The House At Sea’s End

CHAPTER 8

A week later Ruth gets the results of the isotope analysis. She rings Nelson immediately but is told, importantly, that he is out ‘on police business’. His mobile phone is switched off so she leaves a message and waits impatiently, looking down at the data in front of her, tapping her phone against her teeth. When it rings, she jumps a mile.

‘Ruth?’ It’s Ted.

‘Hi, Ted. What’s up?’

‘We’ve found something on the beach.’

‘What?’

‘Some barrels.’

‘Barrels?’

‘Old oil barrels. They might be linked to the bodies we found. Do you want to come and have a look?’

Ruth hesitates. Nelson could be hours and she doesn’t feel ready to settle down to any other work. She has no tutorials this afternoon and doesn’t have to collect Kate until five. And she’s intrigued; how could some old oil barrels be linked to the six skeletons?

‘Okay,’ she says. ‘I’ll come over.’

Ted is waiting for her by the cliff path. It’s a beautiful afternoon; sunny but cold, with no wind. The tide is out and the shallow rock pools are a bright, unearthly blue. Ted is rubbing his hands together with what looks like glee but could just be an attempt to get the circulation back.

‘This way.’

He leads the way past the jutting headland and onto the next beach. To get there they have to climb over the remains of the old sea wall and Ruth is soon out of breath. Ted rushes on ahead, bounding over the slippery rocks like a goat. Is there such a thing as a sea goat? Ruth pauses on the highest part of the wall, getting her breath back and enjoying the view. In front of her is a perfect picture-postcard bay – white sand, blue sky, seagulls calling – a desert island courtesy of Radio 4. Ted’s footprints in the wet sand are like Man Friday’s. Ruth could almost believe that no-one has ever been on this beach before. Although it is only a few miles from resorts like Cromer, this coastline is remote and hard to reach. The cliffs are high and there are no paths or steps. And there’s always the danger of being cut off by the tide. The cliffs are dangerous too, full of caves and fissures, overhanging precariously in places. The only creatures at home here are the birds – hundreds of them – nesting on the sheer rock face. Despite living near a bird sanctuary, Ruth is not fond of birds.

A tiny figure on the deserted beach, Craig is clearing away sand with a shovel. He looks like an illustration of an impossible task, one of the labours of Hercules or a punishment in the Underworld.

Another, less classical, allusion comes into Ruth’s head, inspired perhaps by Cathbad’s championing of Lewis Carroll:

Ruth climbs down from the wall and walks carefully over the rock pools towards the beach. As she gets closer, she sees that, in fact, Craig is clearing the sand away from a large object – several large objects – that lie half-buried at the foot of the cliff. Closer still, she sees that they are oil barrels, orange with rust and studded with limpets.

Craig is red in the face from his exertions. He greets Ruth and Ted with ‘Just the three of them, I think.’

‘What are they doing here?’ asks Ruth, bending close to examine the corroded metal. ‘It’s such an isolated place. Miles from anywhere.’

‘I used to come birds-nesting here as a child,’ says Craig. ‘We actually used to climb up without ropes or anything. Madness really. The cliffs are eighty foot high in places.’

‘I used to go in for extreme archaeology,’ says Ted. ‘Went into these caves once in the cliffs on the Firth of Clyde. Thirty metres down and full of giant spiders.’

‘Fascinating,’ says Ruth. She has no time for extreme archaeology, which seems to her to abandon the most sacred precepts of the subject – time, patience and care – in favour of laddish thrill seeking. ‘Why do you think they could be linked to the bodies?

‘Take a look inside,’ says Ted.

The nearest barrel has a hole in its side, leaving a wickedly jagged edge. Peering gingerly inside, Ruth smells a heady mix of petrol and the sea. She gags. The barrel is half-full of stones which have either fallen from the cliffs or been swept in by the tide, but the smell is still all-pervasive. The second barrel is also open to the elements and inside, under the stones and beach debris, Ruth can see something whitish. The third barrel, as Ted says, is still sealed.

She puts on protective gloves and reaches inside the second barrel. The stones are tightly packed, a mixture of chalk and flint, with a stray crab leg or two thrown in for good measure (probably dropped there by seagulls). Ruth reaches down as far as she can and manages to get a hold of the something white. She pulls.

‘Let me help,’ says Ted.

Together, they drag out a wad of cotton fibres, once white but now stained grey and yellow, smelling strongly of rotten eggs.

Ruth almost chokes again. She takes a deep breath. ‘It looks like–’

‘The stuff we found buried with the bodies,’ says Ted. ‘That’s what I thought.’

‘The barrel’s full of it,’ says Craig. ‘It stinks to high heaven.’

‘Could be something dead in the bottom of the barrel,’ says Ruth. ‘A fish maybe?’

‘Nah,’ says Ted sniffing knowledgeably. ‘That’s sulphur, that is.’

Sulphur. The word has an ominous sound. Sulphur and brimstone. The devil dancing in front of a yellow fire. Ruth shakes her head irritably. Her parents are big experts on the devil but she doesn’t expect him to come invading her thoughts like this. Especially as he is something else she doesn’t believe in.

The third barrel is still sealed. Ruth pushes at it experimentally; it doesn’t budge but there is a faint sloshing sound.

‘Think it’s full of petrol,’ says Ted.

‘Petrol?’

‘Yeah, the beach stinks of petrol.’

Ruth realises that this is true. Petrol must have leaked copiously from the first barrel so that the whole area smells like a garage forecourt. Looking down she sees that the sand is black with oil.

‘Well we’d better get the fire brigade to look at it,’ says Ruth. ‘Put some hazard signs up. All we need is some idiot with a cigarette…’

‘Goodnight Vienna,’ agrees Craig. He starts to pack up his equipment. Ruth likes him; he’s the only archaeologist who doesn’t argue with her.

‘What about the stuff we found in the barrel?’ asks Ted.

‘I’ll take a sample to the lab.’

‘Rather you than me,’ grins Ted.

Further inland, overlooking gently rolling hills and flat water meadows, Nelson and Judy are smelling a rather different smell. Antiseptic, lavender and cut flowers masking another, more elemental, odour.

‘Christ, I hate these places,’ says Nelson for the tenth time, shifting impatiently in his chintz armchair.

‘I can’t imagine anyone likes them much,’ says Judy. She is finding her boss rather trying. It’s not her favourite way to spend an afternoon – interviewing some gaga old bloke in an old people’s home – but it’s her job and she has to get on with it. She thinks that Nelson just resents the fact that Whitcliffe has insisted that he attend this rather routine interview. His attitude, as he shifts in the too-low chair, seems to suggest that, if it wasn’t for this intrusion, he would be out catching criminals and righting wrongs. As it is, he’d probably only be in another of Whitcliffe’s meetings.

As for her, she’d be catching up with paperwork and trying not to think about her hen night in two weeks’ time. There’s a notice on the staff room wall for people to sign on and she saw, to her horror, that there were at least thirty names on it. Surely there aren’t thirty women at the station? ‘Oh, people are bringing friends,’ said Tanya, a friend and fellow WPC. ‘The more the merrier.’

Judy is sure that it’ll be very merry. They are starting off in a wine bar, then out for a meal then on to a club. She has asked for no fancy dress but she’s sure there’ll be an element of comedy headgear and novelty suspenders. Oh yes, everyone will have a whale of a time. Everyone except the bride herself, that is.

‘Would you like to come this way?’ a uniformed figure is smiling down at them. She is probably not a nurse but her manner – a crisp mix of kindness and professionalism – certainly suggests a hospital ward. But this isn’t a hospital, Whitcliffe stressed that. ‘Absolutely super place. Granddad loves it. They play bowls and do gardening. There’s even an archery team. Real home from home.’

Greenfields Care Home, as they walk through its cream-painted corridors, is certainly clean and well-organised, but homely? Judy can’t imagine anyone wanting to decorate their homes with prints of Norfolk Through the Ages or hand-sanitisers or stairlifts or notices on fire safety. And it doesn’t seem terribly like home to have a room with a number, even if it does have your name on it, in cheerful lower case letters.

‘Archie? Visitors for you.’

Archie Whitcliffe, who greets them at the door of his tiny room as if he were Jack Hastings himself, looks disconcertingly like his grandson. Superintendent Gerald Whitcliffe is tall and dark, vain about his hair and his suits. Archie Whitcliffe is also tall, though slightly stooped, with immaculate silver hair. He isn’t wearing a suit but his cardigan and trousers are freshly pressed and he is wearing a tie, regimental by the look of it.

He shakes hands briskly. ‘So you work for Gerald?’

That isn’t quite how Nelson likes to look at it, but he nods. ‘Yes. I’m Detective Chief Inspector Harry Nelson and this is Detective Sergeant Judy Johnson.’

Archie positively twinkles at Judy. ‘What a mouthful. Do you mind if I call you Judy?’

Judy smiles back. ‘Not at all.’ There’s no reason to antagonise the old boy, after all.

The room contains only a single bed, a desk with a television on it, an armchair and a bookcase. As well as the ubiquitous Norfolk print, there are several framed family portraits. Judy cranes her head to catch a glimpse of a teenage Whitcliffe.

‘Here,’ says Archie obligingly. ‘Gerald at his passing out parade.’

Judy looks at the newly qualified policeman, saluting, his neck vulnerable under the new cap. He looks about twelve.

‘He’s done so well,’ she says. ‘You must be proud of him.’

‘Course I am. Proud of all my grandchildren.’

‘How many do you have?’

‘Ten. Gerald’s the oldest.’

Jesus wept, thinks Nelson. The Whitcliffes are breeding like rabbits. There truly is no help for Norfolk.

Archie sits on the desk chair, gesturing Nelson to the armchair. Judy perches on the bed.

‘Mr Whitcliffe,’ Nelson begins. ‘Superintendent Whitcliffe, Gerald, may have told you about the skeletons found buried at Broughton Sea’s End…’

‘He has.’

I bet he has, thinks Nelson. Despite the matter being strictly police business.

‘We believe these skeletons are of a group of men who may have died anywhere from forty to seventy years ago. This obviously includes the war years. I wondered if, as a member of the Home Guard, you remember any sort of incident at Broughton Sea’s End.’

Archie is silent for a long time. Along the corridor someone is playing the piano accompanied by some rather weedy singing. ‘If You Were the Only Girl in the World’.

‘You were in the Home Guard,’ prompts Nelson.

‘Yes.’ Archie seems visibly to straighten in his chair. ‘The Local Defence Volunteers we were called at first. I was too young to join up at the start of the war. Did later, of course. Tank Corps.’ He gestures to the tie.

‘There were some other youngsters in the troop, weren’t there?’ Nelson glances at his notes. ‘Hugh and… er… Danny.’

‘Yes.’

Nelson wonders if it’s his imagination or does Archie stiffen slightly? He looks at Nelson pleasantly, a calm smile on his face. The tension is in his body which is completely still. Too still, surely?

‘Are you still, in touch with Hugh and Danny? Do you know if they’re still alive?’

‘I corresponded with Hugh a few years ago. I haven’t heard from him since.’

‘Do you have an address for him?’

‘I’m sorry, no.’ Archie does not bother to go and look. He just stares at Nelson out of bland blue eyes.

‘A surname?’

‘I don’t think I can remember.’

Nelson looks at Judy who leans forward and asks, ‘What about Danny?’

‘I haven’t seen him since the war, my dear. I’d clean forgotten him until you mentioned his name.’

Nelson tries another tack. ‘Tell us about the captain of the Home Guard. I believe he was Jack Hastings’ father?’

‘Yes. Buster Hastings. Hell of a chap. A real old devil, one of the old school. He’d been in the trenches in the first lot, you know. Tough as old boots. Ran a tight ship too. We weren’t just playing at soldiers. We did manoeuvres. Night manoeuvres. Patrolled the cliffs. On moonless nights, the darks we called them, we went out in the boat.’

‘Why?’ asks Judy.

Archie’s eyes bulge. ‘Looking for invaders, of course. We were sure, at the start of the war, we were sure the Nazis were going to come. And Norfolk was the obvious place. All those little coves. So easy to land a boat at night. Hence the manoeuvres.’

‘And did you ever see anything?’ asks Nelson lightly.

Archie Whitcliffe sits up even straighter. ‘If I had, I wouldn’t tell you. We took a blood oath, you see.’

Ruth, Craig and Ted are in the pub, The Sea’s End. Ruth knows by now that any excavation involving Ted invariably ends in the pub. Ruth drinks Diet Coke and the men drink bitter. Everything is the same as on her visit with Nelson – the same men at the bar watching apparently the same TV programme, the same sticky floor, the same laminated menus. The only difference is that instead of feeling nervous and keyed-up she feels relaxed, enjoying the company of her colleagues. Since having Kate, opportunities for drinks with the boys (never her forte anyhow) have been few and far between.

‘Have a real drink,’ says Ted. ‘They do a good bitter here.’

‘I can’t, I’ve got to drive.’

‘One won’t hurt.’

‘And I’ve got to pick up Kate.’

‘Is that your baby?’ asks Craig. ‘How old is she?’

‘Nineteen weeks,’ says Ruth. She wonders if she’ll ever get used to giving Kate’s age in months or even – incredible thought – in years.

‘She’s a darling,’ says Ted, in his Irish voice. ‘Even Nelson seemed taken with her. Not a man much given to sentiment, our Nelson.’

Ruth keeps her face blank. Ted can’t possibly know anything, she tells herself. Keep calm. Keep smiling.

‘Do you know him well?’ Craig is asking Ted.

‘Not really,’ says Ted. ‘We worked with him on another case, didn’t we, Ruth? Got a short fuse, Nelson, but he seems a good copper for all that.’

‘What do you think about this case, Ruth?’ asks Craig.

‘Well,’ says Ruth, not able to resist a tiny twinge of pleasure at having been asked her opinion, ‘I’d say the bodies had been in the ground about seventy years, which brings us to the war years. I think the bones are of men aged between twenty-one and about forty, which makes them military age. I’d say they were soldiers.’

‘We didn’t find any uniform though,’ says Craig.

‘No clothes at all. Just the length of cotton. Maybe it was used to drag the bodies along the beach.’

‘Something fishy definitely went on,’ says Ted happily. ‘Shot at close range, nothing to identify them. Are we thinking Germans or English?’

Ruth thinks she knows the answer to this but, for some reason, she wants Nelson to be the first to know. She stalls. ‘I’ve sent off for isotopic analysis. That should tell us, broadly speaking, where the men were from.’

‘Wonderful thing, science,’ says Ted. Craig smiles. Archaeologists are divided into those, like Ruth’s boss Phil, who adore science and technology and those who prefer the more traditional methods, digging, sifting, observation. Ted is definitely in the latter camp.

Despite the fact that it is three o’clock in the afternoon, Ted orders a steak and kidney pie.

‘I love a good steak and kidney,’ he says. ‘No-one makes it any more.’

‘I do,’ says Craig. ‘I was brought up by my grandparents so I can do all the old-fashioned stuff. I’ve got a mean way with a brisket of beef.’

‘My mum used to cook oxtail,’ says Ruth, remembering. ‘I’m surprised it didn’t turn me into a vegetarian.’

‘A good oxtail soup is delicious,’ says Craig. ‘I’ll make you some one day.’

There is a slightly awkward pause. Ted raises his eyebrows at Ruth over his (second) pint. Ruth is rather relieved when her phone rings. She goes outside to take the call.

It’s Nelson. At last.

‘You wanted to speak to me.’ He sounds anxious.

‘I’ve had the results of the isotopic analysis.’

‘Is that all?’

‘What do you mean “is that all?” It’s important. The tests show where the men came from.’

‘And where was that?’

‘Germany.’