THE HOUSE AT SEA’S END (21 page)

‘Have you any idea who?’

‘I’ve got lots of ideas,’ says Nelson. ‘Each more ridiculous than the last.’

‘Do you think the same person killed Archie Whitcliffe and Dieter Eckhart?’ Nelson has told her about the autopsy report on Archie. Death by asphyxiation was the verdict, probably with a pillow.

‘Yes I do,’ says Nelson, still looking at Kate as she thoughtfully sucks the building bricks. ‘The method was different but I’m convinced the link was the murder of the six Germans. Someone is prepared to kill to stop that story getting out. There’s Hugh Anselm too, the old chap in the stairlift. I’m sure he was murdered too.’

‘It’s so far-fetched though,’ complains Ruth. ‘Like something out a murder mystery.’

‘Archie Whitcliffe was a big fan of murder mysteries,’ says Nelson. ‘Left a pile of them to his carer.’

‘Really?’ Ruth looks interested. ‘What sort of books?’

‘Nothing special. I hoped they might be worth something. She hasn’t got two pennies to rub together, the carer, but they were just a load of old paperbacks. Second hand, most of them.’

‘Do you have the list of the titles?’

‘Somewhere. Why are you interested?’

‘I don’t know. Just an idea.’

Nelson gets Judy to fax through the list of titles (Ruth is almost the last person in the world still to have a fax machine). Ruth reads through the names while Nelson plays peek-a-boo with Kate. Ruth wishes Clough could see him.

The Third Truth by Kurt Aust

Love Lies Bleeding by Edmund Crispin

Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie

The Fourth Assassin by Omar Yussef

One Step Behind by Henning Mankell

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sherlock Holmes

Sea Change by Robert B Parker

Lost Light by Michael Connelly

‘Was there anything else?’ she asks. ‘Just the list?’

‘Oh, there was some nonsense about which order to read them in. I can’t remember it now. Ask Judy.’ And he disappears behind the cushion again.

‘This is it,’ says Judy. Ruth can hear her rustling paper. ‘He says, read them in this order: 3,2,2,2,2,3,1,2. Crazy, isn’t it?’

‘Maybe,’ says Ruth, sitting down to look at the list again. Nelson, who is crouching on the floor beside Kate, looks up at her.

‘What is it, Ruth?’

‘I don’t know. I just thought … wasn’t this the bloke who liked crosswords?’

‘That was Hugh Anselm.’

‘But maybe Archie did too.’

‘Maybe. He did watch that programme,
Countdown
,’ says Nelson, remembering. ‘Mind you, Cloughie says all old people watch
Countdown
.’

‘Mmm.’ Ruth occasionally watches it herself but she’s not going to let Nelson know that.

‘Do you think he’s left us a clue then?’ says Nelson smiling.

‘It’s possible,’ says Ruth, turning back to the fax paper to avoid looking at Nelson pretending to be a bear.

Ruth always over-complicates everything, thinks Nelson, as he drives back towards King’s Lynn and home. It comes of being an academic. Mind you, when he first met her, he had needed her professional expertise. He’d called her in to look at the Iron Age body but he’d also asked her about some weird letters that had been sent to him, letters full of allusions to mythology, ritual and sacrifice. Ruth had done great work, looking up all the references and working out what the nutter was trying to say. But maybe that has left her unable to take anything at face value. Sometimes a list of books is just a list of books. That’s what he says to his team. ‘Don’t make things too complicated. Nine times out of ten police work is about simple stuff. It was a car
number-plate that caught the Yorkshire Ripper, tax evasion that caught Al Capone. Never skimp on routine procedure.’ Mind you, he can’t see Cloughie and co being tempted to be too intellectual.

Katie’s a grand little kid though. He’d forgotten how much fun they are at that age. Michelle always used to tell him off for making the girls too excited at bedtime. He’d done the bear routine with them too, the old ones are the best. He remembers Laura, hysterical with laughter, falling off the bed and crying; Rebecca screaming when he’d jumped out at her wearing a gorilla mask. Maybe Michelle had a point. He could see that it must have been irritating, stuck at home with young children, having to do all the discipline and boring bits, then having someone come home at bedtime pretending to be a bear. But, then again, he had to have
some
fun with them. In the early years he’d hardly seen his daughters during daylight hours. It’ll be no different with Katie, he thinks. Worse because she won’t even know who he is. He’ll just be some lunatic stranger with funny voices and ingratiating presents. Cathbad will be more of a presence in her life than him. He grinds the gears furiously.

Michelle isn’t home but, amazingly, Rebecca is. Even more amazingly, she’s doing her homework. Admittedly, she’s listening to her iPod, texting her friends and eating a cheese sandwich but she’s also writing an essay entitled ‘Coastal Erosion and its impact on Rural Communities’.

‘What’s this about, love?’ he asks, dropping a kiss on her head.

‘It’s for environmental science. It’s about all these people
who’re, like, getting really pissed off because their villages are disappearing.’

Nelson thinks of Jack Hastings who, by all accounts, is getting more than pissed off because Sea’s End House is disappearing. Whitcliffe has shown him a surveyor’s report condemning the house. Nelson thinks of the back garden, those few yards and then that vertiginous drop onto the rocks below. He tries to imagine how it would have been – a lawn, mown in those fancy stripes, roses, a sundial, Buster and Irene lounging in their deckchairs, drinking dry martinis, looking out over the cove. Will Jack be forced to leave the house his father built? He’ll be pissed off then, all right. Could the strain of losing his house be enough to turn Jack Hastings into a killer?

As usual, Rebecca is flipping between several internet sites, looking for material. She’s expert at cutting and pasting. Nelson hopes this will be enough for the A-Level examiners. She’s too quick for him though, scanning to and fro, highlighting, dropping in text files, finding clip art—

‘Hang on a second!’

‘What?’ She pauses in mid click.

‘That last site. Something about the war.’

‘Oh … do you mean ilovehistory.com?’

‘Possibly. Can you go back?’

Obligingly, Rebecca finds the page and makes it large enough to be seen by his decrepit eyes.

The coastal defence
, he reads,
was to include fifty tons of fuel, to be blown up in the shallow waters of the North Sea. This operation drew on fire ships used by Drake against the Armada …

He goes into the kitchen to ring Ruth, switching on the kettle as he does so. She takes a while to answer and sounds hassled. He can hear Katie crying in the background.

‘Ruth. Did you get the results back from the material? That you found in the barrel.’

‘Yes. I sent you a report.’

‘Tell me again.’

‘It was gun cotton. Cotton dowsed in nitric and sulphuric acid. The material’s immersed in the acid and then dried. Makes it extremely flammable.’

‘I bet.’

‘Apparently when it’s lit it produces an almighty blast. Jules Verne uses it in one of his books to power a space rocket.’

‘And what was in the other barrels?’

‘A mix of adhesive tar, lime and petrol.’

The beach at Broughton Sea’s End, thinks Nelson, as he drinks his tea, was one massive depth charge. The Home Guard had prepared a welcome for possible German invaders that would have blasted them into space. Was that the work of Ernst, the clever scientist? A German who had lived most of his life in Broughton Sea’s End. A German determined to do all he could to defeat the Nazis. Maybe he was a German Jew … Nelson knows that all sorts of people were interned at the start of the war – old people, youngsters, Jews, communists – people who had no reason on earth to side with the Nazis. Why was Ernst living in Broughton in the first place? And why did he have such a close bond with Buster Hastings?
Buster kicked up such a fuss that he was released.
Why was Buster so determined to have Ernst on his side?

And why hadn’t the defences been set off when the six Germans actually landed? The men had been shot from a few feet away, there was no sign of a struggle. Somehow Buster and his mostly ageing troops had been able to overcome six soldiers in their physical prime. But, having done that, why kill them? Surely they could just have taken the men prisoner? He’s no military expert but isn’t it important to take prisoners so you can interrogate them? The German commandos never gave up their invasion plans. Their secret died with them, buried under the cliffs until the sea itself exposed it.

Nelson is still sitting in the kitchen when Michelle comes home, tired from working late and distinctly put out to find that no-one has started supper.

After supper, Michelle and Rebecca settle down to watch
CSI Miami
– female bonding over mutilated body parts – and Nelson escapes back to the study. He types
Second World War Invasion
into the search engine and soon the screen is full of lurid stories: beaches black with bodies, the seas aflame, U-boats full of severed limbs, secret German bases off the Irish coast, 30,000 bodies burned beyond recognition washed up on the South Coast. Nelson enjoys a conspiracy theory as much as the next man (once, Cathbad almost convinced him that the Americans had never landed on the moon), but as a policeman he does require just a trace of evidence. It’s all very well saying that the authorities have covered everything up but could an invasion on this scale really have been hushed up? In a place like Broughton this would, effectively, have meant buying the silence of everyone in the village.

But what if this is exactly what happened? What if, amidst all the hysteria, the Germans did land one small expeditionary party in an isolated Norfolk cove? There they met, not sleepy villagers and bemused fishermen, but a tightly controlled army unit prepared to kill.

He is about to call it a night when, scrolling down a site called ‘Flame Over Britain’, he comes across this paragraph:

The plan was simple. Under cover of darkness several aged tankers, their holds full of combustible fuel, would head across the channel to the enemy invasion ports of Dunkirk, Calais and Boulogne. At the entrance to these ports, the tankers would be abandoned by their skeleton crews and detonated. The subsequent blast would turn the sea into a burning sheet of flame. This operation, which became known as Operation Lucid, actually started life with a more sinister moniker – Operation Lucifer.

Lucifer.

‘Remind me what we’re doing here again, boss?’

Nelson and Judy are climbing the steps to the church of St Barnabas at Broughton Sea’s End. It’s a bitterly cold morning and the gravestones are covered with a fine layer of frost. The weather forecasters are talking about snow. In late March! What a county, thinks Nelson, forgetting that Blackpool hardly enjoys a Caribbean climate. He thinks of Norfolk as existing in a vacuum, entirely separate from the rest of England. Come to think of it, that’s how most of the locals see it too.

Judy is standing looking up at a huge evergreen tree whose branches cover almost the entire graveyard. In its shade the frost is even thicker.

‘We’re here,’ says Nelson, rubbing his hands together, ‘because the vicar has copies of the parish magazine going back to the year dot.’

‘Sounds wild.’

‘Wild or not, I want to find out what was happening in this village during the war. I’m convinced that Operation Lucifer is the key to this whole case.’

‘Don’t say that name out loud,’ hisses Judy.

Nelson laughs. ‘Not getting superstitious in your old age are you?’

But there is, nevertheless, something spooky about the silent graveyard. The way the stones stick up as if something below the earth is stirring, the way the dark tree spreads its branches, the way the church door is bolted shut.

A figure appears from behind one of the largest stones. Judy screams.

‘Forgive me if I startled you.’ The figure resolves itself into a tall, white-haired man wearing clerical clothes. Nelson gives Judy a disgusted look.

‘Father Tom Weston.’ The man extends his hand.

‘DCI Nelson.’ Nelson shakes hands briskly. ‘This is Detective Sergeant Johnson. It’s good of you to meet us.’

‘Not at all. I’m delighted that someone wants to look in the archives. There’s not enough interest in local history.’

He takes out a medieval-looking key.

‘Do you always keep the church locked?’ asks Judy.

‘Have to, I’m afraid. We’ve got some very valuable things in here – candlesticks, brasses, and so on – and I don’t live on site. I’ve got three other parishes to look after.’

It is almost as cold inside the church as out. Judy blows on her hands to warm them and her breath billows like incense. The air smells of stone and damp and flower stalks. Someone has evidently been arranging the flowers because a magnificent display of lilies and ferns stands at the altar steps. Judy thinks of the red roses on Buster Hastings’ grave. She must remember to see if they’re still there.

As they cross the church, their feet echo on the stone flags. Passing the altar, Judy bobs instinctively. Nelson gives her a sardonic glance, correctly identifying Catholic Genuflecting Syndrome. Judy scowls.

Tom Weston leads them past wooden pews with embroidered kneelers, past a garish collage of Noah’s Ark (the work of the Sunday School apparently) and through a door at the back of the church. This is obviously behind-the-scenes. There are piles of hymn books, a broken lectern, mops, buckets and one of those vacuum cleaners with a smiley face. ‘Henry,’ says Father Tom. ‘I couldn’t live without Henry.’

‘Do you do the cleaning yourself?’ asks Nelson.

‘I have to sometimes. Good cleaners are hard to find.’

He does everything himself, they find out. He cleans, polishes, makes cakes for the Women’s Institute, even runs the mother-and-baby group. There’s a man who cuts the grass in the graveyard but that’s it.