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

‘It can be fun, slow cruising along from one country town to another, stop at a canal side pub, have a drink and a bite to eat, back on the boat, chill out, chew the cud, move on a bit, different scenery, different town, different brew, very relaxing.’

‘Must be hellish in the rain.’

‘Oh, I don’t know, all part of it, I guess.’

He seemed really interested in the idea so she thought she’d humour him and said, ‘Maybe we should hire a boat and rope in the gang, staff bonding exercise – you, me, Gibbo, Jenny and Jan,’ though she pointedly left Hector off.

‘Don’t know about that,’ said Walter. Not sure I’d like to spend a fortnight cooped up with Gibbons and his dirty socks.’

Karen giggled and nearly added: and his dirty mind too, but didn’t, and said, ‘You’ve got a point there, Guv.’

‘Let’s talk business,’ said Walter.

‘Sure thing.’

‘What have we got here?’ he floated.

‘Well, we have a dead Chinese girl, almost certainly an illegal, beaten and strangled by person or persons unknown. We’ve got a missing supermodel who not so long ago was sleeping in your bed, or at least one of them, and we’ve got a lonely young man who has gone missing after relieving his employers of more than a quarter of a million pounds, gazoom, on the run, though we have no idea where or why.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘And we also have a policeman executed in my front room.’

‘I thought you said we were to ignore that.’

‘I didn’t say we should ignore it, I said the crime was being investigated by the London boys.’

‘So, it’s not one for us?’

‘No, but it is strange no one has been up here to see me, and stranger too there’s no sign of any investigation.’

‘You know D7, Guv, they do things their own way.’

‘Mmm...’ he said, and then he continued, ‘Let’s talk about the murdered Chinese girl.’

‘Fair ’nuff. Shall we crack on with checking out hotels and the like.’

‘Nah! She wasn’t involved in hotel work.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because if she were an illegal being held by people traffickers she would have been working some place where she couldn’t simply run free. If she was a maid in a hotel she’d have walked out at the first sign of hassle.’

‘So what was she doing?’

‘What businesses are always in the market for young women... employ young women?’

‘Well, ignoring the obvious, Guv, because the PM tells us to, I think we covered all that earlier.’

‘It was something you said, actually, something rang true.’

‘What did I say?’ she asked, trying to remember her own words.

‘You said something like: Every time I see a programme about China on TV I see vast factories with hundreds of young workers.’

‘Yeah. So? What of it?’

‘It struck a chord.’

‘In what way.’

‘Not sure, it just sounds right, it feels right, I can see Yet Kwai slaving away on some production line somewhere, I can feel it in my bones, I can see it in her eyes, I can smell the oil on the machinery, maybe in China, maybe here in the UK, maybe both.’

‘Doing what?’

‘What are they invariably making when you see those vast lines of humanity hard at work in the Far East?’

‘Tat, for the most part.’

‘No, no, - not so much anymore. There’s a conscious effort going on to increase the value of the produced goods, to move upmarket. They have to do that because increasing wages are slowly pricing them out of the market, Vietnam, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, are all snapping at their heels, and one day North Korea will too.’

Karen pulled a thinking face. ‘Clothing, possibly?’

‘More like it, but not always. Often it’s more detailed work, more skilled work, more hi-tec.’

She paused and said, ‘Yeah! Phones, mobile phones, computer bits, electronics, circuit boards, all that kind of stuff.’

Walter nodded. ‘That feels right too. I wonder if we could re-check the girl’s fingers, see if there are any minute particles of electronic guff hidden there to back up the theory.’

‘Got to be worth a try.’

‘It has, you get on to that as soon as we get back.’

Karen thought about it and nodded.

Walter said, ‘Let’s talk about Donald.’

‘Okey-doke.’

‘What did he want the money for?’

‘Well, we know he sent 10K to his folks, maybe he’s going to drip-feed them more and more.’

‘At least we are monitoring the private couriers this time, but that’s only a sideline. If it shows up we’ll have it. The ten grand was handed into a courier’s office in Shrewsbury. They remember it was a guy, but no more than that. Must have been Donald, I reckon. We’ve got the Mercian police checking out guesthouses and hotels in the town, but don’t hold your breath. I don’t expect them to find him. But giving handouts to his parents, however much they might be needed, wasn’t the main reason he stole the cash in the first place. I don’t see that.’

‘Could be any number of reasons,’ she said.

‘Like what?’

‘Maybe to impress a woman?’

‘There’s no evidence of that.’

‘Maybe to buy a house?’

‘There’s no evidence of that either. No, I think he stole the money for a very specific purpose.’

‘Like what?’

‘Don’t know, can’t figure that one out, but I’m sure as hell going to find out. Let’s talk about Jessica Stone.’

‘What about her?’

‘She is a person in great demand, the Barton brothers have put a big price on her head, but so far, as far as we know, no one has found her. She is being held against her will, that we do know, because if she wasn’t she would have been found, so if we were talking about human traffickers before, here we have a human being who would be of great interest to anyone trading in valuable human bloodstock.’

‘Aren’t all human beings valuable, Guv?’

‘You know what I mean! Some humans, to some people, are more valuable than others, it may not be right, or feel right, but it’s fact, and Jessica would fall into that top pot.’

‘You think Jessica Stone is being sold off?’

‘Why not?