The House At Sea’s End

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?