‘Have you any way of verifying that?’
‘You can check my phone. You can check my PC. You can ask my next-door neighbour, Nigel Pardoe. I met him in the local shop when I went to buy a paper that morning. Simpler still – why not go through to the drawing room and ask my wife?’
‘It’s more than likely that we’ll be taking you up on all of those suggestions, Mr Russell. You see, the thing is that we’ve had the preliminary results back from the DNA samples that we took from you and your other family members.’
‘And?’
‘Our forensic examiners found numerous fingerprints on the handle of the hammer that was discovered by our GP dog in the garden here on these premises. Unfortunately they were too smudged to be able to make a positive identification. However they were able to collect a DNA sample, and it turned out that it’s an exact match for your DNA.’
‘What? That’s impossible.’
‘No question about it. It’s a ninety-eight-point-nine per cent match. And our forensic experts in Exeter have now conclusively established that it was that very hammer that was used to strike Mr Herbert Russell a single blow on the back of his head, resulting in a fatal brain haemorrhage.’
‘This is insane. I didn’t even know of that hammer’s existence until your police dog found it, and I certainly never touched it. Quite apart from the fact that I was two hundred miles away when my father was killed.’
‘Nevertheless, Mr Russell, the preliminary DNA test does appear to show beyond any reasonable doubt that it was you who was the last person to be holding that hammer.’
‘Wait a minute… surely my brother and sister have the same DNA? Although I’m not suggesting that either of them killed our father.’
‘Your sister wouldn’t have the same DNA – no,’ put in DC Cutland. He may have looked like a farmhand, but the way he spoke was dry and technical, with little licks of his lips and sideways rolls of his bulging eyes in between sentences. ‘Humans have twenty-three pairs of chromosomes and when you compare the first twenty-two pairs you can’t tell the difference between males and females. But when it comes to the twenty-third pair, the sex chromosomes, males have an X and a Y chromosome, but females have two X chromosomes and no Y. And as far as your brother is concerned – well, we’re still waiting on a final report from the lab, but their initial analysis showed that you and your brother don’t share identical genomes.’
‘Meaning what, exactly?’
‘In your case, you both had the same mother, apparently, but not the same father.’
Rob stared at him. Suddenly he was thirteen again, hearing his father shouting at his mother outside his bedroom window. ‘Of course he’s nothing like me! And we both know why that is!’
DI Holley cocked his head to one side, in that hawklike way of his.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Russell. Did you not know that?’
‘No. I mean, yes. Of course I did. It’s just never been tested before. You’ve thrown me, I’m afraid. I never expected—’
‘You never expected what?’
‘This – this accusation that I killed my father. Of course I didn’t kill him. As I’ve told you, I wasn’t anywhere near here when he was attacked. I never laid a finger on that hammer. And in any case, why would I kill him?’
‘There’s this house to be inherited after his demise.’
‘Oh, come on. You don’t seriously think I’d murder my own father for this dump? A grade-one listed building like this is more trouble than it’s worth. In any case, his solicitor has told us that it’s not going to be passed directly to any of us – neither to me nor to Martin nor to Grace. It’s going to be held in trust for our son, Timmy.’
‘Your son, Timmy, who is sadly still missing.’
Rob was growing angry, as well as confused. His father might have been accusing his mother that night of conceiving him during an adulterous affair, but he had never heard either of them mention it again. Over the years he had grown to accept that his father must have simply been having one of his rages, which were frequent, and boiling, and usually bizarre. When she was only eleven, he had shouted at Grace for waiting by the gate for the postman, so that she could ‘snog’ him. The postman had been about fifty years old, with hair like a scrubbing brush and no front teeth.
Yet this DNA test seemed to have proved that Herbert Russell had been right, and that he was his mother’s love child, by another man. He suddenly felt as if he shouldn’t even be sitting in this house, answering questions about a father that he certainly hadn’t killed. A father who wasn’t even his real father. He suddenly felt like a stranger.
‘What are you trying to suggest about Timmy? That I murdered him, too, so that I could have the house to myself?’
‘Children have been done away with for far lesser reasons than that, Mr Russell, and I speak from experience.’
‘That’s an outrageous thing to say to me. Who’s your superintendent? I’m going to make a complaint.’
DI Holley appeared to be unruffled by this. He rubbed his hands together as if he were Pontius Pilate absolving himself of all legal responsibility.
‘As DC Cutland here has told you, we’re still waiting for a confirmatory autosomal test on your DNA, Mr Russell. We expect to receive that later today or tomorrow. Until then I won’t be taking this investigation any further.’
‘Oh, I see. You’re not going to arrest me? Not yet, anyhow?’
‘No. But I’m requiring you to remain here in this house and not attempt to evade any further questioning.’
‘In other words, you’re telling me not to do a runner?’
‘If you want to put it that way, Mr Russell. Also, I would recommend if you have a legal representative to contact him or her
