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

Ahmed and Mohammed were already one step ahead.

It only left the women. It had to be Sahira.

The Imam fixed Mohammed with his gaze and softly and slowly spoke the words, ‘Your daughter, our sister, has shamed us all. She is fornicating with a kaffir.’

Stunned silence.

Mohammed broke the spell.

‘But... but, that cannot be right, Imam, she is never left unattended in the house, she is not permitted to have boys, men, to the house unless we are present, and she has never brought a kaffir to our property, never, not once.’

The Imam brought his hand to his mouth and scratched his scrawny grey whiskers. Glanced up at Hujjat, and then back at the still stunned Khan clan. The Khans had recently been negotiating a good marriage for Sahira, and this kind of filthy rumour could scupper everything.

‘She is fornicating with a kaffir!’ repeated the Imam, ‘letting herself be abused by a Christian youth, the scummiest Christian youth you could ever hope to meet, a man of terrible repute, a lecher, a sinner, a criminal, a fornicator!’

Mohammed clasped his hands together and squirmed in his seat. Beads of sweat popped from his forehead like mini-sprouting cabbages.

His father Ahmed glanced across as his anguished son.

Mohammed went to speak again, but Ahmed interrupted, ‘Let us hear what the good Imam has to say, Mohammed, let us hear on what he bases these terrible accusations.’

Sabir glanced to his left and looked up again at Hujjat, then bobbed his head just the once in as pious a manner as he could manage.

Hujjat was suddenly on the move, making for the side wall where dark drawn curtains obscured part of the wall, as if there was a window there. He drew back the curtains, but there was no window, just a large flat screen television fixed flush to the wall, giant size, top ticket price, donation no doubt from Javed Grewal’s electrical shop. Hujjat glanced back at Sabir, as if for instruction. Sabir nodded, and Hujjat slipped the DVD into the player.

DC HECTOR BROWNE HAD been brought back to earth. He’d had no idea how hard it was to trace someone through the local council tax records. He could not find a Luke Flowers, nor a Luke Edward Flowers, nor an L Flowers, or L E Flowers, or a Luca Flowers, or Lucan Flowers, or Look Flowers, or any other similar name.

If this guy Luke Flowers had a flat in the city of Chester, he wasn’t registered to pay council tax, so either he had registered in another name, possible, though Hector thought unlikely, or he hadn’t registered at all, in the vain hope of avoiding paying. The council would soon catch up with that. They always did in the end. Browne pondered on his findings and wondered where he should go next.

DC Darren Gibbons had so far visited five travel agents with his oppo Jenny Thompson, so far without any luck. There were still another five to do, including the one on the high street, where the pretty girl always smiled at fit young men like Darren Gibbons.

The other teams were also finding out just how difficult and busy receptionists could be on health centre counters. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to help, they said, but that essential health matters simply had to take priority, and even some of the police officers had some sympathy with that.

Libraries had proved equally useless. Luke Flowers was not a library kind of guy, or if he was, he was into those book reader devices that were revolutionising the whole publishing and reading business.

Karen owned one, adored the thing, given to her by an ardent admirer who had long since been binned, though she kept the electronic reader after he’d gone. She had to have some decent memories of David Gardner, for there weren’t many others, and she would squint at that grey slab at every opportunity.

Walter sat back in his chair, his hands behind his head, and gazed unblinking at the ceiling. He often did that when he was reviewing a case in his mind. Karen had seen that semi-trancelike state many times before, and when he visited planet Darriteau, she knew better than to interrupt him.

Mrs West had been to the Ladies to freshen up and was coming back when she spotted him, sitting there, unmoving and silent.

She didn’t fully accept the deep thinking scenario that Walter portrayed. In fact she often wondered if he had perfected the art of falling asleep with his eyes wide open. She wouldn’t put it past the strange old man under her command.

Joan West was concerned.

She had a violent unsolved murder on her desk, and the buck would stop with her. She was beginning to consider that Walter Darriteau’s best days might be behind him. She’d give him another forty-eight hours. If there hadn’t been any developments by then, she would consider calling in outside help. She had to be seen to be proactive. No one liked a leader who sat alone in their office and did nothing. Leaders had to lead, and had to be seen to lead, even if she led everyone else up the garden path. Being seen to be doing something was so important in the service, and far more important than staring into space. Walter’s sloth-like manoeuvres irritated many, and had occasionally resulted in his lack of promotion.

Walter was still thinking. Didn’t care less what other people might think. Why had Luke Flowers tried to kill Neil Swaythling?

He was no nearer a satisfactory answer, indeed the whole question appeared to be getting lost in the headlong pursuit to arrest the cretin.

IMAM HUJJAT DREW THE curtains across the real window on the other side of the room. The glass was frosted to keep out prying eyes, but now the summer morning light was excluded too.

A colour picture filled the big screen.

Shivering images, initially, humming sound, nothing spoken. Then