Brought in Dead. Jack Higgins
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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.
4
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?’
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