Hiding the Past (The Forensic Genealogist series Book 1)

by Nathan Dylan Goodwin

  Morton nodded like a suspicious interrogator. That volume must have been crammed with names, yet Morton felt sure that the reason it was missing was down to just one name: James Coldrick.

  ‘Can I order up 1943 and 1945?’ Morton asked.

  Max scanned around the office. No sign of Miss Latimer. ‘Sure,’ he answered. ‘Fill in the slips and bring them back to me.’

  Morton returned to his desk and completed a small pink slip for each document with the reference code, his name and table number. In addition to the admissions registers, he also requested a bundle of governors’ meeting minutes and a staff list that he thought he would take a chance with, plus the baptism records for the local parish church.

  Twenty minutes later, in accordance with the rules, Max placed only the first three documents on Morton’s desk. ‘Good luck,’ Max said with a smile. ‘I’ve got a feeling you’re going to need it.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Morton said. He didn’t need luck. He was a forensic genealogist: he was born for this kind of work.

  He dived straight into the baptism register, thumbing his way carefully to the correct decade. Baptisms in the 1940s generally gave the name of the child, parents’ full names and address, plus the father’s occupation. Sedlescombe's being a small, rural parish meant that Morton could search from 1930 through to 1950 in just a few minutes. No sign of James Coldrick. He extended the search into the 1960s, just in case James had chosen an adult baptism when he left St George's but there was nothing even close.

  He closed the ledger and opened the 1945 admissions register for St George’s, hoping that the apparently unborn James Coldrick was deposited at the home in the year following his birth. He flicked through the pages and ran his finger meticulously down the list of names. Predictably, there was no mention of James Coldrick. Had the name appeared there, then it would have told Morton everything that he needed to know: birth date, parents’ names, occupations and address. Ordinarily, he would have felt largely disappointed at the setback, but he felt nothing but exhilaration at this latest twist. Someone had worked hard to remove all traces of James Coldrick’s birth. He knew at that moment that he wouldn’t find any reference to James Coldrick in the files but still he painstakingly trawled both registers, cover to cover, hoping to spot an anomaly.

  After several hours of diligent searching, all Morton had discovered was the barbaric nature of the home, at which Linda, the manager of St George’s had hinted. Almost every child had faced ritualised corporal punishment for the most minor of misdemeanours. G placed in solitary confinement for insolence. R given ten taps of the cane for rudeness. Taps of the cane: there was a euphemism if ever Morton read one. Poor kids. Morton thought that it was of little surprise that James Coldrick had maintained a veil of silence over his childhood.

  The large tome of governors’ meetings revealed little more than the passing of a minor array of insignificant decisions. The staffing list of the time only served to provide some fresh stock for Morton’s collection of bizarre names: Ada Drinkwater, Elsie Flowerdew, June Berrycloth, Betty Beebee, Bill Goozee, Kathleen Menghini.

  Max’s announcement that the office was about to close broke Morton from his reveries, where he was envisioning the character of Betty Beebee. Old, short, ration-starved, hair in a tidy bun. Her name didn’t suggest she was a cruel abuser of neglected children. She sounded jolly, the kind of person always ready with a smile and a warm hug.

  Morton typed up the document dates, references and findings, adding them to the growing file on the Coldrick family.

  ‘Excuse me, Mr Farrier?’ Morton looked into the glare of Miss Latimer, who hurriedly scooped up the ledgers from Morton’s table, as if she had caught him about to secrete them down his trousers. Miss Latimer indicated the clock at the back of the room. ‘The office is now closed,’ she said dourly.

  Morton wanted to smile and issue an acerbic retort, but instead he answered, ‘That’s fine. I’d finished anyway.’

  Morton nodded a goodbye to Max and headed out of the office, depositing a stack of his business cards on the foyer stand, which stated in bold type that he was a ‘Forensic Genealogist’. He knew full well, however, that Miss Latimer would likely throw them all in the recycling as soon as he was out of the door.

  After a throaty and heavy-sounding few seconds, his car finally turned over and he began his journey home. On a whim, Morton pulled into a busy Tesco Express and grabbed a bottle of white wine and the ingredients for Juliette’s favourite meal of wild mushroom and goat’s cheese risotto.

  Tired and drained, Juliette had arrived home and changed into a pair of white jeans and a loose-fitting t-shirt. She had removed the numerous grips which held her hair neatly under her PCSO hat, allowing the dark waves to fall freely over her shoulders. She leant casually on the doorframe to the kitchen, watching as Morton dished up the risotto onto two waiting plates. When she was off-duty, Juliette took a lot of time and care over her appearance, spending an inordinate amount of time in front of the mirror applying a range of creams and make-up, the function of which Morton could never hope to understand. It was how she appeared now, relaxed and natural, that Morton found the most attractive.

  ‘Did any more come to light today about Peter Coldrick?’ Morton asked, carrying the two plates of steaming dinner over to the dining room table, where he’d set two glasses of white wine. Juliette followed and sat opposite him.

  ‘Well,’ she began taking her first mouthful of dinner, ‘I logged onto the PNC and-’

  ‘PNC?’ Morton queried, not being au fait with the overwhelming abundance of police acronyms.

  ‘Police National Computer. I thought I’d take a look at Peter for you. Nothing came up – no previous convictions, no arrests, no cautions – he’s a model citizen. Not even a parking or speeding ticket.’

  Morton was unsurprised. Coldrick had hardly seemed the type to have been up for GBH or running a drug cartel somehow. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘I spoke to Malcolm Burrows in CID about Peter and they’re definitely going down the suicide line. It’s going to the coroner and ultimately it’ll be her decision.’

  ‘Did nobody question why a man like Coldrick would shoot himself? Where does Malcolm Burrows think he got the gun from?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I guess that’ll be investigated.’

  ‘Do you know what type of gun he used?’ Morton asked, guns being another specialism of his.

  ‘Just a regular shotgun, I think. He could have got it from anywhere. His ex-girlfriend didn’t seem to think he owned a gun.’

  Morton took a sip of wine and shot an interested look at Juliette. ‘Ex-girlfriend? Did you happen to get her name? She might be worth a visit.’

  Juliette took a moment to finish her mouthful, her analytical face showing that she was searching for the name. ‘Soraya Benton,’ she said finally.

  ‘Soraya Benton,’ Morton repeated, making a mental note to look her up after dinner.

  ‘What about your day?’ Juliette asked.

  Morton spent the rest of the mealtime relaying his trip and its findings to Juliette. She always professed interest in his work, even when Morton was conveying dry, historical facts about a family she knew nothing about.

  Ordinarily, Morton would have helped Juliette to clear away the dinner; on this occasion, he left Juliette to load the dishwasher by herself, whilst he quickly logged onto his laptop to run an electoral register search for Soraya Benton. He punched in her name. Four results. Only one in the whole of the south-east and she was living in Tenterden, just a few miles from Peter Coldrick’s house. Bingo. He scribbled down the address and phone number then shut the lid on his laptop. Morton stared at the paper with Soraya’s name on it and wondered if she could shed any light on the mysterious Coldrick family. Maybe being Peter’s ex-girlfriend meant that she knew something of how a man living in a council house could afford to pay such a huge fee for his services. From the way Peter had spoken at their one and only meeting, he was unemployed and had
been for some time. The thought of how Peter could find such a vast sum to pay him hadn't really crossed his mind at the time but now he weighed the possible options of where the money had come from. Lottery win? Unlikely - what were the odds? Fourteen million to one? Redundancy? Possible - but no mention was made of any previous job. Savings? Possible but unlikely. Inheritance? Possible - his father had died last year, about the right time for his estate to pass through the hurdles of probate. His searches at the beginning of James Coldrick’s life were proving fruitless, so perhaps it was time to start looking at the end of his life for answers.

  ‘You’re day-off tomorrow, aren’t you?’ Morton called into the kitchen.

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Fancy a trip to Brighton?’

  Juliette appeared at the lounge door. ‘Why?’ she asked suspiciously, a questioning scowl screwing up her face.

  ‘Just thought it would be nice to have a shop, meal out and walk along the beach,’ he answered.

  Juliette laughed. ‘When have you ever suggested going out shopping? What’s the real reason?’

  Morton smiled. ‘Brighton District Probate Registry.’

  Juliette’s eyes narrowed and Morton was sure that he could see the workings of her brain behind her hazel eyes, processing the information. ‘And what goes on there?’

  ‘It’s a government building where wills and administrations are housed.’

  ‘Right,’ Juliette said, the tone of her voice encouraging him to continue.

  ‘The public can go in and search the indexes to wills. I want to find out how much money James Coldrick had when he died last year. Something doesn’t add up with the amount Peter paid me compared with his house and his life.’

  Juliette groaned, slumped into the sofa and switched on the television. ‘Yes, fine. Can we stop talking about this job now?’

  ‘Yep,’ he said, casting a quick glance at Soraya Benton’s scribbled contact details. They could wait until tomorrow. Morton sat beside Juliette, coiled his arm around her back and pulled her in close. He was starting to realise what this was not going to be an ordinary research job. His previous employment had simply been jobs. The Carder job. The Dungate job. The Ashdown job. This one needed a more appropriate title. The Coldrick Case.

  Chapter Three

  Friday

  On this occasion Morton was happy to confer the driving seat over to Juliette. Not that she minded. She hated his driving. She said that he overtook far too much, and far too dangerously; unlike her perfect driving. Her only concession to recklessness was the additional ten percent of speed she knew that she might get away with if she were ever pulled over by the likes of WPC Alison Hawk or PC Glen Jones. Not that she would get pulled by them, it would much more likely be Traffic Police, Juliette had explained to him in great detail one day after they’d driven past a car accident. They’re not Road Traffic Accidents anymore, they’re Road Traffic Collisions. Car crashes are rarely accidents, Morton.

  Juliette pulled into the Churchill Square car park in the city centre and found an empty parking bay close to the exit to the shops.

  ‘Right, I’m going to go and look at some clothes,’ she said, climbing from the car. ‘You do whatever you’ve got to do and we’ll meet in Starbucks. An hour enough?’

  ‘Perfect,’ Morton said, as they made their way from the car. He knew that Juliette would be fine once the magnetism of the shops had worked its magic and pulled her in. Once she set foot over Karen Millen’s threshold it was like she’d passed into Narnia and time meant nothing. She kissed him and reminded him of their meeting arrangements, then they parted. He strode quickly through the busy shopping arcades, out the other side and along a quiet side street until he reached the Probate Office on William Street, a plain, brick building fronted by a wide run of steps upon which was assembled a collection of nettled men and women, exiled by the smoking ban.

  Morton headed through a small lobby area which fed a staircase and several key-padded doors to which the public were not permitted. He approached a tiny serving hatch, behind which were half-a-dozen suited workers floundering around an open-plan office, cooled by four industrial-sized fans. Nobody seemed in any particular hurry to do whatever jobs they had been charged with undertaking. Morton waited impatiently for someone to acknowledge him, as tiny molehills of sweat pushed to the surface of his forehead. He wiped his face and emitted a polite cough. Several sets of eyes glanced in his direction but only a woman who looked slightly crazed approached the hatch. She had a mop of tightly-permed, bleached-white hair and dark, squinty eyes framed by a bizarre pair of horn-rimmed glasses that could never, in the history of the world, ever have been considered fashionable.

  ‘Hi, I’d like to have a quick look at the probate indexes, please,’ Morton said with a courteous smile.

  She nodded and sighed. ‘Hang on.’ She disappeared from sight momentarily and then a door opened to Morton’s right.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, heading into the tiny room with a slight odour of must, where each wall was crammed with large leather-bound ledgers. It was at least ten degrees hotter in the stifling room than in the lobby area and Morton could feel the perspiration making a break for freedom down his back.

  ‘Have you been here before?’ the lady asked, leading him over to a solitary microfiche reader.

  ‘Yes, I have.’ He had been several times - it was a quick and free way of finding out if someone had left a will and, importantly, how much they’d bequeathed. It would only provide him with basic information – if he wanted more he would need to order a full copy of the will for five pounds.

  ‘Okay, so you know that wills 1858 to 1980 are on the shelves and 1981 onwards on microfiche?’ she asked, somewhat suspiciously, as if he were being tested. She pronounced fiche as fish. Microfish, like plankton.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Right then,’ she said, ‘I’ll leave you to it.’ Except she didn’t. Instead, she stood with her arms folded in the corner of the room, watching as Morton started up his laptop.

  When she saw that Morton was more than capable of switching on the reader all by himself, she sighed and returned to the office, sending a momentary welcome burst of cool air into the room. He picked up the thick folder of microfiches and selected the first of two fiches, covering wills administered in 2012.

  He slid the fiche under the glass slider and the minuscule white lettering on a dark blue background became instantly magnified. Shifting the plate around until he came to the letter C, Morton quickly located Coldrick. Rather unsurprisingly, James Coldrick was the sole entry for that surname.

  Coldrick, James of 15 Westminster Rise, Tenterden, Kent, died 3 January 2012, probate Brighton 18 March Not exceeding £780,000, 9851305366G

  Morton was stunned. He didn’t know what figure he was expecting to see but to discover that Peter Coldrick, living an austere wartime existence in his dreary council house had been sitting on more than three-quarters of a million pounds' inheritance when he died shocked him. Where the hell had his father got that kind of money from? The general labourers that he’d ever encountered in his genealogical work usually had a pittance at the end of their lives; James Coldrick conversely had a small fortune.

  The white-haired lady suddenly pulled open the door. ‘Found what you were looking for?’ she demanded. Morton didn’t want the woman to see what he was looking at and hurried to type up the entry.

  ‘Yes, thanks,’ he answered curtly. She moved into the room and stood behind him, her hot breath heavy on his nape.

  ‘Blimey, he did alright for himself, didn’t he?’ she muttered. ‘Did you want that printed?’

  ‘No,’ he snapped, hoping that his abruptness might make his feelings perfectly clear but no, she remained uncomfortably close as he saved the file, closed the lid of his laptop and switched off the microfiche reader.

  ‘All done?’ she said, sounding rather disappointed.

  ‘All done.’ Morton thanked her and hurried from the claustrophobic building.
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  Once outside, the sweat on his forehead instantly abated. He breathed deeply, grateful to be out of the stuffy office, and made his way down the steps. One of the smokers standing in front of him, a man in his forties, wiry and grubby looking with crew-cut blond hair, dropped his half-smoked cigarette to the floor and dragged a heavy black boot across it before ascending the steps two at a time. As he levelled with Morton, a box of cigarettes fell from his jacket pocket. Morton picked them up. ‘Excuse me, you’ve dropped your cigarettes.’

  The man stopped in his tracks and turned, allowing Morton a full view of his face; not the most aesthetically pleasing chap he’d ever clapped eyes on. A giant pink fleshy scar ran from his right eye almost to the corner of his mouth.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said tersely, snatching the box.

  ‘That’s okay,’ Morton said, mesmerised by the man’s magnificent scar. He wondered what kind of accident, operation or fight could have caused his face to open from eye to mouth. Morton watched as he disappeared inside the building.

  He looked at his watch – he had more than half an hour before he had to meet Juliette. He pictured her trying on a veritable mountain of clothing but not actually buying as much as a pair of knickers. Wrong size. Wrong colour. Wrong style. Wrong label. He never could work that out. Then again, there wasn’t an awful lot in the female psyche that he felt he did fully understand.

  Taking a leisurely saunter through the crowded North Lanes, Morton stopped occasionally to look at passing window displays of the tiny shops which adorned the rabbit warren of thin passageways. He paused at an antique shop specialising in war memorabilia and studied the items in the window. You never know what you might find in such places. The highlight of an extensive ten-week research job into one lady’s family history was his serendipitous locating of her grandfather’s First World War medals in a junk shop in Hastings Old Town. No such trinkets sprang out at him today.