Hiding the Past (7 page)

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Authors: Nathan Dylan Goodwin

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‘Just water’ll
be great, thanks,’ she said, before qualifying, ‘...driving.’

‘You’ve
decorated, I see,’ Morton said, vaguely directing his statement towards his
father.

He
frowned.  ‘You must have been here since then.  Must have been a good
eighteen months ago.’

‘It looks
nice.  Very modern,’ Morton said, ignoring the oblique undertones to his
father’s statement.

‘Jeremy and I
decided it was about time we gave it a lick of paint.  I’ve still got one
or two mates down at B&Q who I used to work with, so I got my ten percent
staff discount.  And that was on top of the discount given to pensioners
on a Tuesday.’

‘Fantastic,’
Morton said, making no effort at all to sound genuine.  He just couldn’t
be bothered.  And nor, it seemed, could his father who had spotted someone
more interesting to converse with across the room and silently wandered off.

Jeremy returned
with Juliette’s drink.  ‘Here you go.’

‘Cheers,’
Juliette said, as her glass met with Morton’s and Jeremy’s bottles.

‘You two really
should come over more often you know, we miss you up here,’ Jeremy said.

‘Yeah,’ Morton
said half-heartedly.

‘Could you do
something for me, Morton?’ Jeremy asked.

‘Uh-huh,’
Morton answered, not liking the sound of owing Jeremy a favour.

‘Will you call
in on Dad more often while I’m away?  He’s getting on a bit now and he’d
love to see more of you.’

Morton took a
deep breath, resenting the implication and doubting the statement.  ‘Yeah,
sure.’

‘Great,
thanks.  It’ll be a big weight off my mind.’

‘Do you know
when you’re likely to be back?’ Juliette asked.

‘Hopefully six
months, but you never know,’ Jeremy answered.  ‘Anything could happen.’

‘We could
declare war on
any
unsuspecting part of the Middle East if there’s
enough oil there,’ Morton said, taking a large mouthful of beer and receiving
an admonishing hand squeeze from Juliette.  He really needed to tone down
the sarcasm.

‘I think
there’s a bit more to it all than that,’ Jeremy said.

‘WMD?’ Morton
mumbled, his hand feeling like it had been crushed in a vice.  Jeremy let
the comment slide and changed the subject.

‘How’s your
work going, Juliette?  Enjoying rounding up criminals?’

‘I love it.
Well, apart from the late nights and crappy shift patterns.’

‘What sort of
things do you have to do?  Is it like the regular police?’

Juliette
laughed.  ‘Well, the regulars call us CHIMPS – Can’t Help in Most Police
Situations.  That about sums it up.  Mostly we confiscate alcohol
from fourteen-year-old boys, liaise with the community and direct traffic,’
Juliette said with a laugh.

The doorbell
sounded and Jeremy excused himself to answer it.

‘Morton, stop
being such an arse,’ Juliette whispered as soon as Jeremy was out of earshot.

‘Just listen to
them,’ Morton said, quaffing his beer and indicating a large group of soldiers
in the doorway, ‘All this macho bear-hugging and back slapping.’

Juliette took a
deep breath and moved across the room towards a table of buffet food. 
Morton headed into the kitchen, pushing past more army clones.  The place
was like a wartime working men’s club, he thought. 
Keep up the good
work, chaps.  Don’t let old Blighty down
.  He cracked open
another beer and took a swig.  Busy washing up at the sink was a
smartly-dressed lady with white hair in a neat perm.  She turned and
smiled.  ‘Hello,’ she said brightly.  ‘Are you Morton?’

Morton nodded,
having no previous recollection of the woman.  He realised that he was
projecting his resentment at being there onto the poor lady.  ‘Yes, that’s
me,’ he said with a smile.

The lady pulled
off her yellow Marigolds and offered her hand.  ‘Madge,’ she said. 
‘I’m a friend of your father's.’

‘Nice to meet
you,’ he said tentatively, shaking her hand. 
Madge
?  All he
could think of was Madge Bishop from
Neighbours.

‘I’ve heard a
lot about you.  You’re a genealogist, aren’t you?’

‘That’s right,’
Morton answered, surprised to find that his father had discussed him at all,
much less his career.  He took another mouthful of beer and listened as
Madge spoke, her eyes suddenly lighting up.

‘That must be a
wonderfully interesting job.  All those stories and personal histories
you’re uncovering - how exciting!  I dabbled with my family history a few
years ago before everything went online and you had to haul out huge ledgers
for each quarter of each year just to locate a person’s birth, marriage or
death.  Just finding my grandfather’s birth entry took me nigh on a whole
day once!  Now it’s all there at the click of a button.’

Morton
remembered the hours and hours he had spent in the early years of his career at
the Family Records Centre in Islington, a building always bustling with amateur
and professional genealogists alike, all vying for precious desk space in which
to place the voluminous tomes containing thousands of names.  ‘I must have
spent half my life trawling through records there,’ Morton recalled.  ‘And
the censuses were just as bad, with only the 1881 census having been indexed.’

‘Oh yes, they
were all microfilmed weren’t they?  Amazing to think how quickly things
have changed.  What is it that you’re working on at the moment?’

Morton took a
deep breath and explained the highlights of the job to her, enjoying the fact
that he had a genuinely interested audience.  Madge asked questions along
the way but had little to offer in the way of suggestions or avenues he had not
yet considered pursuing.

With a vague
twitching in his bladder, Morton excused himself and headed upstairs to the
bathroom and urinated, deep in thought.  The downstairs loo would have
been more convenient but the solitude of the upstairs bathroom was more
appealing.  He zipped up, took a swig of beer and went into his old
bedroom.  He had occupied this room for eighteen years.  It was
filled with more memories than any other place in which he’d lived; illicit
teenage drinking sessions and clumsy gropes all took place here.  He had
his first kiss on that very bed.  It had all gone horribly wrong when his
puckered lips met with Clare Smith’s gaping mouth, her fleshy pink tongue trying
to probe apart his clenched teeth.  She said it hadn’t mattered and that
she wouldn’t tell anyone, but by first lesson the next day he was dumped and by
second lesson the vast majority of the school were puckering up as they passed
him in the corridors. 
Such wonderful memories
, he thought.

He sat down on
the bed and finished his beer, welcoming the furring and blurring of his
mind.  He glanced around the room; there was no trace of his ever having
resided here.  Within days of his leaving for university his father had
redecorated the entire room, as if that were the last time that Morton would
ever go home.  No thought for the long holidays or life after
university.  The curtains, the pictures, the carpet, the ceiling light –
everything replaced.  They’d even changed the door.  Something about
drawing-pin holes from his Madonna posters.

Morton
sighed.  A long time ago.  A very different world.  He left the
room and his melancholic nostalgia behind and headed down to the kitchen. 
Madge was engaged in a conversation with a tall stout man in army
uniform.  Morton opened another beer then scoffed down two prawn
vol-au-vents and a tuna sandwich.  He was about to grab a handful of
crisps when he heard his father call for the assembled crowd to quieten. 
He was going to do a speech. 
Great, this party just gets better and
better,
he thought.

‘Ladies,
gentlemen and members of Her Majesty’s armed forces, could I please have your
attention for one moment.’  The lounge was packed solid and, standing on
tip-toe, Morton could just catch a glimpse of his father, standing on a leather
pouffe in the bay window with an arm tightly around Jeremy’s shoulder.
 

The room fell
silent.

‘Thank
you.  I won’t keep you long, I know you’ve all got plenty of food to eat
and beer to drink.  I just wanted to say how proud I am of Jeremy; a
sentiment that I’m sure would be shared by his late mother, Maureen.  It
takes a lot of courage to join the army in these unpredictable and unstable
times that we’re in today.  I know there are others in the room who will
also be joining my son, so I just wanted to wish you all the best of luck and
may God’s good grace keep you all safe out in Cyprus.’

The assembled
crowd murmured their agreement, with glasses being raised and hands being
clapped.

Morton was
confused.  ‘Cyprus?’ he said loudly, to no-one in particular.
 

A beefy man in
front of him turned.  ‘Yeah, we’re off to Cyprus for a tour of duty.’

‘I didn’t know
we were at war with Cyprus.’
 

The large man
frowned and said something but Morton wasn’t listening.  For no apparent
reason, an image of Peter Coldrick being blasted in the head at close range
appeared in full clarity in his mind and at that moment his stomach decided to
show the world what semi-digested vol-au-vents, tuna sandwich and beer look
like.  All over the hallway carpet.

 

Chapter Six

 

Sunday

 

The memory of the previous evening made
Morton’s eyes ping open involuntarily.  Though his brain was suspended in
what felt like a thick, mucous-like sludge, he could still remember his
vociferous protestations that the beers he’d consumed
weren’t
the reason
that he’d thrown up all over his father’s fancy cream carpet.  He had
tried to explain (particularly to the beefy man whose shoes had been caught in
the blast) that he was working for a dead man who had shot himself in the
head.  That was the moment that Juliette had shot through the crowd like a
raging bull and bundled him straight out the front door.  No
questions.  No goodbyes.  No explanations.  Just dragged
unceremoniously from the house and shoved into the back of the car.

Morton touched
his left bicep – the arm that Juliette had used to lever him out of the house –
it was bruised and aching: a reasonable punishment, he supposed.  Probably
best not to complain about it.

‘Morning,’
Juliette said from beside him, her voice flat and emotionless.  She was
sitting upright in bed reading and Morton wondered what she was thinking. 
He rolled over and placed his arm across the top of her thighs.  ‘Don’t
even
think
about it,’ she warned.

‘What?’

‘Trying to
sidle up to me,’ she said, without taking her eyes from the page.  ‘You’ve
got a lot of grovelling to do today, Morton Farrier.’
 

Ah, those
precious, wonderful words: Morton Farrier.  She only used his name like
that when she was faking displeasure.  She wasn’t
really
annoyed.  Maybe just a tiny bit.  It wouldn’t take him too long to
get back on her good side.

‘I know. 
Sorry,’ he said, hauling himself up and hoping that his brain wouldn’t fall
out.  ‘Breakfast in bed?’ he asked.  It was the single last thing on
earth that he wanted to do and he hoped desperately that she would say no, or
that she’d had her breakfast hours ago. 
What was the time?
 
He looked at the clock: ten twenty.

‘Yes, please,
that would be a good start,’ she answered.  ‘The full works.’
 

Morton had to
work hard to restrain the whimpering cry in his larynx as he twisted his body
and placed his feet on the floor.  He hadn’t collapsed or died yet. 
That was achievement enough.  With a deep breath and a concerted effort,
Morton hauled himself up and waited for the room to stop merry-go-rounding in
front of him before trudging to the kitchen like a decrepit old man in need of
a hip replacement or two.  He was grateful to have made it all the way to
the kitchen without succumbing to death, and poured himself a welcome glass of
orange juice.  Someone had once told him that drinking orange juice after
alcohol lessens the severity of a hangover.  Well, it was better late than
never, he guessed, as he sunk the glass much too quickly and then promptly
regretted it.

A while later
Morton carried a tray of scrambled eggs on toast, glass of orange juice and mug
of filter coffee through to Juliette.  She set down her trashy romance
novel and smiled.

‘Perfect,’ she
said, fiercely attacking the breakfast.  ‘Are you not having any?’

‘I had a bit of
dry toast, it was all my poor stomach could cope with,’ Morton said, lying down
at her feet with a groan, hoping for a little sympathy.

‘It’s your own
stupid fault.’

Morton made a
strange whining noise in agreement.

 

Two hours later, Juliette was sporting a
thick fluffy white dressing gown that they each owned after ‘stealing’ them
during a long weekend in Gleneagles last summer, a treat after Juliette had
been accepted to become a PCSO.  They liked to tell people they’d stolen
the dressing gowns but actually the hotel had added the cost of them, sixty
quid each, onto their credit card bill, which Morton only discovered the
following month.  In hindsight it wasn’t the best start to a career in law
enforcement.

‘So what have
you got planned for today?’ Juliette asked.

‘First things
first is to make sure that money cleared,’ Morton said, fully dressed,
showered, breakfasted and ready to go.  The hangover had at last lifted,
like a thick fog leaving his brain.

‘Well, I’m
going to spend the day in my dressing gown watching my backlog of
EastEnders
,’
she announced, curling up prone on the sofa and switching on the television.

‘Enjoy,’ Morton
said, making his way upstairs to the study.  He dialled the bank and
waited while his 0845 call was routed half way around the world.

Finally, a
sullen voice at the bank confirmed that his balance now stood at fifty
thousand, two hundred and twenty-two pounds.  Morton took the news
surprisingly morosely.  He’d never had such a huge amount in his life, but
the money came in tandem with Peter Coldrick’s death.  His thoughts were
interrupted by a loud beep from the fax machine, heralding that the seldom-used
machine was about to spring to life.

Morton waited
patiently then tore off the disgorged piece of paper.  It was sent from St
George’s Nursing Home.  On the top sheet was written, ‘Found it! 
Regards, Linda.’  Unexpectedly, she had managed to locate the inventory of
the records taken to East Sussex Archives.  His narrowed eyes passed
quickly down the typed list of records until he reached the admission
registers: 1944 was removed along with every other record on the page. 
According to the inventory, the register had left St George’s on 1 December
1987.

Yet it had
never arrived at East Sussex Archives.

Morton turned
to the last page to see the name of the person who had transferred the
documents – maybe they still worked at the archives and could be held to
account.  Squiggled neatly at the bottom of the page he found the
unambiguous signature of Max Fairbrother.

Morton’s pupils
dilated and his heart kicked into a new, heavier rhythm as he studied the
signature.  There was no question about it; Max’s name was right there in front
of him.  Morton remembered Max’s baffled face when he had enquired as to
the whereabouts of the document.  That was the opportunity Max had to say,
‘Oh,
that
register, yes I lost it.  Just one of those things. 
I do apologise.’

‘I can’t
believe it,’ Morton said, entering the lounge.

‘Can’t believe
what?’ Juliette asked.

‘Max bloody
Fairbrother.  He’s only the one who took the file admissions file from St
George’s that I wanted to see.’

‘Max who?’

‘Max
Fairbrother,’ Morton ranted, ‘he works at the archives.’  Juliette looked
perplexed.  ‘Max,’ Morton repeated, as if that would help.  It
didn’t, but his thoughts had run too far away to bother with explanations so he
just said, ‘It doesn’t matter,’ instead.

 

The car miraculously started first time,
as if aware that its life hung in the balance and it should start to make an
effort.  But Morton had made up his mind and drove directly to the BMW
garage.

He pulled into
the customer parking bay tucked behind the shiny glass building, which Morton
presumed was a deliberate way to separate the vehicular wheat from the
chaff.  He stepped out into the relentless heat and headed towards a
racing-green Mini Cooper SD that had caught his eye when he had previously
driven past.  He cupped his hands over the driver’s window and gazed
longingly inside.  Long no longer, Mr Farrier.

‘She’s a
beautiful car, this one,’ said a keen youth, fresh out of salesman school, who
had appeared from the heavens and startled Morton.  He was sporting an
ill-fitting suit and an eager eye.  ‘Hundred and forty miles per hour top
speed, hundred and seventy-five HP nominal power, nought to sixty-two in five
point six seconds, automatic aircon, sports seats, chrome interior, navigation
system, hi-fi loud speakers, rain sensor, bi-xenon lights, the list goes on:
beautiful!
’ 

Morton didn’t
know what bi-xenon lights were or whether one hundred and seventy-five HP
nominal power was a good thing or not.  It sounded impressive, though, he
had to admit.

‘Would you like
to take her for a test drive, sir?’

‘No. 
Thank you, though,’ Morton said, watching the salesman’s smile turn upside down
as he realised he’d made another wasted journey from the confines of the
air-conditioned showroom.

‘I’ll take
it.  What will you give me for my old Mondeo over there?’  Morton
asked, quickly regretting the use of such a depreciative adjective.

The man
introduced himself as Paul and extended a hot hand towards him.  He rubbed
his hands together.  ‘If you’d like to follow me, sir, I’ll see what I can
do.’

Morton followed
him into the glass-walled office and was quickly handed a polystyrene cup of
tea by a lugubrious secretary while Paul went out to make an assessment of the
Mondeo.  Morton wondered just how much training he had had to make such a
judgement.  Probably a couple of days reading
Auto Trader
. 
Paul returned ten minutes later with the news that it was worth no more than
seven hundred and fifty pounds, but that he would give an extra five hundred
quid as a ‘good-will gesture’, leaving Morton with a mere seventeen
thousand-pound balance to pay.  A drop in the ocean for a rich forensic
genealogist like him.  Morton knew that he was being fleeced, but
continued regardless.  He stripped the Mondeo of the scratched case-less
CDs, handful of loose change and outdated road map; an hour and a half later he
was sitting in the plush virgin leather interior, speeding from the garage
without so much as a cursory glance back at his old car, festering in the
shadows of the showroom.

 

Morton grinned
as he tore along the country lanes, zipping in and out of traffic like he was a
Formula One driver.  He swung into a parking space in the car park
adjoining East Sussex Archives and marched confidently into the ice-cold
office, riding on the fresh burst of energy supplied by the thousands of pounds
sitting in his bank account.

Quiet Brian,
the slim taciturn man who appeared sporadically and without routine at the
archives was on duty in the lobby.  He was either exceptionally shy or, more
likely, Morton thought, had had his personality frozen out of him by Miss
Latimer.

Quiet Brian
handed Morton the adherence to the rules form, which he duly signed and handed
back.  Morton glanced over to the shelf on which he had placed his
business cards and, sure enough, they had all gone.  It was a bit of a
stretch of the imagination to think that they had been snapped up
enthusiastically by the general public in three days.  Miss Latimer had to
have discarded them.

Morton bound up
the stairs clutching the fax from Linda, his heart beginning to race as he
pulled open the search room door and ventured inside the wintry room.  He
had no idea exactly how he was going to broach the subject with Max. 
Maybe he should just come right out with it in a loud, bold voice, as if he
were in court. 
I put it to you, Max Fairbrother that on the first of
December 1987 you wilfully removed the 1944 admissions register from St
George’s Nursing Home and kept it for your own personal gain…

Miss Latimer
was sitting at the research desk, holding her glasses millimetres above the
bridge of her nose as she studied a document on the desk in front of her. 
Morton knew that he had entered her peripheral vision and that she was
deliberately ignoring him.  He shuffled lightly on his heels to try and
attract her attention and he wondered if he should cough politely.

‘It’s
downstairs, first door on the right,’ Miss Latimer said loudly, without moving
as much as an eyelash.

‘Sorry?’ Morton
said, before he realised to what she was referring, but it was too late to stop
her.

‘The
toilet
,’
she enunciated, ‘it’s downstairs, first door on the right.’

‘I don’t need
the toilet –’

‘Then would you
kindly stop wiggling about in front of me,’ she said, finally condescending to
look up at him.  She placed her glasses down and stared at Morton. 
He guessed that was his cue to talk.

‘Is Max here?’

‘Mr Fairbrother
is not available at the moment.  What is the nature of your enquiry?’ she
asked.

‘Confidential,’
Morton said with a caustic smile, ‘could you call him, please?  It’s
important.’

Miss Latimer
sat rigid, contemplating his request.  Finally, she picked up the
phone.  ‘Sorry to disturb you, Mr Fairbrother.  I’ve got somebody
here to see you.  He says it’s important.’ She covered the
mouthpiece.  ‘Who are you?’ Morton knew she was feigning ignorance but
played along regardless.

‘The forensic
genealogist, Morton Farrier,’ he said dryly.  Miss Latimer scowled.

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