The House At Sea’s End

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.

He walks to the point of the headland and looks out across the next cove. Deserted. This was the place where they found the barrels, he remembers. The cliffs are higher here, streaked yellow and grey. The beach beyond Broughton, Ruth said. He rings her number again. No answer. He tries her home and gets the answer phone. He doesn’t know who he expects to answer anyway. The cat? Next he rings Judy, she’s best at the local stuff.

‘Judy? What’s the next beach beyond Broughton?’

‘Going north or south?’ At least Judy never asks unnecessary questions.

‘North.’

‘Rockham. Beyond that, it’s Cromer.’

‘Can you get down to the beach from there?’

‘Yes. There are some steps.’

‘Can you meet me there as soon as possible? Bring Cloughie too.’

‘Okay, boss.’

As Nelson clicks off his phone, a wave breaks over his feet. Soon Broughton will be cut off by the sea and Ruth is still on the beach somewhere. There’s not a moment to lose.

‘What are you playing at?’ asks Ruth angrily.

‘Get in the cabin, Ruth.’ Craig is smiling, that gentle smile that she has always rather liked. He was her favourite of the field team, she remembers, because he never argued with her.

‘You must be joking. Put that gun down.’

‘If you don’t, I’ll kill you. Just like I killed Eckhart and the others.’

‘You killed them?’

‘Yes,’ says Craig, still in that sweet, reasonable tone. ‘I had to. I had to protect my grandfather’s memory.’

‘Your grandfather?’

‘Donald Drummond. My mother’s father. He was one of the Home Guard.’

Donald. The gardener, who presumably had the key to the summer house. The one who had wanted to kill the Germans outright.

‘He was a fine man,’ says Craig. ‘He brought me up, you know. My father scarpered when I was a kid, Mum couldn’t really cope. But my grandparents, they were always there for me. Constant, steady. It was a different generation. A better generation.’

Ruth remembers Craig telling her that he was brought up by his grandparents. Thanks to them he can make oxtail soup. Is it thanks to them that he is also a murderer?

‘Granddad told me all about the war,’ Craig says. ‘And when I was old enough he told me about killing the Germans. It was them or us, he said. I understood. He was only doing his duty, fighting for his country.’

‘They killed them in cold blood!’

Craig turns on her furiously. ‘What do you know about it? Where would you be, you and all the bleeding heart liberals, if they hadn’t protected you? They stood on this coast line and they defended it. They defended it with their lives.’

‘Did you kill Archie and Hugh?’