By the time her students arrive, standing self-consciously in the open doorway, shuffling their papers, Ruth has decided to go straight home after the tutorial. She’ll stop all this ridiculous detective business. It’s no business of hers whether the wreck is that of a fire ship, part of Operation Lucifer. It’s no business of hers who murdered Archie Whitcliffe, Hugh Anselm or Dieter Eckhart. Her job, as Tatjana pointed out, is being a mother. She’d better get on with it.
It’s not one of her best tutorials. Luckily, the students do most of the work themselves, one of them reading a paper, the others discussing it. They are all mature students from China and America and they are scrupulously polite to each other. All Ruth has to do is to steer the conversation in certain directions and to correct some misconceptions about Neanderthal Man. Then they are backing out of her room, the Chinese students literally bowing.
Ruth’s phone rings. It’s Nelson.
‘Ruth, I’m off to Sea’s End House. There’s a few more questions I need to ask. What are you doing?’
‘Well, Craig, one of the field team, rang to say that they’d found a boat on the beach just beyond Broughton. They think it might be a fire ship. You know, part of the coastal defence.’
‘Are you going down to have a look at it?’
‘I might do.’
‘I’ll see you there, if so. And Ruth?’
‘What?’
‘Be careful.’
Ruth turns off the phone but, almost immediately, switches it back on to call Sandra. She’ll just have a quick look at the boat. She’ll be home by six at the latest.
Nelson had asked if he could speak to Irene on her own, but when he reaches Sea’s End House he is told by Stella that her mother-in-law is unwell and can’t be disturbed.
‘What is it?’ Nelson does not return Stella’s smile.
‘The doctor thinks it may be a small stroke.’
‘Jesus.’ Nelson is taken aback. A stroke is serious. Why aren’t they running about calling ambulances?
‘At Mother’s age these things are almost inevitable,’ says Stella, leading the way into the sitting room. ‘There’s no point her going into hospital. She might as well stay here, peacefully, in her own bed.’
There is an air of resignation about her which Nelson finds disturbing. In her own bed. People talk about dying ‘in their own bed’. He’s not going to do that. He’s going to die in a speeding car or saving some child from drowning. Peace is overrated, in his opinion.
‘How old is Irene?’
‘Ninety-three.’ Again, that calm smile.
It seems odd not to have Irene fussing about with the tea. There’s no sign of Jack or Clara either. But that suits Nelson. Stella has always struck him as the sanest one of the family.
‘Jack and Clara have taken the dogs for a long walk,’ explains Stella. ‘Jack needed to get out of the house. He’s been so worried about Irene. And Clara could do with a break too. She’s had a bad time of it recently.’
‘Was she very upset about Dieter Eckhart’s death?’
‘Very. I think she really cared about him.’
‘Was she in love with him?’
Stella looks slightly reproving. ‘They’d only known each other for a few weeks.’
But it happens, Nelson wants to tell her. Didn’t he fall in love with Michelle as soon as he saw her, that day in the Blackpool Rock Shop?
‘Mrs Hastings,’ says Nelson. On Saturday night they had been on first name terms but that seems a long time ago. ‘How much do you know about the war years at Sea’s End House?’
‘Quite a lot,’ says Stella placidly. ‘More than Jack, I daresay. Irene talked to me a lot. Buster too. I was very interested.’
‘Did you know that Irene used to visit Archie Whitcliffe?’
‘Yes. She was fond of him. Buster had been almost like a father to him.’
It seems odd to think of the elderly man with the regimental tie having a father, surrogate or otherwise. Nelson remembers what Archie said about Buster Hastings. Hell of a chap. A real old devil. One of the old school. Not the most loving of descriptions.
‘What about Hugh Anselm? Did she visit him?’
‘She went once, a few years ago. She wasn’t so close to Hugh. I don’t think Buster liked him much, he always referred to him as that damned commie.’ She laughs softly.
‘Did you ever meet Hugh?’
‘Yes. I drove Irene over to see him that time.’
‘And Archie?’
‘Once or twice.’
It’s incredible, reflects Nelson. He had thought that Jack was the key to Sea’s End House but all the time it was the quiet woman sitting in front of him. She had known all Irene’s wartime stories, she remembers Buster, she had taken Irene to visit both Archie and Hugh.
‘Mrs Hastings, did Buster ever talk about Daniel West?’
‘Daniel West? No, I don’t think so. Who is he?’
‘He was a young boy in Buster Hastings’ platoon. He killed himself in 1940.’
‘Killed himself? How horrible.’
‘He killed himself to escape the memory of a war crime committed by Buster Hastings and his men.’
‘What do you mean, war crime?’
‘Has your husband told you about the film we were watching that day at your house? The day when it snowed?’
‘Only that it was some nonsense produced by Hugh.’
‘In the film Hugh Anselm accuses Captain Hastings and his sergeant of killing six defenceless German soldiers. The six bodies we found at Broughton Sea’s End.’
‘That’s not true!’
‘Your husband believed it.’
‘Jack? He can’t have.’
‘You said yourself that the war was a desperate time. People do desperate things in desperate times.’
She looks at him as if half conceding the point. In the background, a clock ticks.
‘Mrs Hastings,’ says Nelson. ‘Do you know how Hugh Anselm died?’
Stella’s brow furrows. ‘Some sort of accident, wasn’t it?’
‘He was found dead in his stairlift.’
‘How terrible.’
‘We think foul play may have been involved.’
He meant to shock her and he does. Her eyes widen and her hand clenches on the arm of her chair.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that someone deliberately stopped the stairlift. Someone who knew that Hugh Anselm had a heart condition and that the agitation of trying to free himself would be likely to kill him.’
‘What are you suggesting?’
‘Archie Whitcliffe was suffocated,’ says Nelson brutally. ‘I think the same person killed both men.’
‘Archie? Suffocated? I don’t believe you.’
‘A post mortem examination cannot lie,’ says Nelson, though they can and do.
There is a silence. Out of the French windows, Nelson can see the sea, brightest blue under a paler blue sky. A white-sailed yacht moves slowly across the horizon.
‘Detective Chief Inspector,’ Stella is very pale but her voice is perfectly steady, ‘am I to understand that you suspect someone in this family of these horrible crimes?’
‘I suspect no-one and everyone,’ says Nelson portentously.
‘What does that mean?’
‘Someone killed those men and I think it was to protect the memory of Buster Hastings. Dieter Eckhart too. He was about to uncover the truth. I think someone killed to prevent that happening.’
She stares at him, her hands still clenched on the arms of her chair. An alarm goes off, making them both jump. Stella Hastings looks at her watch.
‘Time to check on Mother. Excuse me, Detective Chief Inspector. I won’t be long.’
And she goes out. Leaving Nelson to look out of the window, across the bay to the lighthouse. In front of him is a row of plants, one of which, he now realises, is planted in a German officer’s helmet.
Ruth is glad that she came. It is a beautiful afternoon, the se
a sparkling in the sun. There is no snow left on the beach and it could almost be a summer day, if it were not for the sharp air that makes her catch her breath and wish she’d brought a scarf.
Craig is waiting for her at the foot of the slope. He is warmly dressed in a donkey jacket and black woolly hat.
‘Where’s Ted?’
‘He had to go back. Some domestic crisis. I said I would wait.’
‘That was kind of you.’
As Ruth follows Craig across the beach, she wonders about Ted’s domestic crisis. As far as she knows, he isn’t married or living with anyone. He’s a bit of an enigma, Irish Ted. He once told her that his name wasn’t even Ted.
Sandra had been happy to look after Kate for an hour longer. ‘No problem. Don’t worry so much, Ruth.’ But Ruth does worry. Tatjana’s words have left her feeling bruised and vulnerable. She has tried a couple of times to ring Tatjana back but her phone seems to be switched off. Is Ruth really such a terrible mother? She loves Kate more than her life but maybe this isn’t enough. Certainly the whole maternal thing doesn’t come easily to her, as it does to women like Michelle. Ruth never knows what to say to Sandra or to other mothers – one excruciating morning at a mother and baby group was enough to show her this. She doesn’t know what baby food to buy or which car seat to avoid. She’s never read a parenting magazine or watched Supernanny. She and Kate are having to make it up as they go along. And she’d thought she was doing all right, until the conversation with Tatjana.
But Tatjana has her own issues. Ruth knows this but she still shies away from talking properly to her friend. She has had her chances over the past weeks, but she has been too cowardly to take them. Tatjana will go home tomorrow and Ruth may never see her again.
They have left Broughton now and are crossing the beach where the barrels were found. The tide is out, rock pools stretch in front of them and Ruth can see the remains of the Victorian sea wall, like a green-slimed monster rising from the water, but something in the air perhaps, or in the wild calling of the seagulls, tells her that the tide may be about to turn. They’d better keep an eye on it. There’s no way off this beach and the cliffs are too high to climb.
‘How much further?’ she asks.
‘Just round the next headland.’
They have to climb over rocks, sharp with barnacles and crusted mussels, then in front of them lies another bay, a perfect semicircle scooped out of the sandstone cliff. And there, rearing out of the shallow water, is the unmistakeable hull of a ship. The water has eaten away at the wood and Ruth can see the blue sky through its prow but the shape is still there, a largish boat, about the size of the launch that took them to the lifeboat. It looks both menacing and strangely sad.
‘Have you any idea how old it is?’ asks Ruth, splashing forwards, despite the fact that she isn’t (for once) wearing her wellingtons. The water is freezing.
‘I don’t know but I think about sixty or seventy years old by the shape of it.’
Ruth knows nothing about the shape of boats but this one looks as if it has been here forever. ‘What makes you think it was a fire ship?’ she asks.
‘There are barrels inside,’ says Craig. ‘Take a look.’
‘We’d better be quick,’ says Ruth, looking out to sea at the waves coming in towards them, shockingly fast.
‘Oh, we’ve got all the time in the world,’ says Craig.
Nelson is still staring out of the window when Stella comes back into the room.
‘How is she?’ he asks.
‘As well as can be expected. Peaceful.’ That note of resignation again. It casts a shadow on the bright afternoon, a shadow reflected on Stella’s face as she joins Nelson by the window.
All that is left of the garden at Sea’s End House is a thin strip of land, about a metre across, that runs alongside the house. The back garden has disappeared completely. But someone has taken trouble with the tiny piece of ground that is left. There is a narrow ribbon of lawn and someone has been tending the flowerbeds.
‘Strange to see the flowers coming up again after the snow,’ says Stella. ‘They’re hardier than you think, spring flowers.’
‘Are you a keen gardener?’ asks Nelson. He isn’t, though he quite likes mowing the lawn. Michelle loves garden centres; they’re her idea of heaven.
‘No, but we have someone who comes in. There’s not really enough for him to do now but he’s always looked after our garden. And his grandfather before him.’
Something stirs in Nelson’s brain as he looks at the spindly tulips pushing up out of the chalky soil.
‘Wasn’t he in the Home Guard? Your old gardener?’
‘Yes, Donald Drummond. He was devoted to Buster. And to Irene.’
As clear as if it is being amplified into the air around him, Nelson’s hears Hugh Anselm’s voice: Donald said they were only filthy Jerries and would do the same to us. Donald Drummond, the gardener.
And, like a kaleidoscope spinning before his eyes, so fast that the colours are blurred and the shapes indistinct, Nelson sees himself looking down from Archie Whitcliffe’s window. He is watching the gardener mow the lawn. Then, he sees himself at Hugh Anselm’s sheltered accommodation, admiring the grounds, so beautifully kept, recently mown, newly planted.
‘What’s the name of the gardener you have now? Donald’s grandson?’ he asks, so sharply that Stella steps back.
‘Craig. I assumed you’d know him. He’s an archaeologist too. One of Ruth’s team.’
CHAPTER 30
The hull of the ship is so weathered and encrusted that it seems part of the rocks around it. Peering inside, Ruth sees pools of stagnant water, mussels like obscene growths clinging to the wood, a crab scuttling warily across the remains of a bench seat. But the basic structure remains, there is even a rudimentary cabin with the door bolted shut and, in the lowest part of the ship, partly submerged, two sealed barrels. Ruth leans forward and pulls at something trapped under one of the barrels. It looks like cotton wool, stained and discoloured by the water but smelling unmistakably of sulphur – gun cotton.
She looks at Craig who is peering over the side of the boat.
‘How come no-one’s found this before? It’s quite visible at low tide.’
‘Oh, people know about it. It’s even on the maps. I just don’t think that anyone has made the fire ship connection.’
It’s possible the boat was already a wreck when Hastings and his men primed it, thinks Ruth. It has probably sat in this lonely bay for years. Hastings would have known about it, she is sure that he knew every inch of this coast. He would have come down here in Syd Austin’s boat, probably with Ernst, the clever scientist, and filled the rotting hull with barrels of explosives, stuffed with the lethal cotton. They may even have had a way of setting off the explosion from a distance. The impact would have set the very sea on fire.
‘I wonder what’s in the cabin,’ she says. ‘It’s still locked.’
‘Let me have a look,’ says Craig, climbing over the side of the boat.
‘Funny,’ says Ruth. ‘The lock looks new. It’s not rusted at all.’
‘That’s odd.’ Craig comes to stand beside her. Even though the boat is lodged tight in the rocks, it still tilts slightly with the two of them aboard. The timbers creak and Ruth wonders if they will hold out.
The bolt slides back easily, too easily. Ruth feels the first, slight, frisson of alarm. She hears the sea thundering towards them and the gulls overhead. The tide has turned.
‘Have a look inside,’ says Craig.
Ruth turns, suddenly scared. It is a few seconds before she realises that she is looking down the barrel of a gun.
Nelson is ringing Ruth’s number. No answer. Leaving Stella looking bemused, he runs out of the house, sprints to the end of the drive and along the cliff path. Ruth’s car is in the car park. There is only one other car, a blue Nissan.
Nelson goes to the rail and looks down at the sea. The tide is coming in, crested waves rolling in towards
land, smashing against the remains of the Victorian sea wall. There is no-one on the beach. At the spot where the bodies were found, police tape still flutters in the breeze. He looks at his watch. Five o’clock. A blameless time of day. Michelle will be cutting someone’s hair, chatting about holidays. Rebecca will be home from school, eating toast and talking to her mysterious on-line friends. Clough will be asking who’s going to the pub after work. Judy will be ignoring him. And Ruth? Ruth should be picking Katie up from the childminder. Instead, her car’s here and she’s nowhere to be seen. What had she said? Craig, one of the field team, rang to say that they’d found a boat on the beach just beyond Broughton.
He walks back to Sea’s End House and takes the sloping path down to the beach. The same route taken by Captain Hastings and his men that moonless night. But this is a bright, spring afternoon. Surely Ruth cannot be in danger? He looks up at the house, the Thirties gothic folly, its sombre grey walls rising up out of the cliff. Inside that house, a woman is ill, perhaps dying. He remembers the shadow that he saw on Stella Hastings’ face and shivers.
I am going to swim out beyond Sea’s End Point. I am going to swim and swim until I can swim no more and then I am going to let the sea take me.
Danny West had swum to his death from this beach. Dieter Eckhart had been killed and his body thrown onto the rocks. Six murdered men were buried in the gap between the cliffs. Hugh Anselm had apparently thought that the beach at Broughton had an unwholesome atmosphere. Hardly surprising, given what he had witnessed there, but Nelson himself had felt something of the sort – though he could hardly have put it into words – the first time that he looked down at the narrow bay, with the cliffs on one side and the tall grey house on the other. This place has known death before.
The House At Sea’s End Page 25