THE HOUSE AT SEA’S END

perches on the edge of the sofa. Ruth offers him tea which he accepts but disconcerts her by asking for lemon instead of milk. She hasn’t got any lemon but finds a wizened lime at the back of the fridge (from Shona’s tequila phase). It’ll have to do.
    ‘I am sorry to trouble you at home,’ says Eckhart, accepting the unpleasant-looking drink with every appearance of pleasure. ‘But I ask at the university who is the forensic archaeologist in charge of the case.’
    Ruth is gratified that someone has identified her as being in charge but rather mystified as to how Dieter Eckhart has managed to find out about the bodies so quickly. Thanks to Whitcliffe, there has been nothing in the British press.
    The mystery is soon explained. From his backpack Eckhart pulls a map of Norfolk, a book about the D-Day landings and a crumpled letter written in thin black ink.
    ‘I’m a military historian,’ he says. ‘I have written severalarticles about the rumoured German invasion of Norfolk in the Second World War. One day last month I received this letter.’
    He hands it to Ruth:
Dear Mr Eckhart
Please excuse my presumption in writing to you. I read your recent article in
History Today
entitled ‘The Great Invasion Mystery’ and it awoke some very vivid memories, memories that I have, for many years, been trying to suppress. I was a member of the Broughton Sea’s End Home Guard from 1940 to 1941. I was one of the three younger members of the platoon which was captained by one Buster Hastings. I am now 86 and in poor health, yet a memory of a particular event in 1940 has haunted me all my life. I feel I must discuss it with you. You, sir, are a young man, an academic and a German. It is for these reasons that I feel compelled to contact you. A great wrong was done many years ago, Herr Eckhart, and, unless we tell the truth to the generations that follow, the evil will lie waiting beneath the earth.
I am, sir, your honourable former enemy,
Hugh P. Anselm.
     
    Ruth looks across at Dieter Eckhart, who is calmly sipping his tea. Her mind is racing. The rumoured German invasion of Norfolk. Nazi officers patrolling the streets. Six bodies found buried under the cliff.
The evil will lie waiting beneath the earth.
    ‘I made enquiries,’ says Eckhart. ‘There was indeed a Home Guard platoon captained by a man of that name. I decidedto come to England. For many years I have been planning to write a book about the invasion.’
    ‘But they didn’t really invade, did they?’ responds Ruth. ‘I mean, I know there were rumours, and there was a film. I saw it with my father. But there was never any evidence.’
    ‘I believe there was,’ says Eckhart, putting down his cup. ‘But I believe that the evidence was deliberately destroyed.’
    ‘So you think the Germans came here? To Norfolk?’
    Eckhart looks at her. He has very blue eyes, which reminds Ruth of Erik. He says, as if reading from a script: ‘In September 1940, in the village of Crostwick, Norfolk, villagers reported seeing a convoy of army trucks carrying dead German soldiers. Later that same month two bodies were found on the Kent coast between Hythe and St Mary’s Bay. They were identified as German soldiers by their uniforms. The bodies were burned from the waist down.’
    ‘Burned?’
    Eckhart continues as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘On October the twenty-first the corpse of a German anti-tank gunner, Heinrich Poncke, was recovered from the beach at Littlestoneon-Sea. The discovery was openly reported in the press at the time.’
    ‘But I thought all these stories had been disproved,’ says Ruth, impressed, despite herself, by this recital. ‘The invasion was one of the myths of the Second World War. Like nuns parachuting or Hitler having a double.’
    ‘The parachuting nuns may well have been a myth,’ says Eckhart with the ghost of a smile, ‘but the invasion definitely happened. It was not the full-scale exercise that had been planned, the so-called Operation Sealion, but I believethat small reconnaissance groups did land on the Norfolk and Kent coasts in September 1940. The story has been denied and the solders involved vanished into thin air.’
    ‘How could they just vanish?’ says Ruth, but she has an uneasy memory of the bodies at Broughton Sea’s End, bodies buried in sand, sand which destroys bone. ‘Why would anyone want to deny that an invasion happened, if it did happen?’
    ‘Because,’ says Eckhart, ‘what we are looking at is a