The House At Sea’s End

CHAPTER 10

‘Was he ill?’ asks Clough, rather indistinctly, through a mouthful of chocolate chip cookie.

‘He seemed fine when Johnson and I saw him yesterday,’ says Nelson, swerving to overtake a farm lorry.

‘It’s Johnson, that’s what it is,’ says Clough. ‘She’s a jinx. Remember last year?’

Nelson does, indeed, remember last year, when Judy interviewed a sick old woman with star tling, and tragic, results.

‘Maybe he had a heart condition, though,’ says Clough, licking crumbs from his fingers. ‘How old did you say he was?’

‘Eighty-six,’ says Nelson.

‘There you go, then,’ says Clough. ‘Old age, that’s what did it. Mystery solved.’

Was it really as simple as that, wonders Nelson, as he takes the turning for Greenfields Care Home. Old man dies. No mystery, just the expected end of a long life. But eighty-six is no great age these days. His own mother, Maureen, is more active at seventy-four than many people in their thirties. Every day you read about people living to a hundred, or even older. The Queen must be worn out writing all those telegrams. And Archie Whitcliffe, standing proudly in his neat cardigan and regimental tie, had certainly seemed the picture of elderly good health. No-one at the Home had mentioned a heart condition and Archie showed no tell-tale signs of heightened colour or shortened breath. He had been calm and measured, even intimidating. If I had, I wouldn’t tell you. We took a blood oath, you see.

But only a few hours after saying those words Archie was dead. He died in his sleep, apparently of a massive stroke. That can happen at any age, Nelson knows, but nevertheless the sequence of events troubles him. That is why he is on his way to the Home, despite Whitcliffe’s thinly veiled discouragement. ‘Might be more respectful to wait a few days.’ Well, Nelson will be respectful, but he knows from experience the value of getting immediate statements. He wants to speak to the last people who saw Archie Whitcliffe alive.

He would have preferred to take Judy rather than Clough but Judy, much to his disgust, has the day off. ‘It was booked ages ago,’ says Nelson’s PA, Leah. ‘I think she’s having a wedding dress fitting.’ Jesus wept. The station is becoming more like an episode of Friends every day (he knows about Friends from his daughters). So, as two officers are required and it is imperative to stick to the rules, he has to take Clough and pray that he doesn’t give vent to his much-aired views on euthanasia (‘after seventy it’s kinder’).

Clough, however, seems subdued by the surroundings, though when the last person to have seen Archie alive turns out to be an extremely pretty Filipino carer, he cheers up considerably.

The carer is called Maria and her eyes are red from crying. Nelson doesn’t know why but he is relieved to see this evidence of human emotion. The owner of the Home, a formidable woman called Dorothy, said all the right things earlier but he had got the impression that Archie’s death was primarily an inconvenience to be dealt with as speedily and efficiently as possible. She hadn’t been too pleased to see two policemen littering up her entrance hall, either.

‘Everything’s quite above board,’ she said. ‘The doctor’s signed the certificate.’

‘There’s no suggestion of foul play,’ said Nelson in his policeman voice. ‘But Mr Whitcliffe was an important witness in another enquiry. I need to know if he said anything before he died.’

‘I’ll get Maria. She did Archie’s bed call. She was the last person to see him before he passed away.’ She gave the impression that it had been in bad taste for Nelson to use the ‘d’ word.

The bed call turns out to involve helping Archie get into bed. ‘Sometimes people need help with toilet,’ explains Maria. ‘But not Archie. He did everything by himself.’

‘In good shape, was he?’ asks Nelson. ‘For a man his age?’

‘He was one of our fittest clients.’ Maria’s eyes brim with tears. ‘That’s what makes it so sad.’

Clough pats her arm sympathetically. Nelson gives him a look.

‘Miss – er – Maria,’ he says. ‘If it doesn’t distress you too much, I’d like you to go over everything that happened with Archie yesterday. Don’t leave anything out, even if you think it’s not important. I want to get a complete picture.’

Maria dabs her eyes with a tissue. ‘I see him in the morning, just a check call. He is reading.’

‘Reading? A book?’

‘No. I think it was a letter.’

‘Did you have any visitors that day? Apart from DS Johnson and myself.’

‘I don’t think so. I can check the book.’

‘Did he have regular visitors?’

‘His grandchildren come sometimes with their families. Some very sweet little children. They like playing in the garden, feeding the fish. There’s a friend who comes too, an old lady.’

‘Did you ever see the grandson who’s in the police?’

‘No.’

So much for Whitcliffe’s claim that he visits all the time.

‘So, yesterday, you saw Archie in the morning. What time approximately?’

‘About eleven.’

‘When did you see him next?’

‘Not until the bed call. I have some hours off so I can pick up my little boy from school.’

‘What time was the bed call?’

‘Nine.’

‘Bit early for bed isn’t it?’ says Clough.

‘We have so many clients,’ says Maria. ‘We have to start early. Archie was one of the latest because he likes to watch Panorama.’

‘Please go on,’ says Nelson, shooting Clough another look.

‘I go in. He is in his pyjamas watching telly. I put his teeth in a glass. Tidy away his clothes, turn down bed.’

‘How did he seem?’ asks Nelson. ‘In good spirits?’

Maria pauses for what seems like a long time. ‘No,’ she says at last. ‘He seem…’ She stops, searching for the word. ‘Thoughtful. Yes, he seemed thoughtful. Usually we chat, about the telly, about my little boy. He’s five. Archie always remembers him. At Christmas he gives me money to buy him a present.’ She presses the tissue into her eyes.

‘But yesterday he seemed thoughtful…’ Nelson prompts gently.

‘Yes. I was a bit worried about him so I went back, about half an hour later. His light was still on but he wasn’t reading. He likes to read. Murder mysteries mostly. I buy them for him from the charity shop. But yesterday he was just lying in bed. I thought he was asleep but when I lean over him he grabs my arm. I don’t think he knows who I am. He says a name, sounds something like Lucy.’

‘Something like Lucy?’

‘Yes. All morning I’m trying to think.’ Her smooth brow furrows. ‘I am trying to think of the name.’

‘Lucy-Ann?’ suggests Clough. ‘Lucille?’

‘Maybe it wasn’t a name,’ says Nelson. ‘Maybe it was something else, like “lucky”.’

Maria shakes her head. ‘No, it was a name. I’ve heard it before.’

‘Lucia? Luke?’

‘No.’ Maria’s brow clears and she almost smiles. ‘I remember now. Lucifer. He said Lucifer.’

‘Lucifer,’ says Clough. ‘Bloody hell.’

They are in Archie Whitcliffe’s bedroom, which already has an abandoned feel. The bed is stripped, the pillow gravestone-smooth. On the bedside table, Archie’s teeth are still in their glass, next to a copy of The Nine Tailors. The family photos still smile down from the walls, but now even the cheerily grouped children seem oddly sad. There is no-one left to look at their forced jollity, no-one except Dorothy and her staff when they clear the room, ready for their next ‘client’. Nelson looks out of the window. The grounds are immaculate but empty. A gardener is cutting the grass but, although it is a fine spring day, no-one is sitting in the basket chairs carefully arranged on the patio. Nelson turns back and, as he does so, he notices a yellowing photograph pushed to the back of the desk. Several middle-aged men sit in a row outside a house, a house which looks vaguely familiar. Three much younger men crouch in front of them. At the bottom, in spidery handwriting, is written: ‘Broughton Sea’s End Home Guard 1940.’

Which was Archie? The gangly boy in front, trying not to smile but obviously delighted to find himself alongside these hardened veterans? The one with his hat at a jaunty angle, gas-mask in hand? Perhaps the serious one with glasses. Which of the older men was Buster Hastings? The scary-looking fellow with the walrus moustache or the fat one with buttons straining? Maybe the one looking vaguely in the wrong direction… Of course, that must be Sea’s End house in the background. He recognises the grey stone but realises that the picture must have been taken at the back of the house, in the garden that has since fallen into the sea.

Archie’s newspaper is still folded back at yesterday’s TV. He has ringed the programmes he wanted to watch. Countdown, Coronation Street, Panorama, an afternoon film matinee of Went the Day Well? The shaky blue pen makes Nelson feel suddenly very sad.

‘Come on,’ he says. ‘There’s nothing here. Let’s go and see the doctor.’

‘No signs of satanic ritual then, boss?’

‘Show some respect,’ growls Nelson. Even as he says it, though, he remembers how Archie described Buster Hastings yesterday. ‘Hell of a chap,’ he had said.

A real old devil.

Ruth, like Judy, has taken the day off. Tatjana is arriving tomorrow and the spare room is still full of old boxes so she has dropped Kate at Sandra’s. She stopped off for strengthening croissants, has made a pot of coffee and is now preparing to transform the room into a bijou boudoir, suitable for someone with American standards of hygiene and comfort. The trouble is, for the last twenty minutes she has been sitting on the floor reading an article about Ian Rankin from a two-year-old copy of the Guardian (found at the bottom of one of the boxes). It is only the arrival of Flint, purring and standing on Ian’s face, that brings her back to the job in hand. Jesus, how do people ever tidy anything? She moves stuff from one box to another but it is still there, in the way. How do people like her sister-in-law ever manage to have houses where everything is shut away in cupboards and all the storage jars actually contain the thing they say they do? Ruth’s sugar jar contains small flint flakes, evidence of prehistoric tool-making. Coffee is full of miscellaneous pens and Tea is a strange herbal mix of Cathbad’s, almost definitely hallucinogenic.

That’s another worry. Cathbad’s ridiculous naming-day party. It’s tomorrow night and Cathbad seems to have invited half the university. And now Tatjana will be there too. What will she think about a crowd of pagans dancing around the inevitable bonfire? Ruth has never discussed religion with Tatjana. She knows that Tatjana, like Nelson, was brought up as a Catholic, but living through a civil war tends to change people’s perceptions of good and evil. Ruth shivers; she hopes that they can get through these few weeks without ever discussing life or death or any of the points in between. They will have nice, civilised chats about archaeology, admire Kate, drink white wine and visit Norwich Castle. The past does not need to intrude at all.

What the hell is in this box? Old sample bags full of dust and pieces of flint, lecture notes, a model of a Stone Age causewayed enclosure made for the university open day, complete with plastic sheep, a theatre programme (A Little Night Music – when had she ever gone to see that?) and, oh my God, a picture of Ruth, Peter and Erik standing by the henge, as triumphant as if they had made it themselves.

She peers more closely at the photo. Christ, she is wearing a bikini top. She must have been at least three stone lighter then. Erik is in a billowing white shirt that has a faintly druidical feel. Peter is wearing a Chelsea football vest; his face red and sweaty. It had been a hot summer, she remembers. Working in the sun all day had been hard; they all wore hats, Ruth’s a wide-brimmed straw number, Peter’s one of those legionnaire’s caps with a flap at the back, Erik’s a jaunty panama. In the photo Erik is waving his hat, very white against the improbably blue sky. Now Erik is dead and the henge has disappeared, its timbers taken to a nearby museum to be preserved. Cathbad and the other druids had protested violently. ‘They belong to the wind and the sky,’ Ruth remembers Cathbad shouting, his purple cloak flying out behind him as he took his position in the centre of the sacred circle. ‘They are not yours to take, to bury in some soulless museum.’ Erik had sympathised but the university, who was funding the dig, had insisted. And now the timbers lie in an artificially controlled climate behind smoked glass, no longer a henge, just some oddly shaped pieces of wood.

Ruth thinks about Broughton Sea’s End, about the sea advancing, eating away at the cliffs, destroying brick and stone, uncovering secrets. Was there a link between the bodies and the oil drums? The strange-smelling material had certainly looked the same. She has taken it to the lab (her car still reeks) and will run tests on it. Six German soldiers, shot and buried under a remote cliff, buried in sand so their bones will disintegrate, oil drums containing petrol and diesel fuel. Ruth is reminded of a film that she saw years ago with her father. Nazis marching through an English village. What was its name?

She has got precisely nowhere with the tidying. The bed is still buried under boxes, although Flint has found a pillow and is kneading it busily. She will have to be ruthless. Erik sometimes used to call her Ruth the Ruthless. Time to live up to her name. She’ll get some black plastic bags and chuck the lot away.

As she crosses the sitting room she sees, with a shock, that there is somebody at the front door. Her bell hasn’t worked for years but her few visitors know this and usually hammer and yell. God knows how long this polite person has been standing there. She opens the door, prepared to apologise.

A man is standing on the doorstep, smiling. Blond and good-looking, there is something unmistakably foreign about him. Maybe it’s the green coat or the backpack – or the smile, which shows extremely white teeth.

‘Dr Ruth Galloway?’

‘Yes.’ She likes it when people use her correct title. She doesn’t see why strangers should call her Ruth and she despises ‘Miss’.

‘My name is Dieter Eckhart. I wish to talk to you about some dead German soldiers.’