Hiding the Past (The Forensic Genealogist series Book 1) Read online

  Hiding the Past

  by

  Nathan Dylan Goodwin

  Copyright © Nathan Dylan Goodwin 2013

  Nathan Dylan Goodwin has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This story is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the author. This story is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the author’s prior consent in any form of binding, cover or other eformat, including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  I would like to dedicate this book to my son, Harrison River

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Prologue

  6th June 1944

  When Emily woke, everything was dark and everything was still. The angry, vicious weather from the previous day had subsided and yet something outside wasn’t quite as it should have been. It couldn’t have been an air-raid – they had stopped three months ago. Quietly rolling back her woollen blanket, Emily sat up in bed and listened. She was thirty-one and effortlessly beautiful, even now, after a bad night’s sleep. She gently switched on her beside lamp, not wanting to disturb her precious baby boy, who slept silently beside her in his cot. The lamp cast a low, amber glow over his face. Whatever it was that had disturbed her, had not stirred her son.

  Emily padded over to the window and lifted the heavy blackout curtains. It took a moment for her to process the sensations she suddenly experienced: a charcoal-grey curtain of thick smoke, reeking of a chemical she couldn’t quite place, enveloped the beloved orchard which surrounded her home, as enraged orange flames fought their way towards the house. Emily snapped back to reality, let the curtains fall into place and quickly scooped up her child, still blissfully sleeping. She turned and picked up the small brown suitcase beside her bed, which she had hastily packed last night.

  Carrying the boy close to her chest with one hand and the suitcase in the other, she hurried into the kitchen, wearing her white, silk nightie. There was no time to change or search for her shoes. She paused at the front door, momentarily unwilling to loosen the bolts that kept her safe inside. Placing her hand on the first metal bolt, she suddenly placed the chemical stench outside, which was now seeping through the cracks and crevices of the kitchen – petrol: she was being driven out.

  Emily pointlessly looked around the room for another means of escape, another plan, but she knew it was hopeless. Insidious tendrils of smoke began to creep from the bedroom ceiling, licking their way towards her.

  The baby began to cry, a soft, mournful sound that broke Emily’s heart. It reminded her that nothing was real. This life that she had made was not real. Her home was not real. Even her name was not real.

  With a final glance around the room, Emily unbolted the brass fastenings. Maybe there is time to run, to get away from here, she thought. She pulled open the solid oak door and could see only blackness tinged with the muted light from the raging fire at the rear of the house. Despite the darkness, she knew that someone was there; waiting in the shadows for her.

  Emily held the baby tightly and ran from the house. She navigated the orchard easily - nobody knew it better than she - and made it to the periphery of the woods. As the baby began to scream and pain spiked her bare feet as she ran, she knew she could never escape, yet she kept running – pushing further and further into the darkness, her nightie catching and snagging on branches. Behind her, the crunching of heavy boots was gaining ground, easily homing in on the sound of the screaming child. She pulled him tightly into her bosom, hoping to stifle his cries. From the blackness behind her, an unseen hand reached out and grabbed Emily’s shoulder. It was over.

  Chapter One

  Wednesday

  Morton Farrier was perplexed. He was sitting at home running an online birth search and, according to the indexes, the man for whom he searched hadn’t ever been born. It was a rare occurrence for a birth not to have been registered, he had to admit, but it wasn’t that extraordinary. Nothing to get over excited about. In his twelve years of working as a forensic genealogist he had come across it maybe once or twice before. Although, now that he actually thought about it, he couldn’t bring the specifics of any particular case to mind. It certainly didn’t warrant the unnecessary histrionics that his new client, Peter Coldrick, had displayed when he had visited him for the first time yesterday afternoon.

  Morton had found Peter living an austere life in a run-down council estate on the outskirts of Tenterden, a charming Kentish Weald town not far from his own home in Rye. Peter’s house was crammed with a plethora of genealogical books and guides. Years of personal research and three redundant genealogists later, Peter Coldrick had come to the conclusion that any antecedents prior to his father had been wholly obliterated. It was for the birth of Peter’s father, James Coldrick, that Morton had searched in vain. He ran one final check on Ancestry, his favoured website for birth, marriage and death searches, but came to the same answer: there was no James Coldrick. He was pondering the implications of this when his mobile rang. It was Juliette, his girlfriend.

  ‘What was the name of the guy that you went to see yesterday?’ she asked. Typical Juliette, storming straight in with a random question, Morton thought.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The man you’re working for, what’s his name?’ she asked in an impatient whisper.

  ‘Coldrick, Peter Coldrick. Why?’

  ‘I’m guarding his house while SOCO are inside; he’s dead, Morton.’

  Her words struck him like a rock to the head. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Well,’ Juliette began, lowering her voice so that Morton struggled to hear her, ‘we’ll know more when the Scene of Crime Officers are done but it looks like suicide.’

  ‘Suicide?’

  ‘Uh-huh. Look, I can’t talk long, just thought I’d let you know.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Morton said absentmindedly.

  Juliette paused. ‘Listen, Morton, I’m going to have to tell the sarge that you visited him yesterday and that he phoned our house last night,’ she warned.

  ‘That’s fine,’ Morton answered.

  ‘Got to go. See you later.’

  ‘Bye.’

  He pocketed his iPhone and thought back to Peter’s garbled voice message, which he'd left within two hours of Morton having left his house. The message asked Morton to phone back as he'd found something important. Morton never returned the call, figuring that it could wait. A frenetic surge of thoughts and questions bounced around his brain. The idea of Coldrick topping himself seemed ridiculous. Then he remembered the money. Coldrick had
paid Morton way over and above his usual fee. Who pays someone all that money in the morning then kills themselves that same night? It didn’t make any sense.

  The sun was shrouded behind voluminous, concrete-grey clouds when Morton set out, rendering the drive an uncomfortable fusion of stickiness and claustrophobia, which only worsened as the ten-mile journey progressed. By the time he reached Peter’s house on Westminster Rise, his skin was clammy and his pulse racing. He didn’t know what he was expecting to find when he got there – one police car and a few nosey neighbours maybe – but the reality was very different: an angled police car dramatically blocked the road, its blue warning lights flashing rhythmically, matching the beat of two further police cars and an ambulance parked behind it. A strip of yellow tape proclaiming in thick black letters: POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS, cats-cradled its way between lamp-posts and gateposts across the street. Behind the cordon were what appeared to Morton to be half of Kent’s emergency personnel, idly chatting and drinking hot drinks. And behind it all quietly stood the mournful little council house containing Coldrick’s dead body, penned in like a quarantined animal. He felt slightly sick as he parked up and climbed from his car. Morton, handsome with a boyish face that belied his being in the final few weeks of his thirties, was dressed casually in a loose-fitting, white t-shirt and faded jeans. He ran his fingers through his short, dark hair, as his chestnut-brown eyes surveyed the scene before him; he blended well with the crowds of spectators who had gathered on the pavement.

  In his peripheral vision, a uniformed figure broke from the mêlée, heading towards him. It took a double-take to realise that it was Juliette, thunder etched onto her face, ducking under the cordon tape. Although she’d been a PCSO for more than six months now, he still hadn’t got used to seeing her in uniform. His presence here wasn’t going to go down too well.

  ‘What’re you doing here?’ she demanded. Morton shrugged. He didn’t know.

  ‘I just wanted to see… Is there any news?’

  ‘SOCO are still in there. Nothing else to report. There’s no need for you to be here, Morton.’

  ‘I’m sure he wouldn’t have killed himself, you know, Juliette,’ Morton ventured.

  ‘Not what it looks like in there. Besides which, you knew him for what, six hours?’

  ‘It just doesn’t feel right. Have you actually been inside?’

  Juliette nodded.

  ‘And?’

  ‘I’ll talk to you later. The sarge is sending someone over to talk to you at home.’

  ‘Coldrick wanted to show me something, Juliette. Can you get me in?’ Morton said, knowing it to be a futile question, but hoping that she could flash her badge or whatever she did and wave him through.

  Juliette laughed, glancing over her shoulder. ‘You think going out with me is going to get you past that lot? No chance. Go home.’ And with that she turned, stooped under the yellow tape and was reabsorbed into the sea of fluorescent yellow jackets.

  Morton returned to his car and started the engine. All he needed to do was stick it in reverse and leave this unpleasant place behind. But he was mesmerised by the spectacle playing out through the windscreen, his own television set with no off button. He supposed that was why cop shows always did so well on TV; there was something strangely appealing about life going so terribly wrong for someone else. He wasn’t a great fan of emergency services dramas. Juliette loved and loathed them in equal measure, usually lapping up the crime then decrying the police work with angry snorts of ‘It’s obvious who the murderer is’ or ‘That wouldn’t happen in real life’. Not like this, this was real life and he knew that if he waited long enough, he would see it – that one defining image that he’d seen a hundred times on telly and, sure enough, it came. Half an hour later Peter Coldrick’s lifeless corpse, enveloped in a black body-bag, was rolled out onto the pavement by two sombre paramedics, his head and feet cutting revealing shapes into the shiny, dark material. Seconds later, in front of the mesmerised audience, he was loaded into the yawning rear of the ambulance and slowly driven away. No sirens. No blue flashing lights.

  He started the car and headed home.

  Morton looked out from the lounge window of his home, a converted police station that fell in the long shadow of Rye parish church. Whilst some deemed it disturbing that Morton’s nearest neighbours were the long-deceased, he found it strangely comforting to live there. As far as he was concerned, the dead were so much more predictable than the living.

  He stared at a weathered sandstone grave, attempting to recall his journey home from Coldrick’s house, but there was nothing for him to latch onto. After the ambulance had pulled away his mind went blank, as if somebody had recorded over his memories with white noise. No matter how Morton allowed his mind to wander, it immediately boomeranged right back to the conundrum of Coldrick’s apparent suicide. Did a few hours spent in his company really afford Morton the absolute certainty in his belief that Coldrick hadn’t killed himself?

  He realised that his strong feelings might well stem from the harrowing circumstances surrounding Coldrick’s death, rather than the death itself. It somehow had managed to crank open the lid of an area of his brain that he only accessed when absolutely necessary. He imagined that place to be like a small wooden chest with a tight-fitting lid that only he could open when he chose. It was the same place that he kept memories of his childhood, his mother and questions surrounding his own identity and hidden past.

  Morton's addled brain leapt from Coldrick's death to his brother, Jeremy, who was on the verge of being posted to Afghanistan. Was this how it would feel to be told that he'd been hit by a Taleban sniper? He chastised himself for his morbid pessimism about Jeremy’s ability to survive in a war-zone. As he glanced out at the erect needle commemorating the town’s war dead, the thought occurred to Morton that maybe he was projecting his own inadequacies onto his brother. He often thought that he would have been a conscientious objector if he had been alive in either of the World Wars, although he was never quite sure if this was from cowardice, or with the benefit of hindsight.

  His disjointed thoughts were interrupted when a Volvo V70 police car, with luminous blue and yellow bodywork, parked outside his house and two officers climbed out and knocked officiously on the front door. Morton showed them into the lounge where they peeled off their hats and introduced themselves as PC Glen Jones, who gave Morton the stark impression of being on day-release from the SAS, and WPC Alison Hawk, a feline-like creature with cold grey eyes.

  ‘Had you known Peter Coldrick long?’ Jones asked, the very moment that they were seated.

  ‘No, I first met him yesterday morning,’ Morton answered.

  ‘And he phoned you last night?’ Hawk asked, scrunching up her face. Morton met her stare, fixed on him, unblinking, ardently scanning for inconsistencies. He nodded, went over to the answer-phone and duly pressed play. You have one new message. Message left yesterday at six twenty p.m. Morton, it’s Peter Coldrick. Can you come over as soon as you get this? I’ve got into my dad’s copper box and found something.

  ‘Having seen you yesterday morning, why do you think he was so desperate to see you again in the afternoon, Mr Farrier? What do you think he had found?’ she asked, pen poised over a notepad in anticipation of his answer.

  Morton shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea. I wish I’d gone over there now – maybe he’d still be alive if I had.’

  ‘And what was the nature of your relationship with Peter Coldrick?’ Jones asked.

  ‘I was working for him,’ he answered.

  ‘Doing what?’ Jones asked.

  ‘He paid me to research his family tree, that’s all. I'm a forensic genealogist.’

  ‘Can I ask how much he paid you?’ Hawk asked.

  Morton paused, knowing that the figure would sound preposterous to them. It sounded preposterous to him. He also knew that there was no way of withholding the information: they would undoubtedly be able to produce a breakdown of his bank account faster than h
e could. ‘Fifty thousand.’

  ‘Fifty thousand pounds?’ Hawk repeated. ‘Peter Coldrick paid you fifty thousand pounds so that you could tell him who his family was?’ She cast an ominous look to her colleague, and Morton felt sure that he was about to be read his rights.

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ Morton answered, finally regaining his confidence and realising that he hadn’t actually committed a crime. Thank God he had a PCSO as an alibi for last night. ‘He paid me a lot more than I have ever been paid before or ever will be again, I’m sure. You’re right, it does sound strange. But if you are listening to me, you’ll also realise that I received that money in good faith.’

  Jones produced, seemingly from nowhere, a small white envelope bearing Morton’s name. ‘Open it,’ he directed.

  Morton took the proffered envelope and tentatively withdrew a short, typed letter. He felt strangely obliged to read it aloud, despite a rather large obstruction unhelpfully lodged in his larynx. ‘Morton, please stop the research. I’ve realised that it’s all irrelevant now my parents are gone. Please keep the money and enjoy it. Peter.’

  ‘Of course,’ Hawk said with a caustic smile and a knowing glance to her esteemed partner, ‘we don’t yet know if the letter is genuine. We will be having it analysed. Is there any reason you can think of as to why Mr Coldrick would take his own life the very day he paid you such a significant sum of money?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And how did he seem to you?’

  Morton shrugged, having nothing to compare it to. ‘Not suicidal.’

  There was a pause as Morton watched a whole conversation passing unspoken between the two police officers.

  WPC Alison Hawk suddenly stood up and Morton felt sure that she was going to arrest him. Would they handcuff him even though he wasn’t resisting? How ironic, Morton thought, living in a former police station. Maybe they should just convert the cellar back into a cell. It wouldn’t take long: the four-inch-thick metal door was still intact, as were the bars on the window. A life sentence with boxes of Christmas decorations, old school reports, congealed tins of paint and thirty-nine years' worth of general detritus.