‘Mr
Farrier. Right.’ She set down the phone and began tapping at the
computer. Moments later in strolled Max Fairbrother wearing a brown
leather bomber jacket and light blue jeans. He was either going for the
young and trendy look or the Biggles look. Either way, he looked
ridiculous.
‘Morning,
Morton. Back so soon?’ he said cheerily.
Morton smiled,
unsure of how to tackle him. He rummaged in his bag and pulled out the
fax from St George's and approached the front desk, where Max stood behind Miss
Latimer.
‘Max, do you
remember I was looking for the 1944 admissions register for St George’s last
week?’
Max’s brow
furrowed for a moment. ‘Oh yes, I do. It was missing on transfer,
wasn’t it? Or something?’
Or something
was about
right. Morton nodded and thought that Max was acting the part very
well. If he hadn’t seen the signature for himself he might have believed
him. Maybe he should have been an actor rather than an archivist.
‘Well, a funny
thing happened. I contacted St George’s and luckily they had an inventory
of what was removed on the…’ Morton looked down at the faxed account,
Max’s name just out of sight. ‘…first of December 1987.’
Miss Latimer
set down her glasses, intrigued by the exchange taking place between the two
men. Max’s cheeks had flushed crimson.
‘Apparently,’
Morton continued, his eyes boring into Max, ‘
everything
was removed,
including the 1944 admission register.’
‘Pass that to
me,’ Miss Latimer instructed, thrusting out her hand.
Max dived
across and snatched the paper. ‘It’s okay, Deidre, I’ll deal with it.’
Morton looked
at Miss Latimer’s disgruntled face.
Deidre
. He never had her
down as a
Deidre.
She was an Agatha or an Eileen or a
Camilla. Deirdre Latimer, the spinster archivist.
‘Do you fancy
going out for a coffee, Morton?’ Max asked, his face continuing to burn.
‘Nero’s okay for you? I find coffee places are all much of a muchness
these days,’ Max quipped cheerfully.
‘Sure,’ Morton
answered tersely, riled by Max’s blasé attitude. He was desperate for a
caffeine injection, and to get away from Deidre was probably the best solution
for everyone. Particularly for Biggles and a confession that could cost
him his job.
Morton took a table in the back corner of
the coffee shop, which he was grateful to find largely deserted. He
didn’t trust anybody at the moment, least of all the man heading towards him
with a tray of coffees and two muffins.
Max had actually bought him a
muffin?
Morton found it vaguely disturbing, as if they were old chums
on an annual get-together.
‘I got a
blueberry and a double-chocolate – take your pick,’ Max said brightly.
Morton reluctantly took the blueberry muffin – well, he was hungry after
all. Max sat back in the leather armchair, crossed his legs at the ankles
and took a bite from his muffin. His nonchalance irritated the hell out
of Morton.
‘Who told you
to remove all the old records from St George's to the archives, Max?’ Morton
said, barely able to contain his fury.
Max cleared his
throat and blew out his cheeks, his lips vibrating together.
‘County. They’d been asking us to archive all sorts of records for a long
time, from schools, the local authority, hospitals, parish councils but we
simply didn’t have the resources to achieve it all quickly enough. St
George’s was just one of many.’
Morton was
perplexed. ‘But then? Why 1987? What was the urgency?
Those records had sat there untouched for years.’
‘I haven’t the
foggiest,’ Max said, shaking his head and steepling his fingers. ‘Let’s
just say that I was
persuaded
by someone to make St George’s a
priority.’
‘So it was
someone in County who told you to pull the admissions register?’
‘No, at least
not that I’m aware of.’
‘Who was it
then?’
Max
shrugged. ‘Not the nicest acquaintance I’ve ever met.’
‘Do you know
his name?’ Morton pushed.
Max’s brow
furrowed. ‘If memory serves me correctly, it was a man called William
Dunk.’
‘Why did he
want the records?’
‘I don’t know,
Morton.’
‘Did he want
any others?’
Max shook his
head. ‘That was it.’
‘Do you know
what happened to the records once he’d taken them?’
‘I imagine that
whatever they contained needed destroying – why else go to such extreme
lengths? Lots of people would love to get their hands on original
documents which show their family – sometimes touching and holding something
one's great, great grandfather once held or signed is the closest one can ever
get to them – but nobody would do what Dunk did for that reason.’
Morton’s
instincts agreed with what Max had said about the records likely having been
destroyed. He glared across at Max, wondering what had made someone with
such a passion for preserving the past want to blatantly sabotage it.
‘Why did you do it? Money?’
Max shifted
uncomfortably in his seat. ‘Well, I didn’t get a choice in the matter,’
he answered, his voice trailing off, as if encouraging Morton to jump in with a
moral condemnation. Morton preferred to stay quiet and give Max all the
rope he needed to hang himself. Max continued, ‘First of all he showed up
at the archives and I told him to bugger off, to put it mildly, then the next
day he showed up at my house brandishing a weapon. So, I handed the file
over. After that I never saw him again.’
‘Why would
someone be so desperate to remove an admissions register?’ Morton said
rhetorically. ‘Seems a bit extreme.’
Max met
Morton’s hard stare. ‘I’ve asked myself the same questions over the years,
but I still have no idea.’
Morton
considered the scenario carefully. As an historian, if he had been put in
Max’s position the first thing that he would have done would be to pick over
every word of that admissions register with a fine-tooth comb to discover its
hidden secret. ‘You must have taken a look inside,’ he said finally.
‘Yes, I
did. I took it home and read it cover to cover. Then I re-read it
and re-read it again. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing.
Just the names of children being admitted to a children’s home. I didn’t
get it. In a funny way, that kind of made it easier to hand over.
It wasn’t like I was giving away the Domesday Book.’
‘I don't
suppose you recall seeing the name Coldrick in there?’
Max shook his
head. ‘As I said, nothing stood out. I couldn't now tell you a single
word that was written in there.’
Morton didn’t
trust Max but he felt that he was being honest with him. ‘Who did this
William Dunk work for?’
‘I don’t know,
he never said and I never asked.’
‘How could I
find him?’ Morton demanded.
‘He’s probably
six feet under by now, I shouldn’t wonder. He was at least in his
seventies back then.’
‘In his
seventies? And he threatened
you
?’ Morton said, slightly incredulous
that a beefy man like Max could be intimidated by a pensioner. He had
visions of this Dunk character propped up outside Max’s house on his Zimmer
frame.
‘When I say
that he came to the house, I meant that he was
inside
my house. With a
crowbar held over my wife’s head.’
That revelation
slightly dampened the damning fires of Morton’s moral condemnation.
Still, he couldn’t quite let Max off the hook; he could have reported it to the
police or something. ‘Oh,’ Morton said.
‘Exactly.’ Max
paused. ‘Look, Morton, I know it goes against everything that I’ve ever
worked for and I do feel guilty about it, but I’d like to meet the man who
offered a polite ‘no’ to William Dunk and his crowbar. The question is,
what are you going to do now that you know I took it?’
‘Hadn’t thought
about it,’ Morton said, dismissively.
‘Can I ask what
your
desperation is to locate this one register?’ Max asked.
Morton took a
leisurely sip of his drink before answering. He didn’t want to divulge a
thing to Max. ‘Just a case that I’m working on, that’s all.’
Max
smiled. ‘You think I’m still working for them, don’t you?’ he said.
When Morton wasn’t forthcoming with an answer he added, ‘I’m not, you know.’
‘Whatever
you say, Max,’ Morton said glibly. He downed the last of his coffee,
burning the roof of his mouth, and marched indignantly back to his car.
Morton left Lewes with a fresh piece of
jigsaw to add to his case notes: William Dunk. If Max was correct, and
Dunk was now dead, then the implication was that a lot of people had been
working for decades to cover up the past – a task which was continuing to this
day. He had no doubt at all that the removal of the admissions register
was because of James Coldrick. As he zipped through along the High Street
in Rye towards his house, he contemplated his next step. To connect this
new piece of jigsaw to the bigger picture, Morton needed to know more about
William Dunk.
As he turned
into Church Square, he noticed an aged war veteran, standing proudly by the church
entrance wearing a blue beret and a full selection of medals, collecting money
for charity. His mind flashed to the future –
would Jeremy survive an
army career in these unstable times and be standing outside a church in his
seventies?
He felt happier that he was now, at least, headed
somewhere that the Foreign Office hadn’t blacklisted as a travel
destination. He needed to stop being so damned morose and think about
something more positive. Like Juliette. She’d be home watching television,
waiting for him. Maybe they could do something nice together.
‘Hiya,’ he
called into the lounge when he got home. The television was off and there
was no sign of Juliette. Her car was still on the drive but he couldn’t
see a note or any clue as to where she might have gone. Ordinarily he
wouldn’t have paid it any heed, but after all that had occurred, visions of her
being bundled into the back of a blacked-out van sprang into his mind. He
chided himself for being so melodramatic. He picked up his mobile and called
her. She answered. Thank God.
‘Are you
alright?’ he asked, trying to conceal his concern. She sounded
breathless.
‘Fine, I’m just
out for a jog. What’s up?’
‘Nothing, I’m
home and just wondered where you were,’ Morton replied.
Jogging?
In this heat? Was she mad?
‘You sound
weird,’ Juliette puffed.
‘No I’m fine;
I’ll see you in a bit.’
‘Okay. Bye.’
Morton hung up,
relieved. Since she was out frying herself in the heat, he had a moment
to switch on her laptop and run a search in the Ancestry online death indexes
for a William Dunk, born
circa
1917, give or take ten years. The
results flashed up on screen.
William Dunk, 1 May 1913 – May 1993,
Havering, Essex
William Dunk, 7 Mar 1902 – Mar 1999, North
Somerset, Somerset
William Charles Dunk, 1 Apr 1913 – Jul
2002, Hastings and Rother, East Sussex
William Edwin Dunk, 21 Dec 1911 – Nov
1986, Hackney, London
William George Dunk, 6 Aug 1910 – Sep
1993, Shrewsbury, Shropshire
William Isaac Dunk, 12 Mar 1911 – Jan
1998, Leeds, Yorkshire
William Joseph Dunk, 1 Jun 1912 – Mar
1997, Poole, Dorset
William Roy Dunk, 11 Oct 1934 – Nov 1989,
Grimsby, Lincolnshire
William Thomas C. Dunk, 21 Jan 1915 – Jul
1985, Chorley, Lancashire
He looked at the list in front of
him. Several of the men’s ages ruled them out. One would have been
way too old and one too young to pass for a man in his seventies in 1987 and
two of the men were dead by that time. That left five men to choose
from. Dorset, Yorkshire and Shropshire as places of death were possible,
yet seemed unlikely, somehow. That left William Charles Dunk, who died in
East Sussex in 2002 as the most probable candidate.
Morton
jotted down the details, opened up a new tab in his web browser and went to
www.gro.gov.uk
to order Dunk’s death certificate.
Ordinarily, he would have selected the £9.25 standard option but decided that
it was worth spending £23.40 to receive the certificate on the priority
service, since Dunk was a potentially significant window into whomever was
hiding the Coldrick past. A few simple clicks later and the certificate
was ordered.
