The America Ground (The Forensic Genealogist Series Book 3)

by Nathan Dylan Goodwin

  He was there—in her peripheral vision—she could just see the dark shape of the coffin, the indistinct form of his head with his prominent nose and beard sticking out. Her eyes filled with resentful tears, her vision blurred and he vanished.

  Her thoughts turned to Richard and how he had, on the night of such terrible storms, come all the way to the America Ground, under the pretence of handing back her shawl. Would he really have come all that way just for that under such conditions? Was it really too much to imagine that he shared the same odd sensation that she had felt deep inside? She was certain that they shared something and she was determined to seek it out.

  Her tears dried and her father returned to the fringes of her vision and the heart of her thoughts.

  Harriet slowly paced across the parlour to the coffin.

  She looked at her father for the first time and cried. Neighbours who had earlier come to pay their respects had said that he had looked peaceful, but to her he looked horribly altered and dead. Her mother had done her best to wash and disguise the cuts and wounds on his face, but nothing could hide the fact that when the seawater had emptied from his lungs last night, it had taken with it whatever had made him her father. The lifeless man before her, who bore a passing resemblance to him, was without a soul.

  Harriet held his cold white hand and continued to sob.

  Minutes passed and her tears gathered in small pools on the floor.

  Harriet wondered about their future. Was her Ma permitted to keep running the Black Horse by herself? Or would they now need to sell it? Could they even sell it?

  Her thoughts were squashed to the back of her mind when the street door suddenly opened. It was Christopher looking a little sheepish.

  ‘Hello, Hattie. I weren’t sure whether to knock or not—’

  ‘It be fine, Christopher,’ Harriet interjected, spinning round from the coffin.

  An uncomfortable quietness lingered between them until Christopher spoke: ‘It were Mr Woods,’ he said. ‘The body in the cottage, I be meaning. Poor Mrs Woods is without home, husband or living. I don’t be a-knowing what will come of her. She ain’t got nobody left now.’

  Harriet began to cry again. Her upset wasn’t particularly with Mrs Woods’s loss—she barely knew the woman—but for the whole sorry situation.

  Christopher moved forwards and pulled Harriet into an embrace.

  She held on tightly, immediately calming in his arms. She exhaled as he gently stroked the back of her hair.

  ‘Everything will work out, Hattie,’ Christopher breathed.

  She lifted her head from his shoulder and smiled.

  He leant in and kissed her softly, transmitting a quivering sensation from her lips, unexpectedly rippling throughout her whole body.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The silver BMW bumped along some kind of long dirt track, which caused the driver to curse as he swerved erratically to avoid the potholes. Aside from his occasional outburst of aggravation, the journey so far had been quite quiet. As they had accelerated away from the archive, Morton had quickly thought about the kinds of questions that Juliette and the police would ask him—assuming that he wasn’t being led to his death—when he got home. The first question that they would ask would be about the men who had captured him and he had already failed on that count. Thuggish men in jeans. Early thirties. That was his description of them so far. Then the police would ask where he was taken, so he tried to plot the journey in his mind as best he could, attempting to keep count of the turns and the approximate time spent on each stretch of road. But it was a hopeless task: they had been driving for a good half an hour now and, after leaving the duel carriageway, they had taken a multitude of turnings and roundabouts that had disorientated him completely.

  The car slowed and Morton felt from the way that the two men either side of him were growing twitchy that they were now approaching their destination.

  Sure enough, the car drew to a halt and the engine was turned off.

  Morton tried to control his breathing. He knew that whatever was about to happen next relied on him remaining calm. The feeling that he had strips of barbed wire lining his stomach intensified as fear began to grip him.

  The doors either side of him opened and the two men jumped out. A rush of warm air, laced with the faintest farmyard whiffs, blew into the car and Morton knew at once that they were somewhere in the countryside: he had been deliberately bundled off into the middle of nowhere.

  ‘Tell Kevin we’re here,’ one of the men called, before Morton became aware of his presence beside him in the car. ‘Out,’ he ordered.

  Morton blindly shuffled across the back seat as best he could and tried to swivel his feet out onto the ground, but instead caught them on the bottom of the doorframe and tumbled out, unable as he was to break his fall. He landed awkwardly, his right shoulder taking the brunt of the impact. He winced and bit his lip to avoid crying out.

  The men around him laughed and then one of them grabbed his right bicep and yanked him onto his feet. ‘Walk,’ he instructed, shoving Morton forwards.

  Morton followed the sound of the men striding in front of him, listening intently for any clues that might help to determine his location. But for the crunching of gravel under the men’s marching feet and some distant birdsong, there were no other sounds.

  The footfall of the men suddenly changed. They slowed and the surface on which they walked altered. It was now harder, quieter.

  Then he realised that the temperature had dropped and the acoustics around him had also changed: he was now inside a building. There was a slight echo when one of the men coughed. It was a large building of some kind.

  A solid hand pushed down on Morton’s painful right shoulder and he yelped out, as he was forced down into a chair.

  ‘Take it off,’ a husky voice ordered.

  The hood was unceremoniously whipped from Morton’s head. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust. The room that he was in—a barn—was dimly lit by the shards of sunlight that spiked through thin gaps in the walls. The four men who had bundled him into the car stood menacingly around him. Directly in front of him was the man that they had referred to as Kevin—a large-framed man with cropped hair and a grin on his face.

  ‘Morton, lovely to see you again.’

  It was him. The strange man on Mermaid Street with the pint of beer. The same man that Morton suspected had broken into his house last night.

  ‘Listen, I won’t beat around the bush. You and I aren’t silly. Look around you—you’re not going to do anything stupid, so we’ll just assume that you’re going to comply. Yes?’

  Morton thought about his situation for a brief second: his hands were bound tightly behind his back; he was in the middle of nowhere and he was surrounded by five beefy men, who could quite easily have stepped straight from a Bond film. No, he wasn’t about to do anything stupid. ‘Yes,’ he replied flatly.

  ‘Excellent!’ Kevin said, moving closer to Morton. He crouched down in front of him. ‘What I need are the original indentures for the America Ground. Simple, really.’

  Morton was confused. ‘They were stolen from my house last night,’ he answered.

  Kevin laughed. It was a peculiar fake laugh that unnerved Morton. ‘The originals,’ he repeated.

  Morton looked dumbfounded. He was asking for the indentures, yet he had to have been the one to have stolen them. It made no sense. ‘You took them from my house last night,’ he answered.

  ‘I thought we agreed no games. I don’t want to hurt you, Morton. I really don’t. It’s been a good few years since anything like this has been necessary and, to be honest, I’m getting past it. Do you know what I mean? Heading to retirement. So, where are the indentures?’

  ‘Right. Someone—not you evidently—but someone, broke into my house last night and stole them-’

  ‘Yeah, that was us,’ he interrupted, acknowledging the other men with a grin.

  ‘Sorry, but I’m lost,’ Morton answered, his fe
ar merging with irritation. ‘No games. I had only one set of indentures in my possession and you stole them.’

  Kevin sniffed and the grin dropped from his face. He stood, towering over Morton. ‘I want the originals, not these.’ He stopped mid-sentence and held his hand out to one of the men, who handed him the two vellums. ‘Not these, fake things.’

  ‘Fake?’ Morton repeated. ‘What do you mean? They’re originals. I even had a solicitor look at them.’

  ‘Don’t mess me around, Morton. I really don’t have the patience. Just tell me where the originals are.’

  ‘I don’t know!’ Morton snapped. ‘I thought they were originals.’

  Kevin nodded to one of the other heavies beside Morton, who suddenly pulled out a short flick-knife and pressed it to Morton’s neck.

  ‘Where are they?’ Kevin shouted, hurling the indentures to the floor.

  ‘I swear, I’ve no idea,’ Morton pleaded, his voice a faint whimper. The blade was pressing harder and harder into his carotid artery; he could feel the first trickle of blood running down his neck, pooling in the hollow of his clavicle. ‘The person who gave them to me found them a few weeks ago…in the back of a painting…I’m trying to find…’—the blade pressed more deeply—‘If the originals exist, then I can find them for you.’

  Another nod from Kevin and the blade was removed. ‘They exist alright. Find them how?’ he quizzed.

  ‘By finding their previous owners,’ Morton said, his voice shaking.

  Kevin laughed. ‘Yeah, that sounds easy enough.’

  ‘I can do it; it must be a family member who had them copied—if they could prove exceptional circumstances then they could challenge the ownership of the land. Is that why you want them? Are you related to the Lovekins?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter why I want them—just accept the fact that I do.’ Kevin stared at Morton expressionlessly.

  ‘Why are you so sure they even still exist?’ Morton asked.

  ‘I just am. What if I do let you go off and find them? The first thing you’ll do is go to the police.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Morton vowed.

  Kevin laughed. ‘No, I know you won’t.’ He stood up and rubbed his hands together and Morton prepared himself again for the blade. But it didn’t come. The man faced Morton. ‘I’ve got a few contacts in Sussex Police.’

  Morton nodded then flinched when the man thrust his face just inches away from his.

  ‘Juliette Meade,’ he said. ‘A good police constable—she’s got what it takes, apparently. A strong contender to rise through the ranks.’

  ‘I won’t tell her,’ Morton promised.

  ‘Again, I know you won’t. I don’t think you’re that stupid that you would put two pieces of paper before your fiancée’s career and your wellbeing.’

  ‘So are you going to let me go, then and get on with it?’ Morton asked, his fright tipping into a growing confidence.

  ‘You’ve got one week to find them, otherwise you’re back here...’

  ‘Fine,’ Morton retorted. ‘Now, can I have those back, please?’ He nodded his head towards the indentures on the floor.

  ‘Why not, they’re bloody useless as they are.’ Kevin bent down, picked up the hood and placed it back over Morton’s head. ‘Take him back.’

  ‘Wait! How will I get them to you?’ Morton asked, as he was dragged to his feet.

  ‘Don’t you worry about that, Morton; we’ll always be watching your every move.’

  Kevin’s manic laughter echoed in the barn, fading quickly as Morton was shoved back outside towards the car.

  Thirty-five minutes later, Morton was standing beside his Mini watching the BMW speeding away. Almost on the verge of collapsing, his body spent from the adrenalin overload, he placed his trembling hands on the bonnet of his car and took some long deep breaths to steady himself. He touched the cut on his neck and flinched. It had thankfully stopped bleeding now but was nonetheless painful and his white shirt was bloodstained down one side. He knew that he had been very lucky to walk out of that barn relatively unscathed. Whoever those men were, they meant business. Five of them! he thought incredulously, just to find the location of two indentures from 1827. It was ridiculous. Sitting in that barn, fearing for his life, Morton realised that the thugs holding him, even Kevin who had taken the lead, were simply henchmen. They had stolen the copies from his house last night also believing them to be genuine. Whoever they were working for had then set the record straight and sent them straight back after him in search of the originals. But for whom were they working? As far as Morton could tell, that person—or persons—fell into one of two possible categories: one was that they were a descendant of the Lovekins who stood to gain a great deal by asserting an existent claim over a parcel of land on the America Ground or second, that they were someone who stood to lose an even greater amount if the indentures were to fall into the wrong hands. The latter option seemed more reasonable. Riccards–Maloney. They would lose a small fortune if a case were proven against them. It has to be them behind this, Morton thought. Everything that had happened—the man standing in the street goading him, the burglary and his brief captivity—had occurred since his email to their offices three days ago. The more he thought about it, the more it actually didn’t matter if he did find the originals and handed them over—it was outside of his work remit from Bunny. All that she wanted was Eliza Lovekin’s life story to help sell a painting. If he didn’t tell her that the indentures weren’t original then she would be none the wiser. Morton suddenly felt all the more comfortable with the idea that he was actually working on two linked, but separately focussed cases. The Lovekin Case and The Burly Thugs Case.

  He sighed, climbed inside his car and tossed the indentures onto the passenger seat. For some inexplicable reason, it helped to know who might actually be behind it all. It might just assist him in figuring a way out. But he had his work cut out: he had just promised to locate two documents within a week that he wasn’t even sure still existed.

  Morton glanced down at the indentures, started his engine and went to pull away but stopped, pulled out his mobile and phoned a number from his recent calls list.

  ‘Hello, it’s Morton Farrier here.’

  ‘Oh, hello, Morton,’ Jonathan Greenwood answered. ‘I was going to give you a call in the next day or so.’

  ‘Go on,’ Morton said, hopefully.

  ‘I’m still on the case of your indentures and one of my ex-colleagues seems to think you might have a case if there was any fraudulent paperwork involved at the time or proof of foul play—even going back that far. Of course, you’d need all original paperwork.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The original indentures—I assume you have access to them?’ Jonathan asked.

  ‘You knew the ones that I brought to you were forgeries?’ Morton demanded, not quite believing what he was hearing.

  There was a slight pause before Jonathan spoke again. ‘Yes—I said as much. I said to you that they were very good copies and that Eliza’s daughters could have made a claim if they had the originals.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Well, they’re very good copies but they’re far from perfect. One simple but glaringly obvious thing missing: every lease and release indenture had a unique wavy line cut across the top of the two parties’ copies so that they could be matched up, if it ever became necessary to prove that they were genuine. Yours have got a straight cut along the top.’

  ‘Right. I had no idea, you see. I don’t suppose you have any thoughts as to when the fakes might have been made?’ he ventured. If he could pinpoint the approximate period in which they were created, he could cross-reference Eliza and Joseph’s descendants to the same point. All of which was much more easily said than done.

  Jonathan laughed. ‘No idea, I’m afraid—some years ago, though, I would say judging from the general wear and tear. Do you want me to see if I can find someone with a bit of experience in this area?’


  ‘That would be great—thank you, Jonathan.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll get back to you. Bye.’

  ‘Bye.’ Morton terminated the call and began his drive home.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Juliette asked, when he entered the lounge.

  Morton sighed. He’d spent half of his journey home considering what his next course of action should be in the Lovekin Case and the other half trying to think up a watertight story to feed to Juliette. As hard as it would be, he had made up his mind to keep this afternoon’s drama to himself for now. He knew that PC Juliette Meade would be straight onto his case, demanding an explanation for the huge gap between his text message saying that he was coming home and his actual arrival time.

  ‘Sorry,’ he apologised. ‘I just needed time to think. After I texted you I got a coffee and just tried to…well, think. You know, weddings, Dad and all that.’

  ‘Okay,’ Juliette said, eyeing him suspiciously. ‘That sounds ominous.’

  Morton smiled. ‘No, it’s all fine. Just lots of thinking. But I’m not going to let Dad and Madge get in the way of our plans. So, let’s get on with it.’

  ‘What happened to your neck?’ she asked.

  He’d already pre-empted the questions the gaping wound on his neck would bring, so he’d stopped off at a supermarket on his way home and bought a packet of plasters and a fresh shirt with a passing resemblance to his old bloodstained one. If it were covered at least, she wouldn’t be able to see how bad it really was. ‘I cut myself shaving this morning,’ he lied.

  ‘Right.’

  She was still looking at him doubtfully and he wasn’t sure if he had been believed or not. ‘Shall we get on with it, then?’

  ‘I’ve got all the wedding bits out ready,’ Juliette said, pointing to the kitchen table, which was when Morton looked over and noticed the two envelopes from the General Register Office. Ann Lovekin’s marriage certificate and Keziah Lovekin’s death certificate. ‘All that remains is for us now to open some red and get deciding.’

  ‘You didn’t like my Vegas idea, then?’ Morton joked, unable to stop himself from wondering at the contents of the two envelopes.