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Authors: Nathan Dylan Goodwin

BOOK: Hiding the Past
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‘Why would you
do that?’

‘Finlay. 
I was always working for him remember – not you – and as my client, he doesn’t
deserve the fallout from all this.  Take him and leave.’
 

Right on cue,
Finlay Coldrick strolled into the room.  Rather bizarrely, Morton thought,
the boy actually grinned from ear to ear when he spotted him.  ‘Hi,
Morton!’ he greeted.  Even more bizarrely, he bent down and gave Morton a
hug.  ‘What happened to your arms?’

‘Long story,’
Morton said, genuinely taken aback by the child’s reaction.  Maybe
children weren’t such an alien species after all.
 

‘Fin,’ Soraya
said sharply, ‘go to your room and pack some clothes into your holdall, like
you used to when you went to stay at…’ Her sentence faded and their eyes locked
momentarily before Fin hurried from the room.

‘Would it
really have been worth it, Soraya?  I take it all this comes down to
money?’ Morton asked, not pausing for an answer.  ‘You realise that your
husband is responsible for Peter’s and his mum’s deaths, don’t you?’

Soraya suddenly
burst into tears - uncontrollable, angry tears.

‘Goodbye,
Soraya,’ Morton said.  He took one last pitying glance at her then left
the house, knowing that he would see neither Soraya nor Finlay ever again.

‘Done?’
Juliette asked him as he climbed back inside the hot police van.

‘Done.  To
the station,’ Morton replied emptily.  None of the previous genealogy jobs
he had completed had ever had even one percent of the drama of the
Coldrick
Case
but they had all ended with a satisfying conclusion; this left him
feeling hollow inside.  So many lives had been destroyed and were about to
be destroyed because of the
Coldrick Case.

 

It took six hours.  Six long
gruelling hours in the void that was Interview Room Three of Ashford Police
Station and Morton had told Barnaby McHale, the middle-aged, yet spry Deputy
Commissioner for the Metropolitan Police the entirety of the
Coldrick Case
,
inside and out.  He even confessed to the innumerable illegalities which
he had committed along the way.  McHale passively scribed several pages of
notes, only occasionally interjecting to clarify a point which sounded quite
ludicrous.  ‘Your house blew up?’ he had asked, to which Morton
nodded.  ‘What, all of it?’ which seemed a slightly obtuse question. 
Morton nodded again and then continued with the interview.  The only
careful and discreet economies with the truth surrounded Soraya Benton and Max
Fairbrother’s involvement.  In the case of the bald-pated stalwart of East
Sussex Archives, Morton felt his involvement to have been so insignificant and
so long ago as to be ignorable but he couldn’t quite see how Soraya would
escape investigation, seeing as she was married to the murderer that was Daniel
Dunk.  He wondered if killing more than one person made Dunk a serial
killer or mass murderer.  Neither was a great character trait in a
husband, he reasoned, as he handed over all the documentation in his
possession.  McHale mentioned Olivia Walker’s astonishing rise to the top,
muttering something about questionable nepotism by the Secretary of
Defence.  He told Morton that he would be personally overseeing an
investigation into Mary and Peter Coldrick’s deaths.  Then McHale shook
his hand, acknowledged the possibility of Morton's facing his own charges but
concluded nonetheless, ‘Very brave thing you’ve done, Mr Farrier.'  But
Morton didn’t feel brave; he felt like the clichéd fish out of water, albeit a
very stubborn one, like a belligerent salmon, hacking its way against the
prevailing current.  Maybe a dog with a bone was more apt if he was going
for animal analogies.
 

Once the
interview was over, McHale led Morton down the labyrinth of indistinguishable
internal corridors until they reached the front doors where Morton was released
back into the wild to find that the day had grown grey and chilly as a fine,
almost imperceptible coating of drizzle fell from the sky.

Juliette was
waiting in civvies in her car and together they left the compound.

She leant over
and kissed him.  ‘How did it go?’

‘Fine, I
think,’ he answered.  After all that had gone on, he didn’t feel he was in
much of a position to fully appreciate the implications of what he had just
done.  Before Morton was even halfway through his revelations to McHale it
had become obvious that the ramifications for the Windsor-Sackvilles' political
careers would be huge.  Not to mention Olivia Walker’s high-flying career
in the police and Dunk’s career in serial-killing.  What the police didn’t
tear apart, the newspapers surely would.  It was all out of his hands
now. 
Que sera sera
and all that.
 

‘Could we make
a quick detour on our way home, please?’ Morton asked.

Juliette
groaned.

 

Morton nudged open the lych gate to
Sedlescombe church with the tips of his bandaged hand.  Among the
documentation that he’d handed over to McHale was the burial certificate for
Marlene Koldrich in this very churchyard.  With the drizzle increasing to
a constant saturating rain, he headed straight for the vestibule where, on his
last visit, he had noticed a map of the churchyard pinned to the notice board.
 It told him that Marlene was buried in section R, grave number 22, which,
according to the map was in the back right area of the churchyard.

 
Oh the
irony!
  On his previous visit here, he had been so absorbed with the
task in hand as not to see the blindingly obvious.  In front of him,
sheltered by the overhang of an oversized yew, was the clean black granite
grave of James and Mary Coldrick, the tell-tale signs of fresh earth and fresh
flowers pronouncing Peter’s recent interment and behind it,
directly
behind it, was a subtle jaded wooden cross with a simple brass plaque at the
centre.

Marlene, died 6
th
June 1944.

Here they all
were.

Together.

If he had been
a religious man, he might have uttered a prayer, or quoted some appropriate
lines from the Bible about eternal unity, but he simply stood in the dusky wet
churchyard as sporadic droplets fell from the yew above him.  His head
slightly bowed, he felt a profound sorrow for the remains of the tragic family
before him; all of them innocent pawns in someone else’s game. He saw it all
clearly now - the whole jigsaw completed, all making sense.  Marlene,
daughter of Eberhard Koldrich, sent to England as a young woman to ingratiate
herself into English aristocracy in anticipation of a Nazi victory, finds
willing hosts in the Windsor-Sackvilles, a family so self-important that their
only care regarding the war was to be on the victors' side, regardless of
consequence, ends up not falling in love with the son of an important
government minister, but with the loutish estate handyman.  She falls
pregnant, manages to convince the Windsor-Sackvilles that they have a male heir
on the way, then bang!  D-Day happens and the course of the war changes
direction and Nazi-sympathisers beat a hasty retreat.  Among the documents
in the box file was a small newspaper cutting that spoke of the death of ‘an
unknown visitor’, only known by the name of Marlene, having committed suicide
on the village green on 6
th
June 1944.  Goodbye, Marlene. 
Lo and behold, the Windsor-Sackvilles are there celebrating at Chartwell with
Churchill soon after VE Day and David James Peregrine Windsor-Sackville’s
company, WS Construction, lands one of the biggest reconstruction contracts in
Europe.  Then follows the knighthood and nothing else is mentioned again
until Mary Coldrick starts researching her husband’s family tree in 1987. 
Cue fire, cue death, cue huge payments landing in James Coldrick’s bank. 
Problem solved, until Peter Coldrick becomes curious.  Cue gunshot wound
to the head.  Cue death.

But what these
people hadn’t reckoned on was the services of Morton Farrier, Forensic
Genealogist.

Morton stared
at Marlene’s austere grave.

‘Goodbye,’
Morton said.  He turned and left the family at peace.

 

Chapter Twenty

 

6th
June 1944

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.

‘It’s finished,
Emily,’ her assailant shouted.

Emily turned to
face him.  ‘My name’s not Emily!’ she shouted back.

‘Fine. 
It’s finished,
Marlene
.’

Emily visibly
sagged.  All the lies, all the pretense, all the hopes for the future were
gone, another casualty of the global conflict.  A political union between
two prominent families, as orchestrated by her father, Eberhard, and Frederick
Windsor-Sackville, was crushed and buried.  She cared nothing at all of
it, her initial aspirations shattered the moment her baby son arrived. 
James. 
What would become of him?

‘Hand the boy
over, Marlene,’ he ordered.

‘What will you
do with him?’

‘That all
depends on what happens next.  If you do as I ask, then he’ll live. 
If you don’t, then neither of you will see this war out.’

Marlene
nodded.  There was nothing she wouldn’t do for James.  She set the
suitcase down, gently kissed him on the forehead and handed him over.

‘Well
done.  Now, listen – ’

Marlene didn’t
wait to hear the end of the sentence; she dropped the suitcase and bolted into
a thicket of coppiced horse-chestnut trees.  She knew that she was only a
few hundred yards from the Charingsby perimeter fence. 
If she could
just run faster!

A sudden loud
crack echoed through the dusky woods, a bullet was fired into the back of
Marlene Koldrich’s skull.  She dropped to the floor like a pile of old
rags.

David
Windsor-Sackville pulled the safety-catch over the shotgun and returned to the
crying baby.  He knew what his father wanted him to do to the baby but, as
he held him in his arms and watched as the tears abated, he knew he couldn't do
it.  He would take him to St George's where he could start a new life.
 The baby looked up at him and smiled.

Chapter Twenty-One

 

Friday

 

The house felt different without Jeremy
there.  Aside from his physical presence, there was something clearly
missing.  Quite what that something was, Morton wasn’t sure.  He’d
taken the plane as planned, back to Cyprus, back to his maddening vocation in
the military.  Morton was still having trouble reconciling that particular
career choice with his gay brother.

‘God, look at
the time,’ Juliette said, thrusting her finger towards the clock above the
fireplace.

‘Damn it,’
Morton said.  They were supposed to collect his father from hospital
fifteen minutes ago.  The house needed to be perfect for him. 
Everything in its place.  It also needed not to look like they’d been
squatting there for the last couple of weeks, news of which he’d yet to break
to his father.  Morton had to give Jeremy his due, he’d certainly gone to
town in cleaning and tidying the house in preparation for his arrival. 
He’d make someone a lovely husband one day.  And vice versa
hopefully.  There was just one last thing to do.  ‘I’ll be two
minutes.’  Morton hurried up the stairs, grabbed the new pair of National
Trust binoculars that he’d purchased from Mote Ridge and pulled open his father’s
wardrobe.  In his clumsy haste, and having only minimal movement in his
fingers, Morton upset the box of junk in which he was trying to insert the
binoculars.

‘Bloody hell,’
he muttered. 
Why now, of all times?
  His father was going to
be in a foul mood as it was.  ‘Can you give me a hand, please?’ he called.
 

When Juliette
entered the room, he stood back and allowed her to scoop up all of the rubbish
and put it back inside the box, including the National Trust binoculars.
 

‘Stop!’ Morton
yelled, with unnecessary drama.

Juliette looked
perplexed.  ‘What?’ She looked down at the scrap of torn newspaper;
yellowed, crinkled, dated December 1973, and knew instantly.

It was an
archetypal e-fit criminal: swept over dark hair, menacing, deathly eyes, thick
black moustache and long sideburns.

His real, bone
fide biological father.
 

Say hello to
Daddy.

They
scrutinised the photo.  The face that peered out bore no atavistic
resemblance to Morton, of that he was sure.  Definitely not the kind of
photo he’d be putting in his wallet anytime soon.

Juliette read
the story beneath accompanying the e-fit.  ‘This is the suspect whom
police want to talk to after a teenage girl was raped last weekend.  The
casually-dressed man lured his victim to a secluded spot in the town centre
after befriending her during the evening of Saturday 15
th
December.  The attack occurred around 10 p.m. close to the Bell and
Whistle pub.  Detectives are appealing to the public to help catch the sex
predator.’  She finished reading and looked at Morton.  He knew that
she was staring at him but he couldn’t take his eyes off the e-fit.
 

His father.

No!  Not
his father; his father was in hospital waiting for him to collect him, moaning
and groaning to the nurse and doctors no doubt about how incapable he was.

‘What do you
want me to do?’ Juliette asked uncertainly, the piece of paper hanging limply
in her hand.

‘Put it all
back,’ he said.  ‘Let’s go and bring Dad home.’

 

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