Grant knew he couldn’t leave Cornwall without finding Ivan Youlen and Ken Holford. He thought he had left the horrors of Zennor behind until parked below his balcony he spotted a car, an old Austin, that he was sure he had seen on the previous two nights. He made a note of its number plate, and a swift internet search revealed the car was registered in Essex. This confounded him. However, if the car belonged to the elderly couple who had been staring at him unnervingly there might just be someone he knew behind all this – his former friend Danny who he was sure had tried to put him off pursuing the matter further. But why would he want to frighten him? What could he be hiding? He resolved to locate Ivan Youlen, but he couldn’t get back online at the hotel. He asked reception for a copy of the Yellow Pages. On receipt of this he was delighted to discover an Ivan Youlen living near by at Mevagissey.
He hurriedly dialled the number and heard the message, ‘Neither Ivan or Julie are here at present, so please leave a message.’
He left a short, succinct one. ‘Hi, Ivan. You won’t remember me, but my name is Grant Morrison, and I used to stay at the hotel where your Uncle Tom worked. Can you please call me on …’ He didn’t have high hopes of a returned call. He reasoned that Ivan must be well over sixty years of age, as it was over forty-four years since he and another coastguard had rescued Joanna Jessops from drowning off Constantine Bay Beach. He now turned his attention to tracking down Ken Holford, who he guessed must be in his mid to late seventies if he was still alive. He looked at his iPad for Justyn’s emailed report, but it hadn’t arrived.
That evening Grant drove to a nearby pub on the road to Mevagissey to seek out some local gossip. He sat at the bar, making out that he had lived in Cornwall most of his life and was now looking to settle in this particular area, even bluffing that he had friends near by called Ivan Youlen and Ken Holford. No one identified either as being acquaintances, but one of the locals, a hairy, thickly tattooed man with forearms that could have belonged to a professional wrestler, raised his eyes heavenwards at the mention of Ken Holford.
‘Do you know him?’ asked Grant eagerly.
‘No I don’t,’ came the clipped reply. ‘But if hanging was still allowed, that man would have swung from the old gallows in Truro.’
‘Wow, strong stuff. What’s he done?’ Grant had overplayed his hand, sounding a bit too London toff, and the landlord interrupted the opinionated Cornishman.
‘Now then, Ernie. That be dangerous talk.’
Much to Grant’s chagrin, there would be no further discussion on the subject. The barman turned up the music to such a volume that conversation became almost impossible, which was plainly his intention. As Grant had consumed four pints of bitter – in addition to buying pretty much everyone in the pub a drink while claiming he was celebrating his birthday – he ordered a taxi back to the hotel. This was a deliberate ploy. He knew taxi drivers were a rich source of local information, and he would order another in the morning to help him retrieve his car. Just as he was about to leave, the publican and a coterie of others appeared with a dessert, a small slice of Black Forest gâteau with a solitary candle burning on it, and delivered a hearty rendition of ‘Happy Birthday to You’. Startled and a little hazy as a result of his hop-fuelled evening he thanked them, saying it had all been very enjoyable. He climbed in the cab, dessert in hand.
‘What a prat,’ the landlord said to the assembled drinkers, as the taxi pulled away. Grant didn’t catch the words but saw their laughter all too clearly.
‘What a jolly bunch,’ he remarked to the driver, before asking, ‘Do you know a man by the name of Ivan Youlen?’
Grant’s fortunes were on the rise. As luck would have it, his driver lived in the fishing village of Mevagissey, on the same street as Ivan Youlen.
‘Ivan the greenfingers,’ announced the cabbie in a proper West Country burr.
‘Why is he called that?’
‘Well, he works at the gardens.’
‘Which gardens?’
‘You know, the ones that were lost and are now found.’
‘The Lost Gardens of Heligan,’ Grant announced triumphantly. ‘Will I find him there?’
‘Expect so. And Julie works in the shop.’
‘Has Julie been there long? I mean she and Ivan have been together a long time, haven’t they?’ he bluffed.
‘Don’t think so. Julie’s only forty-odd, more than twenty years younger than that old rascal Ivan. He trades in his women for younger models more often than rockin’ Rod Stewart,’ the cabbie chortled.
‘Lucky Ivan if they look like Rod’s women.’
‘Well, whatever,’ said the cabbie. ‘That’ll be £6.’
Grant gave a tip of another £2, delighted that he now knew where to find green-fingered Ivan, the ladies’ man. Heading back to his hotel room, he was sober enough to look for the old Austin with the Essex number plate. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or not that it wasn’t there. On closing his bedroom door he moved swiftly to fill a bath and then he called Brigit.
‘Well, hello,’ she replied. ‘I’ve been worried about you.’
‘Yeah, sorry. Phone got cut off last night. Don’t know why. I tried the office around six, but I guess you were on your way home.’
‘Anyway, no more being haunted by old biddies?’
‘No, but it’s creepy. There was a car at Zennor I saw in the car park here.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, and it’s an Essex number plate. You don’t think Danny is trying to freak me out?’
‘Unlikely. But lock your door anyway.’
Grant decided not to mention the second of his interrupted nights and ended the call with dutiful amorous declarations. He couldn’t wait to get back home, but he wasn’t going to quit now.
The following day he set out to find Ivan at the Lost Gardens of Heligan. The tourist attraction was well signposted, instructing Grant to turn right off the B3273 heading to Mevagissey and following the brown signs. On arrival in the car park he surveyed all the shops and tea rooms and wondered if he had arrived at a run-of-the-mill garden centre. He was soon to be educated, however, marvelling as he read the potted history that explained how the gardens had been hidden for seventy-odd years. He noted the motto, ‘Don’t come here to sleep or slumber.’ He asked for Ivan at reception, and it so happened he had just clocked on for his shift.
‘Ivan,’ he announced when they came face to face, ‘I’m Grant Morrison. I left a message on your answerphone last night.’
Ivan studied him carefully but made no reply.
‘Can we talk?’ He followed Ivan outside.
‘What the fuck about?’ Ivan marched away to start his work, with Grant following hurriedly in his wake, noticing that Ivan walked with a pronounced limp. As he rushed to catch up, he wondered whether Ivan had acquired the infirmity by being battered by waves in his coastguard days or, more likely, by getting involved in a skirmish or two over the years. In other respects the man appeared much as he would have anticipated. His ambling gait seemed to diminish his height to around six feet; Grant was sure he used to be taller. His jet-black hair, now silver grey, was still worn long. The only other notable change was a couple of rather grainy chipped teeth.
‘Look, I know it was a long time ago, but there was never any justice for your Uncle Tom and neither, it would seem, for Hector Wallace.’
Ivan studied Grant again, disapprovingly. ‘And who are you? Inspector fucking Morse?’
Grant became bolder. ‘Look, you can swear at me as much as you like, but I’m not going away, and I would much rather we had a cordial conversation.’
‘What about?’ Ivan repeated again, this time without the expletive.
Grant felt this was progress of sorts. ‘Someone has got away with these events, these crimes, for a long, long time, and there is some evidence as to who the killer might be.’
‘And who might he be?’
Grant pursued Ivan around the Italian section of the gardens, figuring that as long as Ivan didn’t make a citizen’s arrest he would continue, as it was his only hope of speaking to Ivan the Irascible.
‘Three questions. First, were you in the pub that night with Trevor Mullings and Hector Wallace when messages were written in bottles and Hector was found washed up dead the next day? Second, did you go to the beach with Hector? And, third, did Ken Holford go?’
For one glorious moment Grant hoped his direct approach had paid off, as Ivan studied him again before instructing him to ‘Go play with yourself’, at which point he disappeared into a shed and slammed the door.
‘And what happened to the cash Uncle Tom was looking after, Ivan? The truth will come out. You can’t ignore it, and you can’t ignore me,’ shouted Grant, getting angrier than he could ever remember being before.
‘Oh, can’t I?’ shouted Ivan through the closed glass window.
‘No. I will find Ken Holford next, and I’ll find out from him.’
‘I don’t think so,’ countered Ivan, breaking into a deep spine-chilling laugh.
‘And why’s that?’
‘Because he’s – as you Cockneys would have it – brown bread! Yes. Would you Adam and Eve it? Ken’s brown bread. ’E don’t go down the rub-a-dub-dub no more. ’E don’t even go up the apples and pears no more. ’E’s brown bread!’ Ivan’s belly laugh from inside the hut seemed to rock the wooden foundations and rendered Grant speechless. As he walked away disconsolately he looked back and could just about make out Ivan mouthing every expletive invented in his direction; he was minded to report him to his employers but thought better of it.
Grant suddenly felt a fool. Hadn’t the man in the pub, Ernie, said about Ken Holford, ‘That man should have swung from the old gallows in Truro’? And he had completely missed the comment being in the past tense. As he turned to make his way back through the gardens, he couldn’t help but be struck by the incongruity of such a wondrously beautiful place bearing witness to such an ill-natured conversation. Grant lingered just long enough to turn and witness Ivan on his mobile phone. Recovering his equilibrium, Grant couldn’t help smiling as he read a notice board saying, ‘Enjoyed today? For the same price you can become a Friend of Heligan for a year.’
Great, he thought. I could be abused by Ivan every day of the year for no extra charge.