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

worked on rats and apes and she was sure, with more tests, it could work on humans too. The opportunity to experiment on live human beings was one she could not turn down. She said one final push, and she’d crack it. She had been experimenting on apes for at least a year before that. It’s not such a big step from apes to humans. The people were handpicked. They had no known relatives. They were terminally ill and not expected to survive for long.’

‘So what happened to these people?’

‘They all died, according to Desi. Every one of them. Cremated on site. She always went to the funeral services. Most times she was the only one there.’

‘And their deaths were covered up?’

‘You tell me, Walter. You’re the detective.’

‘I don’t know. I know nothing about it. Did she make any progress?’

‘Progress, yes, a cure? I’m not sure.’

‘How many people are we talking about?’

Sam pulled a face.

‘Don’t know for sure, twelve, maybe twenty.’

Walter’s turn to pull a face. Between twelve and twenty deaths, if the guy was to be believed. Legal deaths? Or Illegal? Murders or mercy killings? He didn’t know, but he wanted to find out.

Sam was talking again.

‘It wasn’t just experiments on live humans that Desi did. She was obsessed with all aspects of progress in the field. Her father had been struck down with it. That made it personal. She wasn’t interested in much else. She’d developed a theory called Distant Consciousness. It’s an idea that in severe cases memories can be stimulated by documents and items from long ago. Everyday items, but objects dear to the heart, things associated with beautiful memories, precious events, such as a programme from the 1951 Festival of Britain, an occasion attended with a loved one, a fiancé, a life partner. Or maybe an early Elvis Presley record, or tickets to an early Beatles concert when no one outside of Merseyside had ever heard of them. Even football programmes from big games like the 1966 World Cup Final, that kind of thing, memory jolters, she called them. People who’d not shown any sign of recognition of anything for years, recognised those items. She had genuine success with it. She was communicating with them.’

‘Go on.’

‘She’d visit country nursing homes, study the patients, and bring her research data and techniques back to Eden Leys. Adding that to the secret live experiments, she told me she was this close to cracking it,’ and Sam held his forefinger and thumb half an inch apart, and jabbed them into the air. ‘This close, Wally! And then you bastards murdered her.’

‘I didn’t murder anyone.’

‘You know what I mean!’

‘Why seven, Sam?’

‘MI7 were responsible. It was just a number, it seemed fitting at the time, it stuck in my mind, seven times one is seven. You had to pay seven times over. They all had to pay.’ Sam glanced at his watch. ‘You’ve got fifteen minutes left, Wally, fifteen minutes. Said your prayers yet?’

‘There are still things I don’t understand.’

‘Tough luck! Fifteen minutes.’

‘Tell me about the day Desi died.’

The guy sighed hard, but started talking again.

‘She was on the way to London to pick up some top scientific award. A train had been cancelled. The station was packed. She was desperate for a seat. She had work to do. Her speech to complete. She was standing at the front. The train came in. A little nudge from behind. It could even have been done with a muscular chest, thrust forward at an opportune moment; that would have been enough. Over she went, out of this world, out of my life forever, my darling Desiree, my other half, my soul mate, my reason for living... murdered in cold blood in broad daylight in a public place by some government assassin.’

Sam looked away and stared at the wall.

Walter gave him a moment, then asked, ‘How do you know all this?’

‘I studied all the police reports I could lay my hands on. I had to bribe one guy in your department, there you are, one juicy titbit of gossip you can take with you. You’ve got a mole who will sell their soul, cost me three hundred nicker, worth every penny. Plus the coroner’s statement, everything I could find. It was obvious your mob was convinced it was suicide from day one. You never really looked at alternatives. You didn’t give Desi a chance. You’d made up your minds.’

‘I was on holiday.’

‘Gee bloody whiz! Well, that’s you off the hook, isn’t it! I don’t think so!’

For once Walter didn’t have an answer.

Sam snarled and started again.

‘Along with what Desi told me about unexpected accidents, and how scared she was, I knew she had been murdered. I just knew.’

‘But didn’t you say she was upset about something in her past; that she woke from nightmares. Couldn’t that have had something to do with it? Couldn’t that have been preying on her mind?’

Sam thought a beat and said, ‘She didn’t commit suicide, if that’s what you think. But she did once tell me she was hearing voices.’

‘Voices?’

‘Yeah, you know, nasty voices in her head ordering her about. I think it went back to that Toby Malone character. I’d like to have met him. I’d like to have killed him, but thankfully someone else got there before me. Good and bad in everything. Good, that he’s long dead, bad, that I didn’t eradicate the bastard first.’

‘Could Desi have murdered Toby?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’

‘Really? Are you so sure? She was used to death after all, and if he hurt her so much...’

‘She didn’t! But even if she did, he deserved it, and even if she did, it had nothing to do with her demise.’

‘You don’t know that!’

‘I visited the cop shop seven times. Seven times, Walter. Seven bleeding times! Pleading with your people to reopen their inquiry. Begging them to start an investigation into everything that was happening at Eden Leys. And what did they do? Damn all! That’s what. Bugger all!’

‘I guess your enquiries never made it past