Hiding the Past (27 page)

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Authors: Nathan Dylan Goodwin

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Guy was
evidently satisfied that the coast was clear.  It was the kind of setting
where the door should creak loudly, announcing to all and sundry their
arrival.  But it didn’t, it just opened gently to reveal what Morton could
only think of as a magnificent entrance hall that put Mote Ridge to shame. 
An ornate multi-branched chandelier cast a diffused yellow glow over the
room.  There was just enough light to see the massive gold-framed
portraits of long-deceased Windsor-Sackvilles, glaring down at him, as if they
were aware of his potential to destroy everything that they stood for.  A
grand staircase wound its way up before splitting into two and curving out of
sight.  An intricate woven rug formed the centrepiece of the immaculately
polished mahogany flooring.

‘Impressive,
huh?’ Guy whispered, breaking a self-imposed rule that there should be no
talking unless absolutely necessary.  It hardly seemed necessary to Morton
to ask if he found it impressive.  A nodded response sufficed.

Guy closed the
door behind them and they began the long journey to the door beside the foot of
the staircase.  If it was going to go wrong anywhere, then it was
here.  To avoid the CCTV cameras, they had to creep around the room’s
extremities, which would take them a whole lot longer than simply walking
directly across the floor.

Guy strangely
acted like he’d done this before, ducking carefully this way and that,
circumventing protruding furniture like a professional dancer.  Maybe he
had
done this before.  Morton’s paranoia resurfaced; could this all be a
trap?  Guy did seem to have a very in-depth knowledge of the internal
workings and security of a house in which he was simply a – what
was
his
job?  Footman?  Butler?  Did this sort of a place still have
those roles?  Whatever, now wasn’t the time to start asking questions;
they’d finally reached
the
door – the door behind which all of the
darkest Windsor-Sackville secrets were kept. 
This
was the door
into the walled garden to which Peter Coldrick wanted access.  Where other
genealogists had failed to conquer, Morton was here, on the verge of discovery.

All things
considered, the door to the archives of Charingsby offered little in the way of
resistance.  It was protected by nothing more than an outlandishly large
lock, for which Guy had the outlandishly large key.
 

Five seconds
later, they were inside.  Guy tapped in another six digit code to prevent
the alarm from sounding.

Morton quietly
closed the door and took stock of the room.  It was huge, effortlessly
dwarfing East Sussex Archives.  There were no windows and no other exit
points other than that through which they had just entered.  The walls
were lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves containing books, box files and
folders.  A long line of tall, metal cabinets filled the centre of the
room.  All of this to search in under an hour.

Both men
instinctively made their way to the bulky cabinets in the centre of the room
and began to search indiscriminately among the files.

‘Where do I
start?’ Guy whispered.

Morton exhaled and
looked in awe at the room; he had no idea where he
should start. 
‘I don’t know, just look for anything we can hold against them.  Or
anything to do with the Coldricks or the war.’
 

East Sussex
Archives had a great number of obvious downsides but at least they had a decent
system of cataloguing that made some semblance of sense to the public. 
Here the system only had to make sense to one person – the archivist.
 

‘Do you know
the archivist at all?’ Morton asked.

‘There isn’t
one; it’s just another job for the secretary,’ Guy answered, pushing closed
another drawer.  ‘That’s that cabinet done.  What now?’

‘We’ve just got
to keep searching,’ Morton instructed, as a pang of despair crept into his
head.
 

Pushing shut a
heavy drawer containing land purchases in the eighteenth century, Morton took a
deep breath and looked around the room. 
Time was running out. 
There had to be some kind of logic to the material gathered here. 
His
eyes moved slowly and systematically around the shelves, trying to piece
together some kind of order from the haphazard assortment of documents. 
In his peripheral vision, Morton spotted something of interest.  Turning
to a stack of nondescript folders at the bottom of a nearby shelving unit, he
had just selected a red box file when he heard a low unnatural thud behind
him.  He turned.  Any doubts that Morton had about Guy’s allegiances
were dispelled; he was lying crumpled in a heap on the floor, possibly
unconscious, possibly dead.  Morton’s nemesis, Daniel Dunk stood like a
demented Bond villain over the body.

For someone who
felt so inadequate in so many ways, it surprised Morton greatly to discover
that his fight or flight reaction was actually to fight.  Without thinking
about it – because if he had thought about it he would very likely have
reconsidered – Morton picked up a bronze bust statue of Sir Winston Churchill
that stood proudly on a lectern nearby and threw it at Daniel Dunk.  Sir
Winston seemed to cut through the air in slow motion – at least it was slow in
comparison with the raft of thoughts firing through his brain. 
What if
Sir Winston struck Dunk on the head and killed him?
  There was
certainly no pleading self-defence.  Then again, there were always stories
that incited outrage where the burglar got knocked out by a defiant home-owner
and the home-owner was the one locked up while the burglar walked off scot-free
with compensation. 
He
was that burglar.

Morton was
actually slightly relieved, and not at all surprised, that Sir Winston fell
short of his target, crashing down at Dunk’s feet.  Not even close enough
to bruise his big toe but at least it showed Dunk that he was a force to be
reckoned with.  Well, sort of.  The only damage he managed to inflict
was on poor Sir Winston, whose nose had been severed from his face.

Dunk emitted a
primeval grunt as he lunged across the cabinet that separated them, his hands
aimed at Morton’s throat.

Morton again
surprised himself by instinctively punching Daniel Dunk in the face.  Not
only had he punched him but he had punched him hard, sending Dunk to the
floor.  He had, quite literally, floored someone.  Amazing.  The
last fight that he’d had was with Jonathan Stainer in the third year at primary
school.  And he’d lost.
 

Without missing
a beat, Morton sent his right foot into Dunk’s ribcage, wincing when he heard
what sounded like the cracking of bones.  It was enough; Dunk was down and
out of action, so Morton grabbed the rucksack and the box file and ran from the
room.  He didn’t know what to do about Guy but, whether dead or
unconscious, he was still left with the problem of a large immoveable
Australian.  He dialled Juliette; it was time for phase two of the plan.

As Morton ran
back in the direction that they had entered the house he could hear some kind
of commotion going on nearby, the sound of men running towards him.  He
hurried down the narrow passageways and reached the large oak door that led to
the outside world.  He yanked on the handle but it was locked.

The angry shouts
of several men were drawing closer; they had entered the passageway and would
appear within seconds.

Morton’s fight
or flight reaction was now severely leaning towards the latter.

He tried the
door again but it was locked fast.  Then he spotted the small green button
beside the door.  He pressed it and the heavy clunking mechanism released
the door.

He ran out into
the cold darkness of the shingle car park.  As he turned to run behind the
house, he caught a glimpse of blue flashing lights.  Then the sirens
started, echoing violently around him, hurtling towards the house.  A
police car and a police riot van – both heading this way.  Good old
Juliette.  It was hopefully enough to clot the flow of enraged security
guards who would now stop at nothing to hunt him down.

Morton didn’t
hang around to find out if the plan had worked or not, he kept on running until
he reached the woods that he hoped led past the shooting box.  From there
he could make his way back to the village and the sanctity of his car.

By the time he
reached the shooting box, Morton was sweating and suffering tachycardia. 
He needed to stop just for a moment to catch his breath.  He leant up
against the abandoned building and tried to regulate his breathing.  He
looked out into the dense woodland but could see nothing - it was like staring
down a bottomless well with squinted eyes.  He hoped that if he were being
chased, his assailants would make enough noise for him to know that they were
following.

It was time to
move on, to get out of Sedlescombe once and for all.  Morton ran over to
the point in the fence that he had entered by previously but found it had been
repaired.  He was fully prepared for this eventuality and pulled out the
wire-cutters from the rucksack.  He hoped that this would be the last time
he would have to sabotage the Charingsby perimeter as he snipped a hole large
enough to crawl through.

He took one
final glance behind him then squeezed himself through the gap into safety.

And just like
that, he’d escaped the clutches of the Windsor-Sackvilles.  It actually
wasn’t as hard as he’d thought it would be.

Having regained
his energy, he ran across the field towards the village, which was now bathed
in a washed-out orange from the nascent sunrise.  The Mini appeared in
view and he heaved a sigh of relief.  This thing, this monster project
that he’d daubed the
Coldrick Case
was almost over.  All he needed
to do now was get to the police station.  Climbing into the safety of the
Mini, he locked the doors and pulled out his mobile.  Fourteen missed
calls from Juliette in the last ten minutes.  He started the car and
dialled her back.  The phone dialled endlessly, as he sped the car along
the deserted street.  He began to panic. 
What if the plan had
failed?  What if Dunk’s henchmen had realised that the large intimidating
riot van only contained Juliette and the accompanying police only contained her
partner, Dan?

Finally, the
call connected and he heard Juliette’s reassuring voice.

‘Did you find
Guy?  He was knocked out by Dunk,’ Morton blurted out.

‘Yeah, we found
him.  He’ll be okay, bit of a bump to the head.  Listen, we stopped
most of them but a couple managed to escape in a BMW.’

Morton glanced
in his rear-view mirror and saw a pair of headlights in the distance. 
Headlights that were quickly gaining speed.

‘I think I
found the BMW,’ Morton said, watching the car zoom closer.  ‘Or at least,
it’s found me.’

‘Where are
you?’

‘Er, just
leaving Sedlescombe,’ was all Morton managed, before he dropped his phone from
the force of a rear shunt.  The Mini lost control and swerved dangerously
towards the edge of the road.  Morton knew the occupants of the BMW had
one aim: to force him down the steep embankment they were currently speeding
past.  He yanked the steering wheel hard and managed to level the Mini as
it bumped the hard curb.

When Morton
realised that the BMW was trying to get alongside him for a final swipe, it was
too late to stop it.  The BMW was driving neck and neck with him.
 

He knew this
was it.

He looked
across at his assailants: Daniel Dunk and Philip Windsor-Sackville.  He
watched, as if detached from the scene, as Dunk wrenched his steering wheel and
smashed into the side of the Mini.  They had achieved their objective.

 

His head was spinning faster than the
worst of the worst drinking sessions put together.  A wave of nausea came
and went.  His hands felt like they were on fire.  He swallowed down
against another wave of nausea and tasted blood.  A lot of blood.  It
was too dark to know where he was.  He was on his side, pinned in.

That smell, he
knew it.  Clear, fetid, like ammonia.  But what was it? 
Petrol.  Something in his brain, something intense was able to push
through the soupy confusion and tell him that he needed to get out of the
car.  But there was another, separate reason why he must escape. 
Something to do with the rucksack that he found his face buried in.  Grab
the rucksack and get out; that was all he knew.

The door was
welded shut.  The window?  He ran his hand around the door, knowing
that there should be a handle or a button, something to make the glass
move.  Then he realised that there was no window; it was just an open
space that led out into darkness.  Trees.  What was he doing in a
wood?  He caught a flashback of the shooting box at Charingsby.  Was
that where he was?  Something to do with Sir Winston Churchill.  And
Daniel Dunk.

The pungent
stench of petrol sent a fresh wave of sickness surging around his
stomach.  He grabbed the rucksack and pulled himself towards the vacant
space beside him.

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