THE HOUSE AT SEA’S END

kids,’ Clara had sniffed.
    So she had known about the children.
    Nelson adds another brick and then knocks over the tower. Kate laughs delightedly. She loves destruction. Ruth is beginning to regret letting Nelson come at a time when Kate would be in the house. It makes her uneasy to see themtogether. Whilst, on one hand, she wants Nelson to love his daughter (and, by extension, her?), she knows that the more attached Nelson gets, the more complicated their situation becomes.
    ‘What did the post mortem say?’ she asks, to bring him back to earth.
    ‘Eckhart was stabbed with a sharp metal object. They think it was scissors.’
    ‘Scissors?’
    ‘Heavy-duty scissors. The sort used for dressmaking or cutting back plants. They were honed to a point apparently.’
    ‘Honed. So someone had planned this? It wasn’t spur of the moment?’
    ‘No,’ says Nelson soberly. ‘Someone sharpened those scissors and waited.’
    ‘Have you any idea who?’
    ‘I’ve got lots of ideas,’ says Nelson. ‘Each more ridiculous than the last.’
    ‘Do you think the same person killed Archie Whitcliffe and Dieter Eckhart?’ Nelson has told her about the autopsy report on Archie. Death by asphyxiation was the verdict, probably with a pillow.
    ‘Yes I do,’ says Nelson, still looking at Kate as she thoughtfully sucks the building bricks. ‘The method was different but I’m convinced the link was the murder of the six Germans. Someone is prepared to kill to stop that story getting out. There’s Hugh Anselm too, the old chap in the stairlift. I’m sure he was murdered too.’
    ‘It’s so far-fetched though,’ complains Ruth. ‘Like something out a murder mystery.’
    ‘Archie Whitcliffe was a big fan of murder mysteries,’ says Nelson. ‘Left a pile of them to his carer.’
    ‘Really?’ Ruth looks interested. ‘What sort of books?’
    ‘Nothing special. I hoped they might be worth something. She hasn’t got two pennies to rub together, the carer, but they were just a load of old paperbacks. Second hand, most of them.’
    ‘Do you have the list of the titles?’
    ‘Somewhere. Why are you interested?’
    ‘I don’t know. Just an idea.’
    Nelson gets Judy to fax through the list of titles (Ruth is almost the last person in the world still to have a fax machine). Ruth reads through the names while Nelson plays peek-a-boo with Kate. Ruth wishes Clough could see him.
    The Third Truth by Kurt Aust
    Love Lies Bleeding by Edmund Crispin
    Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie
    The Fourth Assassin by Omar Yussef
    One Step Behind by Henning Mankell
    The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sherlock Holmes
    Sea Change by Robert B Parker
    Lost Light by Michael Connelly
    ‘Was there anything else?’ she asks. ‘Just the list?’
    ‘Oh, there was some nonsense about which order to read them in. I can’t remember it now. Ask Judy.’ And he disappears behind the cushion again.
    ‘This is it,’ says Judy. Ruth can hear her rustling paper. ‘He says, read them in this order: 3,2,2,2,2,3,1,2. Crazy, isn’t it?’
    ‘Maybe,’ says Ruth, sitting down to look at the list again. Nelson, who is crouching on the floor beside Kate, looks up at her.
    ‘What is it, Ruth?’
    ‘I don’t know. I just thought … wasn’t this the bloke who liked crosswords?’
    ‘That was Hugh Anselm.’
    ‘But maybe Archie did too.’
    ‘Maybe. He did watch that programme,
Countdown
,’ says Nelson, remembering. ‘Mind you, Cloughie says all old people watch
Countdown
.’
    ‘Mmm.’ Ruth occasionally watches it herself but she’s not going to let Nelson know that.
    ‘Do you think he’s left us a clue then?’ says Nelson smiling.
    ‘It’s possible,’ says Ruth, turning back to the fax paper to avoid looking at Nelson pretending to be a bear.
    Ruth always over-complicates everything, thinks Nelson, as he drives back towards King’s Lynn and home. It comes of being an academic. Mind you, when he first met her, he had needed her professional expertise. He’d called her in to look at the Iron Age body but he’d also asked her about some weird letters that had been sent to him, letters full of allusions to mythology, ritual and sacrifice. Ruth had done great work, looking up all the references and working out what the nutter was trying to say. But maybe that has left her unable to take anything at face value. Sometimes a list of books is just a list of books. That’s what he says to his team. ‘Don’t make things too complicated.