Brought in Dead. Jack Higgins

      Jack Higgins

      Brought in Dead

      Dedication

      For Dorothy Limón – a real fan

      Contents

       Cover

      Title Page

      Dedication

      Publisher’s Note

      1

      The girl was young and might have been pretty once,…

      2

      Detective Superintendent Bruce Grant, head of the city’s Central Division…

      3

      Henry Wade was fat and balding and his several chins…

      4

      The small office of the Stone Street Citadel was badly…

      5

      The door of her room was unlocked and when he…

      6

      When Brady opened the door of the Coroner’s Court and…

      7

      When Monica Grey opened her door and found Duncan Craig…

      8

      Miller came awake slowly and stared up at the ceiling…

      9

      The evening started slowly at the Berkley as it did…

      10

      It was dark in the office except for the pool…

      11

      The disk shot high into the air, poised for one…

      12

      It was raining hard when the van turned into Brag…

      13

      From one-thirty onwards Max Vernon knew in his heart that…

      14

      The marsh at Grimsdyke on the river estuary was a…

      About the Author

      Other Books by Jack Higgins

      Copyright

      About the Publisher

      PUBLISHER’S NOTE

      Brought in Dead was first published in the UK by John Long in 1967. It was later published in paperback by Penguin but has been out of print for several years.

      In 2012, it seemed to the author and his publishers that it was a pity to leave such a terrific story languishing on his shelves. So we are delighted to be able to bring back Brought in Dead for the pleasure of the vast majority of us who never had a chance to read the earlier editions.

      1

      The girl was young and might have been pretty once, but not now. Her right eye was almost closed, the cheek mottled by livid bruises and her lips had been split by the same violent blow that had knocked out three teeth.

      She hobbled painfully into the Line-Up room supported by a woman P.C., a pathetic, broken figure with a blanket over her shoulders to conceal the torn dress. Miller and Brady were sitting on a bench at the far end of the room and Brady saw her first. He tapped his companion on the shoulder and Miller stubbed out his cigarette and went to meet her.

      He paused, noting her condition with a sort of clinical detachment, and the girl shrank back slightly from the strange young man with the white face and the eyes that seemed to stare right through her like dark glass.

      Detective Sergeant Nicholas Miller was tired – more tired than he had been in a long, long time. In the ten hours he had already spent on duty, he had served as investigating officer at two burglaries, a factory break-in and a closing-hours brawl outside a pub near the market in which a youth had been slashed so badly across the face that it was more than likely that he would lose his right eye. This had been followed almost immediately by a particularly vile case of child cruelty which had involved forcible entry, in company with an N.S.P.C.C. inspector, of a house near the docks where they had found three children huddled together like animals, almost naked, showing all the signs of advanced malnutrition, squatting in their own dirt in a windowless boxroom that stank like a pigsty.

      And now this. Compassion did not come easily at five o’clock on a dark February morning, but there was fear on this girl’s face and she had suffered enough. He smiled and his whole personality seemed to change and the warmth reached out to envelop her so that sudden, involuntary tears sprang to her eyes.

      ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘Everything’s going to be fine. Another couple of minutes and it’ll be all over.’ He turned to Detective Constable Brady. ‘Let’s have them, Jack.’

      Brady nodded and pressed a red button on a small control panel on the wall. A hard white light illuminated a stage at the far end of the room and a moment later, a door opened and half a dozen men filed in followed by two constables who marshalled them in line.

      Miller took the girl gently by the arm, but before he could speak, she started to tremble violently. She managed to raise her right hand, pointing at the prisoner who stood number one in line, a great ox of a man, his right cheek disfigured by a jagged scar. She tried to speak, something rattled in her throat and she collapsed against Miller in a dead faint.

      He held her close against his chest and looked up at the stage. ‘Okay, Macek, let’s be having you.’

      A thick-set, fourteen-stone Irishman with fists like rocks, Detective Constable Jack Brady had been a policeman for twenty-five years. A quarter of a century of dealing with human wickedness in all its forms, of walking daily in squalor and filth and a gradual erosion of the spirit had left him harsh and embittered, a hard, cruel man who believed in nothing. And then a curious thing had happened. Certain villains now serving collectively some twenty-five years in one of Her Majesty’s Prisons had thrown him down a flight of stairs, breaking his leg in two places and fracturing his skull, later leaving him for dead in a back street.

      Most men would have died, but not Jack Brady. The priest was called, the last rites administered and then the surgeons took over and the nurses and physio-therapists, and in three months he was back on duty with a barely perceptible limp in his left leg.

      The same, but not the same. For one thing he was noticed to smile more readily. He was still a good tough cop, but now he seemed gifted with a new understanding. It was as if through suffering himself, he had learned compassion for others.

      The girl painfully signed her name at the bottom of the typed statement sheet and he helped her to her feet and nodded to the woman P.C.

      ‘You’ll be all right now, love. It’s all over.’

      The girl left, sobbing quietly, and Miller came in holding a teletype flimsy. ‘Don’t waste too much sympathy on her, Jack. I’ve just heard from C.R.O. She’s got a record. Four previous convictions including larceny, conspiracy to steal, breaking and entering and illegal possession of drugs. To cap that little lot, she’s been on the trot from Peterhill Remand Home since November last year.’ He dropped the flimsy on the table in disgust. ‘We can certainly pick them.’

      ‘That still doesn’t excuse what Macek did to her,’ Brady said. ‘Underneath that surface toughness she’s just a frightened little girl.’

      ‘Sweetness and light.’ Miller said. ‘That’s all I need.’ He yawned, reaching for a cigarette. The packet was empty and he crumpled it with a sigh. ‘It’s been a long night.’

      Brady nodded, applying a match to the bowl of his pipe.