‘We still haven’t heard from Francis,’ said Rob. ‘I was hoping he might be able to find out what in the name of hell is going on here.’
Vicky sat down next to him. ‘I couldn’t help thinking while I was upstairs… what if we never see Timmy again, ever? How are we going to go on living? How are we going to forgive ourselves for bringing him here? And what if we never see Martin again, either?’
‘I’m not allowing myself to think like that yet. If Katharine heard Martin whispering to her, then he must still be here. And if Martin’s still here, there’s every chance that Timmy’s still here. And Ada. I’m beginning to believe that John was right about a parallel dimension, if that’s what you want to call it. And if you can go into a parallel dimension, surely you can come back out of it.’
‘I was reading about that the other day,’ put in Portia. ‘Quite a lot of scientists think that there’s an infinite number of parallel dimensions, and that they’re all just like this one, except they all have very subtle differences. Like, we’ll all be in them, all of us, but dressed a little differently, and talking a little differently, and maybe the colour of our eyes will be different. And when we go outside, the grass will be a different shade of green, if it’s green at all, and there’ll be different birds and trees.’
‘It sounds like Alice In Wonderland,’ said Vicky.
‘Well, perhaps that’s where Lewis Carroll got the idea from. He used to visit Alice in her family’s big house in Oxford, didn’t he? Perhaps that house had presences, too, just like this one.’
‘I feel as if I’m dreaming this,’ said Grace. ‘I hope and pray I don’t hear any of that whispering tonight. I’m not sure I can take any more of it. I don’t care who it is.’
Portia reached across the sofa and held Grace’s hand. At the same moment, there was a knock at the front door. They all looked at each other. It was dark outside now. Was it good news or bad news, or no news at all? Was it better to keep on hoping, or to be told that the volunteers had found a body?
Rob went to open the door and found DI Holley standing outside, with DC Cutland.
‘What’s this?’ he asked, and held out both of his hands as if he were expecting to be handcuffed. ‘Come to arrest me, have you?’
‘Not this evening, Mr Russell, no,’ said DI Holley. ‘We won’t receive the final DNA analysis until tomorrow at the earliest. But we’ve made some interesting progress with all that luggage you found in the attic here. May we come in?’
‘Of course, yes. Come through to the library.’
The two detectives took off their raincoats and then they followed Rob into the library and sat down. DI Holley was carrying a black plastic file, which he placed on the table in front of him and opened up. Rob could see that the first sheet of paper in it bore the letterhead of Dartmoor Prison.
‘We paid a visit to the prison this afternoon and I must say the governor was most cooperative. She gave us access to all the inmate records going back more than forty years. Who was locked up there, who was released and who was transferred.’
‘And did you find out who all these suitcases belonged to, and why they were stored in the attic?’
‘We found out who they belonged to, yes. Every one of them belonged to an inmate who was serving a sentence during the time that your father, Herbert Russell, was governor. There were thirteen of them altogether, and every one of them had been convicted of corruption or fraud. As you know, Dartmoor is only a C-category prison, so that’s where they send white-collar criminals, although “white-collar” is stretching it a bit with some of them.’
DC Cutland leaned over and read a name from the list in DI Holley’s file.
‘Here’s one. Jeremy Porter, more commonly known as Jez the Jeweller. He made a fortune out of faking diamond certificates and selling inferior gemstones in Hatton Garden for a huge mark-up. Anybody who complained or threatened to squeal on him would have their fingers crushed in a taxi door, and be told in no uncertain terms why it had happened. Except nobody could prove that Jez was behind it, which was why he was only category C.’
‘The list goes on,’ said DI Holley. ‘And during the nineteen years that your father was governor, every one of these inmates was transferred from Dartmoor to HMP Ford, which is an open prison in Sussex. The records show that he’d assessed every one of them as suitable candidates for a special rehabilitation programme called Social Conscience, and that this programme could see them being granted a much earlier release. Some of them might have as much as four or five years knocked off their sentences.
‘Every one of their transfers to Ford was signed off by your father and the head of the Offender Management Unit.’
‘But if they were being transferred to this open prison, what the hell were their suitcases doing in his attic?’
‘That, I’m afraid, we don’t yet know. We’ve tried contacting HMP Ford but the governor is away at a conference until Monday and the staff who deal with inmate records won’t be available until tomorrow.’
‘All right. I suppose you’ll be able to tell me tomorrow when you come here to arrest me. I don’t know why you bothered to come here tonight, to be honest with you. I already knew that those suitcases all belonged to prisoners, from the labels.’
‘I wanted to see your reaction, Mr Russell.’
‘And what has that told you?’
‘It’s told me that your father’s death is a lot more complicated than a straightforward
