The House At Sea’s End

‘Do you think Buster Hastings did it?’

‘It’s possible. He certainly seems a determined character.’

‘He was mad.’

‘Maybe.’ Nelson is thinking of a world where a man would tell his wife to kill their children, rather than have them fall into enemy hands. A world where fishmongers, gardeners and clever scientists were prepared to kill to defend their little piece of land. Desperate times, Stella Hastings had said.

‘Do you really think Archie and Hugh were murdered to stop them telling the truth about it?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Nelson wearily. ‘I feel like I don’t know anything.’

But before they are halfway back to the station a message comes through on Judy’s phone. Clough has just come back from the autopsy. Archie Whitcliffe was killed, not by a stroke but by asphyxiation.

CHAPTER 17

The noise, thinks Ruth, is indescribable. In fact, it has gone beyond noise and has become simply a white sheet of pain, against which everything else appears in harsh silhouette, like the strobe light that turns Judy’s white shirt into pure migraine. There’s no music as far as she can tell, just thumps and crashes and the occasional ear-splitting screech. Her head has become a mere amplifier for the noise. She can’t think, she can’t feel, she can’t speak. She wonders if she’s about to pass out.

‘It’s great isn’t it?’

A young policewoman, a friend of Judy’s, bobs in front of her. She is dancing wildly, her head thrown back in ecstasy, arms flailing.

‘Great,’ yells back Ruth but the girl has danced away again, back into the whirling throng. Ruth looks at her watch. One o’clock. Surely, surely she can go home soon.

Lights, red and green this time, criss-cross the walls like snakes. Was this what the Inca sacrifice ritual was like, the capacocha? Deafening noise, incomprehensible sounds, adherents dancing in a drug-crazed frenzy, the victim garlanded and clothed in gold (she is wearing her best trousers), the tribal drumming, the sacred knife raised on high, the blessed moment of blackness, of death, of unbeing. The longer Ruth stays in the Zanzibar nightclub, the more she longs to be put out of her misery. Maybe she just needs some mind- altering drugs, but when she reaches for her glass it’s empty. Oh God, this means she has to fight her way to the bar and be ignored by the pierced and tattooed barman (the High Priest). Maybe there’s drink in someone else’s glass. But all the other women in the hen party are drinking lurid cocktails with blue curacao or advocaat. Ruth is the only one on white wine. Yawning, she reaches under the table for her shoes (they are so uncomfortable that she has taken them off) and sets out on her quest. Maybe after one more drink she can go home.

The evening started in a wine bar. That was quite pleasant – lots of talk about sex and wedding dresses, lots of plays on the theme of arresting, handcuffs and full body searches, some talk of software and hardware (Darren is in computers). But at least there had been real wine and Ruth had liked Judy’s colleagues, with the exception of Tanya, whom she finds slightly scary. After the wine bar they had had a meal and things started to blur somewhat. Ruth tried to stay soberish; she doesn’t get out much and she wanted to do justice to her seafood risotto. But the wine kept flowing and soon she was discussing star signs with a policewoman called Mindy (Pisces) and singing along to Mamma Mia. Judy unwrapped some presents, all of which seemed to be furry handcuffs, and after much badinage with the gamely smiling waiters the party moved on to the Zanzibar.

Here things started to go downhill. As soon as she entered the club with its zebra-striped walls, leopard- spotted chairs and tiger-skin tables, Ruth was struck by a wave of tiredness so acute that she could have lain down and slept on the snakeskin floor. Despite the skull-crunching noise, she had difficulty keeping her eyes open. Judy, on the other hand, who earlier on had confessed to Ruth that she ‘never wanted to get bloody married anyway’, suddenly had a second wind and dragged the others out onto the dance floor where they scandalised the cooler clubbers by dancing round their handbags and demanding Abba songs.

Tatjana is in the middle of them, her hips, in skin-tight jeans, gyrating like a teenager. ‘Tatjana’s fab,’ pronounced Judy. Ruth, sitting alone at the tiger-skin table, knows that she isn’t fab, that she’s forty, that she has a five-month old baby who’ll be awake in four hours, that her shoes hurt and the waistband of her best trousers is digging into her skin. She’s too old for all this and she’s just remembered that she never liked clubbing anyway

Should she ring Shona again? She decides against it. She has already rung four times, and the last time Kate had finally gone to sleep and Shona said that she was about to follow. Shona has kindly offered to stay the night (she will sleep in Ruth’s bed and Ruth will have the sofa) so that Ruth and Tatjana can ‘let their hair down’. Ruth’s hair, unpleasantly sticky from Tatjana’s application of hairspray, feels as if, metaphorically, it is in a tight little bun. She doesn’t want to let her hair down and do wild things: she wants to be in bed with her baby beside her and Flint purring on the duvet. Still it was kind of Shona to offer. She had originally asked Clara but she said apologetically that she couldn’t do Saturday. Probably out with Dieter, thinks Ruth, remembering the embracing figures in the snow.

She seeks out Judy and asks if she wants another drink. Judy appears to be in a trance, her hair across her face, her limbs twitching randomly. Glancing around, Ruth sees that everyone else is in the same state. Except Tatjana, who is dancing abandonedly with an exceptionally handsome black man.

‘What?’ says Judy.

Ruth repeats her question.

‘No,’ says Judy vaguely. ‘You’re all right.’

Ruth approaches Tatjana, who is now draped around the man’s neck. His hands are firmly clenched on her bottom.

‘I might go soon,’ says Ruth, trying not to look.

‘Go?’ repeats Tatjana, eyes shut.

‘Home. Check on Kate.’

‘Kate?’

Ruth gives up. She decides against another drink. Instead, she takes her gold lottery ticket and goes to retrieve her coat. She’ll send Tatjana a text to say that she’s left.

Outside, it is freezing. There is already frost on the ground and on the nearby parked cars, none of which seem to be taxis. Ruth decides to walk to the station, to see if there are any cabs there. Her feet are blocks of ice in her unaccustomed high heels and she finds it impossible to walk fast. Some passing youths shout at her but she ignores them, head down. She wishes she’d brought a woolly hat, gloves, her trusty wellingtons…

‘You want a lift?’

A car has come to a halt beside her and she looks down at a smiling, toothy face. The car is a dark saloon, slightly battered.

‘Are you a taxi?’ she asks.

‘Sure. Minicab.’

For a moment she is tempted to get in beside the sinister smiling man. At least she’d be warm in his car. Before he murders her, that is.

‘It’s okay,’ says Ruth, trying to walk faster. ‘I’m meeting someone.’

The car glides along beside her for a few minutes then, to Ruth’s relief, it veers away. She has reached the reassuring lights of the station. Here, thank God, are other people – a few disconsolate football fans clutching lager bottles, a bemused-looking man with a briefcase and a mother holding a baby. What can she be doing at King’s Lynn station at two in the morning? Ruth tries to give the woman a reassuring mother-to-mother smile but she looks away, clasping the sleeping child against her shoulder. Should Ruth offer them a room for the night?

The taxi drivers do not want to go as far as the Saltmarsh.

‘New Road? That’s miles.’

‘No can do, love. It’s out of my zone.’

Ruth is desperate. She almost considers going back to look for the smiling man in the minicab. But, eventually, someone takes pity on her.

‘All right,’ says a fat man in a Ford Cavalier. ‘Sunday rates, mind.’