‘You still don’t seriously believe I killed my father? Have you contacted any of my witnesses yet?’
‘Surrey police are doing that for us. We should have heard by tomorrow. Once they’ve been in touch I’ll be wanting to have a word with your missus, too.’
‘“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow”,’ Rob quoted. ‘And now you might as well know, my brother, Martin, went missing last night and still hasn’t turned up yet, and so has a young woman called Ada Grey who came to visit us.’
DI Holley stared at him as if he couldn’t believe what he had just heard. DC Cutland looked at DI Holley as if to say, Is this a wind-up?
‘I think you need to tell us a bit more, don’t you, Mr Russell?’ said DI Holley. ‘When you say “went missing”, what exactly do you mean?’
Rob’s head slumped down. He felt infinitely tired.
‘I wish I knew. I wish I knew but I don’t. “Missing” as in “not here any more”, that’s all I can tell you.’
DI Holley was thoughtfully tapping his middle finger on the table.
‘“Missing as in not here any more”?’ he repeated. ‘That’s not very helpful, now is it? That’s not very helpful at all.’
*
Before they left, DI Holley and DC Cutland went into the drawing room to speak to Vicky and Grace and Portia.
‘When exactly was the last time you ladies saw these two missing persons?’ asked DI Holley.
‘The last time we saw Martin was early yesterday evening,’ Vicky told him. ‘He and his wife, Katharine, went into Tavistock for something to eat. We heard them come back but it was late and we didn’t see them. We heard Katharine go up to bed but we didn’t hear Martin.’ She didn’t add that they had both sounded drunk, and how fiercely they had been arguing.
Rob said, ‘In the morning his coat was on the sofa but he was gone, and we haven’t heard from him since.’
‘Where’s his missus now?’
‘Asleep at the moment,’ said Vicky. ‘She’s extremely upset.’
‘You’ll be able to talk to her when you come back tomorrow,’ said Rob. None of them mentioned that Katharine thought she had heard Martin whispering to her in her bedroom.
‘And this Ada Grey? When and how did she go missing?’
‘She came here early this afternoon because she was interested in seeing this house.’
‘Any particular reason?’
‘Well, it’s supposed to be haunted, and she’s a medium.’
‘Oh, talks to your dead granny, all that kind of malarkey? Crystal balls and Ouija boards?’
‘That’s about it, yes.’
‘So when did she disappear?’
‘We’re not sure. About half past one. One minute she was looking around the house and then she wasn’t. We looked everywhere for her, but we couldn’t find her.’
‘Does she live locally?’
‘Yes, Rundlestone.’
‘You’re sure she didn’t just get fed up or bored and leave the house without telling you?’
‘Or shit-scared, if it really is haunted,’ put in DC Cutland, without even the hint of a smile.
Rob didn’t answer that. He was tempted to tell these two detectives everything about the whispering and the witching room and the way that Ada had been dragged into the wall, but he was desperately worried that if the police came barging into the house, knocking holes in walls and lifting up floorboards, the reaction from the whisperers would be even more hostile than it was already. If there was the slightest chance that they could bring Timmy and Martin and Ada back from whatever parallel existence they had been taken to, he didn’t want to jeopardise it.
‘Is there any reason you can think of why either of them would have gone missing? Any disagreements? Any personal problems? Depression? Mental illness?’
Rob shook his head.
‘You’ve tried to contact them, I imagine.’
‘Martin left his phone here, so we haven’t been able to – and no, we haven’t yet tried to get in touch with Ada.’
‘Any reason for that?’
Yes – she disappeared into a solid wall. How the hell do you think we were going to get in touch with her?
‘No – well, we were waiting for her to get in touch with us. She’s what you might call a free spirit. A very independent young woman.’
DI Holley gave DC Cutland a look that clearly meant: Independent young women, nothing but trouble. Then he said, ‘Very well. I’ll report both of them as mispers even though neither of them have yet been gone for twenty-four hours and they’re both responsible adults. You’ll let us know immediately, won’t you, if either or both of them turn up?’
Rob showed the detectives to the door. While he was buttoning up his raincoat, DI Holley looked around the hallway and said, ‘There’s definitely something iffy going on here. I can feel it in my water.’
As he said that, a fork of lightning flickered over Pew Tor, only half a mile away, and it was followed almost immediately by a colossal rumble of thunder, like a hundred barrels rolling down a flight of stairs. Somewhere in the darkness, a black kite screamed in panic.
27
Ada opened her eyes. She had the most extraordinary sensation that she was weightless, and that she was sliding up the wall behind her. She found that she was standing up, and even though the witching room was dark, she could vaguely see the wavering outlines of at least eight or nine men, like the reflected ripples at the bottom of a well.
‘She’s up,’ whispered one of them, and the rest of them whispered in what sounded like excitement. At first Ada couldn’t make out what they were saying, but then she heard a voice say, quite clearly, ‘There… I told you she wouldn’t be able to hold off the weary much longer. None of us did, the first time we were chanted.’
There was more whispering, and then she heard a swishing sound as somebody approached her. Chilly fingers took hold of
