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

deliberately high in the hills to catch the frequent rains, and enable the force of gravity to deliver its precious cargo down to the city, pumps non essential. Turn a tap on in the city centre and the goddess of gravity instantly delivers.

Mohammed pulled the car to a standstill.

There was a small pull-in to the left of the single lane of tarmac. It was debateable if any traffic ever came that way, other than occasional Water Company inspection and maintenance jeeps, and bad tempered motorised farmers seeking lost sheep. But her father seemed to know the place existed well enough. It was as if this was the spot he had been seeking all along.

‘Have you been here before?’ she asked gently.

Her father sniffed a soft laugh, as if forgetting himself.

‘Shut the fuck up!’ yelled Maaz.

‘It’s all right, Maaz,’ their father said. ‘I have indeed been this way before, when I was courting your mother, we used to drive up here and picnic on this very spot, her dressed in her most expensive green robes, gold thread interwoven into the green, it was designed to impress me, and of course it did, I’ll always remember that.’

‘I thought you had an arranged marriage,’ said an amazed Maaz, becoming interested in the strange conversation.

‘Oh yes we did, through the Mosque, and I’d always recommend it, but I still had to court Akleema first, that was only right and proper, and she’d expect it too. We’d sit here and talk, not ever touching of course, rarely daring to look into each other’s eyes, because her father and his brother, big bulky men, the pair of them, sat in the gold Ford Granada behind, staring at me in the mirror every time I glanced in the glass.’

Mohammed sniffed another laugh, as if remembering those carefree days from long ago, and then he said, ‘Sahira, get out of the car!’

Maaz jumped out and opened her door.

‘You heard father. Get out!’

Sahira glanced up at her crazy brother, and did as she was told.

The men seized one wrist each and walked her away from the car, down toward the glassy water. From somewhere Mohammed produced a torch, and pointed on ahead.

It was grassy, but deep unkempt, windblown grass, and not easy to walk through. There were no trees to be seen anywhere and no buildings either, nothing, just thick grassland turning to heather on the moors a little higher up.

‘What are you going to do? Throw me in the lake?’

No answer this time, they just carried on walking, leading her away, maybe a hundred yards from the car.

The wind was blowing hard against their faces, whistling through the dark sky, as the final jagged shards of daylight were slowly extinguished. Not an obvious living thing about. Even the ubiquitous sheep had vanished.

It was a famous place in a quirky kind of way, not that any of them knew that. It marked the halfway spot for those individuals, crazy or hardy enough, to attempt the 875 mile Lands End to John O’Groats walk.

It often broke rainfall records for the most rain to fall in a certain area within a certain period of time, hence the proliferation of reservoirs, and not too far away, were remote buildings and Halls that had purportedly inspired some of the Bronte novels.

It was still a famous place too, but that wasn’t important right there, and fact was, everywhere in Britain is a famous place if you look hard enough.

They came to a standstill.

Maaz let go of her wrist.

Her father did not.

He stared down at her in the gloom. Shone the torch into her puzzled face.

‘You have failed me, daughter. You have brought great shame on the family.’

‘I am sorry, father. I was only following my heart.’

‘You behaved disgracefully.’

‘You’re a stinking fucking slut!’ yelled Maaz, waggling his arm and pointing into her face, his poisonous words grasped by the swirling wind and whisked away into the night.

Sahira pityingly glanced at her brother.

The boy wasn’t well. Everyone knew that.

‘We could never trust you again,’ Mohammed continued.

‘She sleeps with filthy kaffirs! She’s nothing more than a common prostitute! You are no sister of mine!’

‘Oh Maaz, listen to yourself,’ said Sahira.

‘She’s shamed the family, shamed her religion, shamed her sex, shamed her parents, shamed me!’

‘Oh, and you’re so pure, are you?’

‘Don’t you... don’t you dare bring my conduct into this! It is you that has behaved blasphemously! You are an evil woman... pure evil!’

‘Yes, but at least I’m not a mental case!’

The men stood there before her, stunned to silence.

How could she possibly have known about that?

How long had she known?

And how had she found out?

She glanced at Maaz’s face.

Took a little comfort in knowing that she had momentarily silenced him, hurt him too, by the look of him. There was spittle in the corner of his lips. The moon was out and the spittle glistened silver in the moonlight. She thought he looked like some kind of extra from a zombie movie, or a madman from a crazy pop video.

Sahira pulled a defiant face directly at him, as she often did when they were children, a face framed in her white hijab, and then she twisted her head from side to side and glanced away. She didn’t want to look at him any longer. She had seen enough.

Maaz scowled and stared at his father, as if for guidance; then let out a guttural noise. He pulled the short-handled ball hammer from his pocket, the gleaming tool he had slipped out to the hardware store earlier to buy, brandished it in the air, and crashed it down on the centre of her head, splitting her skull asunder. She fell to the ground, falling backwards, and died, at their feet.

Maaz glanced across at his father.

Mohammed stared up at the black skies and yelled her name: ‘Sahira!!!’

‘It had to be done, father,’ cooed Maaz, as if they had put down a rabid dog.

‘I know that, son, now go back to the car and get the petrol.’

MAAZ NODDED AND