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

He turned to his fragrant wife and pecked her on the cheek.

‘Mind my make-up.’

‘Have you got a programme?’

She opened her over-large designer bag and pulled out a copy and handed it to him. He glanced at the schedule. Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds, Nottingham, Hull, York, Durham, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Edinburgh, Perth, Glasgow, Carlisle and Preston. Thirteen long-since sold out lunches that would test the waistline of any man, but Kit had promised faithfully that he would eat and drink little else during the whole of the tour.

Jennifer was determined to keep him to his word.

‘Have you brought the camera,’ he asked.

‘I certainly have.’

‘Good, you never know when we might need it.’

The tickets had all sold out within five hours of being put on sale online, and though his publishers, Casson & Cates, had scored a minor victory by insisting on increasing the prices to £150 per head, there hadn’t appeared to be any resistance to the price point, as they were fond of pointing out. That wasn’t a phrase that Kit either liked or would ever use, but he would have his revenge by opening his speeches with an apology for the ticket price, out of my control, my friends, and that was sure to go down well, when he would insist it was forced on him by his publishers using the small print in their extraordinarily detailed publishing contract.

If Casson & Cates didn’t like it he could always move on somewhere else. There had been several overtures from American book behemoths who were monitoring his astonishing progress by the day. It helped with the selling of the tickets that his latest tome Make Money While You Sleep, was locked in, seemingly permanently, at number one in the non-fiction book charts, something that irritated TV cooks and TV gardeners to hell and back, for they regarded that as their rightful territory, and theirs alone.

‘Manchester, here we come,’ he said, softly.

‘Yes indeedy,’ said Jennifer and she leant over and kissed the side of his beard. ‘And after that, the big opening.’

There was a brief moment of silence when only the luxurious hum of the locally made engine assailed their ears, and then Kit whispered, ‘Ah yes, the Big Opening!’

PRYCE UNLOCKED THE doors at the end of the corridor, carefully closed them behind him and locked up. Ahead of him was the final set of doors that would take him into the inner sanctum of the assembly plant. He didn’t go in there often, he did not feel the need, and anyway, that was the junior partner’s domain, Brinton’s. He could be chased in there whenever the need arose, as it had recently with the slip-sliding of the Cambridge order that thankfully, was now looking back on track.

Pryce turned right and selected a different key from his huge band of clinking metal. He opened the solid door to the little used pep talk room, turned on the striplight that spluttered to life, and stepped inside. He closed the door behind him and set the bottle of mineral water on the desk. It was the only desk in the windowless room, and the only other pieces of furniture were a single executive chair set on either side of the desk. On the floor against the right wall was a blue plastic washing-up bowl.

Pryce set his hand on the high back of the near chair and stared across the office. In the far chair sat a woman. She was opening and closing her eyes, time and again, as the striplight shone down into her face. Sitting alone in the darkness for three hours straight couldn’t be much fun for anyone, he mused, though he guessed she had been sleeping.

She was restrained in the chair by plastic cable ties, pretty much unbreakable, unless you had a good knife or scissors, while across her mouth was a length of thick pink tape.

‘How are you?’ he asked, knowing full well she could not answer. Her eyes, now acclimatised to the neon, glared at him, unblinking. ‘Oh, I’m forgetting myself,’ he said. ‘Would you like a drink of water?’ and he glanced at the green bottle.

The woman shook her head.

‘Ah well, just as you like, maybe as well, come to think of it.’

He reached across and grabbed the bottle and unscrewed the cap. Carefully emptied a couple of drops into the upturned top, knowing full well he could not leave it there for long.

He glanced at the girl. She couldn’t keep her eyes off him, and what he was doing, and that was how it should be. He gently tipped the drops onto the right side of the desk. A couple of seconds passed and the hissing and burning began. Smoke, or was it fumes, began ascending toward the light. He glanced at the girl. There was fright in her eyes. Good to see. All to plan, so far.

‘As you can see, my dear, just as well you declined a drink, for sulphuric acid is a mighty strange substance. Now the thing is, and here’s the lesson, in a moment I am going to remove the tape from your overlarge mouth, no offence, and if you so much as mutter a word, never mind a yell, scream, or shout, I shall drip the entire content of that bottle down your face, beginning at the forehead, just below that ridiculous haircut of yours, and it will roll down, hopefully between your eyes, and not into them, though I suspect it won’t do your nose much good. Do I make myself clear?’

Jessica Stone nodded.

‘Good, just so long as we understand each other,’ and he went around behind her and surprisingly gently, removed the tape from her mouth. For a brief moment she thought about biting his fingers, but no matter how much pent up anger was in her, she knew that would have been a futile gesture. She gasped for air through an open mouth. Breathing solely through the nose for three hours at