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

be the moment to be so, minutes after I had found my life partner. He or she or it, or whatever God is or was, might have snatched that happiness away, by snagging my chute. I can’t tell you how relieved I was when that multi coloured mushroom swirled open above me, and when it did, slowing the fall, I wished it had opened later, so that I could have been on earth sooner.

Desiree was a woman of her word.

She always was.

There she was, standing there, swaying back and forth, her hands clasped together behind her back like a little girl at her first school assembly, or a mother flushed with happiness when her first son learns how to ride a bicycle, beaming at me just as before, only more so.

She linked my arm, asked me how it had been, asked me to explain my emotions, and said she shared the same feelings, though neither of us wanted to talk about parachuting. There were so many more important things to relate, as we made our way back toward the buildings.

Her friends were still there, hanging about, becoming irritated.

‘Come on, Desi,’ one of them pleaded, ‘We are going to the Snooty Fox!’

‘Can’t today, boys. I’m sorry, but I’ve met my old friend, Sam, and we have so much to catch up on. Don’t we?’ she said, pulling me closer and peering and smirking into my eyes.

I nodded and said, ‘Yes, we do.’

And that is what we were. Old friends. Old friends who’d known each other minutes, yet we had known each other forever.

We had so much to say.

Everything that had gone before, we couldn’t wait to share, and everything that was to come, we couldn’t wait to see, and think about, and whatever the future held, we would share every moment, hand-in-hand. The good times and the bad, and there would be plenty of both. We didn’t stop talking for hours. We didn’t stop talking once, not until we were making love in her apartment that overlooked the River Dee, just above the ancient bridge.

She’d asked me if I’d like to accompany her back to Chester, and of course we both knew the answer to that. She’d led me back to her brand new Cayton Cerisa hatchback, while my friends and her friends gawped on in amazement, as if we were in a bubble, as if we couldn’t see them, and they couldn’t see us. And after that we’d driven to town, shared our first meal in some old pub in the main street, as we talked and talked, and begged each other to know where we had been all our lives, and why the hell we hadn’t met sooner.

That night we made love on and off till the sun came up, and for longer still.

After that day, I never slept with anyone else.

I have never thought about sleeping with anyone else.

I have never desired anyone else, and she said the same thing, and I believed her.

I shall never lie with another woman.

Why should I?

Desiree Holloway was everything I desired.

Desiree Holloway was everything.

Desiree epitomised desire.

It was as plain and simple as that.

Desiree Holloway was desire.

When you have the best, nothing else will do.

Chapter Fifty-Five

Walter yawned and glanced at the clock. Twenty to six. He felt dog tired. Someone else’s blood was gallivanting around his body, maybe donated by nine different people. Thank you, the nervous nine, I couldn’t live without you. At least it was human blood. He set the diary down and ambled outside. Mrs West came out of her office wearing her going home face.

‘You still here? Thought I told you to go home early.’

‘Things to do.’

‘Don’t stay too late.’

‘I won’t, ma’am.’

She nodded and headed for the door, just as Karen was coming back in. She ambled over and said, ‘How’s it going?’

Walter pulled a face and nodded.

‘Chapters and chapters of his love for Desiree Holloway. He was sure smitten.’

‘Men get that way,’ she grinned.

‘Do they?’

‘Have you never felt that way?’

He thought for a second, and said: ‘No.’

She pitied him, but didn’t say; then she wondered if he was being truthful. Men often aren’t when it comes to such matters, women too, though men were far worse, in her eyes, they were. Much worse.

‘Do you mind if I shoot off? I’m going to have an early night.’

‘Nope, sure, fine, you get away, see you in the morning.’

He seemed distant.

‘Are you all right?’

He focused his large dark eyes on her as if she’d just come in, and said, ‘Yeah, sure, I’m fine, see you tomorrow.’

Karen collected her bag and smiled and bobbed her head and turned about and left.

Walter went to the cloakroom and pondered on what she had said.

Have you never felt that way?

Yes, once, maybe, but that was long ago, and there was little point in dragging up old sores. He washed his hands, blew them under the drier, and returned to the private office. And the diaries.

I HAVE SUFFERED MANY setbacks in my life; I am not alone in that, and I am not making excuses, and I don’t want pity, but the knocks I took were bound to leave their mark.

My beloved mother died before I started school. My father took a mistress, the hateful and deceitful Donna Deary, who would slap me when my father’s eyes were turned elsewhere. I suffered the loss of my beautiful house and garden where I played and learned of life. Then came the loss of my father in a violent and catastrophic accident, along with his new wife and my stepbrother, though I confess I did not shed a tear at their deaths. The loss of my inheritance, wasted in propping up a failing business, sucked dry by the scheming leech, Deary. The loss of my income and job at the flower shop I loved, the first true interest I ever developed, a love of flora that will remain with me always. Mrs Greenaway’s surprising