THE HOUSE AT SEA’S END

everyone will have a whale of a time. Everyone except the bride herself, that is.
    ‘Would you like to come this way?’ a uniformed figure is smiling down at them. She is probably not a nurse but her manner – a crisp mix of kindness and professionalism – certainly suggests a hospital ward. But this isn’t a hospital, Whitcliffe stressed that. ‘Absolutely super place. Granddadloves it. They play bowls and do gardening. There’s even an archery team. Real home from home.’
    Greenfields Care Home, as they walk through its cream-painted corridors, is certainly clean and well-organised, but homely? Judy can’t imagine anyone wanting to decorate their homes with prints of Norfolk Through the Ages or hand-sanitisers or stairlifts or notices on fire safety. And it doesn’t seem terribly like home to have a room with a number, even if it does have your name on it, in cheerful lower case letters.
    ‘Archie? Visitors for you.’
    Archie Whitcliffe, who greets them at the door of his tiny room as if he were Jack Hastings himself, looks disconcertingly like his grandson. Superintendent Gerald Whitcliffe is tall and dark, vain about his hair and his suits. Archie Whitcliffe is also tall, though slightly stooped, with immaculate silver hair. He isn’t wearing a suit but his cardigan and trousers are freshly pressed and he is wearing a tie, regimental by the look of it.
    He shakes hands briskly. ‘So you work for Gerald?’
    That isn’t quite how Nelson likes to look at it, but he nods. ‘Yes. I’m Detective Chief Inspector Harry Nelson and this is Detective Sergeant Judy Johnson.’
    Archie positively twinkles at Judy. ‘What a mouthful. Do you mind if I call you Judy?’
    Judy smiles back. ‘Not at all.’ There’s no reason to antagonise the old boy, after all.
    The room contains only a single bed, a desk with a television on it, an armchair and a bookcase. As well as the ubiquitous Norfolk print, there are several framed familyportraits. Judy cranes her head to catch a glimpse of a teenage Whitcliffe.
    ‘Here,’ says Archie obligingly. ‘Gerald at his passing out parade.’
    Judy looks at the newly qualified policeman, saluting, his neck vulnerable under the new cap. He looks about twelve.
    ‘He’s done so well,’ she says. ‘You must be proud of him.’
    ‘Course I am. Proud of all my grandchildren.’
    ‘How many do you have?’
    ‘Ten. Gerald’s the oldest.’
    Jesus wept, thinks Nelson. The Whitcliffes are breeding like rabbits. There truly is no help for Norfolk.
    Archie sits on the desk chair, gesturing Nelson to the armchair. Judy perches on the bed.
    ‘Mr Whitcliffe,’ Nelson begins. ‘Superintendent Whitcliffe, Gerald, may have told you about the skeletons found buried at Broughton Sea’s End …’
    ‘He has.’
    I bet he has, thinks Nelson. Despite the matter being strictly police business.
    ‘We believe these skeletons are of a group of men who may have died anywhere from forty to seventy years ago. This obviously includes the war years. I wondered if, as a member of the Home Guard, you remember any sort of incident at Broughton Sea’s End.’
    Archie is silent for a long time. Along the corridor someone is playing the piano accompanied by some rather weedy singing. ‘If You Were the Only Girl in the World’.
    ‘You were in the Home Guard,’ prompts Nelson.
    ‘Yes.’ Archie seems visibly to straighten in his chair. ‘TheLocal Defence Volunteers we were called at first. I was too young to join up at the start of the war. Did later, of course. Tank Corps.’ He gestures to the tie.
    ‘There were some other youngsters in the troop, weren’t there?’ Nelson glances at his notes. ‘Hugh and … er … Danny.’
    ‘Yes.’
    Nelson wonders if it’s his imagination or does Archie stiffen slightly? He looks at Nelson pleasantly, a calm smile on his face. The tension is in his body which is completely still. Too still, surely?
    ‘Are you still, in touch with Hugh and Danny? Do you know if they’re still alive?’
    ‘I corresponded with Hugh a few years ago. I haven’t heard from him since.’
    ‘Do you have an address for him?’
    ‘I’m sorry, no.’ Archie does not bother to go and look. He just stares at Nelson out of bland blue eyes.
    ‘A surname?’
    ‘I don’t think I can remember.’
    Nelson looks at Judy who leans forward and asks, ‘What about Danny?’
    ‘I haven’t seen him since the war, my dear. I’d clean forgotten him until you mentioned his