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

if it were ever possible to describe any two people as glamorous solely from a rear view. The woman had an hourglass figure and was wearing a fine, flowing dress, maroon, perhaps especially chosen to match the restaurant, who knows to what extremes some people would go to make a statement. She possessed long, wavy, auburn hair that shimmered across the naked skin of her upper back, as she laughed at the stories her attentive companion was dispensing.

The dress was long, half way between knee and ankle, a classy number, imagined Walter, a show-stopper, and even though she was sitting down, it still looked elegant, so much nicer than the mini-no-dresses that so many young women appeared to prefer, or so he thought.

The lady possessed a dainty pair of heels set in a good pair of shoes, jet black, shining like polished jade, legs tucked up, her feet on the lower frame of the stool, and the toes forever on the move, ever so slightly, constantly moving an inch or so this way or that, as if they were restless, or desperate to play footsie with someone, presumably her partner, and that would surely begin once they were sitting opposite one another.

But as her feet moved, a mini spotlight above them caught the shining surface of the shoes, and glinted across the restaurant, but it wasn’t the shoes that caught Walter’s eye, it wasn’t the brand new chrome stools, it wasn’t the chunky diamond ring on her finger that she couldn’t stop touching and admiring, and it wasn’t the freshly polished glasses on the bar, or the lit up bottles of liquor standing to attention behind, but something slightly higher up, something slightly further away, something even more glittering, imprisoned in an impressive display case that looked as if it should have been showing the king of salmons, no, the thing that was glinting in the ambient light across the restaurant was an ancient bejewelled sword.

Austerity was a quick eater, seemed to shovel it down as if she hadn’t eaten for a week. Slammed her fork down and burped.

‘Sorry,’ she said, smirking, hand to mouth. ‘Tikka always does that to me,’ and she wafted her hand across the table over the soiled and empty dishes, and said, ‘This one is on me, by the way.’

‘Oh, that’s kind of you,’ said Harry who had never been known to refuse a free meal.

‘Thanks, but I’ll pay for my own,’ said Walter, who’d given up on the pudding.

‘Oh come on, Darriteau, take my hospitality when it’s offered, I need to spend my money somehow.’

‘I insist,’ said Walter, and he slipped a twenty from his wallet and set it on the table and bade them a good night.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ asked Austerity.

Harry pulled a face and shrugged.

‘Public servant, police inspector, maybe he imagines he’d be compromised.’

‘Compromised! Oh, you are stupid, Harry. What tommyrot!’

WALTER DECIDED HE WOULD walk home. It was a lovely night, balmy, clear, and still, and as he walked slowly along, gears crunched and banged in his head, as imaginary pieces of crazy jigsaws were being removed and retried in unlikely places, and he was still doing that as he ambled up his garden path, and was still offering those difficult pieces into the hardest part of the puzzle an hour later, as he drifted away to oblivion.

Forty-Seven

Monday morning and the team were out on the dentist round. Nothing fresh had come in from Manchester. So far as the Chester police were concerned there was still no ID, still no motive, and still no one had come forward to report the dead person missing.

As for Walter’s own murder, that of Luke Flowers, the trail had soon fizzled out. The Hytec monster hadn’t been able to help either, because monsters need feeding, and fact was, nothing of any consequence had been offered to the monster for a couple of days. The bare truth was, the monster was starving.

Karen was out with Gibbons, crawling around the dentists on the north side of the city. Hector Browne and Jenny were doing the south side. Karen wasn’t alone in thinking it was a complete waste of time, and she was probably right.

While it was quiet Walter would investigate who exactly lived in the State of Kerala, and if they were known to the police.

The men were all so well known; you could see them all practically any time you paid a visit, but what of the women? Fact was, the women were kept away from prying eyes, as if they were the prized wives in some Arab Sheik’s palace, hidden away and never to be seen by visitors and the general public, and Walter didn’t have a problem with that.

If he were ever lucky enough to possess a pretty wife, though that now seemed unlikely, he wouldn’t be that keen on other men looking at her, coveting her, and even lusting after her, or would he?

Wouldn’t it be nice to occasionally take her out and flaunt her in front of friends and workmates, take her to the State, to the theatre, or the races on Ladies’ day, of course it would, and he would too, but therein lay one of the many differences between him and Wazir, between their vastly differing backgrounds and cultures. The pair of them had, after all, originated from opposite sides of the planet, and who was to say which way was right, and which way was wrong? It would still be interesting though, to see how many women lived in that establishment.

First, he checked the PNC, the Police National Computer, that huge beast that began life in the same year that Walter joined the force, 1974. It was mainly a register of stolen cars back then, but now it handled almost seventy million, what they quaintly called, transactions, as if it were some branch of the Stock Exchange, every single year.

It was a mammoth operation, split into five main sections, QUEST, VODS, ANPR, PROPERTY and CRIMELINK,