‘DC Kenwright has already been up there, Stoney. Said the dust was as thick as a carpet. Hadn’t been used in donkey’s years.’ Swifty sounded worried. He had acted without calling it in and awaiting instructions, and if they failed to find anything, he would be in deep shit. Even so, they had a child missing, and suspecting her to be concealed there, her life in danger, he was within the law to enter without a warrant or Grove being present.

‘Swifty! It’s not accessed from the main attic,’ said Matt. ‘As Will told you, there is a tiny trap door into a branch off the main attic. It’s in the box room.’

Leaving Sam and Philip outside, they mounted the creaking stairs two at a time and burst into the room.

‘Behind all that stuff! Up there!’

The far side of the room was stacked to the ceiling with junk. The earlier search had shown up a century of Isaac Berridge’s rubbish, along with heaps of empty removal boxes and hundreds of magazines and periodicals. It appeared that the detectives had given up just before they got to the tallest pile of boxes. These had obviously not been moved, and behind them was a narrow trap door. With a freshly oiled bolt.

Matt knocked the empty cardboard containers away and dragged a table to just beneath the small door. He looked up in dismay. ‘Damned if I’ll get through that tiny aperture!’

‘Then you need a proper copper.’ Showing remarkable agility, Swifty climbed through the narrow trapdoor and was soon calling down from the dusty loft above them.

‘Nice one, Matt! This area is walled off from the attic proper. You’d never see this from the main hatch. And guess what? We have a mini office! Our man has a second computer! I wonder what this one has on it?’

Will groaned and whispered to Matt, ‘But no Sophie.’ He felt distraught that his niece had not been found, but relieved, too, that she hadn’t been in the clutches of a man like Grove.

‘No Sophie, but what will we find on that second computer?’ Matt then yelled up to his friend. ‘Don’t touch anything, mate! Get back down here and radio for the SOCOs and an IT bod. And get your guv’nor back out here.’ He turned to the others with a sigh of relief. ‘I thought I’d blown it. I could just see Grove arriving back to find us in his parlour.’

‘What on earth is that unsavoury man up to?’ asked Sam.

‘We’ll soon find out. The station’s techies will get that baby to cough up its secrets in no time. Now, I suggest we all get back to the house, while Swifty waits here for the scene-of-crime team.’