THE HOUSE AT SEA’S END

coroner’s office and copied you in. Otherwise you wouldn’t have known,’ he adds.
    ‘I know everything that goes on round here,’ spits Whitcliffe. Nelson hopes this isn’t true.
    ‘Look – er – sir … I know this is difficult for you—’
    ‘Difficult!’ Whitcliffe looks ready to explode.
    ‘Your grandfather is dead and, naturally, you’re upset. But I have reasons to suspect that death was not by natural causes.’
    ‘I’ll be fascinated to hear them,’ says Whitcliffe nastily.
    ‘The day before your grandfather died,’ says Nelson, ‘Detective Sergeant Johnson and I interviewed him about the bodies found at Broughton Sea’s End. I asked him if heremembered anything from his time with the Home Guard. His words were: “If I knew anything I wouldn’t tell you. I took a blood oath.”‘
    ‘Is that your only—’
    ‘I didn’t think much of it,’ says Nelson smoothly, ‘though I thought he was concealing something. That night he died.’
    ‘He was an old man. He had a stroke.’
    ‘Two weeks ago,’ Nelson goes on, ‘another old man died. His name was Hugh Anselm and he served with your grandfather in the Home Guard. Shortly before he died he wrote to a German historian telling him that something terrible had happened at Broughton during the war. Two weeks later he was dead. He died in his stairlift. It had stopped halfway up the stairs. It’s possible that it was stopped deliberately.’
    There is a silence. Gerry Whitcliffe stares at Nelson as if he is trying to read his mind. Nelson keeps his face bland. In the background he can hear Clough and Tanya arguing about whose turn it is to go out for chocolate.
    ‘Are you suggesting—’ begins Whitcliffe.
    ‘I’m not suggesting anything, sir,’ says Nelson. ‘But there are just too many coincidences for my liking. Both Mr Whitcliffe and Mr Anselm died before they could tell their stories. I don’t like that. I don’t like that at all.’
    ‘But who could possibly have killed them?’
    ‘I do have a name,’ admits Nelson.
    ‘What name?’
    ‘Lucifer.’
    Ruth and Tatjana are walking up a hill. After two weeks of mostly fine weather, it is cold with a biting east wind.Forecasters are talking happily about possible snow showers and the sky is a heavy, leaden grey. Not really the day for a pleasant country walk but Tatjana has expressed interest in a Roman site near Norwich and Ruth, who has no lectures this morning, is determined to entertain her guest. Besides, she knows the site well. She was called in last year when human bones were discovered in one of the trenches. The archaeologist who organised the dig is a Roman expert called Max Grey. He is an intelligent, attractive man and Ruth has sometimes allowed herself to think about him in a singularly unprofessional way. But the site also holds darker memories – a wolf circling in the night, letters written in blood, a dead baby. Ruth shivers and pulls her anorak tighter. Tatjana, dressed in a trendy suede jacket, looks half frozen.
    ‘I’d forgotten how cold it is in England.’
    ‘It must get cold in Cape Cod.’
    ‘Yes, but we have warmer houses.’
    Tatjana hasn’t spoken much about her life in America. She and Rick seem to spend most of their time sailing and cooking gourmet meals. Ruth has seen photos of a low white house, shiny cars, shiny people, a vast gleaming boat. She thinks of her tiny cottage, the spare room still half full of boxes, her battered Renault 5. ‘You’ve done so well, Tatjana,’ she said once. ‘Two incomes, no kids,’ replied Tatjana, her face closing.
    At the top of the hill, the ground drops away again. To the untrained eye, there is little to see, some grassy ridges and hollows, a trench running southwards and a rather forlorn-looking sign. But Tatjana draws in her breath. ‘It’s quite a big settlement.’
    ‘Yes, Max thinks it was a vicus, a garrison town. The road,’ she gestures to the trench, ‘leads to the sea.’
    Tatjana strides over to the sign, which is the only evidence of the lottery money which funded the dig. Max is hoping for a further grant next year. He says that half the town is still underground.
    ‘It says here that bodies were found buried under the walls.’
    ‘Yes. Max thought they may be foundation sacrifices. You know, offerings to Janus.’
    ‘The God of Doorways?’
    ‘Yes, and of beginnings and endings.’
    Tatjana looks thoughtful. ‘I would have thought that human sacrifice was more Celtic