THE HOUSE AT SEA’S END

yourself,’ says Judy. ‘Didn’t some Nazi do that?’
    ‘Frau Goebbels, yes. She killed her six children rather than have them live in a world where Germany had lost the war.’
    ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ says Judy. ‘Even if the Germans had invaded, women and children would have been okay. They wouldn’t have come to a crazy little place like this anyhow.’
    ‘But they did come,’ Nelson reminds her. ‘Six Germans arrived and six Germans were killed.’
    ‘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 garlandedand 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 curaçao 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