Hiding the Past (The Forensic Genealogist series Book 1)

by Nathan Dylan Goodwin

  ‘Go, Jeremy, it’s fine. I can wait here,’ Morton interrupted.

  Jeremy covered the handset. ‘No, I’d rather wait here.’

  ‘Jeremy, he’s not going anywhere and I’ve got your mobile number. Go out. Have fun.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Sure.’

  It felt like he’d been alone in the waiting room for several hours before a young, female nurse appeared in the waiting room with a smile on her face. Morton hoped she wasn’t one of those people with that condition where they smiled after bad news. His best friend at university, Jon, had burst into hysterical laughter when he was told that his parents had been killed in a coach crash in Switzerland. He literally couldn’t stop smiling all day long and Morton wondered if he was secretly pleased that his parents were dead. Morton only realised that wasn’t the case when Jon was incarcerated in a mental hospital the following day.

  ‘Okay, so the operation went very well. It took a bit longer than we would have liked,’ the nurse said and Morton glanced at the clock. Jeremy had been told it would take around three hours. His father had been operated on for four and a half hours. ‘We’ve moved him to ICU, which is standard procedure after major surgery like this. You can see him but he won’t come round from the anaesthetic for some time.’

  Morton followed the nurse into ICU. He found his father, mouth agape and milky eyes half-opened so that he resembled the living dead. He was hooked up to an even greater quantity of beeping and flashing machines than before.

  He stood watching his father’s chest rise and fall mechanically beneath the off-white crust of bandages strapped to his torso. Wherever his father was right now in the universe, his body looked peaceful. There was still a large part of Morton that believed his father would never recover, but he realised for the first time standing there that he wanted him to pull through; he wanted his father to live.

  ‘You can go in and see him,’ the nurse said.

  Morton sat down beside his father and tentatively said hello. He spoke quietly because it felt odd talking to someone who you knew wouldn’t respond. They always said on Casualty that the person could hear you and that familiar voices might help them to recover. That was all well and good on television, but the reality of sitting within earshot of the nurse whilst he spoke to an inanimate object left him feeling rather stupid.

  He gently picked up his father’s gelid, bloodless hand. A large black bruise splayed out from the entry point of the IV drip in his left hand. His skin had turned into thin tea-stained paper, sagging into the hollows of his cheeks and eye sockets. Morton looked pitifully at the frail man who had raised him. Despite everything, he still couldn’t quite tally the word father with his emotions; it was like there was a link missing somewhere in the chain. Could that link be nothing more than a separate DNA structure? Or was there more to it than that? His father’s Victorian style of child-rearing couldn’t have helped matters, but then it had done nothing to damage the relationship between him and Jeremy. If anything was going to damage their father-son bond, then it would be Jeremy’s sexuality. Morton just couldn’t see his father, a man who frowned upon sex before marriage, sitting at the breakfast table eating his daily fry-up whilst a half-naked Australian man draped himself over Jeremy.

  ‘What did you have to tell me?’ Morton asked softly. He glanced over at the nurse, who was either oblivious to him, or she was acting as though she was. She must see this kind of thing all the time, Morton reasoned. Just talk, he told himself, but the words wouldn’t come. If he was going to talk to an inert object, then there was no point in asking questions and waiting for a reply; he just had to speak.

  He chose to talk to his lifeless father about when his mother died, which he thought, from a psychological point of view, was very revealing. Of all the subjects, in all the world that he could have chosen to talk about, he chose what he considered to be the defining moment of his life. The point where it all changed. When everything he had known was turned upside down. A moment in history that had never been discussed.

  After his father had told him that he was adopted, Morton shrank inside a cocooned version of himself, perfunctorily carrying on with life as if nothing had ever happened. Over the years he had wondered at the timing of the revelation. Had his father deliberately dropped the hit-and-run statement into the emotional turmoil of his mother’s death, knowing that it would provide a convenient smokescreen? He thought he could remember his father muttering something about wanting to tell him before, but the hours that followed boiled down to a handful of crystal-clear words; the rest a blur. There followed brief empty conversations with his father, where the topic was skirted around like a decaying animal in the road. That slowly-rotting carcass was his relationship with his father and his mother’s tarnished memory. It took him two years to summon the courage to ask his father the question. It was on his return home from the first term at university and Morton had found that his father had, for the first time since his wife’s death, lavished the house in Christmas decorations and was bounding around it with renewed zeal. Morton had barely set down his bags when he decided to snatch the presented opportunity of festive cheer and pose the question as to who his real parents were. He should have anticipated his father’s reaction. A long agonising silence, in which Morton hoped that his father’s clenching jaw was simply concentration, was followed by the single longest diatribe Morton had ever heard from his father’s lips. Morton’s scheduled two-week break came to a sharp end after a record hour and a quarter before he caught the train to Jon’s house and spent a peaceful happy Christmas with his family. When he had returned home the following summer, Morton found that his bedroom had been stripped of everything and turned into a guest-room. ‘Well, after you absconded at Christmas, we didn’t think you were coming home again,’ his father said. And so he resided in the guest-room for the duration of the summer, spending as little time as possible there. His father ended the summer holidays by informing him that, in his opinion, university had turned him into a sulky introvert and maybe it hadn’t been a good idea to go there after all. Morton’s response, which he knew retrospectively to have been spiteful, was to ask who his real father was. Jeremy then waded into the argument and informed Morton that he’d broken his father’s heart and the subject was never to be raised again. And it wasn’t.

  But now his father had had his heart repaired.

  Maybe it was time to ask the question again.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Tuesday

  For the first time since he had been attacked, Morton wasn’t woken by the pain from the lump on his head. This morning he was woken by the welcome aroma of coffee. Good quality strong filter coffee, wafting up to his bedroom. Juliette was already up. He heard her laughing at something downstairs and he sat up in bed to listen. Was she on the phone? No, she was talking to Jeremy and Guy, who’d evidently stayed the night again. Christ, Morton thought, he really was turning into his father, casting judgements on his brother’s relationship.

  A round of goodbyes downstairs was followed by the closing of the front door. Morton looked at the alarm clock: nine fifty-five. There was just enough time to grab a bite to eat, take a shower and catch up with Juliette before she went off to work. He was curious to know how her first day had gone yesterday. He suspected either brilliantly or terribly. There was rarely a grey middle-ground where Juliette was concerned. She’d been sound asleep by the time he’d returned from the hospital last night; once he’d begun pouring out thirty-nine years of angst at his father, it was hard to stop. It flowed out of him like an unstoppable reservoir of anguish, whose dam had been unceremoniously ruptured. He’d quickly become oblivious to the nursing staff, the outpouring continuing until he was entirely emotionally drained. His reservoir was empty and he felt utter relief at having said everything he’d ever wanted to say to his unconscious father. Then he left the hospital.

  Morton climbed out of bed, unable to ignore the coffee aroma any longer. Juliette was in the kitche
n in her work uniform, sipping a drink. ‘Morning,’ she said cheerfully. ‘You were late at the hospital last night.’

  ‘I decided to make use of the fact the old man couldn’t answer me back, so I told him everything I’ve ever felt. Ever,’ he replied, pouring himself a coffee. ‘He obviously agreed with me because he didn’t argue back.’

  Juliette smiled. ‘How is he? How did the operation go?’

  ‘Fine, as well as can be expected. He’ll be in ITU for a while then he’ll move to a regular ward,’ Morton said. He couldn’t quite bring himself to say the next part, ‘and then home’, because that would mean he and Juliette would have to face up to the reality of being homeless. It was funny, they’d not once talked about getting a new place, they’d just replaced some clothes and moved in to his father’s house, as if that was the most natural thing to do in the world. It was like they were flying the nest but in reverse. He changed the subject. ‘How was your first day back at work?’

  Juliette raised her eyebrows in a ‘there’s a story’ kind of way. ‘Suspiciously fantastic,’ she said. ‘Usually the Chief doesn’t have much time for the PCSOs, but he was totally OTT with me, asking me how I was and actually listening to my answer, rather than nodding and wandering off in his own little world. Oh, and they split me and Dan, my usual partner up, and paired me with straight-laced Roger who does everything exactly by the book. The bosses hate him, but they know he wouldn’t dare put a foot wrong.’

  ‘Unless you corrupt him’ Morton said.

  ‘Believe me, straight-laced Roger is incorruptible.’

  ‘So nothing new with the Coldrick Case then?’

  ‘Not that I’ve been told, no, but I’ll keep my ear to the ground. I could hardly log on and start fishing on my first day back. Hopefully I’ll see someone involved in the investigation later on. What have you got planned for today, then? Anymore illegal activities?’

  ‘Hopefully not. I’m meeting Dr Baumgartner for the results.’

  Juliette nodded but Morton could tell she didn’t have the foggiest which results he was talking about.

  The train from Hastings station took an hour and thirty-two minutes to reach Charing Cross. Morton had spent the journey on his iPhone, re-examining photos and documents from the Coldrick Case, seeing if there was anything he had missed or overlooked. If Dr Baumgartner had nothing with the DNA or copper box, he was well and truly stumped. No further leads to pursue. The outcome of the case depended on this meeting. Morton marched purposefully along Northumberland Street, the gold lettering of the pub name coming into view. As he approached the pub, he began to worry. What if Dr Baumgartner had been mugged? Or had his hotel room ransacked? Or worse? The people working for the Windsor-Sackvilles had proven that they would stop at nothing to prevent him from discovering the truth. He opened the door and glanced around. There was no sign of him. Morton looked at his watch: they were due to have met five minutes ago. Should he be worried? It was only five minutes, after all.

  The barman looked across at him. ‘Can I help you, mate?’

  ‘There haven’t been any messages left for Morton Farrier, have there?’

  The barman shook his head. ‘No, mate, sorry.’ Morton’s mind went into overdrive, recreating all manner of possible fates that could have consumed his former university lecturer. How could he have been so stupid as to drag him into all this mess? It was bad enough that Jeremy and Juliette were involved. He looked at his watch again – another two minutes had passed. A month ago Morton wouldn’t have thought twice about ordering the drinks, grabbing a table and waiting patiently. Now his heart was racing faster than if he’d just sprinted to the pub. It was ridiculous, but this was what the Coldrick Case had done to him; reduced him to a nervous wreck. He thought back over his previous jobs, scanning for a single hint of danger among them. He came up with nothing more than a heated row with a parking attendant after over-running at Eastbourne Library by three minutes. Perilous indeed.

  ‘Morton!’ It was Dr Baumgartner, standing in the doorway looking completely unfazed, unmugged, and undead. ‘Not late am I?’ his chirpy voiced boomed across the room as he extended his hand to Morton.

  ‘No, you’re not late,’ Morton said with a wry smile, shaking the extended hand. ‘Beer?’

  ‘Oh yes, that would be smashing. Same as last time.’

  Morton carried two pints over to the table that Dr Baumgartner had chosen. They exchanged pleasantries about Dr Baumgartner’s hotel and Morton’s now marble-sized lump before Dr Baumgartner cut straight down to business. ‘Right, the DNA test,’ he said, with a gentle tug of his grey beard. ‘It came back this morning and the chances of your boy Finlay and old Windsor-Sackville sharing a common ancestor within the last forty-thousand years are somewhere in the region of a billion to one.’

  Morton nodded. The firm, concrete news that the Windsor-Sackvilles and the Coldricks were completely unrelated hit him hard, knocking him back to square one. Yet deep down, he had known it all along; his gut reaction, his ‘natural genealogical instinct’ had told him so.

  ‘In layman’s terms,’ Dr Baumgartner simplified, ‘not that a forensic genealogist is in any way a layman, but they are quite frankly genetic chalk and cheese. All forty-three markers we tested came back negative.’ He must have seen something like disappointment on Morton’s face as he felt the need to add, ‘sorry.’

  ‘No, it’s fine,’ Morton said, trying his damndest to stop his mind going into free-fall. All of that work for nothing. It was too late; his thoughts exploded in a hundred directions as he considered all that he’d done and had done to him was in vain. ‘Well, that’s it then. I’ve nowhere else to take it.’

  ‘Morton, that’s not what I expect from a first-class student like you,’ Dr Baumgartner said, his scraggy eyebrows pulled tight into a grimace. He was being deadly serious.

  ‘But that’s it, there’s nowhere else to go.’

  ‘Don’t you want to know about these before you throw in the towel so hastily?’ Dr Baumgartner said, placing the copper box on the table. ‘Very interesting indeed.’

  Morton sat up, ready to listen.

  Dr Baumgartner placed the headshot photograph of James Coldrick’s mother on the table between them and pulled out a large, heavyweight magnifying glass. The exact same one he’d used during his time lecturing at university. He placed the magnifying glass on the photo and raised his eyebrows suggestively to Morton, just like he used to at university. Dr Baumgartner had never been a fan of spoon-feeding his students. If they didn’t have the skills to find the answers for themselves then they were in the wrong field. Simple as that. Morton leant forwards and studied the image. He’d looked at it over and over again – the last time just twenty minutes ago on the train here. There was nothing new to see, no reflection in her eyes, nothing at all in the background. It simply was a photograph of her head and shoulders. She wore small gold studs in her ears and some kind of necklace. What had he missed? Maybe nothing, maybe this was a bizarre lesson in learning when to admit defeat. No, that really wasn’t Dr Baumgartner’s style at all. There was no such thing as defeat in his book. Plus, his smug face made it clear that he knew something. Morton looked up for further guidance, another clue.

  ‘Why do you think the photo is cut like that?’ Dr Baumgartner asked. ‘The sides and top are neatly trimmed equidistanced around the woman’s head, yet the bottom slopes sharply from left to right. What has the person who cut this photo tried to remove?’

  God, it really was like being back in his classroom. ‘Her clothes?’

  ‘Exactly! She was wearing something that would identify her immediately, but whoever cut this picture left us one very large clue around her neck.’

  Morton studied the photograph. What was he not getting? A simple gold chain culminated in a pendant of some kind, ninety per cent of which was not in the photo. Only three narrow bars with rounded edges stacked one above the other, slightly offset remained. ‘A bird’s wingtip?’ Morton ventured uncertainly.r />
  ‘Yes!’ Dr Baumgartner screeched loudly. ‘Any particular bird?’

  ‘Eagle?’ Morton guessed, still not getting Dr Baumgartner’s excitement.

  It all became clear when Dr Baumgartner slid a piece of paper across the table. Morton unfolded it and was stunned.

  ‘Christ.’

  ‘Still want to give in?’

  ‘No.’

  It felt like he’d undergone a transformation, like he was a fully-subscribed, born-again genealogist. Make that a born-again forensic genealogist. The distinction was important. ‘Deidre, how are you today?’ Morton had greeted brashly as he burst whirlwind-like into East Sussex Archives. ‘These are literally flying from your shelves,’ he said emphatically, shoving a great stack of his business cards into the holder made vacant since his previous visit. Evidently Morton’s greeting was like a tranquilliser to her cold black heart because she stared, dumbstruck at him, unable to lance him with an icy jab. He scribbled a high-speed entry in the admissions book and bounced up the stairs into the search room. He had wondered what he would say if he were confronted by Max Fairbrother. He still held a great mistrust for the man and was sure that he hadn’t told him everything he knew. As it turned out, it didn’t matter; Max was, according to Quiet Brian, currently enjoying two weeks' leave in Florence. A fortnight in southern Italy sounded like the most perfect post-Coldrick Case antidote Morton could think of. He’d reclassified the Coldrick job back up to the Coldrick Case in light of the evidence found dangling around James Coldrick’s mother’s neck. ‘The Reichsadler,’ Dr Baumgartner had told him, having handed him an A4 printout of the full pendant. The bird’s wingtip, the only part visible in the photograph, belonged to an eagle clutching a wreath of oak leaves, inside of which was a large, unequivocal swastika. James Coldrick’s mother was wearing the Nazi party emblem around her neck. In Britain. During the peak of World War Two. The Coldrick Case had suddenly taken a giant step forward into the unknown. Dr Baumgartner had passed Morton the phone number of one Professor Geoffrey Daniels, who worked at the National Archives of Berlin and whose field of expertise was Germany and the Second World War, just in case he needed it.