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

sell, and it was always a long time between harvests when the figures didn’t stack up. He’d been looking at the pigs, sizing them up; he had hoped to breed from them, but one of them might have to go.

He came into the kitchen, sat on the old three-legged stool, and tugged off his muddy boots, debating whether to say anything about the pigs.

‘Come and get your lunch,’ cooed Chrissie, and she slapped down on the table a blue plate of crusty bread, local white Cheshire cheese sourced from a farm less than a quarter of a mile away, cheese that actually tasted of something.

They never bought supermarket cheese; in fact they tried not to visit supermarkets at all if it could be avoided. Pile it high and sell it cheap and try not to notice it’s all crap.

That was their view of those consumer palaces. Beside the bread roll, were two chunky homemade pickled onions; the last of the previous year’s pickling that Chrissie had worked late into the night completing. The thought of it brought a smile to her face, for she recalled that even Donald had been roped into the production line, washing and drying jars, filling them with fresh onions from the plot just outside the back door, pickling vinegar in, screw caps, sealed tight, and the essential and surprisingly fancy label that read: Chrissy’s (Donald’s different spelling) Homemade Pickled Onions, with the date handwritten beneath, labels that he had knocked up on the Lion Loans computer system after hours, and Chrissie couldn’t help but wonder what else Donald had been “knocking up” on those computers, beside pickled onion labels when he stayed working late.

The current year’s crop would not boast such an attractive and professional label and finish, but that couldn’t be helped. The contents would be just as good. She wondered too where their only child was at that second, and looked across at Colin as if she were thinking of asking him, but he looked so tired and worn out, she didn’t say a word. Colin bit into the cheese and began noisily eating. He did eat in a noisy way, and she’d be lying if she said it didn’t annoy her, but there was no point in nagging him again, she knew that now, and instead she found herself saying, ‘How’s the cheese?’

‘Champion!’ he said, and he grinned across at her through his gapped teeth, as she set a mug of strong tea before him. ‘Best cheese anywhere,’ and he was right, it was.

She came back to the table with her own lunch, minus the onions, they gave her dreadful indigestion when she was stressed, as she was then. She went back for the mug of tea she had forgotten and had just sat down when the front doorbell rang.

‘Be that black detective,’ said Colin. ‘Know his type, like a dog with a bone, he is, won’t let it lie, not till he gets t’ bottom of it. Mark my words.’

Chrissie nodded and thought that was no bad thing, she wanted the whole matter clearing up, and as soon as possible. She eased up out of the chair, trying to swallow the small piece of white cheese still in her mouth, and ambled down the hall and opened the heavy half-glazed front door.

There was a young man there, a stranger. Beyond him, parked on the road on the other side of their front gate was a modern cream and green van. He was carrying a packet and some kind of electronic device with an attached pen type thing.

‘You sign,’ he said.

Foreign. Polish probably, they usually were, after English and Welsh, Polish was now the most widely spoken language in Britain, over half a million people speaking it, so reported the local newspaper a couple of weeks since, and who’d have thought that ten years ago? Where had all that come from?

She took the packet, scribbled an unreadable signature on the silver screen and said ‘Ta love,’ and the guy smiled and nodded and said, ‘Good day, you have,’ and he turned and hurried away. He had hundreds of packets and parcels still to deliver before he could get home to his sweet wife and teeny twin daughters.

Chrissie closed the door and ambled back into the kitchen, turning the packet over and over in her hand.

‘Private courier,’ she said, setting the packet on the table and sitting down.

‘What is it?’ asked Colin.

‘Don’t know, thought you might have ordered summat.’

‘Not me,’ and he shook his head. ‘Who’s it addressed to?’

She took a bite of crusty roll and stared down at the address.

‘Mr and Mrs Rushnell.’

‘Does it say who it’s from?’

A little chew, and another glance.

‘Nope.’

‘Well open it!’ he said, - she could be such a dopey cow sometimes.

‘All right, bossy boots!’ and she picked up the padded packet and began tearing off the end.

The contents, whatever they were, were wrapped in thick newspaper, and then sealed in brown cardboard and taped up, using a lot of tape. Whoever had wrapped the thing had taken a great deal of care. It was hard to open, hard to get at the gubbins inside.

Colin clicked his tongue and glanced at the ceiling. She always had to make such a meal of everything. Finally, she’d torn a hole through the paper and the contents fell from the packet and landed in the centre of the table with a dull thud.

The Rushnells stared down.

‘Geez!’ said Colin.

Chrissie’s hand went to her mouth, as it often did when she was surprised at anything.

‘Is there a note?’ he asked. ‘A letter, maybe?’

She ransacked the packing.

‘Nope, not a thing.’

‘Good God,’ he said.

‘From Donald, do you think?’

‘Who else?’

‘How much is there?’

Colin picked up the bundle of cash. Used notes the lot of it, in twenties, one hundred in each bundle, held together with high street bank manila bands that said so, and stamped, five separate lots in all.

‘Ten grand,’ he said softly, unable to keep a slight grin from his unshaven face.

‘What do we