The House At Sea’s End

CHAPTER 30

The hull of the ship is so weathered and encrusted that it seems part of the rocks around it. Peering inside, Ruth sees pools of stagnant water, mussels like obscene growths clinging to the wood, a crab scuttling warily across the remains of a bench seat. But the basic structure remains, there is even a rudimentary cabin with the door bolted shut and, in the lowest part of the ship, partly submerged, two sealed barrels. Ruth leans forward and pulls at something trapped under one of the barrels. It looks like cotton wool, stained and discoloured by the water but smelling unmistakably of sulphur – gun cotton.

She looks at Craig who is peering over the side of the boat.

‘How come no-one’s found this before? It’s quite visible at low tide.’

‘Oh, people know about it. It’s even on the maps. I just don’t think that anyone has made the fire ship connection.’

It’s possible the boat was already a wreck when Hastings and his men primed it, thinks Ruth. It has probably sat in this lonely bay for years. Hastings would have known about it, she is sure that he knew every inch of this coast. He would have come down here in Syd Austin’s boat, probably with Ernst, the clever scientist, and filled the rotting hull with barrels of explosives, stuffed with the lethal cotton. They may even have had a way of setting off the explosion from a distance. The impact would have set the very sea on fire.

‘I wonder what’s in the cabin,’ she says. ‘It’s still locked.’

‘Let me have a look,’ says Craig, climbing over the side of the boat.

‘Funny,’ says Ruth. ‘The lock looks new. It’s not rusted at all.’

‘That’s odd.’ Craig comes to stand beside her. Even though the boat is lodged tight in the rocks, it still tilts slightly with the two of them aboard. The timbers creak and Ruth wonders if they will hold out.

The bolt slides back easily, too easily. Ruth feels the first, slight, frisson of alarm. She hears the sea thundering towards them and the gulls overhead. The tide has turned.

‘Have a look inside,’ says Craig.

Ruth turns, suddenly scared. It is a few seconds before she realises that she is looking down the barrel of a gun.

Nelson is ringing Ruth’s number. No answer. Leaving Stella looking bemused, he runs out of the house, sprints to the end of the drive and along the cliff path. Ruth’s car is in the car park. There is only one other car, a blue Nissan.

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?’

‘I felt bad about Archie,’ says Craig. ‘He was a good man, but he was going to tell someone the secret. I did the gardening at the home and I saw how friendly he was getting with that carer, Maria. Then, when Nelson visited him, I knew it was time to act. I just popped up to his room after I’d finished in the grounds and sent him to sleep. It only took a few minutes. A merciful release, really. Archie hated getting old. Hated being in the home.’

‘What about Hugh? That wasn’t a merciful release.’

‘Hugh was a filthy communist. Granddad hated him. Anselm should have been a conchie and had done with it,