuck Lazer. Apparently he’s been passing round the copy of the photo you gave him. He’s come up with a registered addict who sold her a couple of pills outside the all-night chemist’s in City Square just after midnight. If you guarantee no charge, he’s agreed to make a statement.”

“That’s all right by me,” Miller said. “You handle it, will you? I’ll drop you off at Cork Square and you can go and see Chuck right away. I’ve a ’phone call to make first.”

“Anything special?”

“Just a hunch. The girl liked to paint, we’ve established that. Another thing — that name tab she ripped out of her dress was a type commonly bought by students. I’m wondering if there might be a connection.”

He found the number he wanted and dialled quickly. The receiver was picked up almost at once at the other end and a woman’s voice said, “College of Art.”

“Put me through to the registrar’s office please.”

There was a momentary delay and then a pleasant Scottish voice cut in, “Henderson here.”

“Central C.I.D. Detective Sergeant Miller. I’m making enquiries concerning a girl named Joanna Martin and I’ve good reason to believe she might have been a student at your college during the last couple of years. Would it take you long to check?”

“No more than thirty seconds, sergeant,” Henderson said crisply. “We’ve a very comprehensive filing system.” A moment later he was back. “Sorry, no student of that name. I could go back further if you like.”

“No point,” Miller said. “She wasn’t old enough.”

He replaced the receiver and turned to Brady. “Another possibility we can cross off.”

“What now?” Brady demanded.

“I still think there’s a lot in this idea of Father Ryan’s that Martin wasn’t her real name. If that’s true, it’s just possible she’s been listed as a missing person by someone or other. You go and see Chuck Lazer and I’ll drop round to the Salvation Army and see if a chat with Martha Broadribb produces anything.”

Brady grinned. “Don’t end up beating a drum for her on Sundays.”

But Miller had to force a smile in reply and as he went down the steps to the car, his face was grim and serious. At the best of times a good copper was guided as much by instinct as solid fact and there was something very wrong here, something much more serious than appeared on the surface of things and all his training, all his experience told him as much.

The small office of the Stone Street Citadel was badly overcrowded, half a dozen young men and women working busily surrounded by green filing cabinets, double-banked to save space.

“I’ll see if the Major’s in her office,” said Miller’s escort, a thin, earnest young man in blazer and flannels, and he disappeared in search of Martha Broadribb.

Miller leaned against a filing cabinet and waited, impressed as always at the industry and efficiency so obviously the order of the day. A sheet of writing paper had fallen to the floor and he picked it up and read the printed heading quickly. Missing Relatives Sought in any part of the World: Investigations and Enquiries carried out in Strictest Confidence: Reconciliation Bureau: Advice willingly Given .

The biggest drawback to tracing a missing person from the official point of view was that there was nothing illegal about disappearing. Unless there was a suspicion of foul play, the police could do nothing, which produced the ironical situation that the greatest experts in the field were the Salvation Army, who handled something like ten thousand British and foreign enquiries a year from their Headquarters in Bishopsgate, London, and who were constantly in touch with centres throughout the country such as the Stone Street Citadel.

The young man emerged from the inner office, his arm around the shoulders of a middle-aged woman in a shabby coat who had obviously been weeping. He nodded briefly without speaking and Miller brushed past them and went in.

Major Martha Broadribb was exactly five feet tall, her trim uniformed figure bristling with a vitality that belied her sixty years. Her blue eyes were enormous behind steel-rimmed spectacles and she had the smooth, unused face of an innocent child. And yet this was a woman who had laboured for most of her life in a China Mission, who had spent three terrible years in solitary confinement in a Communist prison camp.

She came forward quickly, a smile of genuine affection on her face. “Nicholas, this is nice. Will you have a cup of tea?”

“I wouldn’t say no,” Miller said. “Who was that who just left?”

“Poor soul. Her husband died a year ago.” She took a clean cup and saucer from a cupboard and moved to the tea-tray that stood on her desk. “She married one of her lodgers last month. He persuaded her to sell the house and give him the money she received to buy a business.”

“Don’t tell me, let me guess,” Miller said. “He’s cleared off?”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“She’s been to the police?”

“Who told her that as he hadn’t committed a criminal offence they were powerless to act.” She stirred his tea briskly. “Four lumps and much good may it do you.”

“Do you think you’ll find him?”

“Certain to,” she said, “and he’ll face up to his responsibilities and do right by the poor woman after I’ve had a chance of talking to him. I’m certain of that.”

Another one who thought most people were good at heart . Miller smiled wryly, remembering their first meeting. On his way home one night he had answered an emergency call simply because he happened to be in the vicinity and had arrived at a slum house near the river in time to find a graceless, mindless lout doing his level best to beat his wife to death after knocking Martha Broadribb senseless for trying to stop him, breaking her right arm in the process. And the very next day she had visited him in the Bridewell, plaster-cast and all.

She lit a cigarette, her one vice, and leaned back in her chair. “You look tired, Nicholas.”

“I feel tired,” he said. “A perpetual state these days, but don’t let’s go into that.” He passed one of the photos across. “Ever seen her?”