Hiding the Past (The Forensic Genealogist series Book 1)

by Nathan Dylan Goodwin

  Morton moved the camera to the front of the house. ‘Christ!’ he exclaimed, as a black BMW X6 filled the eyepiece. It was the same car that had followed him and Juliette out of Brighton and it was parked here, on Daniel Dunk’s drive. This time he was able to focus on the number plates. ‘RDA 220,’ he said, repeatedly snapping the vehicle. The luxurious, lavish vehicle was a stark juxtaposition to the decaying, deprived surroundings.

  From the corner of his eye something moved. He swept the camera back over to the house as a thin wiry man slammed the front door shut and made his way to the BMW. The man kept his head down and, for the moment, hadn’t noticed the telephoto lens focused on him. Morton caught a rain-blurred profile shot and gasped. The frozen frame in the viewfinder revealed that the man sported a large scar running from his left eye down to the corner of his mouth. The Brighton Scar Face. Was he Daniel Dunk?

  The Brighton Scar Face started the BMW and Morton was suddenly faced with the possibility of coming face-to-face with him. He had no choice but to quickly swing the Mini onto the adjoining property and make his way up the concrete drive towards a white-washed, weather-boarded house, hoping desperately that the Brighton Scar Face was unaware that Morton had upgraded his mode of transport since their last drive-by meeting. Morton reached the house, killed the engine and slumped down in his seat, just in time before the BMW sped past.

  Seconds later and the BMW had disappeared into dense sheets of rain.

  With a long breath out, Morton sat back up and started to relax.

  His heart skipped a beat, as a shadow passed by and thumped hard on his window. He turned to see a hoary furrow-browed man wearing an oversized yellow poncho staring angrily into the car. Morton got his breath back, opened his window an inch and discreetly centrally locked the doors.

  ‘What do you want?’ the rheumy-eyed man demanded, revealing a gummy, toothless mouth.

  ‘I’m looking for Daniel Dunk,’ Morton answered politely. The old man eyed him suspiciously and Morton wondered if he was about to get an axe through his head. Were there any normal, sane people here?

  ‘That’s his place there,’ the man said, pointing to Smuggler’s Keep. Morton could see rage rising in the old man’s eyes. ‘But you knew that already, ‘cause I saw you pointing that thing at his house.’ The old man flicked an irate finger at the camera resting on the passenger’s seat. ‘What do you want here, I asked you?’

  Morton wasn’t about to hang around and have this conversation. He turned the ignition, flung the car into reverse and raced off the driveway, sending a plethora of small stones firing in all directions from under his tyres.

  The old man hurried down the drive, brandishing his fist in the air and shouting furiously. Morton caught the gist of the rant; he was about to phone the police.

  He reached the empty road and pushed the Mini to full pelt, quickly propelling Dungeness into the rear view mirror.

  Morton’s study resembled the Major Incident Room of a police station, which pleased him immensely. No previous job had ever required him to pin photos of men suspected of murder, arson and stalking to his cork board, which he had gleefully stripped of inconsequential rubbish as soon as he had returned from Dungeness. Gone were the archive opening hours, interesting snippets from magazines and reviews of books he might one day purchase. Now it was adorned with photos, certificates, photocopies, factoids and scraps paper connected by a veritable cat’s cradle of string and multi-coloured pins. At the centre of the board was a freshly printed photo of Daniel Dunk. Adjacent to the photo was William Dunk’s death certificate. The two men had loitered in the peripheral shadows of the Coldrick family for the past two decades. But why? Morton wondered.

  His mobile rang: Juliette. He’d been trying to reach her the moment he had left Dungeness but her phone had been switched off.

  ‘Is everything alright?’ she asked, a tinge of worry in her voice.

  ‘Yeah, I think so,’ Morton said vaguely.

  ‘I saw that I had twelve missed calls from you and I thought something must have happened.’ Morton could hear the concern in her voice abating as he told her about his morning. ‘Oh, I thought it was something serious. So, is that all you wanted?’

  He wondered if she was annoyed because she wanted it to be something serious. Super Juliette to the rescue.

  ‘I need a favour.’

  She sighed. ‘What?’

  ‘I need you to look up Daniel Dunk’s number plate; I don’t think it’s his car somehow. It might reveal who he’s working for.’ It didn’t take a great detective to work out that someone driving a fifty grand car wouldn’t live in a radioactive rundown shed in Kent’s dumping ground.

  Another sigh from Juliette. ‘Give me the number. I’ll see what I can do.’ Morton read out the licence plate from the photograph in front of him. Despite it being engrained in his memory, he wanted to be completely certain. Juliette repeated it back to him and then hung up.

  Having turned that line of enquiry over to Juliette, Morton switched his attention to his other lead: the copper box. He picked it up and turned it over in his hands. It was a very unremarkable box, being without pattern or decoration but for the intricate coat of arms emblazoned on the lid. Time had aged the copper to a dull, rust–brown. Tinges of oxidised light green filled the deepest of the carved ravines. He doubted it held monetary value but hoped it held value in progressing the Coldrick Case.

  Morton set the box down beside him, switched on Juliette’s laptop and ran a Google search on how to identify a coat of arms. He made his way through the first of 15,100,000 pages, adding and subtracting search criteria as he went, hoping magically to identify the arms. He learnt about shields, supporters, ordinaries, helms, coronets, compartments, and mantling but nothing specific enough just to tell him to whom the box belonged. The Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies in Canterbury kept appearing in his searches as an authority on the subject, so he decided to give them a call, naively hoping for an immediate, over-the-phone analysis. A pleasant-sounding lady asked him where he lived and told him that the best thing to do would be to bring the item in and they would research it for him. Morton really didn’t want to venture back out into the cold and rain, he much preferred the idea of sitting with a bucket of coffee, staring glibly at his new Coldrick Case Incident Wall, as he had named it. He’d also hoped that Juliette would have called back by now. How long did it take to tap a bunch of letters and numbers into a computer?

  He took one last look at the Coldrick Case Incident Wall and set out for Canterbury.

  He hadn’t been to Canterbury for some time. The last time was to visit their archives, housed rather superiorly in a section of the Cathedral. Beat that, Miss Latimer, in your tiny flint shed. He still couldn’t quite grasp the idea of her as a Deidre.

  If it had been anything resembling a nice day, he might have taken the time to wander around the Cathedral. He had a vague recollection of a primary school visit in the dim, dark days of his childhood. All he could remember from the day-trip was colouring in a picture of a stained glass window and his travel-sick friend, Clive’s vomit washing up and down the aisle of the coach all the way home.

  By some strange miracle, Morton found a parking spot within half a mile of the Institute and, clutching his briefcase in one hand and a large golfing umbrella in the other, hurried as fast as he could to the building.

  The Institute, a modest, medieval building, was on Northgate, just within the city walls. Morton wasn’t sure whom he had been expecting when he got there, but, as he crossed the threshold into the air-conditioned building, he was greeted by a sweaty, rotund, black-bearded man in his mid-forties whose name badge announced him as Dr Garlick, which Morton thought an appropriate name for a man who bore a strong resemblance to a garlic bulb.

  Dr Garlick took Morton into a small side office with only a tiny, latticed window for light. The walls were bursting at the seams with heavy, disorganised books and files. Dr Garlick sat behind a cluttered oak desk, swit
ched on a powerful desk lamp and placed a pair of glasses on his nose, looking expectantly at Morton’s briefcase. Morton carefully pulled the copper box out and watched as Dr Garlick’s eyes lit up.

  ‘What a marvellous little artefact!’ he said animatedly, as he took the box from Morton and turned it over in his hands.

  ‘Is it?’ Morton said, still finding it quite unremarkable.

  ‘Oh yes. Unusual. It’ll take a bit of investigation though. Can you leave it with me?’ Dr Garlick asked, passing the back of his hand over his sweaty forehead.

  Morton had a flash of paranoia. What if he’s working in cahoots with the Dunk family too? He reasoned that he couldn’t distrust everyone he came into contact with or the case would never progress. ‘Fine,’ he said, before adding, ‘just don’t let that copper box leave this building with anyone other than me.’

  Dr Garlick seemed slightly taken aback but nodded in agreement. ‘Of course, of course.’

  The rain had faded into a misty drizzle as Morton headed back towards his car, a much lesser sense of urgency in his stride. He imagined bounding into the police station and handing a great wodge of paperwork to PC Glen Jones and WPC Alison Hawk. Although, actually, he would need to speak to someone in much higher authority about it. ‘Entirely circumstantial,’ WPC Alison Hawk would say. ‘Do you actually have any concrete evidence that Daniel Dunk is responsible for the death of Mary Coldrick, Mr Farrier?’ Morton would become one of those joke characters in television police dramas that return week after week with increasingly bizarre claims. Aliens abducted my cat. My grandmother has turned into a blue tit. No, he couldn’t go to the police until he had something – anything - solid.

  His mobile ringing jarred him from his wandering thoughts. He hoped that it was Juliette calling with the name of the car owner, but it was Soraya’s name that flashed onscreen.

  ‘Hi, Soraya.’

  ‘Thursday, two p.m.,’ she said, as if he should know what that meant.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Peter’s funeral. Thursday, two p.m.’

  ‘Oh. Okay.’

  ‘Morton, could you do me a favour?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Would you do a reading?’ she asked, in such a light-hearted way that it sounded like she was organising a wedding or asking him to grab some bread from the supermarket on his way home. A reading at Peter Coldrick’s funeral? He hadn’t even made up his mind about whether or not he was even going to the funeral. He’d only known the guy two minutes. Soraya must have sensed his reluctance. ‘It’s just that I’m having trouble rounding people up. He wasn’t the most sociable of people and I don’t need to tell you about the situation on the family front.’

  ‘Er…well, I hardly knew him really. It was just –’

  ‘Just a short piece will be fine,’ Soraya interjected. ‘It doesn’t need to be anything too fancy.’

  ‘What do you want me to read?’ he answered, hoping that his lack of enthusiasm might make her change her mind.

  ‘I’ll leave that up to you. Can I count you in?’

  ‘Yes,’ he heard himself saying.

  ‘Brilliant, thank you,’ Soraya said, ending the call.

  Marvellous. An unknown reading at the funeral of a murdered man he met one week ago. Life just couldn’t get any better.

  Morton had been adding more string pathways to his Coldrick Case Incident Wall when he heard Juliette’s car pull up outside. He hurried down to the kitchen and poured two generous glasses of red wine and sat patiently in the lounge, anticipating her arrival with news of the registration plate. He heard her kick off her boots and trudge steadily up the stairs.

  ‘What a day,’ Juliette groaned, pecking Morton on the lips and reaching for the proffered wine. She collapsed into the sofa and sighed heavily. ‘Sometimes you know, I just hate the police. Do you know what I had to do today?’

  Morton shook his head, hoping that it would be a very short story.

  She took a gulp of red wine. ‘I was only sent out - on foot - on a three-mile walk to see an old man who called in a suspected burglary. Fine, whatever. So, I get my notebook out and start writing it all down – he arrived home ten o’clock yesterday morning having been into town to collect his pension, pay the bills, blah blah blah and when he gets home, he finds his house smelling of excrement – his word – and since he’d only urinated the whole day, somebody must have broken in and used his toilet.’

  Morton laughed, much to Juliette’s consternation. ‘Come on, it is pretty funny.’

  ‘So I asked if anything was taken. No. Was anything damaged? No. Any sign of forced entry? No. Anything else that would indicate a burglary? No. Just that his house smelt of excrement.’

  ‘And did it?’

  ‘Uh-huh, big time.’ Morton laughed again. ‘Anyway, I walk the three-mile trek back to find half the station doubled over in hysterics. Apparently, Mr Pepperdene is a frequent waster of police time. So, now I know. It’s really not that funny, Morton.’

  ‘Oh, I beg to differ.’

  ‘So anyway, investigating the case of the phantom crapper meant I didn’t get time to look up that number plate for you, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Really?’ Morton said, suddenly losing his grin.

  ‘I’ll do it tomorrow but it isn’t easy, you know; I shouldn’t even be accessing those records.’

  ‘I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important,’ Morton said, deliberately not attempting to disguise his disappointment.

  ‘What about you, how was your day?’ Juliette asked, seemingly oblivious to his displeasure. She tucked herself into a foetal position beside him.

  Morton rolled his eyes as the memory of the day flashed before him. ‘After I got back from Dungeness I had a call from Soraya – she only bloody wants me to do a reading at Coldrick’s funeral on Thursday. Can you imagine? I don’t even want to go, never mind read at it.’

  ‘Now it’s my turn to laugh,’ she said with a grin. ‘What have you got to read?’

  ‘That’s part of the problem: she said it was up to me and I haven’t got a clue.’

  ‘If it’s up to you then just stick your finger in the Bible and plump for the nearest moral tale. Nobody listens at a funeral anyway, they’re all too wrapped up in grief to care.’

  ‘We don’t even own a Bible,’ Morton answered, taking a swig from his wine. He considered himself to be a born-again atheist, having been raised by devout Methodists, then, having toyed with all manner of religions at university, he realised that they were equally unappealing. He’d reached the conclusion that religion and oil were responsible for at least ninety percent of the world’s wars. If he were forced to accept a religion, he thought that he would be a pagan. Earth, nature and all that.

  ‘Isn’t Yea though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death a funeral reading?’ Juliette asked. ‘Or is that for the last rights? The last funeral I went to was a Buddhist’s: Gregorian chanting, swinging incense and shaven-headed women in monk’s robes. Very odd.’

  ‘Well thanks for that, that’s really helpful.’

  ‘Don’t get so het up about it, Morton.’ Juliette sat up to face him. ‘Just Google ‘funeral readings.’ There must be something like funeralreadingsonline.com.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Morton answered doubtfully. Two days to plan a reading. Great. He reached for the remote control, ready to switch on the television and switch off from the Coldrick Case.

  Chapter Ten

  Wednesday

  Morton woke midway through a nightmare. Dr Garlick was offering him the copper box, telling him that it was a ‘most unexpected and exciting story,’ but, just as Morton went to take it, Dr Garlick inexplicably morphed into Daniel Dunk who cackled maniacally like The Joker from Batman. Then he disappeared. Just like that.

  He opened his eyes and it took a good few seconds for his brain to register that he was slumped in a hard plastic chair in the waiting room of the Conquest Hospital in Hastings. Nurses, doctors and visitors were milling about, ignoring him
, as if he were just another part of the complexities of the A&E department. He supposed he was really. He felt awful and craved a hefty dose of caffeine. The small waiting room comprised a dozen similar blue plastic chairs, an out-of-order pay-phone and an ancient-looking hot drinks vending machine. There was no option for an extra shot of caffeine, so Morton chose a coffee with two sugars and stared at the posters on the wall, whilst the machine proceeded to fill a plastic cup with cheap instant coffee.

  He wondered how his father was getting on with the plethora of tests the doctors were running on him. Morton had taken the phone call at four a.m. and, like all middle-of-the-night calls, it had set his heart pounding before the person at the other end had even spoken the words ‘suspected heart attack’. Juliette immediately offered to drive them both straight to the hospital but Morton, despite his estranged relationship with his father, knew that he needed to get there quickly – not at Juliette’s law-abiding speed. He’d hurriedly pulled on whatever clothes first came to hand and dashed to the hospital, triggering enough speed cameras en route to lose his licence. He was sure, though, that if it ever reached court, he could cite mitigating circumstances. He’d arrived at the hospital and ignored the pay-and-display car park signs, running into A&E where he found his father’s washed-out body rigged up to more machines, drips and monitors than Morton thought his clogged veins could possibly cope with.

  The coffee was beginning to have an effect, beginning to bring Morton back to some semblance of life. If only it were that simple for his father. What time was it? Morton looked around for a clock, or even a window to give some indication of the time of day, but couldn’t find either. He pulled out his iPhone. Almost nine thirty. Surely there would be an update on his father now. He carried the drink over to the nurses' station, where two young women were in mid-conversation about last night’s Coronation Street. He waited for them to notice him and when they didn’t, he interrupted. ‘I’m sure it was a really life-changing episode for you both, but could you kindly deal with the more trivial matter of my almost-dead father, if you don’t mind.’ It was too harsh and he regretted saying it straight away. The nurses gave each other an exasperated look.