THE HOUSE AT SEA’S END

hand.
    ‘DCI Nelson.’ Nelson shakes hands briskly. ‘This is Detective Sergeant Johnson. It’s good of you to meet us.’
    ‘Not at all. I’m delighted that someone wants to look in the archives. There’s not enough interest in local history.’
    He takes out a medieval-looking key.
    ‘Do you always keep the church locked?’ asks Judy.
    ‘Have to, I’m afraid. We’ve got some very valuable things in here – candlesticks, brasses, and so on – and I don’t live on site. I’ve got three other parishes to look after.’
    It is almost as cold inside the church as out. Judy blows on her hands to warm them and her breath billows like incense. The air smells of stone and damp and flower stalks. Someone has evidently been arranging the flowers because a magnificent display of lilies and ferns stands at the altar steps. Judy thinks of the red roses on Buster Hastings’ grave. She must remember to see if they’re still there.
    As they cross the church, their feet echo on the stone flags. Passing the altar, Judy bobs instinctively. Nelson gives her a sardonic glance, correctly identifying Catholic Genuflecting Syndrome. Judy scowls.
    Tom Weston leads them past wooden pews with embroidered kneelers, past a garish collage of Noah’s Ark (the work of the Sunday School apparently) and through a door at the back of the church. This is obviously behind-the-scenes. There are piles of hymn books, a broken lectern, mops, buckets and one of those vacuum cleaners with a smiley face. ‘Henry,’ says Father Tom. ‘I couldn’t live without Henry.’
    ‘Do you do the cleaning yourself?’ asks Nelson.
    ‘I have to sometimes. Good cleaners are hard to find.’
    He does everything himself, they find out. He cleans, polishes, makes cakes for the Women’s Institute, even runs the mother-and-baby group. There’s a man who cuts the grass in the graveyard but that’s it.
    ‘Are you married?’ asks Nelson. He assumed that vicars have wives that run their parishes for them. It’s one of the advantages of being a protestant.
    ‘I’m a widower,’ says Tom Weston, opening a cupboard at the back of the room. ‘Daphne died five years ago.’
    ‘I’m sorry.’
    ‘It’s all right. It gets easier. At least I know she’s in a better place.’
    Faith must be handy sometimes, thinks Nelson, bending over the box of dusty magazines. His own vague Catholicism would never survive a real test – like something happening to Michelle or one of his daughters. He resists a temptationto cross himself to ward off this dreadful thought. Reflex action, like Johnson curtseying at the altar. How cross she’d been when he noticed.
    The magazines are actually quite well-ordered, arranged in boxes according to year. Nelson starts on 1940, while Judy looks at 1939. Nelson is convinced that the Germans must have come ashore in the early years of the war, when the invasion scare was at its height.
    ‘I’ll go and make some coffee,’ says Father Tom. ‘There’s a gas ring at the back here.’
    Nelson watches the vicar blow dust from an ancient jar of instant coffee. There’s instant milk too. Ruth would have a fit. She only likes poncy coffee in tiny cups.
    Judy settles down on the floor to leaf through copies of the
Broughton and Rockham Parish News.
    ‘There’s a recipe here for squirrel pie.’
    ‘Very popular during the war,’ says the vicar from the back of the room. ‘Some of the old country folk still cook squirrel.’
    ‘How long have you been in this parish?’ asks Nelson.
    ‘Since 1952. The year before the great flood.’ He makes it sound like Noah’s flood. Perhaps the Sunday School will make a collage of it.
    ‘Flood?’ echoes Nelson.
    ‘Yes. Terrible affair. Constant rain, the seas rose, rivers burst their banks. We had boats sailing down the High Street at Broughton. Five people died.’
    ‘I’ve heard about the flood,’ says Judy. ‘It was supposed to happen again wasn’t it?’
    ‘In 2006,’ agrees Father Tom. ‘I remember them testingout the sirens. It brought it all back. We had a prayer cycle in all the Norfolk churches. And the flood never came.’
    ‘I thought that was because 2006 was a particularly hot summer,’ says Judy. Father Tom appears not to hear this.
    ‘I should be retired by now,’ he says, placing two steaming mugs on a packing case marked ‘Palms’. ‘But vicars are thin on the ground these days.’
    ‘Do you remember hearing stories about the war years in Broughton?’