Chapter 80
In many ways, Peter Ward’s neighbors owed him a debt of thanks, and to be fair, most of them knew it.
Pearson Street had always been a little down-at-heel. A newsstand with no papers, a mini-mart with a mountain of cheap alcohol behind the counter, a travel agent with fading posters of the sun, two bookies, a pub on its last legs, a party accessories shop, a nail bar, and a boarded-up café.
And then the Flower Mill had moved in. Peter Ward’s shop, bursting with color, a little rainbow explosion on this gray street.
And what flowers! Peter Ward knew his stuff, and when you know your stuff in a small town, word soon gets around.
People started making little detours from the town center.
And they’d tell their friends, who’d tell their friends, and before you know it, someone down from London has spotted the boarded-up café and bought the lease, and now there were two reasons to visit Pearson Street.
Then a bride ordering flowers from Peter and enjoying a latte in the café sees this little street is on the up, and wonders if it might be the place to open a small hardware store.
So now the Tool Chest sits next to the Flower Mill, opposite Casa Café.
The travel agent suddenly has people walking past and feels the need to change those posters, and those people start walking in.
Twentysomethings, mainly, who had no idea what a travel agent might be.
The Londoner with the café buys the pub and starts doing food.
Terry at the newsstand starts ordering in more papers, more milk, more everything.
The nail bar paints more nails, the party shop sells more balloons, the mini-mart starts stocking gin alongside the vodka.
John from the butcher’s counter at the supermarket takes the leap and opens a store of his own, taking his customers with him.
A local art group hires out a vacant storefront and takes it in turns to buy pieces of each other’s art.
All thanks to Peter Ward’s orchids, and sweet peas, and Transvaal daisies.
Pearson Street is just what you want a shopping street to be—busy, friendly, local, and happy.
Joyce thinks it’s so perfect that it’s surely only six months away from having a Starbucks and losing what it now has.
Which would be sad, but Joyce has to admit that she likes a Starbucks; she must shoulder some of the blame.
Joyce and Elizabeth are sitting in Casa Café. Peter Ward has just bought them each a cappuccino. Becky from the Tool Chest will keep an eye out for customers while he takes half an hour off. It’s that sort of street.
Peter Ward is graying and smiling, and has the easy air of a man who has made a series of good decisions in life. A Folkestone florist whom karma has rewarded for a lifetime of kindness and calmness, a man whose good deeds have won him the prize of happiness.
This impression is misleading. As the scar under his right eye and the bulge of his biceps will tell you, Peter Ward is Bobby Tanner.
Or perhaps Peter Ward has left Bobby Tanner behind?
That is what Joyce and Elizabeth have come to find out.
Is the fighter still there? The killer, perhaps?
Has he recently made the short trip along the coast to Fairhaven and bludgeoned to death his former boss?
Elizabeth lays the photograph on the table between them, and Peter Ward picks it up, smiling.
“The Black Bridge,” he says. “We had a few nights in there. Where’d you get this from?”
“A number of places,” says Elizabeth. “Well, two places, in fact. One was sent to Jason Ritchie, and one was found by the corpse of Tony Curran.”
“I read about Tony,” Peter says, nodding. “That was about time.”
“You’ve never seen this photograph before?” asks Elizabeth.
He looks again, then says, “Never have.”
“You weren’t sent one?” asks Joyce, sipping her cappuccino.
Peter shakes his head.
“Well, that’s either good news for you, or it’s good news for us,” says Elizabeth.
He raises an inquiring eyebrow.
“Well, it’s either good news for you, in that Tony Curran’s killer has no idea where you are. Or it’s good news for us, in that you killed Tony Curran yourself, and we haven’t wasted a trip to Folkestone.”
Peter gives a half smile and looks at the photo again.
“Not that the trip would really be wasted,” says Joyce. “We’re having a very nice day.”
“The police have the idea that Jason killed Tony Curran,” Elizabeth begins. “And perhaps he did. But for reasons of our own, we would prefer that he didn’t. Would you have a view on that, Bobby?”
Peter Ward holds up a hand. “Peter around here, please.”
“Would you have a view on that, Peter?” asks Elizabeth.
“I don’t see it,” he says. “Jason went nowhere near that side of things. He looks mean, but he’s a teddy bear.”
Joyce looks up from her notes for a moment. “A teddy bear who funded a major drugs ring.”
Peter acknowledges this with a nod.
Elizabeth puts the photo back down on the table. “So, if not Jason, then perhaps you? Or perhaps Turkish Johnny?”
“Turkish Johnny?” says Peter.
“He took the photo.”
Peter thinks for a while. “Did he, now? I don’t remember, but that would make sense. I’m guessing you know the story? The boy Tony shot in the Black Bridge? Johnny shooting the taxi driver who got rid of the body?”
“We know that story, yes,” confirms Elizabeth. “Then Johnny disappears back to Cyprus.”
“Well, it wasn’t quite that simple,” says Peter.
“I’m all ears,” says Elizabeth.
“Someone grassed Johnny up to the cops. They raided his flat, but he’d gone already.”
“And who grassed him up?” asks Elizabeth.
“Who knows? Not me.”
“No one likes a grass,” says Joyce.
“It doesn’t matter who,” says Peter. “What matters is that when Johnny legged it, he took a hundred grand of Tony’s cash with him.”
“Is that so?”
“Money he had lying around his flat. Tony’s money. All disappeared. Tony went mental. A hundred grand was a lot of money to Tony in those days.”
“Did he try and find Johnny?” asks Elizabeth.
“You bet. Went off to Cyprus a couple of times. Didn’t find a thing.”
“Not easy when it’s not your natural territory,” says Elizabeth.
“So I’m guessing you haven’t found Johnny either?” asks Peter Ward.
Elizabeth shakes her head.
“How did you find me, by the way? If you don’t mind me asking? I don’t really want to be found by anyone, especially if Johnny’s back in town, leaving photos of me next to bodies.”
Elizabeth takes a sip of her cappuccino. “Woodvale Cemetery, where they buried your brother Troy?”
Peter nods.
“I got access to the CCTV, thanks to a mortician whose uncle I once saved on a train,” says Elizabeth. “That’s where I found you.”
He looks at her. “Elizabeth, I’ve been there twice in a year. There’s no way you found me from the CCTV. That’d be a needle in a haystack.”
“You went there twice, yes,” she agrees. “But on what days?”
Peter sits back, folds his arms, then nods and smiles. He sees it now.
“Twelfth of March and seventeenth of September,” continues Elizabeth.
“Troy’s birthday and the anniversary of his death.
I was hoping to see the same car both times, jot down a number plate, get a friend of a friend to run it through a computer somewhere.
But on March twelfth I saw a white van from a Folkestone flower shop, which I thought unusual at a cemetery in Brighton.
Not impossible, but noteworthy. And I thought it very, very unusual to see the same van on September seventeenth.
I found that very noteworthy, indeed. You see? ”
“I do see,” says Peter with a nod. “And no need for a number plate.”
“Because you had your name, your address, and your telephone number printed on the side,” says Elizabeth.
Peter can’t help but give her a quiet round of applause, and she responds with a slight bow.
“That’s very good, Elizabeth,” says Joyce. “She’s very good, Peter.”
“I see that,” he says. “So no one else knows where I am? No one else can find me?”
“Not unless I tell them where you are,” says Elizabeth.
Peter leans forward. “And is that something you’d be likely to do?”
Elizabeth leans forward too. “Not if you come and see us tomorrow, sit down with Jason and the police, and tell them what you just told us.”