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

saved lives. That was the point of the exercise. Nothing more. No doubt Cresta would think and say different, and in due course, she would have her chance, after he had finished.

If he couldn’t glean such intelligence, the time spent reading Sam’s neat, but tiny handwriting, a style that enabled the guy to cram a maximum amount of information and trivia into those bound A4 pages, would be, in his eyes, wasted.

Cresta would end up writing some best-selling book based on the murder diaries, but Walter wasn’t jealous about that. If she had the time and tenacity to produce such a work, good luck to her. He did not.

He ploughed on, pausing to scribble notes in not so neat handwriting on a foolscap pad. At eleven o’clock he needed a breather, went outside, and headed for the cloakroom.

Cresta glanced up from her desk. She was still writing her final report that she would portray as groundbreaking. Walter had returned and interrupted her train of thought with a comment of his own.

‘Morning, Cresty, how are you?’

Cresta glanced up.

‘Walter, there you are. It’s Crest-A, Walter, as you well know, Crest-A, and you look somewhat pasty, if I may say, how are you feeling?’

Pasty, he thought, she’d look bloody pasty if she’d had the lifeblood sucked from her, but he resisted the temptation to make a joke, and came to the point.

‘What would it be worth to the history of this case, and indeed to the whole subject of criminal profiling, if the killer had written a detailed account of his activities going back years?’

‘A great deal, that goes without saying,’ and then the penny dropped. ‘He wrote a diary?’ she asked, her eyes widening.

Walter grinned and nodded once.

‘Where is it?’

‘I’m reading it now.’

‘Can I see it after you?’

‘I might persuade ma’am to let me release it on one small condition.’

‘What, Walter, what?’

‘You buy me lunch at Pierre’s. I’ll be there at 12.30 if it’s a deal.’

Cresta smiled in purple. What a devious man he was.

‘I’ll be there,’ she said. ‘I’ll be there.’

‘Good. They do a wonderful quiche, and I’ll have chips with mine too, brilliant, it is, see you later.’

Chapter Fifty-Three

After an excellent lunch Walter retrieved the diaries from the locked cupboard, burped, and sat back in the chair. Pierre’s quiche was the most expensive bacon and egg pie in the universe, but it was lovely, even if it encouraged indigestion. Blood making pie was how he described it to Cresta, and that brought a grimace to her purple decorated face. She’d chosen the cold smoked trout with a sprinkling of green leaves, which said everything.

‘I need all the blood I can manufacture,’ he continued, before she suggested they talk of something else, and most particularly of the murder diaries.

She wasn’t bad company as it turned out, and hadn’t Karen once intimated they would make a handsome couple? He wouldn’t have gone that far, but away from the confines of the office and the competitiveness of that environment, she relaxed and was bearable. Perhaps she was being agreeable because she knew he had something she desperately wanted, and it wasn’t his ravaged body. Walter sighed and shook those recent memories from his mind and began reading.

THE FIRST TIME I REMEMBER feeling uncomfortable about myself was the day I discovered I possessed initials that spelt a mildly rude word. It could have been worse, I suppose. I could have been christened Steven Harold Ian Truman, or Freddy Umberto Chapman King, or even, God forbid, Colin Uriah Norman Trethowan.

My name, by comparison to those horrors, and no doubt there are poor unfortunates padding around out there with initials such as those, could be considered comical, a joke. I didn’t see it that way, it wasn’t a joke to me, not back then, and I suspect most boys wouldn’t have thought so either. It was strange I hadn’t noticed it before Billy Freeman yelled at me in the playground: ‘ASS by name, ASS by nature, you’re a complete ASS!’

We were eight, and even then I had to ask him to explain what he meant. It was a small and silly incident that shouldn’t have brought me discomfort, yet it did. Even now, looking back from years later, it makes me uncomfortable to think of it. You’re an ASS!  Maybe I am, who knows, who cares? I dumped the problem as soon as I could by ditching my first name. Who wouldn’t have?

WALTER FLIPPED THROUGH the pages. It was an easy thing to do, to dip in and out, because though they were written on dated pages, oddly, they didn’t come out in chronological order. It was all a little haphazard. The writer was either extremely gifted, or totally disorganised, and it was mighty difficult to decide which.

Karen knocked on the door and came in.

‘I’m going to Iona to oversee the removal of the contents. Anything you want me to look out for?’

‘Yes, the solicitor’s name and address.’

‘Besides that?’

‘Nope, not that I can think of.’

‘How’s the reading going?’

‘Confusing.’

‘In what way?’

‘Jumps about all over the place.’

‘You’ve got Cresta jumping up and down.’

‘Good. Well, she’s going to have to wait, and for quite some time too.’

Karen grinned. He enjoyed winding Cresta up. Karen was surprised he’d told her about the diaries at all.

‘OK, I’ll see you later.’

‘Yep, see you, oh; some more of those fairies would be nice.’

‘I’ll see what I can do.’

He turned over the page.

MY LIFE TOOK A TURN for the better the day I fell totally and utterly in love. It had been a slow burner. I’d known the girl for several years before I thought of her in any way other than as the quiet but cute vicar’s daughter. Unlike my friend Dennis who the very first day I mentioned her, said ‘Yeah, yeah. But would you fuck her?’

At the time that notion had not permeated my confused head, though a few years later that idea was fixed in my mind from first thought