Hiding the Past (The Forensic Genealogist series Book 1)

by Nathan Dylan Goodwin

  Jeremy returned with Juliette’s drink. ‘Here you go.’

  ‘Cheers,’ Juliette said, as her glass met with Morton’s and Jeremy’s bottles.

  ‘You two really should come over more often you know, we miss you up here,’ Jeremy said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Morton said half-heartedly.

  ‘Could you do something for me, Morton?’ Jeremy asked.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Morton answered, not liking the sound of owing Jeremy a favour.

  ‘Will you call in on Dad more often while I’m away? He’s getting on a bit now and he’d love to see more of you.’

  Morton took a deep breath, resenting the implication and doubting the statement. ‘Yeah, sure.’

  ‘Great, thanks. It’ll be a big weight off my mind.’

  ‘Do you know when you’re likely to be back?’ Juliette asked.

  ‘Hopefully six months, but you never know,’ Jeremy answered. ‘Anything could happen.’

  ‘We could declare war on any unsuspecting part of the Middle East if there’s enough oil there,’ Morton said, taking a large mouthful of beer and receiving an admonishing hand squeeze from Juliette. He really needed to tone down the sarcasm.

  ‘I think there’s a bit more to it all than that,’ Jeremy said.

  ‘WMD?’ Morton mumbled, his hand feeling like it had been crushed in a vice. Jeremy let the comment slide and changed the subject.

  ‘How’s your work going, Juliette? Enjoying rounding up criminals?’

  ‘I love it. Well, apart from the late nights and crappy shift patterns.’

  ‘What sort of things do you have to do? Is it like the regular police?’

  Juliette laughed. ‘Well, the regulars call us CHIMPS – Can’t Help in Most Police Situations. That about sums it up. Mostly we confiscate alcohol from fourteen-year-old boys, liaise with the community and direct traffic,’ Juliette said with a laugh.

  The doorbell sounded and Jeremy excused himself to answer it.

  ‘Morton, stop being such an arse,’ Juliette whispered as soon as Jeremy was out of earshot.

  ‘Just listen to them,’ Morton said, quaffing his beer and indicating a large group of soldiers in the doorway, ‘All this macho bear-hugging and back slapping.’

  Juliette took a deep breath and moved across the room towards a table of buffet food. Morton headed into the kitchen, pushing past more army clones. The place was like a wartime working men’s club, he thought. Keep up the good work, chaps. Don’t let old Blighty down. He cracked open another beer and took a swig. Busy washing up at the sink was a smartly-dressed lady with white hair in a neat perm. She turned and smiled. ‘Hello,’ she said brightly. ‘Are you Morton?’

  Morton nodded, having no previous recollection of the woman. He realised that he was projecting his resentment at being there onto the poor lady. ‘Yes, that’s me,’ he said with a smile.

  The lady pulled off her yellow Marigolds and offered her hand. ‘Madge,’ she said. ‘I’m a friend of your father's.’

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ he said tentatively, shaking her hand. Madge? All he could think of was Madge Bishop from Neighbours.

  ‘I’ve heard a lot about you. You’re a genealogist, aren’t you?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Morton answered, surprised to find that his father had discussed him at all, much less his career. He took another mouthful of beer and listened as Madge spoke, her eyes suddenly lighting up.

  ‘That must be a wonderfully interesting job. All those stories and personal histories you’re uncovering - how exciting! I dabbled with my family history a few years ago before everything went online and you had to haul out huge ledgers for each quarter of each year just to locate a person’s birth, marriage or death. Just finding my grandfather’s birth entry took me nigh on a whole day once! Now it’s all there at the click of a button.’

  Morton remembered the hours and hours he had spent in the early years of his career at the Family Records Centre in Islington, a building always bustling with amateur and professional genealogists alike, all vying for precious desk space in which to place the voluminous tomes containing thousands of names. ‘I must have spent half my life trawling through records there,’ Morton recalled. ‘And the censuses were just as bad, with only the 1881 census having been indexed.’

  ‘Oh yes, they were all microfilmed weren’t they? Amazing to think how quickly things have changed. What is it that you’re working on at the moment?’

  Morton took a deep breath and explained the highlights of the job to her, enjoying the fact that he had a genuinely interested audience. Madge asked questions along the way but had little to offer in the way of suggestions or avenues he had not yet considered pursuing.

  With a vague twitching in his bladder, Morton excused himself and headed upstairs to the bathroom and urinated, deep in thought. The downstairs loo would have been more convenient but the solitude of the upstairs bathroom was more appealing. He zipped up, took a swig of beer and went into his old bedroom. He had occupied this room for eighteen years. It was filled with more memories than any other place in which he’d lived; illicit teenage drinking sessions and clumsy gropes all took place here. He had his first kiss on that very bed. It had all gone horribly wrong when his puckered lips met with Clare Smith’s gaping mouth, her fleshy pink tongue trying to probe apart his clenched teeth. She said it hadn’t mattered and that she wouldn’t tell anyone, but by first lesson the next day he was dumped and by second lesson the vast majority of the school were puckering up as they passed him in the corridors. Such wonderful memories, he thought.

  He sat down on the bed and finished his beer, welcoming the furring and blurring of his mind. He glanced around the room; there was no trace of his ever having resided here. Within days of his leaving for university his father had redecorated the entire room, as if that were the last time that Morton would ever go home. No thought for the long holidays or life after university. The curtains, the pictures, the carpet, the ceiling light – everything replaced. They’d even changed the door. Something about drawing-pin holes from his Madonna posters.

  Morton sighed. A long time ago. A very different world. He left the room and his melancholic nostalgia behind and headed down to the kitchen. Madge was engaged in a conversation with a tall stout man in army uniform. Morton opened another beer then scoffed down two prawn vol-au-vents and a tuna sandwich. He was about to grab a handful of crisps when he heard his father call for the assembled crowd to quieten. He was going to do a speech. Great, this party just gets better and better, he thought.

  ‘Ladies, gentlemen and members of Her Majesty’s armed forces, could I please have your attention for one moment.’ The lounge was packed solid and, standing on tip-toe, Morton could just catch a glimpse of his father, standing on a leather pouffe in the bay window with an arm tightly around Jeremy’s shoulder.

  The room fell silent.

  ‘Thank you. I won’t keep you long, I know you’ve all got plenty of food to eat and beer to drink. I just wanted to say how proud I am of Jeremy; a sentiment that I’m sure would be shared by his late mother, Maureen. It takes a lot of courage to join the army in these unpredictable and unstable times that we’re in today. I know there are others in the room who will also be joining my son, so I just wanted to wish you all the best of luck and may God’s good grace keep you all safe out in Cyprus.’

  The assembled crowd murmured their agreement, with glasses being raised and hands being clapped.

  Morton was confused. ‘Cyprus?’ he said loudly, to no-one in particular.

  A beefy man in front of him turned. ‘Yeah, we’re off to Cyprus for a tour of duty.’

  ‘I didn’t know we were at war with Cyprus.’

  The large man frowned and said something but Morton wasn’t listening. For no apparent reason, an image of Peter Coldrick being blasted in the head at close range appeared in full clarity in his mind and at that moment his stomach decided to show the world what semi-digested vol-au-vents, tuna sandwich and beer look like. Al
l over the hallway carpet.

  Chapter Six

  Sunday

  The memory of the previous evening made Morton’s eyes ping open involuntarily. Though his brain was suspended in what felt like a thick, mucous-like sludge, he could still remember his vociferous protestations that the beers he’d consumed weren’t the reason that he’d thrown up all over his father’s fancy cream carpet. He had tried to explain (particularly to the beefy man whose shoes had been caught in the blast) that he was working for a dead man who had shot himself in the head. That was the moment that Juliette had shot through the crowd like a raging bull and bundled him straight out the front door. No questions. No goodbyes. No explanations. Just dragged unceremoniously from the house and shoved into the back of the car.

  Morton touched his left bicep – the arm that Juliette had used to lever him out of the house – it was bruised and aching: a reasonable punishment, he supposed. Probably best not to complain about it.

  ‘Morning,’ Juliette said from beside him, her voice flat and emotionless. She was sitting upright in bed reading and Morton wondered what she was thinking. He rolled over and placed his arm across the top of her thighs. ‘Don’t even think about it,’ she warned.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Trying to sidle up to me,’ she said, without taking her eyes from the page. ‘You’ve got a lot of grovelling to do today, Morton Farrier.’

  Ah, those precious, wonderful words: Morton Farrier. She only used his name like that when she was faking displeasure. She wasn’t really annoyed. Maybe just a tiny bit. It wouldn’t take him too long to get back on her good side.

  ‘I know. Sorry,’ he said, hauling himself up and hoping that his brain wouldn’t fall out. ‘Breakfast in bed?’ he asked. It was the single last thing on earth that he wanted to do and he hoped desperately that she would say no, or that she’d had her breakfast hours ago. What was the time? He looked at the clock: ten twenty.

  ‘Yes, please, that would be a good start,’ she answered. ‘The full works.’

  Morton had to work hard to restrain the whimpering cry in his larynx as he twisted his body and placed his feet on the floor. He hadn’t collapsed or died yet. That was achievement enough. With a deep breath and a concerted effort, Morton hauled himself up and waited for the room to stop merry-go-rounding in front of him before trudging to the kitchen like a decrepit old man in need of a hip replacement or two. He was grateful to have made it all the way to the kitchen without succumbing to death, and poured himself a welcome glass of orange juice. Someone had once told him that drinking orange juice after alcohol lessens the severity of a hangover. Well, it was better late than never, he guessed, as he sunk the glass much too quickly and then promptly regretted it.

  A while later Morton carried a tray of scrambled eggs on toast, glass of orange juice and mug of filter coffee through to Juliette. She set down her trashy romance novel and smiled.

  ‘Perfect,’ she said, fiercely attacking the breakfast. ‘Are you not having any?’

  ‘I had a bit of dry toast, it was all my poor stomach could cope with,’ Morton said, lying down at her feet with a groan, hoping for a little sympathy.

  ‘It’s your own stupid fault.’

  Morton made a strange whining noise in agreement.

  Two hours later, Juliette was sporting a thick fluffy white dressing gown that they each owned after ‘stealing’ them during a long weekend in Gleneagles last summer, a treat after Juliette had been accepted to become a PCSO. They liked to tell people they’d stolen the dressing gowns but actually the hotel had added the cost of them, sixty quid each, onto their credit card bill, which Morton only discovered the following month. In hindsight it wasn’t the best start to a career in law enforcement.

  ‘So what have you got planned for today?’ Juliette asked.

  ‘First things first is to make sure that money cleared,’ Morton said, fully dressed, showered, breakfasted and ready to go. The hangover had at last lifted, like a thick fog leaving his brain.

  ‘Well, I’m going to spend the day in my dressing gown watching my backlog of EastEnders,’ she announced, curling up prone on the sofa and switching on the television.

  ‘Enjoy,’ Morton said, making his way upstairs to the study. He dialled the bank and waited while his 0845 call was routed half way around the world.

  Finally, a sullen voice at the bank confirmed that his balance now stood at fifty thousand, two hundred and twenty-two pounds. Morton took the news surprisingly morosely. He’d never had such a huge amount in his life, but the money came in tandem with Peter Coldrick’s death. His thoughts were interrupted by a loud beep from the fax machine, heralding that the seldom-used machine was about to spring to life.

  Morton waited patiently then tore off the disgorged piece of paper. It was sent from St George’s Nursing Home. On the top sheet was written, ‘Found it! Regards, Linda.’ Unexpectedly, she had managed to locate the inventory of the records taken to East Sussex Archives. His narrowed eyes passed quickly down the typed list of records until he reached the admission registers: 1944 was removed along with every other record on the page. According to the inventory, the register had left St George’s on 1 December 1987.

  Yet it had never arrived at East Sussex Archives.

  Morton turned to the last page to see the name of the person who had transferred the documents – maybe they still worked at the archives and could be held to account. Squiggled neatly at the bottom of the page he found the unambiguous signature of Max Fairbrother.

  Morton’s pupils dilated and his heart kicked into a new, heavier rhythm as he studied the signature. There was no question about it; Max’s name was right there in front of him. Morton remembered Max’s baffled face when he had enquired as to the whereabouts of the document. That was the opportunity Max had to say, ‘Oh, that register, yes I lost it. Just one of those things. I do apologise.’

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ Morton said, entering the lounge.

  ‘Can’t believe what?’ Juliette asked.

  ‘Max bloody Fairbrother. He’s only the one who took the file admissions file from St George’s that I wanted to see.’

  ‘Max who?’

  ‘Max Fairbrother,’ Morton ranted, ‘he works at the archives.’ Juliette looked perplexed. ‘Max,’ Morton repeated, as if that would help. It didn’t, but his thoughts had run too far away to bother with explanations so he just said, ‘It doesn’t matter,’ instead.

  The car miraculously started first time, as if aware that its life hung in the balance and it should start to make an effort. But Morton had made up his mind and drove directly to the BMW garage.

  He pulled into the customer parking bay tucked behind the shiny glass building, which Morton presumed was a deliberate way to separate the vehicular wheat from the chaff. He stepped out into the relentless heat and headed towards a racing-green Mini Cooper SD that had caught his eye when he had previously driven past. He cupped his hands over the driver’s window and gazed longingly inside. Long no longer, Mr Farrier.

  ‘She’s a beautiful car, this one,’ said a keen youth, fresh out of salesman school, who had appeared from the heavens and startled Morton. He was sporting an ill-fitting suit and an eager eye. ‘Hundred and forty miles per hour top speed, hundred and seventy-five HP nominal power, nought to sixty-two in five point six seconds, automatic aircon, sports seats, chrome interior, navigation system, hi-fi loud speakers, rain sensor, bi-xenon lights, the list goes on: beautiful!’

  Morton didn’t know what bi-xenon lights were or whether one hundred and seventy-five HP nominal power was a good thing or not. It sounded impressive, though, he had to admit.

  ‘Would you like to take her for a test drive, sir?’

  ‘No. Thank you, though,’ Morton said, watching the salesman’s smile turn upside down as he realised he’d made another wasted journey from the confines of the air-conditioned showroom.

  ‘I’ll take it. What will you give me for my old Mondeo over there?’ Morton asked, quickly
regretting the use of such a depreciative adjective.

  The man introduced himself as Paul and extended a hot hand towards him. He rubbed his hands together. ‘If you’d like to follow me, sir, I’ll see what I can do.’

  Morton followed him into the glass-walled office and was quickly handed a polystyrene cup of tea by a lugubrious secretary while Paul went out to make an assessment of the Mondeo. Morton wondered just how much training he had had to make such a judgement. Probably a couple of days reading Auto Trader. Paul returned ten minutes later with the news that it was worth no more than seven hundred and fifty pounds, but that he would give an extra five hundred quid as a ‘good-will gesture’, leaving Morton with a mere seventeen thousand-pound balance to pay. A drop in the ocean for a rich forensic genealogist like him. Morton knew that he was being fleeced, but continued regardless. He stripped the Mondeo of the scratched case-less CDs, handful of loose change and outdated road map; an hour and a half later he was sitting in the plush virgin leather interior, speeding from the garage without so much as a cursory glance back at his old car, festering in the shadows of the showroom.

  Morton grinned as he tore along the country lanes, zipping in and out of traffic like he was a Formula One driver. He swung into a parking space in the car park adjoining East Sussex Archives and marched confidently into the ice-cold office, riding on the fresh burst of energy supplied by the thousands of pounds sitting in his bank account.

  Quiet Brian, the slim taciturn man who appeared sporadically and without routine at the archives was on duty in the lobby. He was either exceptionally shy or, more likely, Morton thought, had had his personality frozen out of him by Miss Latimer.

  Quiet Brian handed Morton the adherence to the rules form, which he duly signed and handed back. Morton glanced over to the shelf on which he had placed his business cards and, sure enough, they had all gone. It was a bit of a stretch of the imagination to think that they had been snapped up enthusiastically by the general public in three days. Miss Latimer had to have discarded them.