The House At Sea’s End

CHAPTER 4

‘Four skeletons you say?’

‘At least four, according to Ruth Galloway.’

It’s Monday and Nelson is back. He has called a team meeting for nine but now his boss, Superintendent Gerald Whitcliffe, has forestalled this by strolling into his office, leaning all over Nelson’s lovely clean ‘to do’ list and ‘having a word’.

‘Just thought you’d like a heads-up, Harry, that’s all.’

Heads up? What the hell does that mean? Sometimes it seems as if he and his boss speak an entirely different language, and not just because Nelson was born in Blackpool and Whitcliffe in Norwich. Still, he’s not going to give Whitcliffe the satisfaction of asking for a translation.

‘Could be a delicate situation, you see.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, it’s right on Jack Hastings’ doorstep.’

Nelson feels he should know the name but he’s not quite in work mode yet. Not that Lanzarote is exactly the other side of the world, even though it felt like it at times. Michelle and Lisa have exchanged addresses and the two families are planning to meet up in the Easter holidays.

‘Who’s Jack Hastings?’

Whitcliffe laughs indulgently. ‘Where have you been hiding, Harry? He’s the MEP who keeps ranting on about his house falling into the sea and the government doing nothing about it. Lives at Broughton Sea’s End, that big castle-type place up on the cliff. Did you see his documentary, An Englishman’s Home?’

‘Must have missed it.’

‘Anyway, turns out these bones have been found at the bottom of the cliffs. Just across the beach from Hastings’ place.’

‘What’s the problem? Surely he wouldn’t want to stop us investigating?’

This is said with a slight trace of irony, remembering other influential friends of Whitcliffe’s who have not always been helpful to the police. Whitcliffe doesn’t get it. He never thinks that Nelson is being funny; he just thinks he’s being Northern.

‘Of course not. Just that we have to make sure that we do it all by the book. Can’t afford to cut any corners.’

‘I never do,’ says Nelson. And now he is being funny.

An hour later, Nelson and Clough are driving towards Broughton Sea’s End. It is normally the junior officer who drives but Nelson hates being a passenger and Clough likes to leave his hands free for eating so they are in Nelson’s dirty white Mercedes, doing seventy along the winding coastal roads.

‘So, boss,’ says Clough, as the North Norfolk coastline shoots past, blurry and indistinct, caravan parks, pubs, sand dunes, pitch and putt. ‘Do you think we’ve got another serial killer on the loose?’

‘I assume nothing,’ says Nelson.

‘Still,’ says Clough hurriedly, fearing another variation on Nelson’s ‘never assume’ lecture, ‘seems funny, doesn’t it? Four skeletons in one grave. It’s an out-of-the-way place, too; cut off by the tide most of the time.’

‘We don’t know anything yet. Skeletons could be bloody Stone Age.’ Nelson has never forgotten the first time that he met Ruth Galloway. He had called her in to investigate a body found at the edge of the Saltmarsh, which he had thought might be that of a child and, in a way, he was right. Except that this child had died over two thousand years before.

‘Trace says that Ruth thinks they’re comparatively recent,’ says Clough.

‘Ruth’s not always right,’ says Nelson.

And when they reach the beach at Sea’s End the first person that Nelson sees is Ruth, with the entirely unwelcome addition of a child slung around her neck.

‘Why the hell have you brought Katie?’

‘Childminder’s sick,’ says Ruth.

‘What were you thinking? It’s way too cold for a baby.’

‘She’s well wrapped up.’

Katie looks like an Eskimo child, thinks Nelson. She is wearing an all-in-one thing with built-in feet and mittens. She is sound asleep.

‘I hadn’t got time to make other arrangements,’ says Ruth.

‘What about Shona?’

‘She’s teaching.’

Nelson knows he can’t say any more. Not here. He glares at Ruth and crunches away across the shingle. He doesn’t like this beach; it feels claustrophobic somehow, with the cliffs looming on one side and that monstrosity of a house on the other. He looks across at the turrets of Sea’s End House. Presumably that’s where Whitcliffe’s mate lives. Never trust a man who flies the Union Jack. Everything is so bloody grey – grey stone, grey sea, grey sky. Nelson has a very clear idea of what the seaside should look like, a vision that stays remarkably true to his native Blackpool – sand, big dippers and donkeys. Not this God-forsaken pile of rubble in the middle of nowhere. There’s not even a slot machine, for heaven’s sake.

At the far side of the bay there is an opening in the cliff, a sort of cleft about a metre wide. The mad Irishman Ted is there, clearing stones away with a shovel. Trace is there too, talking into her phone. Nelson sees Clough give her a little wave. Pathetic.

‘Top of the morning to you,’ Ted greets him.

‘Is this where the skeletons were found?’

‘Yes, in this recess. The opening was blocked off by a rock fall. I’ve cleared most of it away now.’

‘We’ve started on the trench.’ Ruth appears next to him. ‘It’s difficult because there’s not much space to dig.’

There is already a neat trench in the narrow gap between the tall cliffs. Nelson looks at it with pleasure. Annoying though archaeologists can be he admires their way with a trench. His scene-of-crime boys could never get the edges that straight. Then he looks closer. The trench appears to be full of bones.

‘Jesus,’ he says. ‘How many in there?’

‘Just the six, I think,’ says Ruth. She leans over and Nelson looks anxiously at Kate, suspended in her baby sling. How safe were those things anyway…?

‘Any idea how old the bodies are?’ he asks.

‘I think they’re fairly recent,’ says Ruth. ‘Bones buried in sand usually disappear after a few hundred years.’

Not for the first time, Nelson marvels at what archaeologists consider recent. ‘So they could be a hundred years old?’

‘I think it’s likely they’re more modern than that,’ says Ruth cautiously. ‘We’ll do C14 dating. Also there’s hair and teeth. We can run a number of different tests.’

Nelson knows from previous cases that C14, or carbon fourteen dating, measures the amount of carbon left within a body. When we die we stop taking in carbon 14 and it starts to break down so, by measuring the amount of C14 left in a bone, archaeologists can estimate its age. He also knows that dates can vary by as much as a hundred years. This may not seem much to Ruth but it’s not very helpful when deciding whether or not you’re dealing with a recent homicide.

‘Anything else?’ asks Nelson, straightening up.

‘Bodies appear to be adult male, well-built…’ She pauses. ‘They’re bound, back to back. One has what looks like a bullet wound in the thoracic vertebrae, another looks as if he was shot in the back of the head.’

‘Natural causes then,’ says Clough, who is hovering in the background

Trace laughs but Nelson glares furiously at his sergeant. Murder is no laughing matter, whether it occurred twenty, seventy or two thousand years ago.

‘What will you do now?’

‘We’ll expose all the skeletons, then we’ll draw and photograph them in situ. Then we’ll excavate, skeleton by skeleton. They should all be done on the same day.’

‘You can’t dig with a baby round your neck.’

‘I can supervise.’

‘Give her to me.’

‘What?’

‘Give the baby to me. Just for a bit. I’ll sit in the car with her, it’s too cold out here.’

The wind has picked up in the last few minutes. They can hear the waves crashing on the beach and sand blows around them. Kate stirs fretfully.

‘She probably needs feeding,’ says Ruth.

‘Well feed her and then leave her with me. Just for a bit.’

‘Jesus, boss,’ says Clough. ‘Are you setting up as a nanny now?’

‘Just for ten minutes,’ says Nelson. ‘Then it’s your turn.’

Ruth’s first reaction is one of intense irritation, followed by an almost blissful sense of release. As Nelson carefully lifts Kate out of her sling, it is as if Ruth has her old body back, her old self back. She straightens up, feeling the gritty wind full on her face, her hair whipping back. She knows she is smiling.

Kate has had almost a full bottle of milk, her eyelids are drooping. Nelson sits with her in the front seat of the Mercedes, Clough watching open-mouthed from the passenger side.

‘She should go to sleep now,’ says Ruth.

‘If she doesn’t, Cloughie’ll sing her a lullaby,’ promises Nelson.

Kate’s head rests against Nelson’s blue waxed jacket. Her fine dark hair, with its one whorl that never goes in the same direction as the rest, suddenly looks unbearably fragile.

‘I’ll get back to the excavation,’ says Ruth, not moving.

‘Don’t hurry back on our account,’ says Nelson, who is still looking down at Kate.

Ruth finds herself almost running back along the cliff path. She can’t wait to get down to the beach and start work on the trench. She wants to assert her authority on the proceedings, to check that the skeleton sheets are properly filled in, that there is no mixing of bones, that everything is securely bagged and labelled. But, more than that, she wants to be involved. It is over six months since she did any practical archaeology. She knows that Trace thinks that she is using Kate as an excuse not to do her share of the hard work, to ‘supervise’ instead. Ruth is the expert here, she’s entitled to sit back and delegate, but Trace will never know how much Ruth wants to dig, to forget everything in pure physical hard work. She would not have admitted it, but by the time she looks down at the bodies stretched out back-to-back in their sandy grave she has almost forgotten that she has a baby.

The trench is still fairly narrow and Ruth squeezes in with difficulty. Ideally, she’d like more time to look at the context but she knows that the sea is advancing. High tide is at six, and with the stones cleared away the sea will probably come all the way into this inlet. Time to excavate the bodies. First she takes photographs, using a measuring rod for scale. Then she draws the skeletons in plan. Finally, bone by bone, she starts on the first body. As she lifts each bone, Trace records it on the skeleton sheet and marks it with a tiny number in indelible ink. All the bones are present and, as Ruth had thought, there are teeth too; each tooth also has to be numbered and charted. When she comes to the skull, she sees that there is some hair still attached, ashblond, almost the same colour as the sand.

There are fragments of rope around the wrists.

Ted whistles. ‘Their hands were bound.’

‘May be able to get DNA from the rope,’ says Ruth. ‘There could be blood or sweat on it.’

‘Will we get DNA from the bones?’ asks Ted.

‘Maybe,’ says Ruth. ‘But DNA can be contaminated by burial.’

Trace says nothing. She is working efficiently but silently, placing each marked bone in a paper bag.

Ruth looks at the skeleton sheet. She is sure that the bodies are adult males. She can see the brow ridges on the skulls, the pronounced nuchal crest at the back of the head, the large mastoid bones. This first skeleton also has a particularly square jaw. Ruth wonders whether they will be able to get a facial reconstruction done but, as she looks at this skull lying on the tarpaulin with sand blowing around it, she has an uneasy feeling that she knows exactly what its living form would be. A tall man (the long bones show that), blond haired with a jutting chin. A Viking, she thinks, though she knows this is historically unlikely. She thinks again of her first mentor – Erik Anderssen, Erik the Viking.

‘How are you doing?’ She recognises Clough’s voice but does not look up.

‘Okay. First body’s almost out.’

‘Baby’s asleep,’ says Clough, sounding amused. ‘Think the boss is about to drop off too.’

Ruth says nothing but Trace says, slightly bitchily, ‘Never knew Nelson was so soft about babies.’

‘Well, he’s got kids of his own, hasn’t he,’ says Ted, carefully lifting out the second skull.

‘They’re grown up now,’ says Clough. ‘Turning into right stunners.’

Ruth wonders whether Ted has children. She knows very little about him beyond the fact that he went to school in Bolton and is famous for his prodigious drinking. She also thinks it is inappropriate for Clough to refer to Nelson’s daughters, one still at school, as ‘stunners’. She wonders what Trace thinks.

The second body is slightly shorter and the few tufts of hair are dark. When they reach the hands they see that an index finger is missing.

‘Could be very useful, that,’ says Ted.

Ruth agrees. She is almost sure these men were killed within living memory. If that is the case, a distinguishing mark will be very useful.

The next body is laid out in an identical position, hands behind the back. The only difference is that something is clasped in the right hand, its skeletal fingers still clenched.

‘What’s that?’ Ted leans in.

Gently Ruth prises the fingers apart. Still they seem unwilling to give up the object they have grasped for so long. A flash of gold, white beads.

‘Is it a bracelet?’ asks Trace.

‘It’s a rosary,’ says Ruth.

She has seen one before, of course. A picture comes into her mind of Father Hennessey, the Catholic priest she met while investigating another long-buried body. She has a vivid memory of a ruined house, a deserted garden, an archway silhouetted against the sky and Father Hennessey holding a rosary, passing it from one hand to the other, his lips moving. Father Hennessey’s rosary was black and ornate. This is smaller and simpler, white beads on a gold chain, a cross at one end.

‘May be able to trace that,’ says Trace.

‘Nah,’ says Ted. ‘Those things are ten a penny.’

Ruth puts the rosary into a separate bag.

‘It’s all evidence,’ she says.

They can now see the lower bodies, which are lying on what looks like a white sheet. On the sheet are some tiny balls of fluff. Ted bends closer.

‘Looks like the stuff we found the other day. Smells the same too.’

‘We can try to identify the material,’ says Ruth. ‘It’ll help with dating.’ She stands up, easing her back. Her earlier euphoria is overtaken by a sudden wave of tiredness. She’s out of practice at digging. Her neck and shoulders feel as if she is wearing an iron collar. Also the trench is starting to feel claustrophobic, the cliffs lowering over her with the triangle of sky above.

Ted is watching her. ‘Why not let Trace take over for a bit?’ He leans forward. ‘It’d be good practice for her.’

She smiles at Ted, grateful for his tact. He grins back, showing two gold teeth. She climbs out of the trench, being careful not to damage the sides, and Trace takes her place.

Ruth walks back across the beach, noticing that white-flecked waves are starting to appear on the horizon. They must keep a watch on the tide. She climbs the slope and walks slowly along the cliff path to the car park. Nelson’s filthy Mercedes is parked by an ominous-looking sign saying ‘Beware! Danger of Land Slides’. The car window is half open and, through it, Ruth sees Nelson, head back, eyes shut, Kate nestling on his shoulder. For a moment, she just stands there. She has only once before seen Nelson asleep and she remembers how his face is completely changed, the fierce lines softened, the eyelashes surprisingly long, the mouth unguarded and vulnerable. Kate’s head is pressed against Nelson’s neck. From reflex more than anything, Ruth reaches in to see if Kate is breathing. Still asleep, the baby turns her head away. Nelson’s eyes open immediately.

‘Ruth. Bloody hell. You made me jump.’

‘Sorry,’ says Ruth.

Nelson winds down the window. ‘I wasn’t asleep,’ he says defensively.

‘It’s okay,’ says Ruth. ‘I won’t tell Clough.’

‘How are you getting on?’

‘Okay. Four bodies almost excavated.’

‘Think you’ll get done today?’

‘I hope so.’ She looks at the sky which is a pale, wintery blue, the sun high and hazy. ‘It’s only midday now. High tide should be at six, and we’ll have to have it done by then otherwise the trench will flood. We’ve cleared away the rubble from the cliff fall, you see. Nothing to stop the sea getting in.’

‘What are you going to do with Katie? She can’t stay here all day and I’ve got to get on.’

‘She can sleep in her car seat for a bit.’

‘What if she wakes up?’

‘I’ll sit with her.’

Nelson looks at Ruth without saying anything. Kate stirs slightly and he readjusts his hold, his hand looking very large against her little back. Ruth finds herself staring at Nelson’s wedding ring. Has he always worn one?

‘Shall I take her?’ she asks.

‘Perhaps you’d better.’

Ruth opens the car door and Nelson climbs out. He places the sleeping baby in Ruth’s arms and tucks her blanket carefully round her. Ruth looks at Kate to avoid looking at Nelson as he does this.

‘She’s beautiful,’ says Nelson softly.

‘Don’t.’

‘I can’t help it, Ruth. I’ve hardly seen her before today.’

Whose fault is that, thinks Ruth. But she knows she isn’t being entirely fair. Nelson has asked several times if he can see Kate, but so far Ruth has always made excuses. She’s tired, she’s got a cold, I’m tired, I’m working. Nelson has a right to see Kate but there is only so much she can take.

She keeps her eyes down, fiddling with Kate’s blanket. ‘Can I see her again?’ asks Nelson. His voice seems to come from a long way away.

‘Sure,’ says Ruth. ‘Cathbad’s talking about having a naming ceremony. You and Michelle can both come.’

This time she looks up and meets Nelson’s eyes. Dark eyes, more black than brown, eyes that he has passed on to Kate.

‘Thanks,’ says Nelson. Then he turns away and strides off along the cliff path, towards the excavation.