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

Rushnells and Kit Contricks of this world. There would be years and years ahead, God willing, of days when he could lie in bed, and he already knew he would pine through those long days, and wish for decent a reason to get up and scamper to work.

He made some toast, banged on the marmalade far too thickly, wolfed it down, swigged the instant coffee while still too hot, burnt his tongue, cursed aloud, and heard the rain beating on the new kitchen window. He hadn’t used his raincoat in weeks, couldn’t for the life of him remember where it was, couldn’t find it anywhere, which was no surprise, as it was hanging up on the back of the cloakroom door at work. He cursed again and made do with a slightly short and totally unsuitable padded jacket.

Then he remembered it was Sunday, and the skimpy bus service there was sure to be, especially at that hour, and he saw the taxi company card on the small hall table and picked it up and rang the number. Despite the day and the hour they still said they’d be with him in five, and they were, on the nail. Very impressive. Went outside, locked up, and jumped in the backseat to be greeted by Carrie the Cab.

‘Hello again. You’re out early. Got an important case?’

‘Yeah, something like that.’

‘Don’t suppose you’d like to tell me all about it?’

‘Can’t, sorry, it’s confidential, you know how it is.’

‘Yeah, sure. Bet it’s exciting.’

‘No, not really, mundane things.’

‘Don’t suppose you’d tell me if it was something fab like a murder... crime of passion! Something like that.’

It was clear Carrie had a fertile imagination and driving a car about the city all day, perhaps that wasn’t so surprising.

Walter laughed a false laugh.

‘Where to then?’ she said in her happy singsong voice.

‘City centre will do.’

‘You got it,’ and she pulled away with a jolt and he fell back into the seat.

Ideally, he wanted her to drop him at the station, but he didn’t want her to know he was a police detective, and he regretted now telling her he was a private investigator. Should have stuck with the zookeeper story. The rain grew heavier still and she slipped the wipers to fastwipe, yet still she had to peer through the cascading water to see the road.

‘Filthy morning!’ she said.

‘It’s been so nice too.’

‘Sure has; I guess this is payback time.’

‘Mmm,’ he said, trying to clear his head and think of work issues.

A few minutes later and she said, ‘This do you?’

He glanced at the tippling rain, and thought of the fair walk to the station, and remembered his short coat and said, ‘Bit further yet.’

‘You got it.’

A couple of minutes later he asked her to pull over, forty yards from work, as near as he dared. Paid the fare, wished her well, and stood out into the torrential rain, and hunched into his jacket, and walked as quickly as he could into work.

The jacket hadn’t done the job, his legs were soaked, his grey slacks were now two-tone, the bottom three-quarters, dark, wet, and steaming, the top quarter, light and dry. He cursed again, hurried into the office, sat down and slid and hid his legs beneath the desk, and removed his shoes.

Jenny appeared carrying coffee and set one on his desk.

Walter nodded and said, ‘Ta. Anyone else in yet?’

‘Not yet,’ but as she said that, Gibbons came through the door in a rush, cursing the rain, with Hector in tow carrying a very smart umbrella, the wally with the brolly, as Gibbons called him, and Jan came in apologising, saying Mass had been running late because the congregation was running slow because of the rain, and the priest had been running slow, because he was getting old, and that’s what old people do, run slow.

Walter resisted the temptation to say: You’ll find out soon enough, and anyway, he wanted all the early morning nonsense out of the way without much comment as soon as possible, so they could get down to the serious business of crime detection.

He thanked them all for giving up their day, they would get their reward in other ways, and he explained why he thought the line of enquiry was so vital, when in truth he could barely explain it to himself. It was just one of those occasions when he knew he was right. He told them the day was to be spent eliminating electronics businesses from the very long list.

They could put a line through any business that had ceased trading, or had moved away. They could eliminate high street retailers and out of town retail park sellers. They would not be employing and using illegal immigrant workers, they could not be holding people against their will, because the girls or women would simply abscond, and they could also rule out big well known organisations and companies.

FTSE 100 companies, multinationals, and the like were not the kind of businesses that were going to make money through slave labour and human trafficking in the twenty-first century, leastways he hoped that to be the case. Surely there had to be some standards somewhere.

The aim was to have looked at every single business on the list by the close of play that day, and those remaining would begin to receive unannounced physical visits, commencing first thing Monday morning.

Walter reminded the team that there were estimated to be upwards of 5,000 people in Britain today working as slaves at any one time, yes, slavery in the twenty-first century, seemed hard to believe, but it was fact, and best intelligence concluded that someone on their patch was involved in the same evil business. It had to be stopped, and they were the only people who would do precisely that.

Everyone knew the drill, saw the target, got their heads down, didn’t fool around, worked hard, and began eliminating as many companies and organisations as they possibly could, and those that remained, and there were still a large