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

‘Who found the body?’ asked Walter.

‘I did,’ said the civilian with the red boozer’s face.

‘And your name is?’

‘George Reece.’

‘And what do you do, George Reece?’

‘Car park supervisor. Just tidying up. Getting ready for a busy day.’

‘What time did you get here?’

‘Six thirty on the nail.’

Walter doubted that. His timing worked out that he would have received a call a good fifteen minutes earlier if Reece had arrived at 6.30. Chances are he was late for work and didn’t want anyone to know about it. Not a criminal offence, not yet.

‘And you found the woman?’

Reece nodded.

‘Did you see anyone else hanging around?’

‘Nope.’

‘Did you touch her?’

‘No way!’

‘Not even to see if she had a pulse?’

‘No chance! She was dead all right. Look at her!’

‘Not even to see if she had any money, a purse, a wallet?’

Reece shook his head and looked away and dragged out a cigarette.

‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ said Karen.

She was trying hard to give up.

The cigarette remained unlit.

‘Okay,’ said Walter, ‘give your details to the uniformed officer.’

‘I’ve already taken them,’ said the young uniform.

He looked about fifteen, or at least he did to Walter. Clean cut and clear skin, bright eyes, optimistic, enthusiastic, the complete package. A couple of centuries before Walter looked like that, hard to believe, but true. The long hours, difficult work, and poor pay would soon knock that out of him.

‘What’s your name, kid?’

‘Squires, Guv, PC Julian Squires.’

Yep, that was about right, he looked a Julian, but nice enough for all that.

‘Right, PC Julian Squires, you and Mr Reece here can go about your normal business, once you have closed the car park, that is. But make sure you drop the information off on my desk before you go off shift.’

‘Will do, Sir,’ and he kind of backed away and went about his business, leaving Reece to head off down toward the public toilets that were set to one side of the baths. The police bike rider had long since gone.

They looked down at the young woman. She didn’t look great. Maybe twenty, maybe fifteen, maybe thirty, it was hard to tell, just over five feet tall, very slim, cheap jeans, cheap grubby logo-less tee shirt, cheap trainers, nothing else. Just cheap cheap cheap. No jewellery, no obvious piercings, no rings, no makeup, no visible tattoos, and no obvious sign of death, but someone had given her a beating, pound to a penny someone bigger, perhaps a bully, and Walter envisaged such a person, and there were heavy markings around her neck too, strangulation, maybe? Black hair in a ponytail secured by an old beige rubber band.

Definitely Oriental, that was unmistakeable, but from where?

Karen pursed her lips and said, ‘Chinese, Japanese, Korean? What do you think, boss?’

‘She’s Chinese.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Koreans look harder and are generally fitter. Japanese are more rounded in the face.’

‘Are you kidding me?’

‘That’s the probability.’

Karen shook her head. Wanted to keep an open mind.

Walter took a pen out of his pocket and carefully poked around in the girl’s pockets. Nothing there other than a well used paper handkerchief. Only to be expected. Whoever killed her wasn’t going to leave easy ID.

He stood up and peered around the car park. Lots of city centre CCTV, both there and on the ring road.

‘Get all the CCTV you can find,’ he said, ‘and ring the Chinese Consulate in Liverpool and ask them if they can help in identifying one of their young women. She could be a student. Tell them we’ll have fingerprints by lunchtime.’

‘Is there such a thing? A Chinese Consulate in Liverpool?’

‘Big seaport, big trading nation, big population, loads of Consuls scattered around the world, doubles as intelligence centres, money to burn, just waiting for your call.’

‘I’m on it,’ and she already was, on the latest mobile device she adored so.

Twenty-Three

Walter turned round. Two vehicles were approaching, Doc Grayling’s ageing grey Jaguar and SOCO’s white van. Five minutes later and the body was shaded by a fresh white tent. Doc Grayling crouched down over her.

‘Don’t you dare ask me for a ToD,’ he said, grumpily.

‘Wouldn’t dream of it. When, do you think?’

The doc exhaled noisily, but there was a semblance of a smile there too.

‘Why don’t you push off and I’ll ring you as soon as I have something to say? There’s nothing more you can do here.’

Walter bobbed his head. Seemed a sensible idea. ‘Ring me,’ he said, and he beckoned Karen back to the car and they headed back to HQ.

THE POPULATION OF CHINA, so far as anyone knows, is 1,339,824,999, and counting. That’s more than one and a third billion. Fact is, as soon as you write it down it’s out of date. That’s more than twenty-two times the population of the UK, and the hated one child only policy didn’t appear to be having that much effect.

But whatever the number, the Consulate was very interested in one of their own, especially one who may have come to a troubled and tragic end. They promised to check fingerprints and to send down embassy staff if she were known to them. The electronically dispatched prints brought back a blank. So far as they were concerned she was an unknown, and that kind of cooled their interest a little, though they still insisted they would give any additional support that was needed. They also pointed out that just as in the UK, there was no all-embracing fingerprint directory in China. They were getting there, so they said, but the memory-busting database was not yet complete.

She could have been Chinese, it was true, but equally she could have been British, or Singaporean, a Hong Konger, Indonesian, Malay, Thai, Taiwanese, if you counted that as a separate country, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and heaven knows what else.

One thing was for sure, no one was in any hurry to come forward and report her missing.

The rushed through post mortem showed death by strangulation. Seemed the marks on her neck were important after all. She wasn’t a