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

‘How did you get down to the caravan?’ asked Walter.

‘Got the old 4X4, and by hell, I needed it, that road is dreadful, feckin’ disgrace, it is, ruined the suspension, shouldn’t wonder.’

‘So your tyre tracks will be down there?’ said Karen.

‘Most likely.’

‘What size shoes do you take?’

‘Eh? 10s. Why?’

‘Just checking,’ said Karen.

‘You’re not planning on leaving town are you, no nice holidays in Spain, or somewhere like that?’ said Walter.

‘Not a chance.’

‘Good,’ said Walter. ‘Because if you left the area without advising us first I’d take a very dim view of that.’

‘I have no reason to run away.’

‘Let’s hope so, for your sake,’ said Walter. ‘We’ll be in touch.’

FIVE MINUTES LATER they were outside in the car. It was already full dark and getting noticeably colder. There was an old 4X4 parked in the lay-by opposite, dark green by the look of it.

‘His?’ you think, said Karen.

‘Probably, check the number.’

Karen switched on ANPR and fed in the number and back came the answers. Owned by Ronald Speight, taxed by Ronald Speight, insured by Ronald Speight. All legit, and no penalty points on his licence either.

‘Quite the model citizen,’ said Karen.

‘Yeah, looks that way, the thing is, I don’t think he’s the murderer.’

‘Neither do I, Guv, but he is a sleaze-ball of the first order.’

‘Can’t lock him up for that.’

‘More’s the pity. Could the drug dealer be the killer?’

‘Maybe, but who is he?’

‘Good question. Someone in the pubs should finger him. Did Belinda Cooper do drugs?’ said Karen.

‘Nothing to suspect it, we’ll have the toxicology report back in the morning, that’ll confirm it.’

‘Someone here is a murderer, someone we’re close to, but which one?’

‘Buggered if I know. Come on, Greenwood, I’m getting hungry and I’m getting tired, and you must be too, and no one sees things well through tired eyes, and a tired brain. Let’s get back and wind it up for the day, and get home.’

‘Sounds like a plan, Guv. Sounds like a plan.’

Twenty-Two

Karen arrived home at half past eight. She’d only been in the flat ten minutes when her mobile rang. It was David, and she wondered what he was going to say. Only one way to find out, take the call.

‘You’re in, are you?’ he said.

‘I’ve just come in. What can I do for you?’

‘Maybe it’s what I can do for you. Fancy going out for something to eat?’

‘Oh I can’t, Dave, I’m bushed, and very tense too, we’re so busy at work.’

‘It’s David, actually.’

‘Sorry! DAVID,’ she said, pronouncing the word deliberately, smiling at his mild rebuke.

‘You have to eat.’

‘I’ll grab something from the freezer, maybe a tuna steak.’

‘I know a perfect cure for tenseness.’

‘I’ll bet you do.’

‘No, not that.... Leastways not yet, no, I was thinking of my neck massage, it’s well renowned, I’m famous for it.’

‘Bet you are,’ she said, but on thinking about it, it was true she did have an aching neck, and right there a soothing neck massage sounded like pure heaven, and with that thought in the forefront of her mind she found herself saying, ‘Okay, but neck massage and nothing more, and you are not staying over, do I make myself clear?’

‘Yes, Miss Greenwood. Perfectly!’

‘Don’t be a prune. Come over in an hour.’

‘I’ll be there.’

WALTER DID SOMETHING that he rarely did on the way home, he stopped off at the local fish and chip shop and bought a jumbo sized battered cod, together with a large portion of chips, and a tub of steaming mushy peas. Yes, they were dreadfully bad for you, but by hell they were delicious, the steaming aroma seeping through the damp paper wrapper.

As soon as he was home he tipped them onto a large dinner plate, added some tomato sauce and vinegar and extra salt - that should annoy the salt police - and sat in his favourite chair before the TV and ate the lot, as he followed and giggled his way through the latest cops and robbers caper from the States.

He’d eaten the dinner far too quickly, and inevitably that brought on indigestion and heartburn, and that meant a trip to the kitchen, and a dose of pink indigestion medicine. Ghastly. Whilst there, he opened the fridge and grabbed a can of black stout, and a glass, and returned towards the lounge. On the way he spotted the landline phone in the hallway. Should he ring Carlene again? He’d sure liked to have talked with her, but she’d been so offhand with him last time, leastways he thought so, and by his reckoning it was her turn to call him. In any event he’d not ring.

The TV show was so bad it wasn’t true, and he snapped it off and grabbed his new tablet, and found his way back to that Internet dating site, purely as research, he reassured himself, looking to see if he could find any entries for Belinda Cooper. It went without saying that if she had used the site she had probably used a false name, as so many of them appeared to do on there, as he’d discovered through personal experience. Probably disguised her address and locality too, that went without saying, and a sensible thing for any woman to do, but the number of fresh photos he had seen of her in the office gave him a head start on anyone else looking for her. Surely she must be there somewhere. What middle-aged woman living alone in the twenty-first century wouldn’t be?

But if she was there she had buried herself well, for he could not find her. There were huge numbers of interesting women who were there though, and many of them quite local too, and some of them more than passable, and some of those, particularly voluptuous, just as he liked them. There was nothing wrong in looking, was there? And he had to admit; it was far more interesting and entertaining than the TV.

Little wonder there were more than