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

home raising a family and making the dinner, and more than one of his sons had intimated that they would be more than happy to accommodate her, except she was a rozzer, and rozzers would never be accepted into the Wells’ world.

‘So you’ve nothing more to tell us?’ said Walter. ‘No pointers?’

‘Fuck all!’ he said, relishing in his use of the F word, smiling lecherously at Karen as he did so.

‘You know where I am if you should happen to hear anything. Barbarians like that have no place in society.’

Langley shook his head, didn’t say a word, and then right on cue, Rose appeared, ready to show them out.

AS KAREN DROVE BACK toward the station she said, ‘Do you think they are capable of such a barbaric killing?’

‘The Langley family? Oh, they are capable all right, I could imagine it too, but I don’t see why Langley would first tell us about Luke, and then go and kill him. That doesn’t make much sense.’

‘No,’ said Karen. ‘It doesn’t, but those three sons of his give me the heebie-jeebies, and couldn’t you just see it?’

Walter could, and all too clearly, that was the problem. Lawrie holding Luke down, Lenny swinging the axe, and Lewis on the door as lookout, maybe slipping Mary Hussein fifty quid to turn a blind eye, and turn off the cameras for half an hour. Yeah, the pictures were graphic enough, they could both envision them as clear as day, didn’t mean to say it had happened that way, didn’t mean to say they had done it, couldn’t think of a reason why they would, though it didn’t make the vivid images disappear.

BACK AT THE STATION, the first call Karen fielded was from Mrs Holly Swaythling. She passed the phone to Walter.

‘I’d just like to thank you, Inspector.’

She sounded tired, but happy too, certainly different to before.

‘Thank me, what for, Mrs Swaythling?’

‘For keeping Neil safe, and for returning him to us in one piece.’

‘That’s what we are here for.’

‘Terrible about that young boy.’

‘Luke? Yes, a great pity, but play with fire and you are bound to get burnt.’

‘And there’s more good news.’

‘There is?’

‘Yes, you’ll never guess, you remember Suzanne Knight, Gerry’s er... his floozy on the side.’

‘Yeah, what about her?’

‘Well, she was so upset about the attacks on Neil that she let it slip that she was concerned about him, more than concerned, if you get my meaning. To cut a long story short, her and Neil have kind of got together. I can’t tell you how happy it’s makes me feel. Neil practically lives with us again now.’

‘I see, that is a turn up. What does Gerry think about that?’

‘Tell you the truth, Inspector, I’m not sure he’s fully cottoned on yet, but when he does he’s in for a big surprise,’ and she laughed like she hadn’t laughed in months, and Walter laughed too, and then she said, ‘I don’t really care what he thinks. Bye, Inspector, and thanks again.’

AFTER THAT, THE WEEK petered out and on Saturday morning Walter had waited in for Galina the cleaner. She was busy in the kitchen, up to her elbows in hot bubbly water, washing the dishes that he’d again let build up in the sink.

The old portable TV was on, twelve-inch screen, set on the end of the worktop, screwed down so it couldn’t move nearer the water, tuned to one of the news channels, as it always was, and there was a lot of news that morning. Walter could tell that from the excited frisson in the newscasters’ voices.

Three big breaking stories, all vying for lead vocal, each trying hard to elbow the others off the screen.

Crime, Terror, and Weird Sport.

The terror was live from Moscow.

A suicide bomber had blown herself up in Moscow’s largest and most modern supermarket, Saturday morning, busiest time, the early casualty figures were horrendous, and would surely rise as the day wore on. Ninety-two dead they were reporting, running with newsreel pictures, probably taken on someone’s mobile, showing smoke and debris and human beings lying around in unnatural positions, amongst tins of meat and dead chickens and smashed bottles of premium vodka, and frantic melons rolling every which way. Galina glanced over her shoulder and stared at the tiny screen.

‘Terrible, Mister Darto,’ she said. ‘Bad men, bad woman, terrible.’

‘Suicide bomber by the look of it.’

‘Unbelievable!’ and then she said, ‘Mind you Russia,’ though she pronounced it Roo-si-a, ‘Roo-si-a bad to Chechnya, Chechnya bad back,’ and she shrugged her shoulders as if she agreed with the eye-for-an-eye philosophy.

‘Terrible,’ echoed Walter, pondering on what might happen if suicide bombers ever came to provincial England, to Chester. It was a thought that didn’t bear thinking about, and he prayed that he would never live to see the day.

The robotic news gal had moved on, as if she had a great deal to get through, as if she didn’t have time to think about the pictures and words and the death that spewed out, as if it was all nothing to do with her, as if it was all somehow make believe, unreal, manufactured stories for the masses. She had a programme to complete, and was determined to do so, and time was already tight.  She was on to the crime story.

The remains of a body had been found on the moors north-east of Manchester, most likely a woman’s body, burned beyond recognition, and dull pictures duly followed from the foothills of the misty Pennines, a weary looking bloke of a reporter, squinting up the hill, then back at a bleak and cold looking reservoir, and back to the police tent in the near distance that had been erected over the remains.

‘So far the body has not been identified,’ sniffed the bloke. ‘In fact it may never be identified, so badly burned was it, but we believe it to be the body of a young woman, though that has yet to be confirmed.’

Walter watched the pictures with interest, listened