THE HOUSE AT SEA’S END

people who had no reason on earth to side with the Nazis. Why was Ernst living in Broughton in the first place? And why did he have such a close bond with Buster Hastings?
Buster kicked up such a fuss that he was released.
Why was Buster so determined to have Ernst on his side?
    And why hadn’t the defences been set off when the six Germans actually landed? The men had been shot from a few feet away, there was no sign of a struggle. Somehow Buster and his mostly ageing troops had been able to overcome six soldiers in their physical prime. But, having done that, why kill them? Surely they could just have taken the men prisoner? He’s no military expert but isn’t it important to take prisoners so you can interrogate them? The German commandos never gave up their invasion plans. Their secret died with them, buried under the cliffs until the sea itself exposed it.
    Nelson is still sitting in the kitchen when Michelle comes home, tired from working late and distinctly put out to find that no-one has started supper.
    After supper, Michelle and Rebecca settle down to watch
CSI Miami
– female bonding over mutilated body parts – and Nelson escapes back to the study. He types
Second World War Invasion
into the search engine and soon the screen is full of lurid stories: beaches black with bodies, the seas aflame, U-boats full of severed limbs, secret German bases off the Irish coast, 30,000 bodies burned beyond recognition washed up on the South Coast. Nelson enjoys a conspiracy theory as much as the next man (once, Cathbad almost convinced him that the Americans had never landed on the moon), but as a policeman he does require just a trace of evidence. It’s all very well saying that the authorities have covered everything up but could an invasion on this scale really have been hushed up? In a place like Broughton this would, effectively, have meant buying the silence of everyone in the village.
    But what if this is exactly what happened? What if, amidst all the hysteria, the Germans did land one small expeditionary party in an isolated Norfolk cove? There they met, not sleepy villagers and bemused fishermen, but a tightly controlled army unit prepared to kill.
    He is about to call it a night when, scrolling down a site called ‘Flame Over Britain’, he comes across this paragraph:
The plan was simple. Under cover of darkness several aged tankers, their holds full of combustible fuel, would head across the channel to the enemy invasion ports of Dunkirk, Calais and Boulogne. At the entrance to these ports, the tankers would be abandoned by their skeleton crews and detonated. The subsequent blast would turn the sea into a burning sheet of flame. This operation, which became known as Operation Lucid, actually started life with a more sinister moniker – Operation Lucifer.
Lucifer.

CHAPTER 20
     
    ‘Remind me what we’re doing here again, boss?’
    Nelson and Judy are climbing the steps to the church of St Barnabas at Broughton Sea’s End. It’s a bitterly cold morning and the gravestones are covered with a fine layer of frost. The weather forecasters are talking about snow. In late March! What a county, thinks Nelson, forgetting that Blackpool hardly enjoys a Caribbean climate. He thinks of Norfolk as existing in a vacuum, entirely separate from the rest of England. Come to think of it, that’s how most of the locals see it too.
    Judy is standing looking up at a huge evergreen tree whose branches cover almost the entire graveyard. In its shade the frost is even thicker.
    ‘We’re here,’ says Nelson, rubbing his hands together, ‘because the vicar has copies of the parish magazine going back to the year dot.’
    ‘Sounds wild.’
    ‘Wild or not, I want to find out what was happening in this village during the war. I’m convinced that Operation Lucifer is the key to this whole case.’
    ‘Don’t say that name out loud,’ hisses Judy.
    Nelson laughs. ‘Not getting superstitious in your old age are you?’
    But there is, nevertheless, something spooky about the silent graveyard. The way the stones stick up as if something below the earth is stirring, the way the dark tree spreads its branches, the way the church door is bolted shut.
    A figure appears from behind one of the largest stones. Judy screams.
    ‘Forgive me if I startled you.’ The figure resolves itself into a tall, white-haired man wearing clerical clothes. Nelson gives Judy a disgusted look.
    ‘Father Tom Weston.’ The man extends his