‘What are these facts that you mentioned?’
DC Cutland passed DI Holley a thick plastic folder and DI Holley held it up. ‘All I actually came here today to tell you was that we’ve completed our investigation into all those prisoners whose suitcases were found in the attic of this house. We certainly didn’t anticipate this stand-off situation.’
‘You’ve found out who those prisoners were?’
‘Oh, yes. The present governor at Dartmoor was extremely cooperative. The records show that every one of them was approached by your father, the late Mr Herbert Russell, when he was governor. Each of them was offered a transfer to Ford Open Prison in Sussex to take part in the Social Conscience programme, which carried with it a strong possibility of early release.’
Rob glanced towards the open front door. Vicky was there now, waiting for him, and he could see that she was growing increasingly distressed. He lifted his hand to show her that he wouldn’t be talking to DI Holley much longer.
‘What I came to tell you was that none of those prisoners ever arrived at Ford,’ DI Holley went on. ‘Not one of them. They were collected from Princetown by a private security company called Headlock and driven away and that was the last that anybody saw of them. When their relatives came to visit them at Dartmoor, they were informed that they had absconded.
‘There is not and never has been a private security company called Headlock. And when our forensic accountants ran checks on the bank accounts and other liquid assets of the missing prisoners, we found that shortly before their disappearance all of them had made substantial transfers of funds to a company based in Tavistock called Florence Holdings.’
‘Florence,’ said Rob. ‘That was my mother’s name.’
DI Holley raised both eyebrows. ‘I’m afraid to say that all the evidence now points to your late father, Herbert Russell, having extorted payments from those inmates at Dartmoor who he knew or suspected still to be harbouring substantial criminal assets after their convictions. We also managed to gain partial access to the accounts of Florence Holdings and it appears that in the last ten years of his tenure as governor of Dartmoor Prison, Herbert Russell was paid well over seven and a half million pounds by those inmates to whom he had offered the chance of early release. Very little of it is left. Florence Holdings now has assets of less than fifteen hundred pounds.’
‘He must have spent all of it on gambling,’ said Rob. ‘He never made it a secret that he bet on the horses, and he liked to play blackjack and roulette at Genting’s Casino in Plymouth whenever he could. But we never had any idea that he was betting on that scale.’
‘In the coming weeks we’ll be looking into your late father’s accounts even more comprehensively,’ said DI Holley. ‘But from what we’ve discovered so far, I don’t think there’s any doubt about what he was up to. The crucial question that’s facing us today is – what happened to all those prisoners who disappeared, and are the individuals who are now on your property those very same men? Did your late father keep them in hiding here for all these years? And if so, how?
‘We’ve been talking to Mr Kipling here and he’s explained his theory to us. As I’ve said, it seems unbelievable, but it coincides in a great many respects with what your lady wife has just told us, and so far there seems to be no alternative explanation that makes any sense.’
‘He’s told you about the witching room? And the way that the people in there come out at night and whisper? He’s told you that our son, Timmy, was probably taken that way, too? And my brother, Martin? And Ada Grey?’
John said, ‘Yes, Rob. I’ve told them everything. There didn’t seem any reason not to, not now.’
‘The force – the presence that was keeping them all here – it’s gone for good,’ said Rob. ‘You can believe it or not, but it was a demon of sorts, called Esus. It was imprisoned in the cellar and I let it out. It fell into the Plym, John. Well, I gave it some help to fall into the Plym. It just – dissolved. I saw it, and that’s the only word I can think of. It dissolved.’
‘Is that what you were up to, with your reckless driving?’ asked DI Holley. ‘You almost drove off the edge of the Dewerstone, from what I was told.’
‘It’s gone, that’s all I need to tell you at the moment, detective inspector. It’s gone, and it’s never going to come back.’
John said, ‘I’ve found out why the Wilmingtons asked Matthew Carver to install a witching room in Allhallows Hall. It’s explained in a letter that Matthew Carver wrote to his cousin, who was a lieutenant in the navy, when the Wilmingtons first asked him if he could do it.
‘They were being persistently threatened by a Jesuit priest called Father Thomas Blakely. He had discovered that, years before, the Wilmingtons had refused to acknowledge to the priest hunters that they had hidden a priest called Father Ambrose in Allhallows Hall, or that they even knew who he was. They were an influential family, and even if they had forfeited some of their property as a punishment, Father Ambrose would never have been tortured and executed. At worst, he might have been exiled.
‘Father Thomas was the great-nephew of Father Ambrose, and the good work that Father Ambrose had done in healing the sick and taking care of the poor was legendary in his family. So Father Thomas threatened to get his revenge on the Wilmingtons by reporting them to the Crown authorities. The Wilmingtons decided it would be too risky to have him murdered, and so they arranged for Matthew Carver to trap him in the witching room, for ever. There’s an implication in
