Elly Griffiths - The House At Sea’s End

So he is not really equipped to work out whether Ruth is in love with him or not. The sex, he has to admit, is fantastic. They are bound together forever because of Kate, but love? He doesn’t say the word, even to himself. He does know that sometimes he fantasises that he could have them both, the beautiful wife and the brilliant mistress, that he could enjoy both his teenage daughters and his miraculous baby. But he knows that life isn’t like that. Nelson was brought up a Catholic. He knows that he is overdue some gigantic, cosmic retribution. The best he can hope for, he thinks, as he turns wearily into his drive, is that it holds off long enough for him to solve this case.

Entering the house, he is met by the most wonderful smell, the smell of childhood, evocative enough to make his mouth water and his eyes prickle. Michelle comes into the hall, wearing an apron over a designer tracksuit.

‘I thought I’d do a roast for a change,’ she says. ‘It’s such a cold day.’

Nelson kisses his wife’s scented cheek. Over her shoulder he can see Rebecca actually laying the table. Light shines on the glasses, cutlery and matching place mats (Lancashire scenes). Radio 2 is playing in the kitchen and the aroma of roast beef fills the air.

Nelson buries his face in Michelle’s neck to hide his guilt.

After lunch, Nelson dozes in front of the football. Michelle and Rebecca have gone to Michelle’s health club for a swim. Nelson knows he would sleep better upstairs but it’s unthinkable for a healthy man to take to his bed in the middle of the afternoon. Besides, Man U are playing. So he drifts between sleeping and waking: Michelle, Ruth, a boat drifting in the dark harbour, the snow falling on the beach, the sound of shots in the night, Clara’s face when he showed her the diary, a stooped figure standing on the landing.

Suddenly, he sits bolt upright.

What was Irene, who slept downstairs because it was ‘easier’, doing on the tower landing at midnight?

Clara said that the scissors belonged to her grandmother.

Nelson goes into the study where he has stored the boxes of parish magazines plus another box marked ‘Sea’s End’. In it are Hugh Anselm’s papers and the ciné film, as well as some photos given to him by Stella Hastings. He takes out one photo and puts it in his wallet. Then he writes a brief note to Michelle and leaves the house.

At first there’s no answer from Maria’s bedsit then, just as he is turning away, a slightly scared voice says, ‘Who is it?’

‘It’s DCI Nelson, Maria. Can I come up for a minute?’

The entry phone buzzes and Nelson takes the steps three at a time.

The room is scrupulously clean as ever. No smell of Sunday roast and no TV blaring in the background. Maria and her little boy are obviously in the middle of some board game. George is sitting on the floor, rolling a dice with great concentration.

‘Snakes and ladders,’ explains Maria.

‘Grand,’ says Nelson. ‘My favourite game, though there’s always a great big snake right at the end.’

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ Maria is still looking worried.

‘No thanks, love. I just wanted to show you a photo if that’s all right.’

‘A photo?’

‘Yes.’ Nelson pulls the picture from his wallet.

‘You remember you said that Archie used to have a visitor, an old lady. Was this her, by any chance?’

Maria looks at the photo of Irene sitting outside Sea’s End House. It was taken about a year ago, Stella had said.

‘Yes,’ says Maria slowly. ‘That is the lady. Mrs Hastings.’

After George has gone to sleep, Maria always likes to look out of the window for a while. Not that the view’s anything much – a garage forecourt, the houses across the street – once the sort of places where she could imagine a family living, now mostly bedsits like hers – the side of a giant billboard advertising a car, shiny red against a shiny blue background. But she likes sitting there in the darkened room (she doesn’t want to put the overhead light on because of George), watching the world outside: the cars drawing into the garage, sales reps in suits impatiently tapping their feet as they wait for the tank to fill, harassed parents, young men with tattoos and cars with extra bits stuck to them; people hurrying past under the streetlights, lights going on in the bedsits, one after the other. She is hundreds of miles away from her family but, somehow, these faceless, anonymous strangers have become her family. And sitting there in the dark listening to George’s noisy breathing (she must see the doctor about his sinuses again), she feels a curious affection, almost love, for the people outside. They all have their own lives, their little circles of light, but she, from her vantage point, can watch over them all. Sometimes she’ll pick on one person, a woman labouring with heavy shopping or a pale-faced man jingling his loose change at the petrol pump, and say a decade of the rosary, especially for them. They’ll never know, of course, but it makes her feel happy to do it.

Tonight, though, she doesn’t feel cosy and secure. She feels jolted, uneasy. She knows why. It was that policeman, Nelson, coming here and asking questions. She doesn’t like the police. She always suspects that when people see how she lives, how little money she has, they’ll try to take George away from her. When he left, Nelson had tried to give her five pounds, ‘to buy George a present’. She’d refused, almost angrily. She may only be an ignorant girl from the Philippines but she knew that you should never take money from a man, especially a policeman. She’d made her mistake once, with George’s father, just a few months after she’d arrived in England, but she’s not going to be caught again.

Archie had been different. Of course, he’d been an old man, old enough to be her grandfather, as he’d often said. But sometimes he didn’t seem like an old man at all. His voice, for one thing, was still strong and echoing, not thin and apologetic like the old people at home. Archie still sounded like a soldier. Some of the other carers didn’t like it; they thought he was too bossy, too full of himself. But Maria liked a man to be a man. She didn’t mind Archie telling her what to do; he was her elder, after all. They had nice conversations, sitting in his little room in the evenings; they talked about George, about Maria’s plans for him. He would grow up to be an important man, just like his father, and do great things in the world. Archie was an important man, Maria was sure of that. That was why it was wrong that he had been taken, suddenly in the night like that. Dorothy said they weren’t to talk about it but Maria knew what she thought. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t what God intended.

Even the garage isn’t the same tonight. Usually it is a great comfort to her because it is open for twenty-four hours, its little kiosk a beacon of hope through the night. But, tonight, there don’t seem to be any cars, just one figure, in a long, black coat, standing beside the tyre gauge. Maria doesn’t like the figure. She knows that people without cars shouldn’t hang around garages but this person has been there for twenty minutes at least, just standing, not going into the shop or anything, just waiting, out of view of everyone except her. Maria goes away to check on George. When she comes back, the figure is still there. Is it a man or a woman? She can’t tell. The person has a long coat and a woolly hat, its hair is hidden and she can’t see its shape. Maria watches for another five minutes before she realises the awful truth. She isn’t watching the figure. The figure is watching her.

Tired as he is, Nelson can’t sleep. Michelle has gone to bed and Rebecca is watching some music programme in the sitting room. Nelson sits in the study, going through Hugh Anselm’s papers. He doesn’t know why he is doing this or what he expects to find. He just knows that he needs a breakthrough. Could Irene, over ninety at his guess, really have killed three people to protect her husband’s name? It’s unlikely, to say the least. Perhaps she could have stopped Hugh’s stairlift, maybe even smothered Archie, but kill Dieter Eckhart, a fit young man in the prime of life? Surely not. Could someone have done it for her? Jack, for instance, or even Clara?