Hiding the Past (5 page)

Read Hiding the Past Online

Authors: Nathan Dylan Goodwin

Morton was moments away from home when it
hit him – if Soraya had only collected Finlay at seven o’clock then he had been
with Peter when he’d made the phone call at six twenty, practically begging
Morton to see him. 
What if Finlay had seen what was in the copper box?

He slammed on
the brakes, being half-tempted to mimic Juliette’s impressive handbrake turn
but he just knew that it would all go wrong and he’d end up upside down in the
hedge, so he settled for the more acceptable three-point turn and sped back the
way he’d come.

 

He banged his fist on Soraya’s front
door.  Four hard thumps later he realised that Finlay was asleep, but by
then it was too late.  The damage was done.  Soraya opened the door
with a deep-set frown, about to lay into the idiot hammering on her door late
on a Friday night, when she realised who it was.

‘That was
quick.’

‘Sorry for the
racket.  I just got all the way home and realised that Finlay would have
been with Peter when he phoned me Tuesday night and I think he might know what
Peter wanted to show me.  I know it’s not ideal but can you wake him up so
I can talk to him?’  Soraya looked uncomfortable and Morton knew he’d made
a mistake in coming back.

‘I don’t think
so, Morton, not tonight.  He’s not sleeping for long as it is.  The
poor kid’s devastated.  The last thing he needs is an interrogation. 
I’ll speak to him in the morning and see what I can glean.  Sorry.’

‘Fair
enough.  Sorry, I wasn’t thinking.’

‘That’s okay,’
Soraya said, about to close the front door when a small face appeared at her
side.

‘Who’s that,
Mum?’ Finlay said shyly, folding an arm around Soraya’s waist.  He was a
small, thin boy with dark hair, dark eyes and a neat pillow-scar that ran down
his left cheek.  Yet there was more to him than that: those mournful eyes
that told of a dark past belonged to Peter Coldrick.  Morton was sure that
he could have identified those sombre eyes in a line-up of thousands.

‘This is
Morton, he’s a nice man who’s come to help us.  Say hello.’

‘Hello,’ Finlay
mumbled, his face meshed into Soraya’s jumper.

‘Come on, why don’t
I make you a hot chocolate and you can have a quick chat with him.’ 
Finlay didn’t seem convinced in spite of Morton’s inane smile.

The three of
them went into the lounge and Morton returned to the chair he had previously
occupied that evening, while Finlay and Soraya took the large white leather
sofa.  Finlay snuggled up to his mum.

‘Fin, there’s
something that Morton needs to know from you, if you can possibly
remember.  When you were at Daddy’s house on Tuesday,’ Soraya began,
knowing full well that she was heading blindly into a minefield, ‘did you see
him open a box kind of thing?’ Morton wanted the ground to open up and swallow
him whole; it was horrific.  The poor kid’s bottom lip began to quiver, he
tightened his grip around Soraya’s arm as tears began to flood down his face
and he lost control and began to wail.  Morton could only meet the child’s
despairing look, those dark eyes punishing Morton.  Soraya pulled him in
closer, telling him it was alright.  She shook her head at Morton – it was
more of a ‘
this isn’t happening tonight
’ look she gave rather than ‘
thanks
very much
.’

‘Come on, let’s
get you back to bed,’ Soraya said soothingly.  He nodded and the wailing
became more subdued as she led him by the hand out of the room.
 

Morton felt nauseous. 
Now what was he supposed to do?
 
Just walk out of the front
door, or wait?
 She could be hours settling him back off to
sleep.  He shouldn’t have come back. 
What was he thinking?
 
He should never have children, that much was certain.  He slipped quietly
out of the house, vowing never to reproduce.

Outside, the
car was dead.  Completely dead.  Rigor mortis had even set in since
nothing happened at all when he turned the key.  What a marvellous end to
a marvellous evening.  If he’d just kept on driving home things would have
been a lot happier for everyone.  It really was time to scrap the damned
car.  Then he remembered the money. 
The money
!  It would
be cleared any day now and he could walk into any car dealership and just pluck
a car from the forecourt – no need for finance options or drawn-out bank loans,
just grab the keys and drive away with the wind in his hair.

He turned the
key again, but it might as well have been for a different car for all the good
it did inside the ignition.  There was no point in him lifting up the
bonnet, it was like a different planet under there and he was very unmanly when
it came to cars.  He just had no interest in them apart from whether or
not they drove.  And this car didn’t, so he’d lost all interest. 
Hammering on Soraya’s door for a second time that evening wasn’t an
option.  He had no choice but to phone Juliette and ask her to collect
him, which she reluctantly said she would do (‘Even though I’m in the middle of
watching
EastEnders
’).

 

Juliette’s trusty Polo swooped in, her
headlights momentarily dazzling him through the windscreen.  He was ready
to get into her car and head home but then she instructed him to ‘open her
up’. 
She’d only brought jump leads and a hi-vis jacket, for God’s
sake.
  In fact, she probably already had them stashed in her boot
along with the red triangle, a more comprehensive first-aid kit than is carried
by most paramedics, tools, spare wheel and all manner of other emergency
equipment. 
She really must have been a scout leader in a previous
existence
, Morton thought.

Morton opened
the bonnet and watched silently from the pavement as Juliette, torch wedged
firmly in her mouth, carefully hooked a bundle of wires between the two
vehicles like an heroic doctor performing an emergency transfusion.

‘I’m going to
get a new car tomorrow, I can’t put up with this pile of junk anymore,’ Morton
moaned from the confines of the pavement.  He secretly hoped that she
wouldn’t be able to fix it.  Not
just
because he felt rather
emasculated but because she would more likely agree that he needed a new car if
even
she
couldn’t get it to start.  But he knew she would be able
to fix it.  She always could.

Juliette
ignored his comment and instructed him to try the key and keep his foot on the
accelerator.  Predictably, the car sprang to life.  After a moment of
delving into the engine, she shut the bonnet and told Morton she would see him
at home.

 

He had followed her back, matching her
religious obedience to the speed limit all the way.  Now, sitting in front
of the telly, Morton was wondering how to broach the subject of a new car,
since she’d taken his previous comment so flippantly.  He decided to just
come out and say it.  After all, he was earning the money.  ‘I’m
telling you, I’m getting a new car,’ he said as empathically as he could
muster, ‘The money will be cleared any day now, so I’ll go and get one.’

‘It’s fine,
Morton.  You say it like I’m going to stand in your way.  It’s your
money, do what you like with it.  Maybe you can put some of it towards
something
for your wonderful girlfriend of thirteen months who rescued you tonight?’
Juliette said with a wry smile.

‘We’ll
see.’  Morton knew that she was alluding to her desire to flash a large
rock on her left ring finger, although, actually he knew that she would have
settled for
anything
on her left ring finger.  Even one of those
ring-shaped jelly sweets would have got her down the aisle.  She was
always complaining that she was the last of her group of school friends without
a husband – some were selfishly already onto their second – or with a brigade
of children around their ankles.

Juliette
examined her left hand.  ‘Gold suits me best,’ she muttered.
 

Maybe he would
buy Juliette a nice piece of jewellery.  He was thinking of a
necklace.  A nice one, something classy.  Maybe with an
inscription.  Just not
that
particular piece of jewellery. 
Not yet.
 

Morton’s
thoughts drifted towards a happier time when his mother was still alive and his
ignorant view of his family was still intact.  Just days after his
mother’s funeral his father callously sat him down and told him that he was
adopted.  He had blurted out the words, as if he was telling him that
dinner was ready or that Morton had known all along but it had somehow slipped
his mind. 
Well, I really didn’t think you’d react like this,
Morton.  You’re almost sixteen now, man, come along.  It’s all a load
of biology, chemistry and whatnot.
 
You’re my son today just like
you always have been and always will be.
  But he was no longer his
parents’ child; his real parents had apparently surrendered him forty-eight
hours after he had first drawn breath.  The only comfort that Morton had
taken at the time from this bombshell was the revelation that he didn’t share a
single shred of DNA with Jeremy, the natural son of his parents.  He was
one of those miracle babies that infertile couples who adopt seem able to
produce all of a sudden.  He’d been treated like a miracle ever since.

As the years
had passed since the adoption revelation, Morton had gradually become
increasingly dislocated from his surname and now no longer felt any connection
to it. 
Do you, Juliette Meade take Morton the Unknown to be his lawful
wife?
  It would be ridiculous for Juliette to take his name upon
marriage when it really didn’t belong to him in the first place.  She
might as well dip her finger into the phonebook and take her pick.  Or she
could have one of the names Morton had harvested from parish registers over the
years, for no other reason than that they sounded amusing. 
Proudfoot. 
Ruggles.  Arblaster.  Stinchcombe.  Catchpole. 
Winkworth.  Peabody.  Onions.
  Yes, that suited her,
Juliette Onions.  It would make her stand out in the world of crime
prevention.  Nobody would forget PCSO Juliette Onions.

Chapter Four

 

5th
June 1944

Emily pulled a hand-made shawl over her
shoulders, staring fixedly through the kitchen window into the orchard. 
Alarmingly high winds – stronger than she thought she had ever known –
thundered furiously through the trees, callously ripping the tiny Victoria
plums from their branches and scattering them heartlessly onto the sodden
ground.  She looked, almost without blinking, though the torrential rain
to the tall, brick chimney in the distance, standing defiantly against the
squally weather.  She wondered what was being discussed in the house about
the current war situation. 
Did they know what was coming?
 
She had been strictly forbidden to leave the confines of the house in the
orchard – it was part of the deal – but two nights ago, shortly after midnight,
curiosity had driven her to determine the source of the constant, deep
rumblings emanating from the village.  What she saw took her breath
away.  Dozens and dozens of lorries, jeeps and tanks, over-spilling with
Allied troops, clattered down the main road.  Silent villagers peered
through their black-out curtains at the spectacle before them.  Emily
guessed where they were heading – towards the coast ready for an imminent
invasion of France. 
What did this mean?  Was the war finally
coming to an end?  What about Hitler’s secret weapon that she had heard
murmurings of?  This wasn’t supposed to be how it all went.  This
wasn’t the plan…

Emily shuddered
as a sudden gust of wind violently shook the window.  She turned to the
baby to see if it had disturbed him: he was still sound asleep in his
cot.  She wondered what would happen to him with the war’s latest twist,
but couldn’t bear to follow her train of thought to its obvious
conclusion.  Moving away from the window, Emily quietly sat at the large oak
table and picked up the only photograph she had of her and the baby boy. 
Apart from only one other photograph of her, she had destroyed all other images
of her family, burning them in a memory-erasing pyre in May 1940.  She set
the photograph down, took a pen and a pad of notepaper and began to write the
letter that she had hoped she would never have to write.

With painful
tears cascading down her cheeks, Emily signed the letter and tucked it inside
an envelope.  There was little sense in sealing it.  If what she
sensed was going to happen actually did, then they would tear this place apart
pretty soon.

Emily carefully
placed the letter and the photograph of her and the baby inside the beautiful
copper box, which had been created for the wedding that would now never take
place.  Drying her eyes, she put the copper box inside a small brown
suitcase and then set about packing essential clothes for the both of them.

 

Chapter Five

 

Saturday

 

Morton was woken by the sound of his
mobile ringing from somewhere in the house.  He would usually have
switched it off at night, preferring not to hear whatever bad news someone
wanted to share, but in light of recent events he thought it better to leave it
switched on.  He followed the trail of noise into the lounge, like a child
following the Pied Piper playing the iPhone ring tone, where he found his
mobile.  Jeremy’s name appeared onscreen and Morton’s heart sank.

‘Morning. 
Not too early is it?’ Jeremy asked.

‘Nope,’ Morton
answered, a little too sharply and then regretted it when Jeremy said, ‘I just
wanted to check you were coming tonight; you didn’t reply to my email.’

‘Sorry, I’ve
had a lot on my mind,’ Morton said defensively.

‘So, are you
coming then?  It’d be really good to see you before I go.  It’s been
ages.’

‘I’ll do my
best.  Like I said, I’ve had a lot on my mind.’  He was being too
harsh, he knew that, yet he couldn’t stop himself.  He needed at least to
try
to be more upbeat.  ‘Are you all set for your adventure then?’

 
‘Think so,
ready as I can be,’ Jeremy said.  There was a long pause, Morton not
knowing what else to say.  He wanted to tell Jeremy to take care and be
careful and keep his eyes open and not to treat it as a big game.  Not to
go at all, in fact. 
What would their father do if his little miracle
had his head blown off by the Taleban?  Or what if he ended up in a
wheelchair?  Then what?  Who’d look after him?
  He wanted to
say all of this but instead said, ‘Okay, we’ll hopefully see you tonight,
then.’

Jeremy said
goodbye and hung up.

‘Damn,’ Morton
chastised himself.  He really could be a bastard sometimes.

Now that he was
awake, and with Juliette already at work, he might as well get on with
something constructive.  He poured himself a strong coffee and headed to
the confines of his study.  He switched on the radio and immersed himself
into the
Coldrick Case
.  Enclosed by sheets of scribbled notes,
Morton weighed his possible next options.  Given James Coldrick’s
confinement in St George’s Children’s Home in 1944, it seemed logical that he
was born in the vicinity of Sedlescombe.  When he had arrived there and
under what circumstances, Morton did not know, but the home and the village had
played a significant part in the formative years of his life.  Morton
fired up Juliette’s laptop and started with a simple Google search of
Sedlescombe, following a plethora of links of varying usefulness and quality
about the history of the village.  The parish council had done an
excellent PR job on www.sedlescombe.org.uk, generally promoting village life. 
A history section on the website provided a potted narrative from the Stone Age
until more recent times.  According to the website, St George’s Children’s
Home was built in 1922 by the firm, Dengates, when the local workhouse was
demolished.  Past research had taught him that life for anyone in a
workhouse, especially children, was gruelling, severe and bleak.  However,
given his findings at East Sussex Archives, Morton wondered if conditions were
any better for the poor children at St George's.

After an hour’s research, the heat was
getting unbearable.  Morton stripped down to what had once been his best
Calvin Klein boxers, but which were now stretched and faded beyond all
recognition.  It was time for some new ones, but Juliette didn’t approve
of spending twenty quid on something nobody except her would ever see. 
‘At least, they’d better not,’ she’d once warned
.
  He remembered
the way that his mother used to carefully iron the household’s clothing every
Monday night without fail, including the underwear.  She even ironed
tea-towels and pillow cases.  It was her generation.  ‘A woman’s work
is never done,’ he remembered her saying on a daily basis.  He wondered
what she’d make of his relationship with Juliette, who shared none of his
mother’s domesticity: you’d never catch Juliette ironing anything that wasn’t
absolutely compulsory (such as her pristine work uniform).  Doubtless his
mother’s religious background would have caused her to frown on their living
together but he was certain that she would have thawed eventually.  Maybe
things wouldn’t now be so strained between him and his father if she were still
alive.  It was incredible that his mother had missed out on more of his
life than she’d been there for.  He was sixteen when she died, still
navigating his way through puberty, flailing around discovering his own
identity.  To all intents and purposes, she never really knew Morton at
all.  He didn’t like to think of her too often because no matter how happy
the memory he was recalling, the story always ended the same: in her death.

Morton tried to
ignore the latest news bulletin on the radio: more British soldiers had been
killed in Afghanistan.  He held his finger to the off-switch, wanting to
avoid the intimate biographical details of the deceased men but he couldn’t
quite bring himself to do it. 
Two British soldiers serving with the
First Battalion Grenadier Guards have been killed after the vehicle in which
they were travelling came under fire, the Ministry of Defence has
confirmed.  Corporal Brian Scott and Corporal Lance Adams, both nineteen,
died after the vehicle they were travelling in…
  He switched it
off.  Jeremy was going to be deployed there any day now. 
Deployed
,
it all sounded so organised and meticulously planned - not quite the reality that
Morton had witnessed in the media. 
War for war’s sake
, he thought.

The idea of
Jeremy out there in the desert, with a real gun and real people to kill, was so
incomprehensible as to be almost laughable.  Morton was sure that he
wouldn’t last ten minutes.  Despite their strained relationship, whenever
Morton heard the word Afghanistan, it was like someone had hooked him up to a
dialysis machine and replaced his blood with a thick freezing sludge.  He
wondered, if the worst came to the worst, if he would hear news of Jeremy’s
death on Radio Four before anyone in his own family had contacted him. 
Probably not, didn’t they always say that they couldn’t release the name until
the family had been informed?  Did that include inadequate adopted siblings?

Morton had had
enough and was feeling claustrophobic in the airless room.  He loved
living in the former police house, right in the epicentre of Rye’s historic
past, but at times the house reached uncomfortable, stifling
temperatures.  He decided it was time to get out of the house and pay a
visit to Sedlescombe, a village he had driven through several times but to
which he’d paid little attention.

 

Morton found a parking space beside the
Sedlescombe Post Office and stepped out onto a tidy, triangular village green,
wearing dark shorts, white t-shirt and sunglasses.  He drew in a deep
breath, laced with the scent of freshly cut grass, and took in the picture
postcard surroundings that he had viewed online: white, weather-boarded and
Sussex peg-tiled houses surrounded an award-winning village green, upon which
was housed a handsome, now redundant pump.  At the top of the gradually
sloping main road was a pub,
The Queen’s Head
and a three-star hotel,
The
Brickwall,
outside of which sat a gaggle of lazy geese.  The
quintessential, quaint and sleepy English village. 
Was it this perfect
during James Coldrick’s childhood
, he wondered?  Or was it all just a
wafer-thin veneer?

One building
stood out from the rest – St George’s Nursing Home, formerly the children’s
home.  The parish website, with its carefully chosen images of the
building, conflicted with the horrific piece of architecture in front of
him.  Morton crossed the deserted main street to get a better look at the
monstrous edifice.  It was a huge, gothic-style building with fairytale
turrets and crenellated parapet walls.  A simple wooden name-plaque raised
high on two stakes proclaimed the name ‘St George’s Nursing Home’.  Below,
in smaller letters were the words ‘Formerly St George’s Children’s Home,
erected with the generosity of Sir Frederick and Lady Windsor-Sackville of
Charingsby’.

It took Morton
a few moments of staring at the name Windsor-Sackville to recall its
familiarity to him: it was the name of the current, widely ridiculed Secretary
of State for Defence.  With a surname like that, he had to be related to
the founders of St George's.

Morton’s eyes
moved from the plaque back to the building.  This was the place where
James Coldrick had spent many of his younger years.  He wondered what had
gone on behind the huge oak door that needed to remain secret all these
years.  Did it
really
warrant Peter Coldrick’s death, covered up as
a suicide, the removal of the 1944 admissions register for St George's
Children’s Home and the theft of his laptop?

A thought
struck him.  What if St George’s had kept a record of the archives
transferred to Lewes?  It was a long shot.  A very long shot but
worth a try.
 

Morton headed
up the stone path and felt a cold shudder pass over him.  He wasn’t a
believer in auras, ghosts or ghouls but the building had some intrinsic
negativity hanging over it.  Some unseen darkness.  Maybe he was just
being paranoid.

He pulled open
the heavy door and entered an immaculately clean, white-washed lobby, filled
with a copious quantity of pungent white lilies, their stench trapped in the
arid lobby.  Not really the kind of flowers that Morton felt were
appropriate for the entrance hall of a nursing home.  A bit too funereal
for his liking.

He opened
another door that led into an air-conditioned reception area adorned with yet
more perfumed flowers.  It occurred to him then that maybe these
were
funeral flowers.  He was pleased to see a mauve-rinsed lady
single-finger-typing at a computer like a timid hen, pecking for grain. 
She couldn’t possibly be the eloquent KC Fellows that he’d spoken to.  She
raised a hand with ridged veins and liver spots to her temple.  Morton
guessed her to be the wrong side of seventy.  He might have mistaken her
for a resident but for her white coat.

‘Be with you in
one second, love.’
 

Morton nodded
and looked around the high-ceilinged room.  He could just catch a glimpse
of a large open room where a group of idle residents sat chatting, sleeping and
reading.  It was difficult to picture how the building would have looked
in James Coldrick’s time here.

‘Right, how can
I help you, love?’ she asked, her Mancunian accent revealing her to be Linda,
with whom he had spoken yesterday.

‘Hi, I spoke to
you yesterday about the records dating back to when this place was a children’s
home,’ Morton said, offering his best smile.

‘Oh yes, did
you try the archives?’

‘Yes, I did but
unfortunately the file I wanted has gone adrift.’

‘Oh dear,’ she
said, a large frown set on her forehead. ‘Not sure what else you can do then,
love.  As I said to you on the phone, we’ve not got anything here at all.’

‘You said you
were here when the records were transferred?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I was just
wondering if the archives gave you any kind of receipt or anything which said
exactly what they took?’ Morton asked, hopefully.
 

Linda screwed
her wrinkly face.  ‘It’s possible but I can’t remember back that far,
love.  I wouldn’t even know where to lay my hands on something like that
if we did keep it.  Have you got a fax?’

Morton nodded.

‘I tell you what
I’ll do, give me your fax number and I’ll have a dig around and see what I can
find.  How’s that sound?’ she asked.  ‘We’ve got folders and filing
cabinets full of old junk upstairs.’

‘Perfect,’
Morton answered, scribbling down his fax number on a proffered piece of scrap
paper, which he was sure Linda would lose within half an hour.  ‘Thanks
very much, I appreciate it,’ he added, hoping that a bit of sincerity might
encourage her to go rummaging.  Morton thanked her again and left St
George's.

With so much of
Morton’s work involving being shut in confined spaces with little or no natural
light, he took a great deal of pleasure in being outdoors and greatly
appreciated the hot sun warming the nape of his neck.  He trundled through
the archaic village, nodding respectfully to a gaggle of old ladies on their
way to the post office, consciously absorbing the detail of the village. 
He scanned the village, dismissing houses or street furniture erected since the
forties.  He began to feel and understand the place in which James
Coldrick was raised.

With sweat
beginning to bead on his forehead, Morton walked from the village centre up a
long, straight road with a gradual incline towards the parish church.  The
road, unimaginatively named
The Street
, was dotted with expensive,
substantial homes with high fences and security gates.  Of some luxurious
houses Morton could only catch a glimpse through gaps in the dense shrubbery
and carefully maintained trees.

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