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

The same two guys who did the fetching and carrying and courier duties, and frequent vehicle re-sprays looked after the goods inward and goods out. A large pile of completed orders were standing ready, all neat and tidy on rough timber pallets secured with tightly bound clear polythene, still within the main assembly plant, waiting to be taken into the dispatch bay.

Brinton watched as the main double doors to the dispatch section opened and one of the new yellow forklifts drove into the assembly plant. Man One was driving. He approached the pallets, slipped in the prongs, lifted one up, swung it round, and took it out through the doors. The first pallet of the Cambridge order was off the assembly floor and ready to be loaded onto a truck for the 150 mile trip, south-east.

Brinton watched the forklift return for a second pallet. Man One clocked he was being observed and nodded across at Brinton. Brinton nodded back, and by then the second pallet was already disappearing out of sight. Things looked okay, not brilliant, but better.

He went to the small shop that was situated next door. There were still a lot of hungry units there, maybe thirty or forty, still with money to spend, and despite the No Talking rules that applied to the whole of the main assembly floor, there was a lot of cackling going on. Brinton approached and clapped his hands hard and the cackling ceased.

The waiting units turned and regarded him warily. It wasn’t unusual for him to slap a disobedient unit, often for no apparent reason, and Brinton slapped hard when he did. More than one unit had lost teeth to a Brinton reprimand, as he referred to it.

The woman serving in the shop was called Tani, and she worked there because she was a little older than the rest. She came from Hong Kong and spoke decent English too, and that helped.

Brinton entered the shop and stood beside her.

‘All right, Tani?’

‘All right, Mr Brinton.’

‘Are we nearly closing?’

‘Soon, Mr Brinton, soon.’

‘How are the takings?’

‘Good, Mr Brinton, good.’

‘You’re not carving a slice off for yourself, are you?’

Tani stopped and stared at the man. Was he being serious? Was she in trouble?

‘Certainly not, Mr Brinton.’

‘You’d better not be, you’d be down the road, if you did.’

Tani went back to serving the many outstretched hands pointing to various items behind her, proffering the specially printed blue Minstrel Electronics ten-pound notes that Mr Brinton himself had designed and printed on the company colour laser printer. Brinton thought back to the day when he first floated the idea past Pryce. He had jumped at it immediately, and Brinton was the flavour of the month for a few days.

Truth was, he felt he could do with coming up with another bright idea, but so far his brain had failed to comply. Seemed hard to believe that before that, they actually used real live money. Brinton sniffed a laugh. Glanced at his watch.

‘You’ve got ten more minutes!’

‘Won’t be finished, Mr Brinton.’

‘Get fucking finished!’

Ten minutes later and there were still customers reaching inside the shutters.

‘Shop’s closed!’ yelled Brinton, but still several customers were offering money to Tani.

‘I said the shop’s shut!’ snarled Brinton, and he reached up and unhooked the shutters and let them fall, narrowly missing several pairs of hastily withdrawn hands. That would not have been good, broken fingers everywhere, when fingers were the most important part of the unit’s body by a country mile, no question about that.

Inside, Tani began cashing up for the day, before straightening out what little stock remained. Brinton went outside. Still a few stragglers about. Brinton glared at them and yelled, ‘Shop shut, shit off!’ and that did the trick and they ambled back, disappointed, to the living accommodation. Brinton went back into the timber built shop. There was only room in there for the two of them.

‘Got the re-stock list, Tani?’

‘Just doing it now, Mr Brinton.’

‘Why do I always have to ask you for things? Why are you never ready?’

He glared into her face. She didn’t look well, looked frightened and scared, as if she thought he might strike her, and he still might.

‘List done, Mr Brinton.’

Brinton held out his hand.

She slipped him the hastily scrawled list.

‘I can hardly read your ugly writing!’

‘Sorry, Mr Brinton.’

He glanced at the list.

13 shampoos.

10 box tampons.

16 large milk chocolate.

12 white chocolate, and so it went on.

‘Is that it? Everything?’

‘Yes, Mr Brinton.’

‘It better be. Give me the money.’

She collected all the money and placed it in the small cotton sack, together with her ready reckoner of the day’s takings. God help her if it didn’t balance.

‘This everything?’

‘Yes, Mr Brinton.’

Brinton nodded hard, just the once.

‘Out you go then, fuck off!’

Tani pulled a face, pulled her grubby overall around her, squeezed past Mr Brinton, and shuffled away toward the living accommodation. She had forgotten to buy a bar of chocolate for herself and that upset her, and despite her working in the shop, no one would share their chocolate with her because all the others thought she was in Brinton’s pocket, that she fed him information, something that she had never done. When she arrived back in the dorm the others went quiet, and turned away.

Brinton went outside and locked the shop for another day. It was a good lock too, because on more than one occasion someone had tried to enter the shop out of opening hours. One way or another he was going to close that damned place.

He walked briskly across the assembly floor, the day’s takings swinging in the bag at his side. He glanced up at the mezzanine floor. Monica was there, leaning on the rail, staring down at him.

‘Get back to fucking work!’ he yelled.

‘Yes, Mr Brinton,’ and she smirked and turned away and went back to her desk.

Forty-Nine

All of Walter’s team were back in the office for 6pm. Gibbons and Hector, looking into the activities of agricultural gangmasters, had found a large number of