‘I don’t think so, Morton, not tonight. He’s not sleeping for long as it is. The poor kid’s devastated. The last thing he needs is an interrogation. I’ll speak to him in the morning and see what I can glean. Sorry.’
‘Fair enough. Sorry, I wasn’t thinking.’
‘That’s okay,’ Soraya said, about to close the front door when a small face appeared at her side.
‘Who’s that, Mum?’ Finlay said shyly, folding an arm around Soraya’s waist. He was a small, thin boy with dark hair, dark eyes and a neat pillow-scar that ran down his left cheek. Yet there was more to him than that: those mournful eyes that told of a dark past belonged to Peter Coldrick. Morton was sure that he could have identified those sombre eyes in a line-up of thousands.
‘This is Morton, he’s a nice man who’s come to help us. Say hello.’
‘Hello,’ Finlay mumbled, his face meshed into Soraya’s jumper.
‘Come on, why don’t I make you a hot chocolate and you can have a quick chat with him.’ Finlay didn’t seem convinced in spite of Morton’s inane smile.
The three of them went into the lounge and Morton returned to the chair he had previously occupied that evening, while Finlay and Soraya took the large white leather sofa. Finlay snuggled up to his mum.
‘Fin, there’s something that Morton needs to know from you, if you can possibly remember. When you were at Daddy’s house on Tuesday,’ Soraya began, knowing full well that she was heading blindly into a minefield, ‘did you see him open a box kind of thing?’ Morton wanted the ground to open up and swallow him whole; it was horrific. The poor kid’s bottom lip began to quiver, he tightened his grip around Soraya’s arm as tears began to flood down his face and he lost control and began to wail. Morton could only meet the child’s despairing look, those dark eyes punishing Morton. Soraya pulled him in closer, telling him it was alright. She shook her head at Morton – it was more of a ‘this isn’t happening tonight’ look she gave rather than ‘thanks very much.’
‘Come on, let’s get you back to bed,’ Soraya said soothingly. He nodded and the wailing became more subdued as she led him by the hand out of the room.
Morton felt nauseous. Now what was he supposed to do? Just walk out of the front door, or wait? She could be hours settling him back off to sleep. He shouldn’t have come back. What was he thinking? He should never have children, that much was certain. He slipped quietly out of the house, vowing never to reproduce.
Outside, the car was dead. Completely dead. Rigor mortis had even set in since nothing happened at all when he turned the key. What a marvellous end to a marvellous evening. If he’d just kept on driving home things would have been a lot happier for everyone. It really was time to scrap the damned car. Then he remembered the money. The money! It would be cleared any day now and he could walk into any car dealership and just pluck a car from the forecourt – no need for finance options or drawn-out bank loans, just grab the keys and drive away with the wind in his hair.
He turned the key again, but it might as well have been for a different car for all the good it did inside the ignition. There was no point in him lifting up the bonnet, it was like a different planet under there and he was very unmanly when it came to cars. He just had no interest in them apart from whether or not they drove. And this car didn’t, so he’d lost all interest. Hammering on Soraya’s door for a second time that evening wasn’t an option. He had no choice but to phone Juliette and ask her to collect him, which she reluctantly said she would do (‘Even though I’m in the middle of watching EastEnders’).
Juliette’s trusty Polo swooped in, her headlights momentarily dazzling him through the windscreen. He was ready to get into her car and head home but then she instructed him to ‘open her up’. She’d only brought jump leads and a hi-vis jacket, for God’s sake. In fact, she probably already had them stashed in her boot along with the red triangle, a more comprehensive first-aid kit than is carried by most paramedics, tools, spare wheel and all manner of other emergency equipment. She really must have been a scout leader in a previous existence, Morton thought.
Morton opened the bonnet and watched silently from the pavement as Juliette, torch wedged firmly in her mouth, carefully hooked a bundle of wires between the two vehicles like an heroic doctor performing an emergency transfusion.
‘I’m going to get a new car tomorrow, I can’t put up with this pile of junk anymore,’ Morton moaned from the confines of the pavement. He secretly hoped that she wouldn’t be able to fix it. Not just because he felt rather emasculated but because she would more likely agree that he needed a new car if even she couldn’t get it to start. But he knew she would be able to fix it. She always could.
Juliette ignored his comment and instructed him to try the key and keep his foot on the accelerator. Predictably, the car sprang to life. After a moment of delving into the engine, she shut the bonnet and told Morton she would see him at home.
He had followed her back, matching her religious obedience to the speed limit all the way. Now, sitting in front of the telly, Morton was wondering how to broach the subject of a new car, since she’d taken his previous comment so flippantly. He decided to just come out and say it. After all, he was earning the money. ‘I’m telling you, I’m getting a new car,’ he said as empathically as he could muster, ‘The money will be cleared any day now, so I’ll go and get one.’
‘It’s fine, Morton. You say it like I’m going to stand in your way. It’s your money, do what you like with it. Maybe you can put some of it towards something for your wonderful girlfriend of thirteen months who rescued you tonight?’ Juliette said with a wry smile.
‘We’ll see.’ Morton knew that she was alluding to her desire to flash a large rock on her left ring finger, although, actually he knew that she would have settled for anything on her left ring finger. Even one of those ring-shaped jelly sweets would have got her down the aisle. She was always complaining that she was the last of her group of school friends without a husband – some were selfishly already onto their second – or with a brigade of children around their ankles.
Juliette examined her left hand. ‘Gold suits me best,’ she muttered.
Maybe he would buy Juliette a nice piece of jewellery. He was thinking of a necklace. A nice one, something classy. Maybe with an inscription. Just not that particular piece of jewellery. Not yet.
Morton’s thoughts drifted towards a happier time when his mother was still alive and his ignorant view of his family was still intact. Just days after his mother’s funeral his father callously sat him down and told him that he was adopted. He had blurted out the words, as if he was telling him that dinner was ready or that Morton had known all along but it had somehow slipped his mind. Well, I really didn’t think you’d react like this, Morton. You’re almost sixteen now, man, come along. It’s all a load of biology, chemistry and whatnot. You’re my son today just like you always have been and always will be. But he was no longer his parents’ child; his real parents had apparently surrendered him forty-eight hours after he had first drawn breath. The only comfort that Morton had taken at the time from this bombshell was the revelation that he didn’t share a single shred of DNA with Jeremy, the natural son of his parents. He was one of those miracle babies that infertile couples who adopt seem able to produce all of a sudden. He’d been treated like a miracle ever since.
As the years had passed since the adoption revelation, Morton had gradually become increasingly dislocated from his surname and now no longer felt any connection to it. Do you, Juliette Meade take Morton the Unknown to be his lawful wife? It would be ridiculous for Juliette to take his name upon marriage when it really didn’t belong to him in the first place. She might as well dip her finger into the phonebook and take her pick. Or she could have one of the names Morton had harvested from parish registers over the years, for no other reason than that they sounded amusing. Proudfoot. Ruggles. Arblaster. Stinchcombe. Catchpole. Winkworth. Peabody. Onions. Yes, that suited her, Juliette Onions. It wou
ld make her stand out in the world of crime prevention. Nobody would forget PCSO Juliette Onions.
Chapter Four
5th June 1944
Emily pulled a hand-made shawl over her shoulders, staring fixedly through the kitchen window into the orchard. Alarmingly high winds – stronger than she thought she had ever known – thundered furiously through the trees, callously ripping the tiny Victoria plums from their branches and scattering them heartlessly onto the sodden ground. She looked, almost without blinking, though the torrential rain to the tall, brick chimney in the distance, standing defiantly against the squally weather. She wondered what was being discussed in the house about the current war situation. Did they know what was coming? She had been strictly forbidden to leave the confines of the house in the orchard – it was part of the deal – but two nights ago, shortly after midnight, curiosity had driven her to determine the source of the constant, deep rumblings emanating from the village. What she saw took her breath away. Dozens and dozens of lorries, jeeps and tanks, over-spilling with Allied troops, clattered down the main road. Silent villagers peered through their black-out curtains at the spectacle before them. Emily guessed where they were heading – towards the coast ready for an imminent invasion of France. What did this mean? Was the war finally coming to an end? What about Hitler’s secret weapon that she had heard murmurings of? This wasn’t supposed to be how it all went. This wasn’t the plan…
Emily shuddered as a sudden gust of wind violently shook the window. She turned to the baby to see if it had disturbed him: he was still sound asleep in his cot. She wondered what would happen to him with the war’s latest twist, but couldn’t bear to follow her train of thought to its obvious conclusion. Moving away from the window, Emily quietly sat at the large oak table and picked up the only photograph she had of her and the baby boy. Apart from only one other photograph of her, she had destroyed all other images of her family, burning them in a memory-erasing pyre in May 1940. She set the photograph down, took a pen and a pad of notepaper and began to write the letter that she had hoped she would never have to write.
With painful tears cascading down her cheeks, Emily signed the letter and tucked it inside an envelope. There was little sense in sealing it. If what she sensed was going to happen actually did, then they would tear this place apart pretty soon.
Emily carefully placed the letter and the photograph of her and the baby inside the beautiful copper box, which had been created for the wedding that would now never take place. Drying her eyes, she put the copper box inside a small brown suitcase and then set about packing essential clothes for the both of them.
Chapter Five
Saturday
Morton was woken by the sound of his mobile ringing from somewhere in the house. He would usually have switched it off at night, preferring not to hear whatever bad news someone wanted to share, but in light of recent events he thought it better to leave it switched on. He followed the trail of noise into the lounge, like a child following the Pied Piper playing the iPhone ring tone, where he found his mobile. Jeremy’s name appeared onscreen and Morton’s heart sank.
‘Morning. Not too early is it?’ Jeremy asked.
‘Nope,’ Morton answered, a little too sharply and then regretted it when Jeremy said, ‘I just wanted to check you were coming tonight; you didn’t reply to my email.’
‘Sorry, I’ve had a lot on my mind,’ Morton said defensively.
‘So, are you coming then? It’d be really good to see you before I go. It’s been ages.’
‘I’ll do my best. Like I said, I’ve had a lot on my mind.’ He was being too harsh, he knew that, yet he couldn’t stop himself. He needed at least to try to be more upbeat. ‘Are you all set for your adventure then?’
‘Think so, ready as I can be,’ Jeremy said. There was a long pause, Morton not knowing what else to say. He wanted to tell Jeremy to take care and be careful and keep his eyes open and not to treat it as a big game. Not to go at all, in fact. What would their father do if his little miracle had his head blown off by the Taleban? Or what if he ended up in a wheelchair? Then what? Who’d look after him? He wanted to say all of this but instead said, ‘Okay, we’ll hopefully see you tonight, then.’
Jeremy said goodbye and hung up.
‘Damn,’ Morton chastised himself. He really could be a bastard sometimes.
Now that he was awake, and with Juliette already at work, he might as well get on with something constructive. He poured himself a strong coffee and headed to the confines of his study. He switched on the radio and immersed himself into the Coldrick Case. Enclosed by sheets of scribbled notes, Morton weighed his possible next options. Given James Coldrick’s confinement in St George’s Children’s Home in 1944, it seemed logical that he was born in the vicinity of Sedlescombe. When he had arrived there and under what circumstances, Morton did not know, but the home and the village had played a significant part in the formative years of his life. Morton fired up Juliette’s laptop and started with a simple Google search of Sedlescombe, following a plethora of links of varying usefulness and quality about the history of the village. The parish council had done an excellent PR job on www.sedlescombe.org.uk, generally promoting village life. A history section on the website provided a potted narrative from the Stone Age until more recent times. According to the website, St George’s Children’s Home was built in 1922 by the firm, Dengates, when the local workhouse was demolished. Past research had taught him that life for anyone in a workhouse, especially children, was gruelling, severe and bleak. However, given his findings at East Sussex Archives, Morton wondered if conditions were any better for the poor children at St George's.
After an hour’s research, the heat was getting unbearable. Morton stripped down to what had once been his best Calvin Klein boxers, but which were now stretched and faded beyond all recognition. It was time for some new ones, but Juliette didn’t approve of spending twenty quid on something nobody except her would ever see. ‘At least, they’d better not,’ she’d once warned. He remembered the way that his mother used to carefully iron the household’s clothing every Monday night without fail, including the underwear. She even ironed tea-towels and pillow cases. It was her generation. ‘A woman’s work is never done,’ he remembered her saying on a daily basis. He wondered what she’d make of his relationship with Juliette, who shared none of his mother’s domesticity: you’d never catch Juliette ironing anything that wasn’t absolutely compulsory (such as her pristine work uniform). Doubtless his mother’s religious background would have caused her to frown on their living together but he was certain that she would have thawed eventually. Maybe things wouldn’t now be so strained between him and his father if she were still alive. It was incredible that his mother had missed out on more of his life than she’d been there for. He was sixteen when she died, still navigating his way through puberty, flailing around discovering his own identity. To all intents and purposes, she never really knew Morton at all. He didn’t like to think of her too often because no matter how happy the memory he was recalling, the story always ended the same: in her death.
Morton tried to ignore the latest news bulletin on the radio: more British soldiers had been killed in Afghanistan. He held his finger to the off-switch, wanting to avoid the intimate biographical details of the deceased men but he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. Two British soldiers serving with the First Battalion Grenadier Guards have been killed after the vehicle in which they were travelling came under fire, the Ministry of Defence has confirmed. Corporal Brian Scott and Corporal Lance Adams, both nineteen, died after the vehicle they were travelling in… He switched it off. Jeremy was going to be deployed there any day now. Deployed, it all sounded so organised and meticulously planned - not quite the reality that Morton had witnessed in the media. War for war’s sake, he thought.
The idea of Jeremy out there in the desert, with a real gun and real people to kill, was so incomprehensible as to be almost laughable. Morton was sure that he woul
dn’t last ten minutes. Despite their strained relationship, whenever Morton heard the word Afghanistan, it was like someone had hooked him up to a dialysis machine and replaced his blood with a thick freezing sludge. He wondered, if the worst came to the worst, if he would hear news of Jeremy’s death on Radio Four before anyone in his own family had contacted him. Probably not, didn’t they always say that they couldn’t release the name until the family had been informed? Did that include inadequate adopted siblings?
Morton had had enough and was feeling claustrophobic in the airless room. He loved living in the former police house, right in the epicentre of Rye’s historic past, but at times the house reached uncomfortable, stifling temperatures. He decided it was time to get out of the house and pay a visit to Sedlescombe, a village he had driven through several times but to which he’d paid little attention.
Morton found a parking space beside the Sedlescombe Post Office and stepped out onto a tidy, triangular village green, wearing dark shorts, white t-shirt and sunglasses. He drew in a deep breath, laced with the scent of freshly cut grass, and took in the picture postcard surroundings that he had viewed online: white, weather-boarded and Sussex peg-tiled houses surrounded an award-winning village green, upon which was housed a handsome, now redundant pump. At the top of the gradually sloping main road was a pub, The Queen’s Head and a three-star hotel, The Brickwall, outside of which sat a gaggle of lazy geese. The quintessential, quaint and sleepy English village. Was it this perfect during James Coldrick’s childhood, he wondered? Or was it all just a wafer-thin veneer?
One building stood out from the rest – St George’s Nursing Home, formerly the children’s home. The parish website, with its carefully chosen images of the building, conflicted with the horrific piece of architecture in front of him. Morton crossed the deserted main street to get a better look at the monstrous edifice. It was a huge, gothic-style building with fairytale turrets and crenellated parapet walls. A simple wooden name-plaque raised high on two stakes proclaimed the name ‘St George’s Nursing Home’. Below, in smaller letters were the words ‘Formerly St George’s Children’s Home, erected with the generosity of Sir Frederick and Lady Windsor-Sackville of Charingsby’.
Hiding the Past (The Forensic Genealogist series Book 1) Page 5
