Hiding the Past (The Forensic Genealogist series Book 1)

by Nathan Dylan Goodwin

  ‘It doesn’t help living out of a suitcase either, neither of us feels settled. My sister’s been great, but we just want to be back home again.’

  ‘Well, let’s get this test done then,’ he said.

  Soraya nodded and called for Fin. Four polite requests and a final threat to have his PlayStation unplugged later and Fin finally, and very sullenly, appeared in the lounge. He seemed surprised to see Morton, and not in a good way.

  ‘Fin, you remember my nice friend, Morton, don’t you?’ Soraya said, over-exaggerating the words, like an animated primary school teacher. Nice friend, Morton, that was one way of describing him. Much better than that-horrible-man-who-made-you-cry-last-time, Morton. This wasn’t going to be pleasant, he could tell already. How was he even going to take the swab? There was no sensible reason (beyond telling the truth, and he wasn’t about to open that can of worms) that Morton could pluck from his brain to justify shoving a stick into Fin’s mouth and wiping the inside of his cheek eight times.

  ‘What game are you playing?’ Morton asked. It was a lame question, but it was the only one he could think of.

  ‘War Storm Four,’ Fin murmured, unable to look Morton in the eyes.

  ‘War Storm Four?’ he said, attempting to mock incredulity. ‘What was wrong with the other three?’

  Finlay shrugged. ‘They were rubbish.’ Morton wanted to give a hearty, supportive laugh, but what came out of his mouth was more of a mocking snigger. He really shouldn’t have kids.

  ‘Fin, Morton’s got an extra special test to do for your diabetes.’

  Fin looked uncertain. ‘Will it hurt?’

  ‘No, not a bit,’ Morton said. ‘Look.’ He pulled out a swab stick slightly larger than a nail file and held it aloft. If he’d used his brain he would have brought two along and demonstrated it on himself first. ‘All I have to do is rub this on your cheek.’

  ‘My cheek?’ he said, raising a finger to the side of his face.

  Morton nodded. ‘Inside.’ The boy clamped his mouth shut and looked horrified. ‘Don’t worry, it won’t go down your throat or anything,’ he quickly added, but the horror remained in Fin’s eyes.

  ‘It’s okay, it really won’t hurt at all,’ Soraya said, hamming up her reassurance. ‘Okay?’

  Fin nodded and Morton approached him, trying to hold the swab stick in such a way as to not make it look like he was brandishing a weapon of torture. Fin opened his mouth and allowed Morton to take to the swab without a fuss.

  ‘There, all done,’ Morton said, delighted with the small triumph of not making an eight-year-old boy cry again. ‘You can go back to War Storm Four if you want.’

  Seconds later the sounds of explosions and gunfire came from Fin’s bedroom.

  ‘Well done,’ Soraya said with a smile, ‘you’re good with kids.’

  He wondered if she was being sarcastic. Not making a child cry was hardly a cause for procreation in his book.

  ‘I didn’t know he had diabetes,’ Morton ventured, unsure as to why the fact had struck him as being important. If Fin was anything like Morton was at the age of eight, then he would have a substantial back-catalogue of medical history. Bumps, breaks, stitches, allergies and all the contagious diseases available had blighted his first decade on the planet, much to the vexation of his parents, whose own biological progeny had been beset by far fewer problems (and most of those had been inadvertently passed on from Morton).

  ‘Yeah, he’s had it since birth. Peter had it, too. It's okay, we control it,’ she said, not quite sounding as if she believed herself. ‘What should we do if the result is positive?’ she asked.

  Now there was a question. Positive as in a match with the Windsor-Sackvilles, or positive as in a good, optimistic outcome? ‘Cross that bridge when we come to it,’ Morton parried. If we come to it.

  ‘But it’s looking like the most likely scenario, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s certainly a possibility,’ Morton answered, unsure whether or not her question was rhetorical.

  Soraya ran her fingers through her hair and sighed heavily.

  ‘I’ll be in touch,’ Morton said, glancing down at his watch. ‘I’ve got somewhere I need to be.’ Morton stood and made his way to the door.

  Soraya followed. ‘Another lead?’ she asked.

  ‘No, just help with existing ones,’ Morton answered cryptically.

  He said goodbye and sped off to the railway[Ma1] station.

  It really had been a case of desperate times calling for desperate measures when Morton telephoned Dr Baumgartner at the Forensic Science Service. His call to his former university lecturer was redirected to a mobile as, rather fortuitously for Morton, he was in London for a few days and was ‘absolutely delighted’ to meet him for a beer. It was always a beer, preferably a local variety, that he would opt for, irrespective of the time of day or the task in hand. He’d once paid for a round of drinks for the whole class of forty students after trooping them down to a nearby pub to study vernacular architecture. Vernacular architecture over a vernacular beer. Morton supposed that it had done the trick; he’d certainly never forgotten that lecture. The call hadn’t come entirely out of the blue; he’d been in touch with Dr Baumgartner several times since leaving university, what with various reference requests and attending the odd public seminar that he’d delivered. There had apparently been a sharp rise in the number of people interested in the Forensic Science Service after the glut of CSI programmes that had filled the television schedules in recent years, though Dr Baumgartner was always quick to point out that real life forensic study bore little resemblance to the slick, exacting procedures found onscreen.

  They’d agreed to meet in the Sherlock Holmes pub off Charing Cross, which Morton considered to be a bit of an irony. He wondered what Holmes and Watson would have made of all the advances in crime detection technology. ‘Deoxyribo Nucleic Acid, my dear Watson’ didn’t quite have the same ring to it.

  The only difference that the elapsed time had made to Dr Baumgartner’s appearance was that his thick black beard had turned to concrete grey, but for the revealing yellow stain around his mouth. Ten roll-ups a day since he was fourteen, something that he inexplicably sought to tell the class on a regular basis. Apart from that minor change, he looked just the same as the last time that Morton had seen him, which, if he remembered correctly was at a photo analysis conference in Eastbourne three years ago.

  They sat at a table mercifully distanced from the rest of the pub’s clientele. Morton explained the whole Coldrick Case, point by point, without exaggeration or embellishment. The more he summarised the Coldrick Case, the more far-fetched it sounded, like some awful Sunday night drama on ITV that he would avoid like the plague. Dr Baumgartner didn’t seem in the slightest bit fazed and actually praised Morton for his thoroughness. ‘You always were a fastidious bugger at university. I think most genealogists would have thrown in the towel long ago, so you should be congratulated for sticking at it. This is exactly your kind of work, make the most of it.’ Morton hadn’t thought about it like that before. He supposed that, despite the obvious drawbacks to stalking, mugging, explosions, espionage and a throbbing lump on the side of his head, it certainly livened up what could otherwise be a rather dull job.

  ‘And what is that you’d like my help with?’ Dr Baumgartner asked.

  Morton delved inside his bag and pulled an apologetic face. ‘I’m hoping that you’ll be able to compare Finlay Coldrick’s DNA,’ he said, raising the swab stick, ‘with Sir David James Peregrine Windsor-Sackville’s.’ Morton raised the plastic beaker he had procured from the apple-pressing marquee yesterday – entirely illegal of course, but Morton hoped that it was the kind of ‘thinking outside the box’ of which Dr Baumgartner might approve.

  ‘Fine, no problems at all,’ he said, without as much as a flash of hesitation. ‘If I were in my lab in Birmingham I could have given you the result in under an hour but it’ll be a bit longer than that, I’m afraid. Give me a day or two and we�
��ll see what I can come up with.’

  ‘No worries. I’ve another request, too, if you don’t mind. Could you see what you think about this?’ he said, passing over James Coldrick’s copper box. It felt a bit presumptuous to be asking his former lecturer to do him such large favours but Morton was desperate. Dr Baumgartner might just be able to offer a new perspective, spot an anomaly that years in the Forensic Science Service had taught him. The main thing was, Morton trusted Dr Baumgartner implicitly.

  Dr Baumgartner opened the box and took a cursory glance at the photograph. ‘Yes, I’ll gladly give you my advice, for what it’s worth, but you seem to be doing a pretty exhaustive job by yourself,’ he said, setting his thick-rimmed glasses down on the table and giving his beard a contemplative stroke. ‘Listen, Morton. You have a doubtless natural genealogical instinct that you need to trust a bit more. You’ve come all this way by yourself, which is frankly admirable. It’s more than I would expect of some of my top people at the FSS. Have faith in your abilities.’ He gave his beard another gentle tug, reset his glasses and read the letter. Once he had finished reading, he set the letter down and stared up at the ceiling, his eyes drifting thoughtfully. ‘It certainly does come across like she knows the end is nigh,’ he finally said. ‘Can I take it away and see if I can come up with something?’

  ‘By all means – thank you,’ Morton said. ‘I’d appreciate some fresh eyes.’

  ‘Great,’ he said with a smile, carefully placing the two items back in the box. ‘Now, I think it’s time for another beer. My shout.’

  Morton watched as Dr Baumgartner toddled off to the bar, an eccentric but redoubtable figure. It felt good to Morton to be back in his company and to receive his approval.

  Morton was more than happy to have his Pampers box of treats quietly sidelined by the news of Juliette’s interview. It wasn’t like he was relishing telling her that his darts trophy had survived the blast when everything she valued and cherished as sentimental had perished. On the way home he had even considered dumping the damned box and all of its contents and telling her that nothing had survived. That way they were on an equal ‘let’s start again' footing. He stowed the box at the bottom of the stairs and joined Juliette in the kitchen.

  ‘You’ll never guess who conducted the interview?’ she said, pouring herself a cold beer and perching herself on the edge of the table. She didn’t give him much time to guess but if she had, then Jones and Hawk would have been his first answer. ‘Only Olivia Walker!’ Nope, it was safe to say that she definitely hadn’t been anywhere near his top ten guess list.

  ‘I did say “Expect the unexpected”,’ Morton said sagely.

  ‘Yeah, but you didn’t tell me to expect her to be acting like my best friend. Christ, I was waiting for the camera crew to leap out, she was so sickeningly friendly. She said she was so grateful that I’d spotted her error in not changing the ownership of her car and that she was sorry that I’d been suspended – administrative error - and that I could start back to work there and then if I wanted to. She’s been hearing great things about me around the station! I mean, can you believe it?’

  Morton couldn’t believe it. But then again, with a moment’s thought, he actually could believe it. What was that old saying about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer? Superhero PCSO Juliette Meade was much more easily monitored within the warm bosom of Kent Police than conducting her own undercover operations whilst being suspended on full pay. They were effectively tagging her.

  ‘Honest to God, Morton,’ she continued, ‘it was all so relaxed and informal, like we’re old friends catching up in Starbucks. “Do you want a tea or coffee, Juliette? I can’t even think about functioning until I’ve got at least a gallon of caffeine running through my veins!”’ Juliette did an exaggerated impression of a stereotypical toff in a fit of laughter. ‘She even had the nerve to say “I hear you’ve had a bit of a to-do with your house; you have had a spell of bad luck.”’ Another bout of toff laughter followed by a swig of the beer.

  A ‘to-do’ with the house: that was one way of describing it. Morton wondered if now was a good time to say, ‘Talking of the house, take a look in the Pampers box and see what treats I’ve got for you!’ No, it wasn’t the time. But then again, there never would be a good time.

  ‘So, I’m back to work seven tomorrow morning, speed-trapping the Udimore Road as if nothing had ever happened.’ He couldn’t tell from her impassive speech and behaviour whether or not she was happy to have been reinstated, then she clarified. ‘Bastards.’

  ‘I thought you wanted to go back?’

  ‘I do, I love my job, but not like this. They’re playing me, Morton, surely you can see that?’ He could see it, as clear as day.

  ‘Did she talk about me or the Coldrick Case at all?’ Morton asked.

  ‘Not a single word. Bizarre.’

  Morton had other questions to ask but at that moment Jeremy appeared in the kitchen doorway, his face puffed and red as though he’d been crying. Morton stared at him. Was this it? Was it their father? Had he finally succumbed?

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Juliette asked.

  ‘It’s Dad, he’s got worse,’ Jeremy said, on the verge of tears. Morton could spot the signs a mile off, having made his younger brother cry more times than he could remember. ‘He had another heart attack and they’ve scheduled him for a triple heart bypass tomorrow evening. He’s in a terrible state.’ Morton could tell that Jeremy wanted to say more but he would burst into tears if he did.

  Juliette went over to the doorway and hugged him. After several seconds she pulled back and looked him in the eyes. ‘The operation’s a good thing, Jeremy. At least it will help him.’

  ‘I know. Even Dad thinks this is the end for him now,’ Jeremy said. ‘He wants to see you, Morton, before he goes down. He’s got something to tell you.’

  Morton nodded, his stomach immediately turning itself in knots over whatever chastisement his father wanted to issue. Whatever it was, it wouldn’t be a treasured deathbed declaration, that much was certain. Morton, you’ve always made me proud. Morton, you’ve always been a wonderful child. Morton, I’ve never seen you as anything other than my natural child, the same as Jeremy.

  Jeremy took a beer from the fridge and sat at the table with Morton, his face etched with grief.

  Nobody spoke because nobody had anything more to say.

  An hour later Juliette called to Morton. ‘Morton? Why’s one of Mrs McPherson’s ornaments in a Pampers box at the bottom of the stairs?’

  A few seconds ticked by whilst Morton braced himself for the penny to drop.

  And it did.

  ‘Is this it? Is this all that’s left? Oh my God.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Monday

  The lump on the side of his head had throbbed for the entire night, maintaining a regular musical beat. When sleep had finally arrived for him, he was plagued by dreams of his father’s deathbed confession, a revelation that a somnolent Morton knew was monumental; an utterance which would change everything. The dream started with him getting out of the Mini in the car park of the Conquest Hospital and running through the building at top speed, as concerned nurses wordlessly directed him through the labyrinth of identical wards until he eventually reached his father, just in time for his last moment on earth. But as Morton drew his ear close to his father’s mouth to catch those momentous words, the dream restarted and he was back in the car park.

  The only answer was to get up and, at precisely four twenty-two, Morton abandoned both sleep and any attempt at catching his father’s nocturnal message. If he were remotely superstitious or religious then he would have made a mad dash to the hospital, believing the dream to have been some kind of prophecy, urging him to see his father before it was all too late. But, since he was neither religious nor superstitious he padded down to the kitchen to make a coffee.

  He switched on his laptop and sat in the nascent dawn light that filtered in through the patio door
and kitchen windows. He had switched on the lights at first, but they gave the room a strange street-lamp hue that was a stark reminder of the unearthly hour at which he had risen. He hoped to goodness that he wasn’t turning into his father. For as long as Morton had been aware, his father had got up at five o’clock in the morning. Weekends, days off, holidays, they were all the same: five o’clock prompt. The strangest thing was that he had never needed an alarm, which Morton had always found particularly baffling when the clocks changed. Morton would willingly be placed in front of a firing squad rather than get up at five o’clock in the morning voluntarily. Today was different, of course.

  Morton opened the online folder pertaining to the case, which he had saved to his cloud storage, and clicked on the photograph of James’s mother holding him as a baby. He looked into the dark eyes that stared out from the grounds of wartime Charingsby. Whoever she was, she looked genuinely happy. Seeing Lady Maria Charlotte Windsor-Sackville in the flesh at the Sedlescombe village fete two days ago had done nothing to help Morton ascertain whether or not she could have been James Coldrick’s elusive mother. Even his trusted friend Google couldn’t help. Evidently she wasn’t high profile enough or a close enough relation to Princess Diana to warrant an archive of online images. He had found, though, that her ancestral home of Mote Ridge, buried deep in the Kentish countryside, had been in the care of the National Trust since her father’s death in 1969 and was, five days per week, open to the general public. Monday was one such day.

  ‘Morning,’ an unfamiliar antipodean voice chirped cheerfully, startling Morton. He turned to see Guy parading into the room wearing nothing more than a pair of white boxer shorts. Two things sprang into Morton’s mind simultaneously. One, where did he come from? As far as Morton knew Jeremy went to bed at the same time as him. There were definitely no Australian homosexuals in the house at that time; surely he would have noticed when he went round checking that the windows were shut and the doors were locked? The second thought that Morton had was how impossibly handsome Guy looked, despite the ungodly hour of the day. ‘Jeez, you’re chatty in the mornings,’ Guy said, filling an empty pint glass with water.