About the Author
Nathan Dylan Goodwin was born and raised in Hastings, East Sussex. Schooled in the town, he then completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in Radio, Film and Television, followed by a Master of Arts Degree in Creative Writing at Canterbury Christ Church University. A member of the Society of Authors, he has completed a number of successful local history books about Hastings, as well as other works of fiction in this series; other interests include reading, photography, running, skiing, travelling and of course, genealogy. He is a member of the Guild of One-Name Studies and the Society of Genealogists, as well as being a member of the Sussex Family History Group, the Norfolk Family History Society, the Kent Family History Society and the Hastings and Rother Family History Society. He lives in Kent with his husband and son.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
nonfiction:
Hastings at War 1939-1945
Hastings Wartime Memories and Photographs
Hastings & St Leonards Through Time
Around Battle Through Time
fiction:
(The Forensic Genealogist series)
Hiding the Past
The Lost Ancestor
The Orange Lilies – A Morton Farrier novella
The America Ground
The Spyglass File
The Missing Man – A Morton Farrier novella
The Suffragette’s Secret – A Morton Farrier short story
The Wicked Trade
The Missing Man
by
Nathan Dylan Goodwin
Copyright © Nathan Dylan Goodwin 2017
Nathan Dylan Goodwin has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This story is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Where the names of real people have been used, they appear only as the author imagined them to be.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the author. This story is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the author’s prior consent in any form of binding, cover or other format, including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Cover design: Patrick Dengate
www.patrickdengate.com
For my dad, Dennis Leslie Goodwin
One of the good ones, taken too soon
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Acknowledgments
Further information:
Prologue
24th December 1976, Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, USA
Velda was numb. The blanket over her shoulders, now heavy from the falling snow, did nothing to stop the acute quivering that rattled through her body. The police tape barricade, vibrating in the icy wind against her hands, had confined her to the street. The swelling congregation behind her—a motley mixture of prying and anxious neighbours and the whole gamut of emergency service personnel—were rendered faceless by the darkness of the night.
Velda’s eyes followed the thick snakes of white hose that crossed her lawn from the hydrant, into the hands of the firefighters, who were battling the great rasping flames that projected from every window of the house. Her house.
One of the firefighters—the chief, she assumed—approached her. He was sweating and his face was marked with black blotches. ‘Ma’am—are you sure your husband and daughter are still inside?’
‘Yes,’ she heard herself say.
‘They couldn’t have slipped out to get something from the grocery store or…?’
‘No,’ Velda sobbed. ‘They’re inside. Please find them.’
The fire chief nodded and turned back towards the house.
A moment later, without fanfare or warning, the house collapsed. The shocked gasps of her neighbours and the stricken cries of the firefighters on the lawn were lost to the appalling cacophony of metal, brick, wood and glass crumbling together, crescendo-ing into the night sky. A funnel of dense black smoke, peppered with flecks of bright red and orange, clashed in mid-air with the flurrying of falling snow.
Then, an odd stillness.
That her house—her home—could be reduced to this pile of indescribable burning debris in front of her shocked her anew.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
The hermetic seal that had neatly separated past and present had just ruptured spectacularly.
And now it was all over.
Somebody touched her shoulder and said something. She turned. It was her son, Jack. Either Velda’s ears were still ringing with the sound of the house disintegrating, or Jack was speaking soundlessly. There was an urgency to his voice.
Velda tried to reply but a sagging sensation in her heart emanated out under her skin and down into her quivering limbs. Her legs buckled from beneath her and she crumpled helplessly into the snow.
Chapter One
14th August 2016, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Morton Farrier was shattered. He looked at his watch: just gone ten in the morning. He and his new wife, Juliette, had arrived at Logan International Airport late last night, following their marriage yesterday in their home town of Rye, England. He yawned. He’d had very little sleep and yet here he was sitting at a digital microfilm reader in Boston Public Library. He stretched and glanced around him. Having managed to navigate his way through busy and noisy corridors, courtyards and vast swathes of uninterrupted bookshelves, Morton now found himself in the genealogy section, tucked behind a partition at the rear of a palatial hall, where only fragmented whispers from the researchers working under green-shaded desk lamps reached the high ceiling above.
An almost tangible restlessness burrowed into Morton’s insides, rendering him tense and apprehensive. He and Juliette were here on a
