The Inspector Walter Darriteau Murder Mysteries - Books 1-4 by David Carter (best finance books of all time .txt) 📕

Liverpool City Council, when all the double decker buses sensibly ran a crew of two, or three, when the Inspector unexpectedly hopped aboard.

Wazir would start his training the following morning, and would be let loose on the old green AEC Regent III double decker bus, on the city centre to Crosby run the following week.

Wazir thanked Jimmy Mac profusely, and hurried home to share his momentous news with his wife. He would earn six pounds ten shillings a week before stoppages, whatever they were. Jimmy Mac smiled contentedly and returned to sipping his tea.

Despite his name, Jimmy Mac was black, and very proud of it. Came from one of the oldest black families in Liverpool. Could trace his roots back five generations to slavery and Jamaica, where his ancestor was known as Reego. He, like so many others, had taken his owner’s name as his own as soon as he was able to do so. He had received the incredible news of his freedom on arrival in Liverpool, where he was working on a sugar trader, took one look around, and promptly decided to stay. Jimmy Mac had never considered living anywhere else, and now he was more scouse than most of the locals.

He shared a two bedroom flat in Toxteth with his wife Norah, who was almost as black as Jimmy Mac, and three eating and sleeping machines, his sons, Reego, Daniel, and James Junior. All the menfolk in the McTavish family were avid Liverpool City Football Club followers, though they were far too clever and cute to ever consider attending a match in the flesh. No one was stupid enough to do that, not in their community, for in the fifties blacks weren’t welcome in the stadium. Times were finally a-changing, but oh so slowly.

The football club had recently employed a new manager, a man the McTavishes had barely heard of, and the new guy had a huge job on his hands, for Liverpool City were languishing in the second division, and were living most decidedly in the shadow of the big clubs in the city. Like so many others in the area, the McTavishes hoped for the best, yet feared the worst.

WAZIR ENJOYED HIS JOB. He’d easily cope with the racist remarks, he’d laugh them off, and he grew to enjoy the banter with the office girls commuting to and from the city, morning and night.

Some of them were fascinated by his smooth, dark skin, and thick and shiny, neatly parted hair that he wore slightly longer than the fashion, and the sparkle that flashed from his brooding dark eyes, even if his English was occasionally difficult to the local ear. Wazir thought the same of them, but rarely mentioned it.

He wasn’t short of offers either, from the women, he could see that in their English eyes, but would never entertain such a stupid thought, for Nadirah was the love of his life, and always would be. She had been chosen especially for him by his parents when he was seventeen, and surely that was the correct way of doing things. A man was given a pure wife, and a woman was married to a decent man. Both families had seen to that.

Three months after he began work on the buses he began doing something that would concern him for the remainder of his days. Things were not going well at home. His hosts were unhappy that he had taken independent employment. They demanded more and more money from Wazir and his wife, and made suggestions that they would be kicked out onto the street if it wasn’t forthcoming.

Nadirah had also secured two additional cleaning jobs that paid a little cash, and the Khan family were determined to save every last penny, for England had fired unimaginable dreams and targets within them, and they wanted them soon, this year, not next.

Truth was, they wanted them now.

Wazir had worked out a way to supplement his wages.

When a passenger left the bus he would go to their empty seat and look for the spent ticket. If he could find it, and if it were in perfect condition, he would rescue it and slip it into a small wallet he kept for just that purpose.

When the next passenger required the same fare that the recently departed soul had paid, Wazir would turn around on some spurious mission, as if to help an old lady toward her seat, or to the jumping off platform, or to help someone with luggage, while at the same time, he would recover the used ticket that was duly handed to the new traveller. No one ever suspected a thing.

The paid fare would not go into his corporation leather satchel, but into his deep trouser pocket. Wazir had perfected a way of doubling his wages; and tax-free at that, trebling even, at busy times, like Christmas.

It worried him slightly, and affected his sleep. He told his wife he was working all the overtime he could find, never mentioned his deceitful scheme to her, for he knew that she would be aghast. He felt guilty at deceiving her, but he could not stop himself. He could barely look Jimmy McTavish in the eye, and lived in dread of discovery, of an inspector jumping on his bus, and especially one particular inspector who was known to all the men as Ged the Gestapo.

Gerrard Fox lived on the Wirral peninsula in a semi-detached house in Prenton, a residential area that Gerrard portrayed to his city bound colleagues as akin to Beverley Hills.

Wazir determined that he would go there one day and see for himself. In his mind, one day Wazir Khan would possess a house in Prenton too, but for now, he was more concerned in balancing the books whenever the inspector suddenly appeared.

The old bus was standing at the Pier Head, coughing and wheezing filthy black smoke that anointed its passengers, before they boarded for the four o’clock run to Crosby where it would turn around