Hiding the Past (The Forensic Genealogist series Book 1)

by Nathan Dylan Goodwin

  Morton’s mobile suddenly sounded loudly from his pocket. ‘Hello,’ he answered, hoping that the voice on the other end was calling with good news.

  ‘Morton?’ Professor Geoffrey Daniels asked in a gruff, baritone voice.

  ‘Yup, speaking.’

  ‘Have you checked your emails yet?’

  ‘No, not today, why’s that then?’

  ‘I’ve found Marlene Koldrich’s birth certificate and have emailed you a translation.’

  ‘Oh, brilliant, that’s fantastic,’ Morton answered, wondering what the email could contain that required a follow-up phone call. He moved into the kitchen and switched on his laptop.

  ‘It’s fairly run-of-the-mill stuff,’ he quantified, instantly deflating Morton’s expectations of a grand discovery. ‘The usual name of parents and address.’

  ‘Okay,’ Morton said, hearing in the Professor’s intonation that there was a caveat looming. ‘I’m just looking at my emails now.’

  There was a pregnant pause as he clicked on his emails and, at the top of the email inbox, found the tantalising gold unopened envelope beside the name Geoffrey Daniels. He opened the message and read the brief contents: Morton, still on trail, but found this which you might be interested in. Regards, Geoffrey. Below his email was a translation of Marlene’s birth certificate.

  Marlene, the daughter of Eberhard and Gaelle Koldrich, born 18 November 1913, Markgrafenstrasse 5, Berlin

  ‘Eberhard and Gaelle Koldrich,’ Morton said, more for his own benefit than the Professor’s.

  ‘Yes, which is why I’m calling. Eberhard Koldrich – ever heard of him?’

  Morton said the name repeatedly in his mind: definitely no entries in his brain under that name. ‘No, should I have heard of him then?’

  ‘Depends on your knowledge of World War Two; I understood from Gerald Baumgartner that you were a first class student.’

  ‘Apparently not.’

  The Professor dropped his oblique indictment and continued. ‘Eberhard Koldrich was a high-ranking member of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. One of his main wartime tasks was the conversion of influential British aristocrats who might be sympathetic to a peace treaty with Germany, effectively allowing the Nazis free rein in occupied Europe.’

  ‘Kind of like the Duke of Hamilton meeting Rudolf Hess in 1941?’ Morton said, if only to prove that he did actually have some depth of historical knowledge.

  ‘Something like that, yes, only more discreet and more organised. I've done a lot of research into him and his group over the years. Eberhard Koldrich was responsible for sending over a surprising number of young men and women to make political unions with important British families.’

  Finlay’s great, great grandfather was a top Nazi. Morton wondered when the best time would be to break that particular piece of news to Soraya. ‘And Marlene was one of those women? Sent to link up with the Windsor-Sackvilles?’

  ‘I've always presumed Eberhard's daughter was involved but she disappeared without trace. Looks like you might have found her. The fact that the Regional Advisory Committee released her a week after being deemed internable suggests that some higher authority pulled some strings.’

  ‘Frederick Windsor-Sackville?’

  ‘That would need evidence, my dear boy.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Morton concurred. He thought about the copper box being created for a marriage between David Windsor-Sackville and an unknown person. ‘Do you know if the Koldrichs had a family crest?’

  ‘Yes, they did.’

  ‘Any chance you could email me a copy of it?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Thank you. Do you know what happened to Eberhard and Gaelle?’

  ‘He was executed at Nuremberg in 1945, Gaelle died in 1962. Marlene was their only child, so the family line has ended.’

  Morton was about to explain that the family name lived on in a new, anglicised form but at that moment the front door banged shut and Juliette casually strolled into the kitchen. She had that characteristic look in her eyes that spoke of having something to say. Everyone had something to say to Morton at the moment, yet nothing that seemed to make any sense. He tried to recall a single moment in his life that was as confusing, personally and professionally, as the last two weeks. Nothing even came close. Morton thanked the Professor and hung up. He would send a follow-up email to him once the case was closed.

  ‘Good day?’ he asked Juliette.

  She leant on the worktop and stared out into the garden. ‘Curious,’ she answered cryptically. He hoped that her curious day had something to do with his parentage. Perhaps she had the name of his father. ‘Just after I spoke to you on the phone, the door opened in the basement and in walked Olivia Walker.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what I thought. According to the schedule, I was telling eight-year-olds not to wander off with strangers and there I was actually rooting around in semi-darkness among closed case files. But Miss Walker didn’t say a word about it. She said she’d looked at my application for the police force last year and couldn’t fathom why I’d been turned down.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  Juliette shrugged. ‘Not a lot I could say really. She implied that if I were to apply again it’d pretty well be guaranteed. The whole time she was eyeballing the files I was looking at.’

  ‘Could she have known what you were looking at?’

  ‘No, no way. I didn’t find anything. I’m sorry, Morton, but we’re going to need more to go on to find out who your dad is.’

  ‘I’m still not sure that I need to know anything beyond that he was a rapist.’

  Juliette filled the kettle and turned to face him. ‘So, are you going to tell me where you disappeared off to in the early hours this morning?’

  So he told her. Everything.

  ‘That was quite possibly the most stupid thing you’ve done since – oh, let me see, you broke into Charingsby,’ she said. ‘What’s got into you lately? You’ve broken the law more times in the last two weeks than in the entire time I’ve known you.’

  She had a point. But his crimes were fairly pathetic and piffling, all things considered. It barely even registered as a felony to walk into an open house and scrape some dandruff into a bag. In Juliette’s eyes, though, a crime was a crime.

  He suddenly remembered the memory of the lipstick mark on the wineglass in Dunk’s house and what Guy had said about Daniel Dunk having a wife or girlfriend who had once worked at Charingsby. He turned back to his laptop, ignoring Juliette’s admonishing glare.

  He opened up Ancestry and ran an online marriage search for Daniel Dunk. There was only one possibility:

  Daniel Dunk. May 2005. Hastings and Rother. Vol. 456. Page 100. Ent. C22.

  Morton clicked the ‘Find Spouse’ button.

  ‘Shit,’ Morton said.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Thursday

  It was the endgame. Morton couldn’t help but lie in bed, conjuring up grandiose descriptions for how the day would pan out. He’d had so little sleep and when his eyes did finally succumb to the acute tiredness weighing down his body, he dreamt of today. This time tomorrow it would all be over, he hoped, as he stared fixedly at the stain on the ceiling, as if it might generate further inspiration for the conclusion to the Coldrick Case. Not that he needed inspiration; he had a plan and it was almost time to put it into effect. He glanced over at the red digital clock display: 2.04 a.m. There seemed hardly any point trying to go back to sleep for fifty-six minutes.

  There was a noise. A repetitive sound that Morton couldn’t place in his dream. What was it? A plague of killer bees? No. He sat up in bed and opened his eyes. It was the heart-stopping shriek of the alarm. He stumbled out of bed like a new-born giraffe and whacked the stop button.

  ‘You’re really going through with this…’ Juliette’s croaky voice mumbled from under the duvet.

  ‘Absolutely,’ Morton answered, surprising himself at just how agile he
felt on so little sleep. It had to be the adrenalin which had begun circulating his veins the moment the alarm sounded.

  ‘Go and wake the boys, then,’ Juliette said, barely managing to lift her head from the pillow.

  Morton went to wake the boys, as they were now regularly being called. It was an appellation that rendered them permanently youthful, which he supposed they still were. Unlike him. Old and crotchety.

  He gently knocked, then pushed open the door. ‘Morning!’ he said brightly, as though he was waking a pair of six-year-olds. Jeremy and Guy were spooned tightly together, sleeping soundly. His topless brother and his topless brother’s topless boyfriend. It almost seemed a shame to wake the boys. The sight of them evoked a strange, envy-tinged parental pride in him. It was good to see Jeremy so comfortable with himself. Morton would be mortified if his father walked in to see him and Juliette spooning. Was he uptight? He was fairly sure that he was. He needed to relax. ‘It’s time to get up, boys,’ he said a little louder.

  Finally Jeremy stirred. ‘Oh crap,’ he muttered, as the reality of the day dawned on him. His return to Cyprus was looming. He leaned over and planted a tender kiss on Guy’s forehead. ‘Time to get up.’

  ‘I’ll see you downstairs,’ Morton said, making a hasty retreat on the basis that if they were topless they were probably also bottomless, and that wasn’t a sight he wanted to see at three in the morning.

  It wasn’t too long before Morton was joined in the kitchen by his three weary accomplices. He wondered how he managed to look so damn rough in the mornings when Guy and Jeremy managed to effortlessly appear like they’d just stepped out of the Next catalogue; ripped jeans, fashionable cardigans and ruffled, out-of-bed hair. But their attire didn’t manage to disguise their deep-seated reservations about the plan that he’d cooked up last night. They were quite right: of course there were far too many ifs, buts and maybes attached to his plan but he had to give it a go. He was wearing suitably dark clothing and had repacked the breaking-and-entering rucksack that he’d almost used to get into Dunk’s house yesterday.

  Juliette, Jeremy and Guy stared blankly in various directions around the kitchen while Morton rehearsed, with military precision, exactly how things were going to happen.

  ‘Since I’ll be thirty thousand feet in the air when this ridiculous thing unfolds, can I skip this part and make a drink, please?’ Jeremy asked.

  Morton acceded with a nod of his head and continued explaining the plan. He asked if they had any questions but there were none. For Morton and Guy, it was time to say goodbye to Jeremy until he was next granted leave to come home.

  ‘Right,’ Morton said, breaking a silence that was close to becoming uncomfortable. It was weird, in the last few days Morton had learned so much about so many things, yet what he most cherished was discovering that he actually liked, no loved his brother/cousin, and now here he was about to disappear off with the possibility of not returning for at least six months and an even greater possibility of being posted to Afghanistan. How could Morton put everything he felt into something that even attempted to summarise his feelings? He couldn’t.

  The silence in the pre-dawn kitchen tipped over into the realm of discomfort as Juliette and Guy began to shift awkwardly. Juliette even resorted to a close inspection of her fingernails, which was something in itself. Morton had never known her give a crap about her nails a single day that he’d known her. It was just too fussy, too girly. He knew that he needed to be the one to break the stalemate but the words wouldn’t come, they were stuck somewhere in his larynx, refusing to accept the fact that all was well between the two brothers. Instead of speaking, Morton opened his arms and drew Jeremy into a long embrace that he hoped would impart everything he needed to say. As he held Jeremy, a tear escaped down his cheek.

  ‘Take care,’ the pair of them said simultaneously.

  The car radio blasted out a dull documentary about women in Uganda when Morton switched on the ignition, producing enough decibels to wake the whole street. Just what was needed at four in the morning. He switched it off and drove in silence, his car mimicking the movements of Juliette’s black Ford Ka in front. Juliette had once suggested that he buy a Ka, a proposal at which he took great offence. It was times like that that he wondered if he was the marrying kind. One person forever, even when they suggest things like buying a Ka. He knew that now the final bastion to their nuptials had been unceremoniously crushed he had no reason not to marry her. But then, was that a good reason to marry someone? Just because you’ve run out of reasons not to? It seemed a little thin. At least upon marriage Juliette would be taking a name that kind of belonged to him, it was his mother’s maiden name after all. Née Farrier. He recalled the – what would it be now, thousands? – of marriage certificates that he’d seen in his career. Would he do as many illegitimates had done before him on marriage certificates and leave his father’s name and occupation blank, or should he write ‘rapist’ under occupation? He was fairly sure that hadn’t been done before and might raise the registrar’s eyebrows.

  The village streets that he passed through were unsurprisingly silent; just the Mini and the Ka playing pre-dawn cat and mouse.

  The Ka slowed as it entered Sedlescombe village then pulled in beside the Clockhouse Tearoom, close to where Morton had woken with urine-soaked boxers and a large pair of pendulous breasts staring him in the face. Such a fond memory. Morton tucked the Mini neatly behind the Ka and climbed out. The village was, as he expected, completely dead. Not a single light but for the sporadic sodium street lamps dotted along the road and not a single noise but for Guy, climbing out of the driver’s side and unlocking the Ka boot.

  ‘Ready?’ Guy whispered.

  Morton nodded. Ready as he ever would be, he thought, acknowledging for the first time the prickling in his intestines.

  ‘It’s not too late to go back, you know,’ Guy said. ‘Call this whole thing off?’

  ‘Nope. Let’s do it,’ Morton said, bundling himself into the tiny confines of the Ka boot. He wasn’t someone who had suffered claustrophobia before but the split-second that the lid came down and the lock crunched darkness into place, he felt as though he’d been mummified. It was a good job this was going to be a short journey. He was grateful not to be in pitch darkness; a muted red glow penetrated in from the rear lights. Not that there was anything to see squashed in the foetal position in a car boot at four in the morning anyway.

  As the Ka began to move off, Morton suddenly had the thought that he could just have walked into the biggest trap of his life. What if Guy was double-crossing him? He might be an undercover operative working for the Windsor-Sackvilles. No, that would just be ridiculous, he’d seen the way that Jeremy and Guy got together at the Sedlescombe Village Fete; that was so not pre-planned. Unless Jeremy was involved, too. No, this was just hysteria talking. Either way, it would be just a few seconds until he found out.

  The Ka sped along for a few seconds then drew to an abrupt halt. They were at the front gates of Charingsby.

  He heard talking and strained his ears but couldn’t catch what was being said. Guy had mentioned that despite his being well-known on the gate, there would still be questions when he arrived at such an hour. Whomever he was talking to was evidently satisfied with his explanation and the car moved off again. They crawled along slowly, the sound of crunched gravel filling the boot space.

  The car stopped and the engine was cut. Morton took a deep breath as the lights were switched off and his prison was plunged into total darkness.

  His heart began to race when he heard Guy’s heavy footfall on the stones.

  Getting closer and closer.

  A key turned in the boot lock and the lid was tugged open, sending in a waft of clean cold air but no extra light.

  Good old-fashioned fear and paranoia pinned Morton inside the boot. He closed his eyes and regressed back to the childlike mentality that if he kept perfectly still and didn’t look out, then he couldn’t be seen.

&nb
sp; A torch beam fell on his face. ‘What’re you doing, you weirdo?’ Guy asked. ‘Crap, are you dead?’

  Morton opened his eyes and almost blinded himself. He raised a hand to shield himself from the brain-frazzling glare.

  ‘Sorry, mate,’ Guy said, switching the torch off. ‘Come on, we need to get a move on.’

  Guy extended a hand to Morton and helped him out of the boot, his eyes gradually adjusting. The car was parked on a rectangle of shingle surrounded on three sides by an overabundance of dense foliage - cherry laurel, if his memory of the lectures on fauna and flora with Dr Baumgartner was correct. On the fourth side, the direction in which they were now facing, was the unmistakable grey stone façade of Charingsby, resembling a sinister country house from a Bronte novel. It might have been the cold night air seeping through his clothing, chilling his core but he had deep misgivings about the place and what had occurred here all those years ago.

  ‘Ready?’ Guy asked.

  ‘Let’s do it,’ Morton answered and he followed Guy across the car park area to a Gothic archway in which was set a heavy black-studded, oak door protected by keypad entry. Guy tapped in a six-digit code which Morton did his best to memorise. Then Morton watched as he pressed his thumb onto a scanning pad. Christ, they really didn’t want intruders getting inside, Morton thought.

  A small green LED illuminated and a heavy clunk sounded from the door’s internal mechanisms. Guy pushed it open and they stepped into a dim narrow passageway that smacked of a servants’ rat-run. Upstairs Downstairs and all that.

  Morton’s heart began to pound even faster, which he hadn’t thought possible without rigorous exercise. They had rehearsed the plan over and again into the early hours; Guy had even drawn a map of the internal layout of Charingsby and, in true Mission Impossible style, fed the paper into Morton’s father’s shredding machine. He suspected that Guy was disappointed not to have a hearty fire to dramatically toss it onto. They hadn’t managed to resolve the question of what would actually happen if they were discovered. Better not to dwell on that.