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

‘Leave it just there,’ said Walter.

The aerial view was slightly from an angle, the bedroom windows clearly visible, overlooking the car park, only one way in and only one way out.’

‘What are you thinking?’ asked Mrs West.

‘Just wondering which guests might have seen the killers coming and going.’

‘All along that side for sure,’ said Karen, pointing at the windows.

‘Only if they were looking out of the window,’ said Gibbons. ‘When I am in a hotel I don’t spend my time looking out of the bloody windows.’

‘We won’t ask what you would be doing,’ muttered Hector.

Gibbons grinned and muttered, ‘Shaddup.’

‘Let’s try those visitors on that side again, anyone who arrived before say half past twelve on Saturday,’ said Walter. ‘Someone must have seen two anxious looking men arriving together, two people we have not been able to account for. We just might get a break.’

There was a short pause and then Karen said, ‘Anything else?’

No one had. The monster had passed its first audition and it was put into stand-by mode, temporarily dead, definitely alive, always there, waiting and brooding and hoping to solve dastardly crimes, as the human beings went back to their day-to-day duties, searching for food to feed it.

TEN MINUTES LATER AND Walter said to Karen, ‘I want to go back to the Red Rose, something isn’t right down there.’

‘OK, Guv, when?’

‘Give me an hour.’

The phone before them burbled and Karen snatched it up.

Walter heard her say, ‘Yes, he’s here, just a moment.’

She held her hand over the mouthpiece and said, ‘It’s your girlfriend?’

He smiled; in a ridiculously optimistic moment he imagined it might be Galina the cleaner. Picked up the phone, said in as syrupy a voice as Karen had ever witnessed, ‘Hello you, what can I do for you?’

‘Who’s been a naughty boy then?’

Forty

It was 2am before Mohammed and Maaz had arrived back at the State, plenty of time to reflect on the day, and the night, and perfect their stories. Closing in on Chester they’d stopped at a remote spot and dumped the petrol can in the canal, and when they arrived home they were surprised to find Ahmed still up.

‘The old man gone to bed?’ asked Maaz breezily, intent on acting out the everything’s fine routine.

‘Yeah, he gets very tired, I’m worried about him,’ replied Ahmed. ‘Everything go all right with you?’

‘Yes,’ said Mohammed snappily. ‘The sinner should be somewhere over the Arabian Gulf by now,’ and he shared a nervous look with Maaz, as Ahmed continued to stare at his shoes.

‘Just forget her,’ said Maaz. ‘It’s finished with. She’s gone for good. Let’s get back to normal. We are better off without her.’

For what she had done and the shame she had had brought down on the family, Ahmed concurred, and he went downstairs and locked up and they all went to bed. Mohammed was the last to find sleep. He’d been wondering about Maaz’s wellbeing, and whether he was taking his medication. He’d check on that in the morning. Then he said his final prayers of the day and lay on his back on the bed. Beside him Akleema slumbered on, unaware that her man had returned, unaware that he had witnessed the murder of their only daughter.

He couldn’t sleep, and got up and went to the lavatory. Sat there for a long time, thinking, replaying the horrific events of the day in his head, flicking through the pictures as he did so.

THE FIRE IN THE LONG grass had long since gone out. A black stain on the landscape, very little left, ash, fragments of human being, fragments of bone, traces of a woman’s clothing, and part of her skull, not immediately recognisable. It could have been a large chunk of charcoal from the end of a decent log, burnt in a campfire. It wasn’t something that most people would stop and examine, though if they had they might have given it a kick.

Inside the chunk of skull, protected from the blaze, sat a perfect, if blackened, set of teeth.

‘WHO’S BEEN A NAUGHTY boy then?’

‘Who’s this?’ said a suddenly irritable Walter, as he adjusted the phone.

‘Oh Walter, have your forgotten me already?’

‘Who is this!’

‘Gardenia Floem of course, your favourite crime reporter.’

‘It’s Inspector Darriteau to you!’

‘Sorry... Inspector ... Darriteau, but you have been a very naughty man, misleading us all with that ruse of yours that Neil Swaythling was dead. You didn’t fool me, as I said before, and I don’t think you fooled many others either, it was just all too neat and convenient.’

‘What can I do for you, Mizz Floem?’

‘Who killed Luke Flowers, Inspector?’

‘No idea. Who do you think?’

‘Oh, don’t ask me. I ask the questions, not answer them.’

‘I ask questions too.’

‘Yes, of course you do, but here’s another one for you from me. Should the Cestrian public be alarmed at the outbreak of what appears to be a spate of gangland murders in their otherwise idyllic city?’

‘If you know of any connection to gangland murders, Mizz Floem, perhaps you could enlighten me.’

‘What else could they be?’

‘I don’t know, that’s why I am investigating them, a task that you are keeping me from.’

‘So sorry to delay you, Inspector, I’ll be in touch.’

‘Don’t bother!’ though by the time Walter said that, she had already gone.

KAREN DROVE THEM BACK to the Red Rose in an unmarked car. Nothing much had changed; a few different cars in the car park, certainly not rushed off their feet, though there was still plenty of time left in the day. There was no sign of any photographers or TV newshounds, they’d all been and sniffed around and click-click-clicked and had already headed off somewhere else.

It was a bright day, almost no cloud, and as Walter stepped from the car he glanced into the sky to where he imagined the satellite might be stationed that recorded the images from space. Couldn’t see a thing, shaded